Category Russia

Putin Step Backs

This article had appeared on numerous sites as “Putin Steps Back from Brink of War with Ukraine.” The original article is here: After Crimea incursions Russia and Ukraine step back from all out war

A couple of interesting points here:

 1. He actually has a section called “Metrics.” This is so nice to see. It should be required in all articles about military affairs.

2. “Ukraine has about 100,000 troops deployed in its eastern territories.”

3. “This is roughly on par with the 45,000 pro-Russian separatists and regular Russian troops deployed inside eastern Ukraine and the approximately 45,000 Russian troops staged across the border in western Russia.”

4. “Ukraine has about 10,000 troops deployed in southern territories near the Crimean border; Ukrainian officials estimate Russia has about 45,000 military personnel inside occupied Crimea.” (I would note that a significant of these are naval personnel)

Decent article from Mr. Nolan Peterson.

Twitter exchange on Ukraine

There was a brief exchange on twitter concerning the previous article, which I was not involved in. The initial response to my previous post was: “40,000 professional troops w/combat experience could go through go through 200,000 conscripts like a hot knife through butter.” The discussion continued with more agreement than disagreement. But it does bring up the issue of the relative capability of both armies.

We do not how good and capable each army is. Just a few observations

  1. The Russian Army is a mixed professional and conscript army. They have been using conscripts in the fighting in Ukraine (as the mothers of deceased Russian soldiers continue to remind us).
  2. The Ukrainian Army is a mixed professional and conscript army.
  3. Both armies had the same roots, traditions, training and leadership up through 1991. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, both armies were very similar for several years after that and both were in decline.
  4. After a period of serious decay in the 1990s, the Russian Army began to rebuild itself, including revising its doctrine.
  5. At the same time the Ukrainian Army began to rebuild itself, revising itself to some extent based upon U.S. doctrine. It joined NATO’s partnership-for-peace program in 1994.
  6. The Ukrainian Army suspended its active participation in the NATO partnership-for-peace program after President Yanukovich was elected in February 2010. The army was reduced and conscription ended.
  7. Since Yanukovich has left office in February 2014 (for the second time), the Ukrainian Army has reintroduced conscription and have begun the process of rebuilding themselves.
  8. Both armies have shown gaps in discipline and professionalism at times. For example, both armed forces have managed to each shoot down a civilian airliner.

My gut reaction is that the Russian Army may be more professional at this moment in time, but certainly not to a degree that would allow 40,000 to conquer a country protected by 200,000. A ratio of 1-to-5 for conducting a major invasion is rarely seen in history. It was certainly not the case when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

Two more points:

  1. There is invasion and there is occupation. For example, in 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq, a country of 24 million, with 75,000 troops. The occupation over the next couple of years did not go well, as an insurgency blossomed in that poor security environment. The population of Ukraine is around 42 million.
  2. The best time to invade a country is at the start of the summer (like Germany did with France in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941). Waiting until August does not make a lot of sense. Fall operations have been done (World War I started in August 1914 and Poland was invaded in September 1939), but in general, you want the longest period of good campaign weather.

My conclusion is that there is almost no chance of a full-scale Russian invasion at this stage. They would need a couple of hundred thousand troops to do so. They have not massed those forces yet and almost certainly will not this year.

On the other hand, they do have enough force to do something more limited, like take Mariupol, or cause problems around Kharkiv/Kharkov. Kharkiv is the second largest city in Ukraine (population 1.4 million) and has a large Russian-speaking population. It was the failure of the pro-Yanukovich/pro-Russian forces to obtain a foothold there in 2014 that severely limited the effects of the revolt in eastern Ukraine. I suspect that now doing anything significant against Kharkiv would be difficult.

Mariupol seems to the “prize” that everyone is focusing on. Even then, it is only another city (population: around 460,000). While it is the major port for the Donetsk province, it does not connect the Russians overland to Crimea. There is another 250 of so miles to make a land bridge all the way to Crimea. This is a lot of territory to take and a lot of territory to then have to protect.

My tentative conclusion as this this conflict for now is effectively stalemated, with perhaps only Mariupol in the balance. This does not mean it will remain peaceful, as there is regularly violence there, and this does mean that there will not be significant increases in violence, but other than the threat to Mariupol, I do not see any other major territorial shifts occurring between now and next spring (2017).

There is a lot you can do with 40,000 troops…

There is a lot you can do with 40,000 troops, but conquering Ukraine is not one of them.

This article does not state that, but it does lay out an overly frightful scenario: 40000 Russian Troops are Preparing for War in Crimea

The scenario they lay out towards the end of the article is “…a full-scale Russian military offensive likely would aim to seize key military-industrial area such as tank plant at Kharkiv, the missile factory at Dnepropetrovsk, the shipyard at Mykolyev, and the port of Odessa. Russian forces also could drive into Ukraine from the northeast to the outskirts of Kiev and place the capital within artillery range in a bid to force a change of government.”

As the article notes: “Still, Russia does not appear to have all the forces in place for a major military operation…”

So how big is the Ukrainian Army? Well, according to Wikipedia they had 250,000 active armed forces personnel in March 2016. Their source was a Reuters article: Reuters

According to Wikipedia the ground forces were 204,000 in 2009 (Air Force was 36,300 in 2009 and Navy was 6,500 in August 2015).  In October 2013 President Yanukovich ended conscription (both the Ukrainian and Russian armies rely heavily on conscripts), but it was reinstated in 2014 after Russia intervened in Ukraine. As Wikipedia notes in a dated posting: “Due to the reintroduction of conscription, and partial mobilization, Ukraine’s armed forces is expected to nearly double from approximately 130,000 personnel in December 2014 to approximately 250,000 personnel in 2015.”

Anyhow, not the best and most current data, but safe to say that the Ukrainians probably have 200,000 or more ground troops available. Numbers do matter, and while 40,000 Russian troops are certainly a threat to Ukrainian security and stability, it is not a force that ready to march to the outskirts of Kiev or take Odessa. It would require a very serious mobilization effort on the part of Russia to do that.

The Great Russian Recession

The Russian Recession has dragged on for 18 months now: Russian Recession

A few significant points:

  1. Economy shrunk 3.7% in 2015
  2. Expected to shrinking 1.2% this year.
  3. Expected to start growing again in 2017.
  4. Russian parliamentary elections are next month. Probably not going to be very earthshaking.
  5. Just for comparison, the “Great Recession” in the U.S. lasted 18 months, started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.
    1. Or is that 12-months, from Q3 2008 to Q2 2009?
    2. In 2008 it was a 0.3% drop in GDP
    3. In 2009 it was a 2.8% drop in GDP.
    4. In 2010 GDP grew 2.5%
    5. Date source: Annual Growth Data

Not much more to say on this, just kind of waiting to see what happens.

Can Russia Cow Europe into Submission?

My previous post addressed a famous 1980s U.S. policy and strategic debate in which quantitative analysis featured prominently. Such debates are ongoing, of course. The International Security Studies Forum just posted a roundtable discussion of a recent book by MIT political scientist Barry R. Posen, Restraint:  A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. The prolific Posen is the Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of MIT’s Security Studies Program. He played a role in the 1980s NATO/Warsaw Pact debate and his ongoing research “focuses on US military strategy, force structure and capabilities, and force posture (the global distribution of U.S. military forces.)”

His new book addresses the relationship between contemporary U.S. national strategy and net assessments of military power. In it, Posen makes an argument for a new grand strategic approach, as described in its blurb:

The United States, Barry R. Posen argues in Restraint, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that he calls “liberal hegemony,” one that Posen sees as unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. Written for policymakers and observers alike, Restraint explains precisely why this grand strategy works poorly and then provides a carefully designed alternative grand strategy and an associated military strategy and force structure. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America’s consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength… His alternative for military strategy, which Posen calls “command of the commons,” focuses on protecting U.S. global access through naval, air, and space power, while freeing the United States from most of the relationships that require the permanent stationing of U.S. forces overseas.

In his response to the comments of the roundtable participants, Posen offered his capsule assessment of Russia’s current strategic situation in the context of his recommendation that the U.S. scale back its military commitment to European security:

Russia, under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, has made itself into a meaningful military power, and is practicing a muscular foreign policy. It seized Crimea, subverts the Donbas, and backs the Assad regime in Syria. This does not mean that it is no longer possible to implement Restraint in Europe. Russia’s power must be put in perspective. The National Intelligence Council assesses Russia’s net power as a fraction of the European Union’s today, and expects little improvement by mid-century. Its disastrous economic policies show no sign of change and the decrease in oil prices has made things even worse. Europe, taken as a whole, will remain quite capable. The question is whether Russia, by virtue of a sustained commitment to the generation of military power from a deteriorating economic base, can somehow cow Europe into submission. Would the Europeans invest so little in defending themselves in the absence of the U.S. military commitment that Russia could win what the Soviet Union could not–hegemony in Europe? [Emphasis added]

In light of recent debates over the correlation of military of forces and alleged military vulnerability of the Baltic States, a realistic assessment of overall strategic and military power seems like a good question to address. Posen’s arguments are well interrogated in the roundtable and his response is illuminating. It is all worth the time to read.

[Post edited for contextual clarity.]