Ukraine Blog 09 - Negotiations and Nukes
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Today was
another day of very limited Russian advances. The Russians are slowly creeping
in on Kyiv and in Luhansk, the Russians are clearly expanding their control.
The Ukrainians on the other hand seems to be recovering terrain in Kharkiv oblast.
The focus
of today was not on battlefield developments, but surprisingly on negotiations
and very much off the radar, but not less important: “the nukes.” For the first
time since the start of this conflict I start to believe that Russia is aiming
for a compromise, but in case their proposed compromise isn’t excepted, they
will resort to other means. In other words, we are finally entering some old fashioned
negotiation scheme here.
Please be
ready for the toughest blog I wrote so far:
So in
short: Russia moved down from complete submission of Ukraine to what many
believed would be their initial demands:
1. Neutrality embedded in the constitution
of Ukraine
2. Recognition of Russian sovereignty over
Crimea
3. Recognition of the Luhansk People’s
Republic (LNR) and Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) as independent states.
This is an
indication that Russian negotiators realize the perilous they put themselves in.
Does this mean that Russia is playing the surrendering card? By far not. This
morning I was alerted by the following Tweet:
Don’t have
the actual clip because of sanctions blocking, but a live stream of the channel
can still be found here
РТР Планета онлайн — Смотреть прямой эфир бесплатно (glaz.tv)
So what does
this mean? In short: I think Russia is making a serious offer to the
Ukrainians. I think they really understand that their losses are huge and a
solution is needed. At the same time Putin at least needs to get a benefit out
of this and the three demands listed above are the minimum he needs to proclaim
a victory. I think the tweet clearly illustrates that Russia is preparing to
deploy a tactical nuclear weapon. There’s some bad news about this and quite some
good news, but there are a couple of things that need to be understood here.
1. Rumors: Over the years I became quite
good in distinguishing what the Russians are saying versus what they are doing
and most importantly: when they are lying. Basic rules are when there’s a rumor:
a. When there’s a rumor and it stays
silent from the Kremlin for the next three days, it’s indeed a rumor.
b. When there’s a rumor, the Kremlin
reacts within three days and they deny it: YOU KNOW IT’S GONNA HAPPEN! No exceptions
to this rule.
2. Kremlin (government) prepping of the
media: The Russian state media is very well known for dropping future decisions
as soundbites in the media. The fact that they are dropping the option of
tactical nuclear weapon on their morning show (the Russian “Koffietijd”) means
that the Kremlin is actively preparing the Russian public for the deployment of
a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. They have done this very actively in the
past and most of the ideas they dropped were actually carried out. Please be
aware that this also happens in Western media. Possible Covid measures (I’m not
going to make a judgement about right or wrong here) were skillfully dropped by
Hugo de Jonge weeks in advance of the actual measures in the media. The Russian
media is very skilled at this and Russian media right now is reaching totalitarian
levels: see the following video
Guy Chazan on Twitter: "Chilling. https://t.co/CFSZdkXo41" / Twitter (it’s bad, but it even gives me goosebumps. Trust
me, I will do a separate blog about music and videos from both sides, just like
I covered Armenia/Azerbaijan, Libya, Syria and Iran songs and videos.
Especially from the Arab word you will get some cool Hip-Hop, I promise 😉)
Then back
to topic: why would the Russians still want to have this as a tool at hand? In
my opinion two reasons, both are rational, one from the Ukrainian side, one
from the Russian side:
1. From a conventional warfare point of
view: Truth on the ground is, that there’s very little reason for the Ukrainians
to surrender now: the Russians gain a little bit of ground each today, but they
suffer absolutely horrible losses. The Ukrainians can easily withdraw to Western
to Ukraine and continue the fight from there. The Russians are already encountering
huge resistance from Russian-speaking and Russian territory, leave alone the fully
Ukrainian Western part of Ukraine.
2. I still believe that Putin sees himself
as the savior of the Ukrainian people who will “liberate” the Ukrainian people
from Nazism and corruption. A lot of Western actors rationalize dictators as
people who know they are evil and just want to terrorize their people. I highly
disagree with that. I think that most dictators strongly believe that they are
acting in the best interest of their people. It’s very clear obvious when
observing Putin’s emotional speeches in the run-up to this conflict. However,
the best example comes from Muammar Gaddafi. In this amazing footage from 2011 he
tells that “the people love him and would die for him.” Truth is: I observe his
body language and his response here and his verbal response and I really think
that he’s fully convinced that he’s doing the right thing for his people. You really
see the desperation in the eyes of the guy.
Libya's Gaddafi: My people love me - YouTube
So why do dictators really think like that? Well, they are often enabled
by an army of civil servants that will make them believe that they are loved by
everyone (in order to suck up to the boss of course). Gaddafi and Putin especially
are persons constantly surrounded by an entourage to make them believe that the
whole country loves them. All the places where they go are thoroughly prepared to
make sure that really the impression is being given that all the people love
their leader
So in case
we have from their point of view rationally acting actors together where neither
of them wants to back down, how will an escalation look like? As I said, there’s
some good news: we likely won’t seem to be on the verge of a global
thermonuclear war. When you observe the twitter account of The_Lookout_N (an excellent
channel for following Russia’s nuclear fleet), you hardly see any nuclear armed
submarine movements over the past couple of weeks. And given Russia’s media
response, I absolutely don’t believe that they are aiming for a global apocalyptic
nuclear war (which would also mean annihilation of Russia itself)
The Lookout (@The_Lookout_N) / Twitter
Bad news is,
that Russia seems to be actively prepping it’s population for the deployment of
a tactical nuclear weapon. I do think that we are entering that phase yet. I think
the negotiation channels have seriously opened, but I think we need to start
preparing for what a Russian nuclear intervention may look like.
1. First of all: the first nuclear escalation
will likely be a high altitude nuclear explosion above Ukraine or even outside
Ukraine above the North-Pole. For the sole purpose to give the signal: “We are
serious.” I absolutely don’t think Russia will go for a strike on a populated
area.
2. In case the Russians will take this
route, existing negotiation channels will have been exhausted and they will
likely go for the “we request unconditional surrender mode.” At this point I’m
pretty sure any Ukrainian government will surrender to the Russians.
However,
this will leave some major problems for the Russians and there are numerous
reports that the members of the chief of staff of Russia are very fearful of
this scenario
1. The fact that Russia can only
achieve its strategic objective by deploying a tactical nuclear weapons as
opposed to its conventional armed forces, is only a signal of weakness. It means
they really only have nuclear weapons as a means of power projection.
2. Russia already lied about not
planning to invade Ukraine, while they actually did. Deploying a tactical
nuclear weapon in a multi-polar world means that they crossed a line nobody has
ever crossed before and nobody knows what comes next. I’m pretty sure the
Russian chiefs of staff are as fearful of this as anyone else. After all, who
will trust Russia anymore.
3. Even if Ukraine surrenders, it won’t
mean the end of resistance by the population. Hundreds of thousands of
civilians, national guardsmen and policemen are now armed and they will fight
any Russian puppet regime/occupation till the last men. You simply can’t deploy
nuclear weapons against people who will fight any occupation force till the last
man. Please carefully check the words of these women.
However, this might still be sufficient as a victory to Putin. At this
stage he might have succeeded in “demilitarizing” the Ukrainian military. However,
in the longer run, he won’t be able to cover the miliary losses suffered so far
and I really doubt many Russians (and Siloviki alike) will see a victory through
the means of tactical nuclear weapons as a victory.
For this
reason I believe that the Russians for the time being are desperate to look for
a functioning negotiation format to get something out of win for Putin out of
this mess. A tactical nuke is an option on the table, but really only a last
resort.
The talk of
nukes made everybody (including myself) very nervous for the past 1,5 weeks.
However, for the first time since the conflict started, I think we entered as situation
where we can really see a situation where both parties at least try to work
towards some kind of negotiated solution.
It also means we just have to keep our heads cool and I think we will all be fine 😉
Best
regards and "Slava Ukraini!"
Niels
*P.S. I discussed
extensively with two friends whether I should write about this. Truth is that
both the American and Russian strategic nuclear rocket forces have extensive
scenario departments that cover all possible scenario’s. My analysis wouldn’t
make a difference. Main point is that I can share this with my readers.
Many thanks for these daily updates Nielse.
ReplyDeleteCould you maybe talk more about the EU energy dependence from Russia and also the possiblity of a coup in? Thank you