Vladimir Putin Ups The Nuclear Ante

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Roughly a month after Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Kursk region of Russia, both belligerents are upping the escalatory ante.

Senior Ukrainian officials have provided their U.S. counterparts with a list of priority targets within Russia that they’d like approval to strike with American missiles. Russia’s kinetic response to Ukraine’s incursion has yet to materialize, but Kremlin policymakers have announced their intent to modify their longstanding Nuclear doctrine in response to western nation’s adversarial actions.

Russia’s (Non)-Response to the Invasion of Kursk Oblast

Ukraine’s surprise seizure of about 500 square miles of Russian territory has yet to be meaningfully rebuffed. In the days following the invasion an assortment of underprepared Russian units which were hastily dispatched in an attempt to slow Ukrainian advances saw little success.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has faced criticism from western military analysts for splitting up the responsibility of recapturing the territory among a multiplicity of government agencies. The division “will likely create additional confusion within the Russian MoD and friction among the Russian MoD, FSB, and Rosgvardia [Russia’s national guard], all of which are attempting to operate in Kursk Oblast” according to a report released by the Institute for the Study of War two weeks after Ukraine’s invasion.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director David Cohen said he expects the battle to retake Kursk to be “a difficult fight” for the Russians, who will face an increasingly deeply entrenched adversary every day the invasion continues.

Putin seems content to run this risk so long as he continues pressing his advantage on Ukrainian soil.

Russia’s Continued Advances in Ukraine

Although the majority of western media headlines in the last month have focused on the success of Ukraine’s incursion, the reality on the ground in Ukraine is that Russian troops have continued their slow advance towards Siversk, Chasiv Yar, and Pokrovsk as well as other parts of the Dontesk region while recapturing their once lost positions East of Korenevo.

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“Putin’s focus is on the collapse of the Ukrainian state, which he believes will automatically render any territorial control irrelevant,” wrote Russian political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Putin himself echoed these sentiments in a televised meeting with military officials during which he characterized Ukraine’s Kursk offensive as a ploy to slow Russia’s drive into Donetsk.

The Future of the Conflict

Eastern and Western observers agree that Ukraine’s destruction of bridges across the Seym River and erection of defensive fortifications have created conditions that will require significant Russian manpower to overcome.

Despite this undeniable challenge for the Russians, Ukraine’s gambit of extending a nearly 1,000 kilometer frontline that they’re already failing to hold could prove to be a strategic blunder.

To this point Russia has avoided deploying conscripted soldiers to battle in Ukraine, but there’s nothing formally preventing Putin from tapping this well of 100,000+ fresh (albeit inexperienced) troops when he decides to dislodge the Ukrainian invaders, who will face significant challenges of their own attempting to maintain extended supply lines in enemy territory.

Stephen M Walt, a Foreign Policy columnist and professor of international relations at Harvard University recently penned an article which concluded that Ukraine’s “short-term success” wont “necessarily have any long-term effects.”

Walt wrote that the success of the invasion “exposed serious flaws in Russian intelligence and readiness” noting that Ukraine’s successful implementation of operational secrecy meant that “the attack resembled the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv in the fall of 2022, which also achieved tactical surprise and faced outnumbered and inexperienced Russian troops.”

Unfortunately for Ukraine, Walt argues that even if they retain their Russian holdings until peace negotiations, they will be of limited benefit because of their relative numerical insignificance in comparison to Russian holdings.

“Ukraine has now seized about 400 square miles of Russian territory … These figures amount to 0.0064 percent of Russia’s total land area.” Walt continue “By contrast, Russia now controls roughly 20 percent of Ukraine, and the war has reportedly forced nearly 35 percent of Ukraine’s population to flee their homes. Even if Kyiv can hang on to the territory it has recently seized, it won’t provide much of a bargaining chip.”

Bilateral Escalation

Walt’s most important point runs directly against a narrative being fervently advanced by hawkish commentators across western media, that Putin won’t use nukes.

Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky recently opined that “The entire naïve, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some of our partners, has crumbled these days.”

Walt disagrees, reasoning that “the claim that there is no risk of escalation no matter what Ukraine does should be firmly rejected. States are most likely to escalate when they are losing a war; indeed, Ukraine’s decision to invade Russian territory can be seen as a risky attempt to reverse a tide that was running against it.”

Following this logic “Putin has no incentive to escalate if his forces are still winning in the Donbas. The danger that Russia will escalate kicks in only if Moscow is facing a catastrophic defeat.”

This is likely why Russia’s nuclear response to the invasion to this point has been limited to (further) nuclear saber rattling.

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Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov announced the Kremlin’s intent to modify their nuclear use of force doctrines in connection “with the escalation course of our Western adversaries.”

While a belligerent nation loosening it’s standards for unleashing nuclear hellfire is never a good thing, Ryabkov’s comments must be taken in the context of a war where Russia is still dominant on the battlefield.

Ukraine is in the process of arguing that they should be able to employ long range munitions provided by the United States to end this dominance.

And lest readers think this news outlet’s grim assessment of Ukraine’s battlefield prospects are “Kremlin propaganda,” understand that a Ukrainian lawmaker speaking to CNN said that without striking these strategic targets deep within Russia it will be “it will be difficult to change the course of the war in Ukraine’s favor.”

It’s unclear exactly what targets Ukraine is asking to hit, or how the administration of U.S. president Joe Biden, who has spent the last two weeks vacationing in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, will respond to the Ukrainian’s request.

Ukraine’s recent drone attacks on Russian oil refineries across fifteen regions, many of which are far away from the front lines, indicate an ambition to do more than strike ammunition depot’s currently out of bounds under the United States’ terms of engagement.

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While it is certainly in Ukraine’s best interest to devastate the Russian oil industry, which is the backbone of the Russian economy, it is altogether unclear that this is a course of action is in America’s best interest. The Ukrainian government still maintains its position that the war will only end once it has been returned all of it’s territory, including the territory illegally annexed prior to Russia’ February 2022 invasion.

It’s clear that Ukraine would be unwise to demand anything less, but it’s also clear that these terms are highly unlikely to be met considering Ukraine’s disadvantageous position on the battlefield and inability to mount the kind of offensive operations necessary to retake land that has been in Russian hands for the better part of a decade.

Despite there being no clear path to achieving his nation’s stated goals on the battlefield, Zelensky has expressed his intent to end the war, promising to unveil a “powerful package” aimed at “forcing Russia to end the war in a diplomatic way.”

According to a CNN report, Zelensky intends to reveal this plan to “Biden, Harris and, possibly Trump” in the coming weeks.”

It is highly likely that “Zelensky’s plan” was actually concocted in conjunction with representatives of the United States government, and that this “revelation” won’t be much of a surprise to those in the know in the American Intelligence Community, after all, Zelensky’s ability to take decisive action is almost entirely predicated on American support.

But those of us who rely on open source intelligence and public statements to read the tea leaves will have to wait to see just how much the United States government is willing to escalate the conflict in the months leading up to a presidential election that currently favors former president Donald Trump, who has promised to end the war swiftly through diplomatic means if elected.

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FITSNews is committed to providing continued independent and nuanced analysis of foreign policy issues.

We pride ourselves on being beholden only to the truth as we see it, something that is all too rare in a “mockingbird” media environment that mindlessly parrots narratives promulgated by the United States government regardless of their veracity.

We abhor despots like Vladimir Putin and denounce his many violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions in the pursuit of his illegal annexation of portions of the internationally recognized territories of Ukraine.

That being said, we won’t let our hatred of despots like Putin blind us from acknowledging the United States’ long history of manipulating the media to generate domestic support for wars when the underlying facts don’t support the government’s narratives.

Finally, we pride ourselves on our open microphone policy and encourage readers who have differing opinions to submit a guest column expressing their views. This is what the free press looks like, and is crucial the functioning of a true representative government.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

(Via: Travis Bell)

Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.

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