2 Part special on the War in Ukraine: Ukraine's keys to survival
Foreign aid and political influence will shape the next 12 months of conflict between Ukraine and Russia
Welcome back to the Woz Report. In Part 2 of a special report on the War In Ukraine, we’ll look at the challenges facing Ukraine in the next 12 months, and how global leaders may wield their influence to broker peace, or intensify the war. We’ll also look at the readiness of Europe’s western armies, not forgetting the information war and the efforts to wield powerful tools to influence support.
As the war enters its 13th month, Ukraine could concede territory in the east, because the Wagner Group, Russia’s private army, has encircled the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, a town known for salt and gypsum mines.
Ukraine relies on the good well of Western allies to provide its defence forces with everything needed to fight a modern war, but it has taken two acts of aggression by Russia for many NATO members to react. Recently, both Poland and Germany made commitments to ramp up their defence spending, but the latter has not written a cheque. Germany also dithered with its commitment to providing Ukraine with the Leopard main battle tank.
NATO: The alliance under pressure to modernise and rebuild
Washington nagged Europe for years to increase military spending to 2 percent of GDP, but it took Russia’s invasion of Crimea for western leaders to rattle the money tin in front of their finance ministers. Even after the fall of Crimea to Putin’s army, only nine of NATO’s 30 members spent as much.
Collaboration is vital in the arms race, and outside of the USA and China, few nations have the financial or technological reach to build an autonomous defence capability. The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of how both sides have leveraged their economic and political ties to bolster defence capabilities.
Ukrainian defence forces have had remarkable success against Russian armour with the British donated Next Generation Light Anti-Tank weapon system. The NLAW is a joint venture between Britain and Sweden. SAAB, once famous for its cars, developed a superb tank killer, capable of neutralising armour at 20 metres. The NLAW means Russian armour cannot hunt in relative safety. Keeping the supply chain taps open is fundamental to the survival of Ukraine sovereignty, a vulnerability being tested by Moscow.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s pledge to bolster the Bundeswehr with €108bn of investment has not translated into action, that’s according to Defense News. Bojan Pancevski, writing for the Wall Street Journal claims Chancellor Scholz has delivered on energy security, but he has yet to start Germany’s military rebuild.
The Bundeswehr, with aircraft that can’t fly due to insufficient spare parts and tanks that break down during training, has long been a joke among defense experts on both sides of the Atlantic. German soldiers serving on NATO’s eastern front are often short of basic equipment like armored vests or winter jackets, to say nothing of the armaments needed to fight a powerful adversary. Defence News
Lesson’s learned, or not as the case may be. It would seem NATO partners have not learned from recent conflicts, and in particular when Tony Blair sent British troops into Iraq without adequate force protection measures, such as body armour, sufficient amounts of ammunition or armoured vehicle platforms. Even with the threat from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), for many years, British troops operated in Southern Iraq out of commercial off-road vehicles.
Defence analysts and eyewitness accounts report some Russian troops operate on the frontline without maps and personal weapon systems. Will Putin and his generals learn from the previous 12 months of a futile war? The
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the fragilities of NATO military hardware, and it should not surprise those with a defence background to learn there is a struggle to supply Ukraine with the Leopard 2 tank. According to the New York Times, some nations are reporting their Leopard variants are not serviceable. Theoretical tanks will not stop the Russian spring offensive.
Spain, which has 108 Leopard 2A4 tanks, early on sought German permission to offer some of its vehicles to Ukraine. Now it has discovered that many of them are in poor condition and need refurbishment that could take weeks or months. On top of that , of one the prime minister’s coalition partners, the leftist Podemos party, is closer to Russia and has been resistant to offering more support to Ukraine. New York Times
Since 2015, Ukrainian troops have received training from the British Army under OP ORBITAL. British troops continue to instruct Ukrainian troops in a range of skills, from basic infantry tactics, to operating the Challenger 2 main battle tank. Nonetheless, the ongoing pledge by the UK government is stretching the finite resources of British Army.
Political influence: China and India could broker peace talks
At the G20 in Delhi this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow’s relations between India and China were good. President Xi Jinping is China’s most assertive leader in a generation, and China’s military reach is vast. Because of that, NATO and its partners are nervous about the prospect of Chinese military capabilities appearing on the battleground in Ukraine. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Xi Jinping and President Putin gave a joint statement on their “no-limit partnership.”
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a huge test for US diplomats, who are urging China not to ship arms to Russia. “If China does decide to supply arms, it will extend this conflict needlessly. It will result in more innocent lives lost, as Russia continues to wage its campaign against Ukrainian citizens.” - General Pat Ryder, US Air Force.
Last week, Mao Ning, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused the US of double standards and prolonging the war by sending $32bn of arms to Ukraine. One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, China issued a 12-point peace plan, which has had mixed reviews.
The document (12-point peace plan) is sooner a rebuttal to Western allegations that China has been a silent accomplice to Russia, and an attempt to bolster its image as a responsible world power in the eyes of developing countries. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Russia provides India with over 50 percent of its defence equipment, and the two countries have had cordial relations since the 1950s. On Friday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni urged Indian Prime Minister Nerandra Modi to play an active role in brokering peace talks. India continues to abstain from voting in U.N. resolutions that condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russian authorities appear to be concerned over a growing loss of leverage in Serbia, which Russia has worked to integrate into the Russian sphere of influence for many years.
India is not isolated in its empathy towards Moscow. Russia has cordial relations with nations in South America and Africa. By the the end of 2022, Russia benefited from Iranian remotely piloted aircraft, armed with explosives and capable of indiscriminate destruction. In February, South Africa ran naval drills with Russia and China in a show of strength.
Ukraine-Russia War: The next 12 months
It is plausible external influence could shape Ukraine’s eastern plain, and in the next 12 months, both China and India could leverage their position to walk Presidents Zelensky and Putin to the peace table.
Global defence forces should note of lessons learned from the trenches of eastern Ukraine, including China’s People’s Liberation Army, a war machine with limited combat experience.
We should not underestimate both the financial and technical burden of maintaining a modern military. The technical components of kinetic operations are further complicated by the necessity of Ukrainian defence forces to understand a variety of foreign weapon systems. Courage and defiance are key strengths of Ukrainian troops, but a reliance on foreign aid and political will is President Zelensky’s weakness. As the war protracts, the political will to support Ukraine could waver.
We should not forget the innocent parties in the fog of war. Millions of Ukrainian civilians are fighting for their survival every hour, and hundreds of thousands of children have lost their youth. Ukraine’s infrastructure continues to buckle under the weight of Russian indiscriminate artillery barrages.
In the next 12 months, we can expect to see more destruction, more information war campaigns, grieving families, sanctions imposed on Russia, more calls for arms from Kyiv and urgency from global leaders to find a peaceful end to hostilities.
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