Russia’s integrated strategies and tactics paid off in the proxy war with Nato and the West

The US and its western allies together with Ukraine which planned meticulously for a Ukrainian counter-offensive to begin on June 4, were somewhat delusional in their confident prediction that within four weeks of the counter-offensive Russia would capitulate with Ukraine capturing Crimea.
Like drunk gamblers who began to count their winnings before even the gambling had started, many Ukrainian officials like its military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov had earlier gloated, back in April, at an imaginary Russian capitulation, by saying that they and most Ukrainians would enjoy their summer holidays by picnicking, boating and fishing at the picturesque holiday destinations which Crimea is well known for, because by then Crimea will be in Ukrainian possession.
It is amazing the US and its western allies really believed in and were fooled by the Ukrainian input in such a fairy tale; perhaps in the case of the US due to the symbolism that V-Day will fall on July 4 – US Independence Day.
More than two months later in August, when the counter-offensive had lost steam, we finally get a sobered US and its western allies, including their fourth estate which has become the global mainstream media admitting in effect that the counter-offensive is a lost cause, and Russia remains supreme, or rather in the upper hand on the battlefield.
The US and its western allies including Ukraine are now in the recrimination business of the blame game on why the counter-offensive is a lost cause after so much hype and publicity about its success were trumpeted months earlier ala Hollywood movies that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, a professional comedian is fond of.
The scapegoat for the failure of the counter-offensive seems to fall on Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, who ironically had earlier opposed the counter-offensive, and then when it had lost steam, is now encouraging continuing the counter-offensive for as long as it takes, despite the horrific loss of troops and military hardware Ukraine is suffering.
Perhaps the other person to be made a scapegoat is Budanov, who had given the intelligence agencies of the US and its allies, and their fourth estate misleading feedback and analysis of how the counter-offensive will be a huge success.
The US and its allies have spent billions of dollars in equipping Ukraine with powerful weapons where every new weapons delivery package announced – from the German Leopard tanks; the British Challenger tanks, long-range Storm Shadow missiles and depleted uranium; to the US Patriot air defence system and cluster munitions – was touted by the global mainstream media as game-changer wonder weapons that will ensure Ukrainian victory.
But despite all these, the collective west is still unable to bring Russia to its knees.

With the looming US presidential election in 2024, the Biden administration is anxious not to make project Ukraine a debacle.
Hence, Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor and the point man in Biden’s reelection campaign is desperate enough to conceive whatever plan it takes to prevent such a debacle.
One of these plans was organising the Jeddah conference to convince the Global South and all neutral countries to force capitulation on Russian throat by discussing the Zelensky peace plan which is not a peace plan at all but a capitulation plan, and to boot, a key party to the conflict – Russia – was not invited to the conference.
With the failure of the Jeddah conference where host Saudi Arabia itself, much to the consternation of the US and its allies, came with its own peace plan that was significantly different from the Zelensky peace plan, they are now desperate for off-ramp solutions to the conflict.
Off-ramp is an American term referring to what the British would call “the slip road” where one exits off a motorway, and in the language of diplomacy, it means a negotiated solution such as a frozen conflict preceded by a ceasefire that saves the losing party/parties from much embarrassment.
One famous example of a frozen conflict is the Korean war in the 1950s in which the prime proxies of the war – US and China – agreed to freeze the conflict to save the US from a humiliating defeat by China.
So, because it is a frozen conflict, North Korea and South Korea until today are technically at war, as the conflict is frozen with no peace agreement between them.
The same search for an off-ramp solution ironically was also evident as the Ukraine war entered its first anniversary earlier this year in February when the global mainstream media busied itself with reporting on various off-ramp solutions to the war, this time ostensibly to save Russian president, Vladimir Putin from embarrassment, though nothing came out of it.
Currently, one off-ramp solution is the idea of trading claims to land for peace in which Kiev could end up relinquishing its claims on Russian territory in exchange for Nato membership.
This idea was mooted by some US and European think tanks and made concrete on Aug 15 by Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff of Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.
But it was a non-starter because Ukraine with its maximalist stance of wanting no less than the withdrawal of all Russian troops back to the 1991 border, has vehemently denounced it, forcing Jenssen to apologise for bringing up the idea.
Russia did not even give its comment because one of the reasons for its special military operation is to ensure Ukraine’s neutrality by not becoming a Nato member.
Moreover, there is a “bribery” element as if Russia will be induced to a bribe of “seizing” more lands in return for peace.
It echoes similar proposal claimed by Swiss news outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung in February that CIA Director William Burns had offered Russia a “land for peace” deal in which Moscow would keep “20% of Ukrainian territory.”

The White House, the CIA, and the Kremlin all denied that such a proposal had been made. Such is the nature of off-ramp solutions – easily deniable.
Another off-ramp solution is for Ukraine to forget about continuing its counter-offensive and its maximalist stance and defend only its territories that are currently not captured by Russia, and then negotiate for a ceasefire, with the smaller-sized Ukraine later applies for Nato membership.
Yet a third off-ramp solution proposed by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was for a series of referendums under “strict” international control in the four new Russian regions and Crimea.
Such a move, Sarkozy claimed would allow the territorial disputes between the two neighbours to be settled once and for all and help Europe avoid merely freezing the conflict.
The response from Ukraine was very scathing when Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to president Zelensky, blasted Sarkozy by alleging that the former French leader “deliberately participated in a criminal conspiracy for Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territories and subsequent organisation of a large-scale genocide and war”.
Podoliak then went on to say that Sarkozy had no right to “trade other people’s territories” for contributing “to the beginning of full-scale aggression in Europe and the mass murder of Ukrainians”.
Meanwhile on Aug 18, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov said western calls for Ukraine peace talks are a “tactical ploy to buy time once again giving the exhausted Ukrainian troops a respite and the opportunity to regroup, and to send in more weapons and ammunition”.
Adding that “this is the path of war, not a peaceful settlement process”, Lavrov also said insisting on Zelensky’s so-called ‘peace formula’ at meetings in Copenhagen and Jeddah – to which Russia was not invited – “hardly demonstrates an intention by the West to negotiate with Russia”.
Expounding on this theme further in an interview with the US magazine International Affairs published the next day, Lavrov said geopolitical issues need to be discussed “not with [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters.”
“The problem, however, is that the US has no intention of ending the conflict,” Lavrov explained, noting that “their officially declared objective is to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia”.
Prospects for negotiations between Russia and the West “are non-existent at this stage”, Lavrov said, while Kiev “western sponsors are constantly pushing them to up the ante.”
Russia has repeatedly tried to negotiate, from the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements to the “drastic attempt to convey our concerns to western capitals” in December 2021, Lavrov noted.
The West “arrogantly rejected” Moscow’s initiative and ramped up deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Kiev instead.
Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, admitted last December that the 2015 Minsk agreement negotiated by Germany and France was “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military.
This was then confirmed by former French President Francois Hollande.
In the midst of the war in March 2022, peace negotiation between Russia and Ukraine brokered by Türkiye was convened in Istanbul, but as an agreement on peace was reached, former British prime minister Boris Johnson torpedoed it by instigating Ukraine not to sign it and promised total western support for Ukraine.

The Ukraine war is both a proxy war and a hybrid war. While it is easy to understand what a proxy war is all about, the same cannot be said about a hybrid war. What then is a hybrid war?
Hybrid warfare combines military and nonmilitary actions, including disinformation campaigns. Deceiving an attacker is one of the tactics of hybrid warfare.
It is a type of conflict that blends conventional and unconventional methods, including military operations, cyber warfare, disinformation campaigns, and economic pressure.
This form of warfare is not limited to a single shape or dimension and can involve a mix of regular and irregular tactics across all dimensions of war.
The term ‘hybrid warfare’ has been in use since at least 2005 when it was employed to describe the strategy used by Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War.
Then there is a non-linear warfare, employed mostly by Ukraine which disrupts the traditional battlefield, making it difficult to distinguish between combatants and civilians or between times of war and peace.
Non-linear warfare utilises a grand strategy approach, where force-on-force conflict is not the primary objective. Instead, the goal is to create a complex and fluid situation that exploits an opponent’s weaknesses.
But all warfare whether it is conventional, proxy, hybrid or non-linear has an ultimate goal of attaining total victory.
The way Ukraine uses non-linear warfare has blurred the distinction between a conventional war and terrorism.
Take the case of its recent drone attacks on Moscow business district, for instance. None of them has any military objective and do not contribute to exploiting Russian weaknesses or even changing the course of the war in favour of a Ukrainian victory.
The objective seems to be maximum civilian casualties and severe non-military infrastructural damages.
But with superior electronic warfare techniques and an excellent air defence system on the part of Russia, most often than not the civilian casualties from these Ukrainian drones attack are nil and the non-military infrastructural damages very superficial, thus negating the objective of maximum civilian casualties and severe non-military damages.
In light of these results, one wonders why Ukraine is currently resorting to this non-linear warfare which does not contribute at all to its winning in the war.
Russia sees this Ukrainian strategy as no strategy at all. Instead it sees it rather as a sign of desperation or warfare tantrum thrown by Ukraine because of the failure of its counter-offensive.

But of course, it is a different matter if the trajectory of the drones/missiles is towards some military objectives and in the process of being hit by Russian air defence system, the debris from the downed drones hit Russian civilian infrastructures causing civilian deaths.
Or electronic jamming renders the drones off course and they then crash on civilian buildings causing civilian deaths.
In both cases, they are conventional warfare and the resulting loss of civilian lives and wanton destruction of civilian buildings are termed as collateral damage.
Let us now discuss the sanctions or economic component of this hybrid war in Ukraine. Russia has somewhat expected this sanctions war but perhaps the magnitude with which the US and its western allies use them was far beyond Russia’s imagination.
Taking its cue from the shock and awe strategy of the Gulf War in Iraq, the US and its western allies introduced shock and awe sanctions on Russia within days of the Special Military Operation in February 2022.
Shock and awe, technically known as rapid dominance, is a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyse the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight.
In the case of the Gulf War, the curtain raiser for this war was the relentless shock and awe blitzkrieg bombing campaign of the US and its allies on Baghdad, launching approximately 1,700 air sorties (504 using cruise missiles).
If you happen to be a resident of Baghdad at that time, imagine the deep fear and trauma you would experience under this constant and relentless barrage of bombardment for days.
In the same manner in March 2022, Russia was subject to a blitzkrieg of more than 5,000 different targeted sanctions, more than Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar and Cuba combined, making it the world’s most sanctioned country.
At that time, with 1,194 sanctions against Moscow, the US is the leading sanctioning country, followed by Canada (908) and Switzerland (824).
This is unprecedented. The main aim of these sanctions is to ensure the speedy collapse of the Russian economy so that it could no longer support the special military operation.
The US and its allies were also hoping that with the collapse of the economy, there will be mayhem and chaos in Russia leading to regime change where Russian President Vladimir Putin will be overthrown, resulting in an end to the war followed by the dismemberment of Russia by the collective west.
And because Russia is a country rich in commodities and natural resources, this huge wealth will then be redistributed among the collective west as spoils of war accompanying a regime change.
So “Project Ukraine” in essence is an investment scheme of the US and the collective west to seek the strategic defeat of Russia and enrich the leaders of the west and their military-industrial complex so that the US remains the only hegemon in a unipolar world.

It was during this early period of the Ukraine war that the sanctions had caused the roubles to nosedive, leading to president Joe Biden gleefully coining the expression “the rouble will be reduced to a rubble”, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Layen to also gleefully coin the famous expression, “Russian industry and economy in tatters”.
But under the extraordinary leadership of Putin and his economic team especially its Central Bank Governor, Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian economy and industries particularly its military-industrial complex remain unscathed from this intense sanctions war.
In fact based on the latest World Economics report, it was revealed that Russia went on to be among the world’s five largest economies and the largest in Europe, replacing Germany in terms of purchasing power parity as of the end of 2022, despite Western sanctions, and amid the proxy and hybrid war it is facing.
World Economics and its parent Information Sciences are London-based entities which have for 30 years specialised in developing economic data series that have become part of the financial world’s DNA. Almost all significant banks, financial institutions, major corporations and governments have subscribed to its services.
So you can’t really say that their report is particularly trying to lick up Russia, and it is really amazing to find a London-based entity to be very impartial towards Russia unlike the UK’s mainstream media.
So what is the secret recipe for Russia’s ability to withstand these shock and awe sanctions and ultimately win the sanctions war?
Cool-headed leadership. You don’t find Putin panicking or snapping at the US or the west. In contrast there are many occasions where Biden snapped at Chinese president Xi Jinping in the most outrageous and undignified manner such as at a dignified State of the Union Address.
Remember the famous remark Biden uttered off-script during his State of the Union Address: “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one!”
This will only cement the close relation further between China and Russia, and it is this close relationship that has also helped Russia to weather the sanctions war, and come out victorious.
Cooler head on the part of Putin has allowed Russia to come out with some brilliant moves to counter the sanctions.
Among others these include making it a condition for EU countries which wanted Russian gas at the start of the war to pay for their purchases in roubles rather than in dollars, where failure to do so would result in their gas supply pipeline shut, and offering oil at huge discounts to Asian and African countries where it was snapped up in huge quantities by India and China, thus more than making up the loss in revenue from nil exports to EU-sanctioning countries.

Russia also began to focus more on alternative trading routes to make up for its loss of the European hinterland by reviving the idea of an International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), touted as an alternative to the Suez Canal.
The INSTC is a planned 7,200km multi-mode transit system that will connect ship, rail, and road routes for moving cargo between Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, India, and Central Asia.
Construction on the project began in the early 2000s, but efforts to develop it have intensified after Western sanctions forced Moscow to shift its trade flows from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The total cargo flow along the INSTC was 14.5 million tons in 2022, and the projection for this year is 17.6 million tons. By 2030, the volume is expected to reach 41 million tons.
Currently, only some sections of the route are operational, with Russia and Iran agreeing in May to build a railway line to incorporate into it. Moscow plans to invest more than $3 billion in the expansion of the project by 2030.
Russia has repeatedly said that the route could become a substitute for the Suez Canal, the 193km sea-level waterway in Egypt that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
The popular route between Europe and Asia sees about 12% of global trade pass through it each day.
In March 2021, the Suez Canal was blocked for six days by a container ship that run aground. This obstruction costs global trade an estimated $9 billion a day.
Trade via the INSTC is expected to allow companies to cut shipping costs by about 50% and save up to 20 days of travel time compared to the Suez Canal route.
Finally, what happens to the shock and awe sanctioning countries? The sanctions boomeranged on them. All of them are experiencing high inflation rates including double digit food inflation and are on the verge of a recession.
That is indeed sweet justice!

The Ukraine war has its root in the past failure to establish a new indivisible Western security architecture that took Moscow’s interests into account in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The new security architecture could take the form of either the dismantling of Nato just like the Warsaw Pact was dismantled, or Russia be made a member of Nato.
The quid pro quo then was clear: If then President Mikhail Gorbachev were to provide his acquiescence for German reunification within Nato, the West would aim at establishing a Western security architecture that took Moscow’s interests into account.
There was a gentleman agreement between Russia, and the US and its western allies that they would not expand Nato eastward.
Initially, President H W Bush and his successor Bill Clinton really did want to transform Nato and take the Kremlin’s interests seriously.
There was, however, one potentially significant contradiction: On the one hand, all countries were allegedly united by the “indivisibility of security,” while on the other, each country allegedly had the right to decide which alliance it wanted to join.
Still, that seemed at the time to be nothing more than a theoretical problem.
Moreover, Clinton, Helmut Kohl and the others spent years rejecting Nato membership for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Such an expansion was viewed then as too expensive, the fledgling democracies in those countries appeared too fragile and their militaries were too reactionary.
The US, UK and Germany had signalled to the Kremlin that a Nato membership of countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic was out of the question.
Furthermore, in March 1991, British PM John Major promised during a visit to Moscow that “nothing of the sort will happen.”
But then the Republicans realised the issue of expanded Nato membership was useful for scoring political points against Clinton.
Many Americans with Eastern European roots lived in the decisive swing states in the Midwest, leading Clinton to ultimately decide to expand the alliance.
President Boris Yeltsin, successor to Gorbachev, expressed significant displeasure when the step was ultimately taken. He gave his approval for Nato’s eastward expansion in 1997, but complained that he was only doing so because the West had forced him to.
In late January 2022, Russian President Valdimir Putin was reported to have said to western leaders: “You promised us in the 1990s that (Nato) would not move an inch to the East … You cheated us shamelessly.”
And he is using that history to justify his current demands for written guarantees that Ukraine will never be accepted into the Western alliance.

According to American political scientist John Mearsheimer, “the US is principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis,” adding further that:
“My central claim is that the US has pushed forward policies toward Ukraine that Putin and other Russian leaders see as an existential threat, a point they have made repeatedly for many years.
“Specifically, I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into Nato and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.
“The Biden administration was unwilling to eliminate that threat through diplomacy and indeed in 2021 recommitted the US to bringing Ukraine into Nato. Putin responded by invading Ukraine on Feb 24 of this year (2022).”
The majority of the analyses on the Ukraine war done by western scholars are glaringly devoid of the West’s role in precipitating the conflict, but once in a while we have scholars like Mearsheimer and Marlene Laruelle who felt the West needs to consider its own role in the current war.
Thus those who believe the Ukraine war is an unprovoked war is just too naïve. However, the obsession with bringing Ukraine into Nato is not the only provocation.
The Ukraine war itself did not start in February 2022. It would be really short-sighted if we believe the war started then.
Instead it started eight years before that in February 2014 in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution in which a democratically-elected president of Ukraine was deposed with US interference.
In late 2013, Ukraine under president Viktor Yanukovych was caught between a rock and hard place.
There was a tussle for influence between Russia and the EU when the then Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov asked for €20 bil (US$27 bil) in loans and aid.
The EU was willing to offer €610 mil (US$838 mil) in loans, but Russia was willing to offer more i.e. US$15 bil as well as cheaper gas prices.
In addition, the EU demanded major changes to Ukraine’s regulations and laws, but Russia did not.
As expected, Yanukovych then refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU at a meeting of the Eastern Partnership in Vilnius, Lithuania, on November 2013, choosing instead closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union.
This led to a wave of large-scale protests known as Euromaidan, which went on for months as a prelude to the Maidan Revolution in February 2014 where clashes between protestors and special riot police became violent, resulting in the deaths of nearly 130 people, including 18 police officers.
Basically, the people in western Ukraine favoured an agreement with the EU, while those in the east and south favoured closer ties with Russia.

In the wake of the bloody protests, on Feb 21 Yanukovych and the leaders of the parliamentary opposition signed a settlement agreement  that called for early elections.
The following day, Yanukovych fled from the capital ahead of an impeachment vote that stripped him of his powers as president.
To make matters worse, shortly after his overthrow, Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions erupted with pro-Russia unrest, with leaders of the Russian-speaking eastern regions of Ukraine declaring their continued loyalty to Yanukovych.
On Feb 23, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted a bill to repeal the 2012 law, which gave the Russian language an official status.
Though the bill was not enacted, the proposal provoked negative reactions in the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, intensified by Russian media saying that the ethnic Russian population was in imminent danger.
On Feb 27, an interim Government was established and early presidential elections were scheduled.
However, the following day, Yanukovych resurfaced in Russia and declared in a press conference that he remained the acting president of Ukraine, just as Russia was beginning its overt military campaign in Crimea.
Russia considered the overthrow of Yanukovych to be an illegal coup and did not recognise the interim Government.
On March 1, Russia’s Parliament approved a request from its president Vladimir Putin to deploy Russian troops to Ukraine.
It sent its army to eastern Ukraine to bolster the pro-Russian separatists who had by then formed the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, collectively known as Donbas.
This was actually the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, which lasted for a few months before ceasefires were implemented under the Minsk agreements brokered by Germany and France in May 2014.
The deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine also led to the capture of Crimea by Russia. But why did Putin do this?
Since Crimea is host to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, perhaps Putin on a hunch knew that US meddling in Ukraine that has led to a regime change via colour revolution (the Maidan Revolution) has as its end game, turning Sevastopol into a US naval base.
It is perhaps to pre-empt such a move that the Russia occupied Crimea and later annexed it via a referendum.

But where was the so-called US interference in all these events?
The colour revolution started in December 2013 with the appearance of US Republican Senator John McCain in company with Democratic senator Chris Murphy working out the crowds in Ukraine, with the former saying:
“Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better. We are here to support your just cause: the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”
Then, there was a recorded phone conversation leaked on Feb 4, 2014, between then US State assistant secretary Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt  discussing their wishes for a Ukraine transition to an interim Government, and specifically, the roles in which they hoped to see the prominent opposition leaders played.
These were clearly meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country even if their aim was to protect the democratic values of the West.
Your editor has often wondered why President Yanukovych then was not firm enough to detain both US politicians for interfering in the internal affairs of his country.
In the early stage of the Special Military Operation (SMO), Putin wasn’t interested in the dismemberment of Ukraine.
What he wanted was for Lugansk and Donetsk to still be under Ukraine’s suzerainty but with special autonomous status to protect the Russian speaking people there, along with Russian culture and language.
That is why Russia agreed to the Minsk Agreement brokered by Germany and France. In fact it was Russia which initiated the move for the Minsk agreement to be endorsed by the UN Security Council.
After eight years of the Minsk agreements whose ceasefire was continuously violated by both parties – Ukraine and the two separatist state of Lugansk and Donetsk – Russia sent troops into Ukraine again on Feb 24, 2022, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, which were designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state.
Little did Putin realise then that he was actually “hoodwinked” by Germany and France because these two countries had a different idea in brokering the Minsk Agreement.
Both the then chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, and the then former French president Francois Hollande who had brokered the Minsk Agreement admitted last December that the 2015 Minsk agreement was “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military.
Before this admission, former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko had earlier admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and  “create powerful armed forces.” 
Although Putin was not aware of this trickery of Merkel and Hollande, the first thing that Russia did soon before it launched the SMO was to recognise the independence of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic.
This is an indication that Putin was fed up with the Minsk agreement because of its failure to prevent the continuous bombardment of the Russian speaking people in the Donbas for eight consecutive years, and the violent oppression of these people by the neo-Nazi militias which had been integrated into the Ukrainian army.

Russia’s military objective, strategy and tactics in the Ukraine war have always been derived consistently from the objectives of the SMO as spelt out by Putin – to protect people in the Donbas who have been subjected to bullying and genocide for the last eight years since 2014 via the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine.
We can take the demilitarisation objective to also mean a neutral Ukraine as part of the new western security architecture that takes into account Moscow’s interest.
Based on this objective, Russia deployed 200,000 troops into Ukraine on the first day of the SMO, with several troops proceeding to Kiev and the bulk of the troops to the Donbas.
The move to Kiev is meant to be a lightning show of force to “coerce” Ukraine into agreeing to a negotiation of neutrality while the move to the Donbass was to ensure Ukraine’s seriousness in observing the Minsk agreement.
Russian military planners were aware to capture Kiev would require more than 200,000 troops, and Putin has made it clear that invading Kiev was not an objective.
In essence, it is the Donbas that has always been Russia’s prime objective, just in case Ukraine is not serious with observing the spirit of the Minsk agreement.
When negotiation in Istanbul in March between Russia and Ukraine brokered by Türkiye indicated that Ukraine seemed to be agreeable to a peace agreement, Russia announced its plan to withdraw its troops from Kiev as a courtesy in good faith.
But when the peace agreement was derailed by Boris Johnson, Russia still went ahead with its planned withdrawal of troops from Kiev. They joined the remainder of the army in the Donbas.
This withdrawal has a military value in that the Russian strategy of retreating to focus on the Donbas is what military experts describe as a fixing operation; i.e. keeping the Ukrainian army fixated with “recapturing” the withdrawn areas, and thus did not reinforce its army in the Donbas to face the real battle until it is too late.
That strategy has made it possible for Russia to control significantly more Ukrainian territory than before Feb 24.
Whereas Ukrainian authorities controlled approximately 60% of Luhansk before the February invasion, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War estimated that by May “Russia controls more than 95% of the broader region of Luhansk as Kremlin-backed troops focus on eastern Ukraine”.
But it’s amazing that Ukraine and the global mainstream media has depicted this as the Siege of Kiev, where Ukraine’s military was seen as exhibiting a surprising resilience to score an early victory.
What actually happened was when Russia withdrew from Kiev, it left a vacuum there, which was easily filled up by the Ukrainian army without a fight. Do you call this a meaningful victory for Ukraine when there is really no fighting for its army to contend with?

By June 2022, in the first round of fighting, Russia has managed to degrade the powerful armed forces that Ukraine has created with the help of the US and its allies during the eight years of the Minsk agreement, and captured more Ukrainian territories.
But the war was prolonged due to the continuous weapons delivery to Ukraine by the collective west.
Moreover, decisions on what type of weapons can be supplied have changed over time. Initially there were a number of Russian “Red Line”warnings about supplying certain types of lethal weapons.
Over time, a number of these red lines have diluted and melted away, allowing weapons to be delivered without too many threats of dire retribution or consequences to the supplier.
By August Russia had already felt the pinch in these weapons deliveries, and the number of its troops in Ukraine was insufficient to meet this prolonged war. Moreover Ukraine has superior numerical strength on the battlefield.
Hence Russia introduced a military tactic of withdrawing its troops from areas it occupied when it deemed defending them will cause a huge loss in troops and military hardware.
So the next phase of the war saw Russia retreating from some areas of Ukraine with its troops and military hardware intact before even Ukraine began its counter-offensive to recapture Kharkiv.
Thus it was easy for Ukraine to recapture Kharkiv during its September counter-offensive but because the strength of Russian troops and their military hardware remained intact from their defensive position on the other side of the Dniper River, Ukraine incurred huge losses in troops and military hardware in the counter-offensive.
But the amazing thing was Ukraine and the collective west saw this retreat to mean that the Russian army is weak and will hastily dispersed and ran away frightened on the approach of Ukrainian army.
This myth became the basis of the planning for the recent June counter-offensive of Ukraine that had seen heavy losses in men and equipment, and could mark the beginning of the end for Ukraine.
Soon after Kharkiv counter offensive, Russia did three things that will continue its supremacy, and perhaps victory on the battlefield – the partial mobilisation of 300,000 men, the annexation of areas in and around four Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia, all in accordance with Russian laws and constitution, and building solid and extensive defensive fortifications along the line of contacts.
And it is around this time that the global mainstream media began running stories about Ukraine’s deficiencies in ammunition, military equipment and men to continue and fight the war.
But this is not so serious as compared to the news that the US and its western allies were similarly facing shortages in ammunitions and weaponries to be supplied to Ukraine.
According to Alexander Mercouris of the Duran, an independent online news channel, this came about due to the deindustrialisation of the US and the collective West especially their military-industrial complex where it can no longer produce ammunitions and weapons as fast as the Pentagon wants it.
How can one win a war with the depletion and shortages of ammunitions and weapons? So it’s better to negotiate with Russia before more damages to Ukraine occur.
Hence, with the setback of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in June, the world is now eagerly waiting for a Russian counter-offensive that may just put an end to the Ukraine war.

Read more on the Ukrainian counter-offensive, off-ramp solutions, drone attacks on Russian business district, sanctions war, and western security architecture:

Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Needs a Plan B

Public mood in Ukraine ‘somber’ amid ‘sluggish’ counteroffensive – The Economist

Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in Ukraine

‘Nowhere to hide’: The question troubling Ukrainian troops amid a grinding counteroffensive

Ukrainian counteroffensive’s slow going offers reality check but could yet pay off

Ukraine’s sluggish counter-offensive is souring the public mood

CIA knows Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail – Seymour Hersh

Moscow issues update on estimated Ukrainian casualties during counteroffensive

NATO’s Ukraine strategy has failed – ex-Italian PM

Diplomacy Watch: Washington may deny it, but looks like someone wants to talk to Russia

Ukraine could give up demands for Russian territory – NATO official

France’s Sarkozy urges West to get real on Crimea

Washington believes Ukraine’s attacks on Crimea are pointless – CNN

Foreign mercenaries reveal shocking casualty rates in Ukraine – media

Ukraine war: Putin’s off ramp and why he is unlikely to take it

Can the US and Russia find a diplomatic ‘off-ramp’ on Ukraine?

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The US and its western allies together with Ukraine which planned meticulously for a Ukrainian counter-offensive to begin on June 4, were somewhat delusional in their confident prediction that within four weeks of the counter-offensive Russia would capitulate with Ukraine capturing Crimea.

Back in April, like drunk gamblers, many Ukrainian officials like its military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanovhad begun to count their winnings before even the gambling had started.

Budanov had then said that most Ukrainians including himself would enjoy their summer holidays by picnicking, boating and fishing at the picturesque holiday destinations which Crimea is well known for, because by then Crimea will be in Ukrainian possession.

It is amazing the US and its western allies really believed in and were fooled by the Ukrainian input in such a fairy tale; perhaps in the case of the US due to the symbolism that V-Day will fall on July 4 – US Independence Day.

More than two months later in August, when the counter-offensive had lost steam, we finally get a sobered US and its western allies, including their fourth estate which has become the global mainstream media admitting in effect that the counter-offensive is a lost cause, and Russia remains supreme, or rather in the upper hand on the battlefield.

The US and its western allies including Ukraine are now in the recrimination business of the blame game on why the counter-offensive is a lost cause after so much hype and publicity about its success were trumpeted months earlier ala Hollywood movies that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, a professional comedian is fond of.

The scapegoat for the failure of the counter-offensive seems to fall on Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, who ironically had earlier opposed the counter-offensive, and then when it had lost steam, is now encouraging continuing the counter-offensive for as long as it takes, despite the horrific loss of troops and military hardware Ukraine is suffering.

Perhaps the other person to be made a scapegoat is Budanov, who had given the intelligence agencies of the US and its allies, and their fourth estate misleading feedback and analysis of how the counter-offensive will be a huge success.

The US and its allies have spent billions of dollars in equipping Ukraine with powerful weapons where every new weapons delivery package announced – from the German Leopard tanks; the British Challenger tanks, long-range Storm Shadow missiles and depleted uranium; to the US Patriot air defence system and cluster munitions – was touted by the global mainstream media as game-changer wonder weapons that will ensure Ukrainian victory.

But despite all these, the collective west is still unable to bring Russia to its knees.

With the looming US presidential election in 2024, the Biden administration is anxious not to make project Ukraine a debacle.

Hence, Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor and the point man in Biden’s reelection campaign is desperate enough to conceive whatever plan it takes to prevent such a debacle.

One of these plans was organising the Jeddah conference to convince the Global South and all neutral countries to force capitulation on Russian throat by discussing the Zelensky peace plan which is not a peace plan at all but a capitulation plan, and to boot, a key party to the conflict – Russia – was not invited to the conference.

With the failure of the Jeddah conference where host Saudi Arabia itself, much to the consternation of the US and its allies, came with its own peace plan that was significantly different from the Zelensky peace plan, they are now desperate for off-ramp solutions to the conflict.

Off-ramp is an American term referring to what the British would call “the slip road” where one exits off a motorway, and in the language of diplomacy, it means a negotiated solution such as a frozen conflict preceded by a ceasefire that saves the losing party/parties from much embarrassment.

One famous example of a frozen conflict is the Korean war in the 1950s in which the prime proxies of the war – US and China – agreed to freeze the conflict to save the US from a humiliating defeat by China.

So, because it is a frozen conflict, North Korea and South Korea until today are technically at war, as the conflict is frozen with no peace agreement between them.

Currently, one off-ramp solution is the idea of trading claims to land for peace in which Kiev could end up relinquishing its claims on Russian territory in exchange for Nato membership.

This idea was mooted by some US and European think tanks and made concrete on Aug 15 by Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff of Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

But it was a non-starter because Ukraine with its maximalist stance of wanting no less than the withdrawal of all Russian troops back to the 1991 border, has vehemently denounced it, forcing Jenssen to apologise for bringing up the idea.

Russia did not even give its comment because one of the reasons for its special military operation is to ensure Ukraine’s neutrality by not becoming a Nato member.

Another off-ramp solution is for Ukraine to forget about continuing its counter-offensive and its maximalist stance and defend only its territories that are currently not captured by Russia, and then negotiate for a ceasefire, with the smaller-sized Ukraine later applies for Nato membership.

Yet a third off-ramp solution proposed by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was for a series of referendums under “strict” international control in the four new Russian regions and Crimea.

Such a move, Sarkozy claimed would allow the territorial disputes between the two neighbours to be settled once and for all and help Europe avoid merely freezing the conflict.

On Aug 18, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov said western calls for Ukraine peace talks are a “tactical ploy to buy time once again giving the exhausted Ukrainian troops a respite and the opportunity to regroup, and to send in more weapons and ammunition”.

Adding that “this is the path of war, not a peaceful settlement process”, Lavrov also said insisting on Zelensky’s so-called ‘peace formula’ at meetings in Copenhagen and Jeddah – to which Russia was not invited – “hardly demonstrates an intention by the West to negotiate with Russia”.

Expounding on this theme further in an interview with the US magazine International Affairs published the next day, Lavrov said geopolitical issues need to be discussed “not with [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters.”

“The problem, however, is that the US has no intention of ending the conflict,” Lavrov explained, noting that “their officially declared objective is to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia”.

Prospects for negotiations between Russia and the West “are non-existent at this stage”, Lavrov said, while Kiev “western sponsors are constantly pushing them to up the ante.”

Russia has repeatedly tried to negotiate, from the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements to the “drastic attempt to convey our concerns to western capitals” in December 2021, Lavrov noted.

The West “arrogantly rejected” Moscow’s initiative and ramped up deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Kiev instead.

Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, admitted last December that the 2015 Minsk agreement negotiated by Germany and France was “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military.

This was then confirmed by former French President Francois Hollande.

In the midst of the war in March 2022, peace negotiation between Russia and Ukraine brokered by Türkiye was convened in Istanbul, but as an agreement on peace was reached, former British prime minister Boris Johnson torpedoed it by instigating Ukraine not to sign it and promised total western support for Ukraine.

Let us now discuss the sanctions or economic component of this hybrid war in Ukraine. Russia has somewhat expected this sanctions war but perhaps the magnitude with which the US and its western allies use them was far beyond Russia’s imagination.

With more than 1,194 sanctions against Moscow, the US is the leading sanctioning country, followed by Canada (908) and Switzerland (824).

This is unprecedented. The main aim of these sanctions is to ensure the speedy collapse of the Russian economy so that it could no longer support the special military operation.

The US and its allies were also hoping that with the collapse of the economy, there will be mayhem and chaos in Russia leading to regime change where Russian President Vladimir Putin will be overthrown, resulting in an end to the war followed by the dismemberment of Russia by the collective west.

And because Russia is a country rich in commodities and natural resources, this huge wealth will then be redistributed among the collective west as spoils of war accompanying a regime change.

So “Project Ukraine” in essence is an investment scheme of the US and the collective west to seek the strategic defeat of Russia and enrich the leaders of the west and their military-industrial complex so that the US remains the only hegemon in a unipolar world.

It was during this early period of the Ukraine war that the sanctions had caused the roubles to nosedive, leading to president Joe Biden gleefully coining the expression “the rouble will be reduced to a rubble”, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Layen to also gleefully coin the famous expression, “Russian industry and economy in tatters”.

But under the extraordinary leadership of Putin and his economic team especially its Central Bank Governor, Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian economy and industries particularly its military-industrial complex remain unscathed from this intense sanctions war.

In fact based on the latest World Economics report, it was revealed that Russia went on to be among the world’s five largest economies and the largest in Europe, replacing Germany in terms of purchasing power parity as of the end of 2022, despite Western sanctions, and amid the proxy and hybrid war it is facing.

So what is the secret recipe for Russia’s ability to withstand these shock and awe sanctions and ultimately win the sanctions war?

Cool-headed leadership. You don’t find Putin panicking or snapping at the US or the west. In contrast there are many occasions where Biden snapped at Chinese president Xi Jinping in the most outrageous and undignified manner such as at a dignified State of the Union Address.

Remember the famous remark Biden uttered off-script during his State of the Union Address: “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one!”

This will only cement the close relation further between China and Russia, and it is this close relationship that has also helped Russia to weather the sanctions war, and come out victorious.

Cooler head on the part of Putin has allowed Russia to come out with some brilliant moves to counter the sanctions.

Among others these include making it a condition for EU countries which wanted Russian gas at the start of the war to pay for their purchases in roubles rather than in dollars, where failure to do so would result in their gas supply pipeline shut, and offering oil at huge discounts to Asian and African countries where it was snapped up in huge quantities by India and China, thus more than making up the loss in revenue from nil exports to EU-sanctioning countries.

Russia also began to focus more on alternative trading routes to make up for its loss of the European hinterland by reviving the idea of an International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), touted as an alternative to the Suez Canal.

The INSTC is a planned 7,200km multi-mode transit system that will connect ship, rail, and road routes for moving cargo between Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, India, and Central Asia.

The total cargo flow along the INSTC was 14.5 million tons in 2022, and the projection for this year is 17.6 million tons. By 2030, the volume is expected to reach 41 million tons.

Currently, only some sections of the route are operational, with Russia and Iran agreeing in May to build a railway line to incorporate into it. Moscow plans to invest more than $3 billion in the expansion of the project by 2030.

Russia has repeatedly said that the route could become a substitute for the Suez Canal, the 193km sea-level waterway in Egypt that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

The popular route between Europe and Asia sees about 12% of global trade pass through it each day.

Trade via the INSTC is expected to allow companies to cut shipping costs by about 50% and save up to 20 days of travel time compared to the Suez Canal route.

Finally, what happens to the shock and awe sanctioning countries? The sanctions boomeranged on them. All of them are experiencing high inflation rates including double digit food inflation and are on the verge of a recession.

On the battlefield itself, Ukraine experienced a nasty setback when its recent counter-offensive resulted in a colossal loss of troops and military hardware.

On top of this, not only is Ukraine in a dire situation of dire shortages of ammunitions and weaponries, more serious than this its western sponsors are also similarly facing acute shortages in ammunitions and weaponries to be supplied to Ukraine.

How can one really win a war with the depletion and shortages of ammunitions and weapons? So it’s better for Ukraine, the US and its western allies to negotiate for peace with Russia before more damages are inflicted on Ukraine.

Regards,

Jamari Mohtar

Editor, Let’s Talk!

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