Nine months that shook the world not. Or rather, not yet

This article addresses how, thanks to the constant “breaking news” and the easily accessible info noise, “events” became longer in modern age. Consequently, it takes the world longer(!) to recognize transformative events.

The clash of the Russian strongman, who is well-resourced but old-school, with the Ukrainian leader, who gets the art of war of the 21st century, has demonstrated the superiority of the latter. The conclusions in this article can be informative for other early 21st-century conflicts. So, keep reading.  

 Ten-day event used to persuade the world is shaken

The leftist Harvard-educated journalist John Reed had a chance to compare the Mexican and Russian revolutions that he covered for US periodicals. He concluded that it was the latter that shook the world. His 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World proved right as attested by the reception of its film adaptation Reds. The movie attracted stars like Jack Nicholson, won three Oscars one year into Reagan’s tenure, and appeared in the 100 best US movies of the 20th century in the 2002 list by American Film Institute/CBS. 

Hundred years ere, just like now, there were many dramatic events for John Reed to choose from: 

-        the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that was as disruptive as Covid-19, 

-        World War One that heralded transformations in the Imperial Britain while suppressing the German claims to a global power status, 

-        major US bank failures twelve years prior, in 1907, that led to the creation of the Fed and were not less scary than the Subprime Crisis. 

John Reed weaved a love story into his book. But besides fun, it is considered an accurate substantive account of how capable anti-tsarist politicians and army organizers prevailed over a monstrous bureaucratic and military machinery.

Then, old-school strategists pondered how tsarist forces could mount a horizontal escalation, adding new troops under old banners. The horizontal escalation didn’t happen. 

Foreign interventionist troops were also viewed as a feasible means of putting pro-tsarist rulers back in the driver’s seat. Their navies with heavy artillery were thought of as a vertical escalation.

In the jargon that we use today, the 30-years-old John Reed was describing a Black Swan, claiming to have seen the inner mechanics of the mysterious black box of decision making in the far-left government that took over. 

Conceiving a Black Swan in 2022

Ukraine and Russia started off in 1991 with fairly similar initial positions. Wild West capitalism bloomed throughout the 1990s due to a poorly designed privatization of Soviet enterprises along with inflation and other macroeconomic troubles. Yet, past historical patterns prevailed quickly: Russia, a federal multiethnic state, let the power concentrate in the hands of Putin, an aspiring tsar with a background of a KGB spy, while Ukraine has gone through six presidents across different generations: 

 -        first two were born in 1930s, similar to B.Yeltsin, 

-        second two, in 1950s, similar to V.Putin, 

-        the fifth, in the 1960s, similar to B.Obama, D.Cameron, B.Johnson,

-        and the current president Zelenskyy, in the 1970s, similar to J.Trudeau, E.Macron, L.Truss, G.Meloni.

The world preferred focusing on Ukraine’s similarities with Russia, notably on corruption, that persisted due to the unfair privatization in the 1990s. Commentators were even occasionally noting how Russia was more orderly because of its strongman. 

 Ukraine has also been noted, but for a different thing – the firming up of a civil society, with long protest standoffs against corruption and abuse of power taking place in the winter months of 2000-2001, 2004-2005, 2013-2014. While the first one was suppressed, the second and the third ones led to fair elections. Naturally, voters were not always getting it right and new governments were not figuring everything out either. So, the commentators kept focusing on corruption without seeing how civil society was prevailing. 

 Ukraine’s victorious defense of its territory is a classic Black Swan case because no one saw it coming at the beginning of 2022. 

Nine months’ gestation? The world has shaken but is coming to realize it slowly 

October 2022 marks nine months since the KGB-infested Russian leadership started their full-on assault on Ukraine. Zelenskyy’s sympathizers and curious bystanders alike convinced themselves that Russia would be the winner of this attack from four directions, 

 -        from the north, targeting the capital and the largest metropolitan area of Kyiv, 

-        from the northeast, targeting Kharkiv, the second largest city,

-        from the east, trying to capture in full Luhansk and Donetsk regions where since 2014, the majority of the territory remained Ukrainian but the largest densely-populated urban areas of Luhansk and Donetsk where occupied by Russia-backed separatists

 So, that was the conception. 

 When US president Joe Biden offered president Zelenskyy to evacuate from Kyiv in the first days of the intensified war in late February, he must have been drawing on a similar type of intel as Putin and the Russian military did.

 Nausea hit Russia right in the 1ST trimester. By the 12th week of the invasion (May 19), Russia lost a whopping 28.5 thousand military personnel. Half of the losses happened in just the first four weeks. Russia withdrew from the north of Ukraine and arrested high-profile FSB coordinators who failed to predict the fierce resistance of the Ukrainian civilians. Army Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov (b.1961) became the commander of the entire invasion effort. Ukraine sank the Russian battleship Moskva on April 13 to hail his appointment four days earlier. The fact that it was done by a Ukrainian-made Neptun missile compelled international observers to change the discourse towards admiring Ukraine rather than talking about worse-than-expected Russian performance. 

 When the Kremlin tried to capture Kyiv, the Russian army was composed of professionals who have been in training at the Ukrainian border for more than half a year in preparation for the incursion. They occupied the area in northern Ukraine equivalent to the Netherlands. 

 By April, mainstream commentators falsely converged on the belief that it is not the strong Ukraine but a weak Russia. It was all about Russia’s poor military planning and low-quality intel. 

 Ukraine showed a formidable defense tactic and troop coordination. Russia lost about 20,000 dead and much more wounded. They started to retreat at the end of March. Ukraine liberated its north by April 8. Russia declared a successful completion of the 1st phase of the war and said it would focus on eastern and southern Ukraine henceforth. 

 It is from mid-April that the “grinding” story begins. And it frightens Kremlin-fed opinion makers. Their manicured social media posts criticize the Russian army gently. One can come across such statements as “those Russian generals who remember to parade and to move troops in columns should learn to fight,” “brigade tactical group commanders should start taking decisions and forget about the vertically oriented combat control system.” 

They take quotes from Tactics textbooks such as [a] disperse the forces along the front and in depth, [b] occupy salient areas such as heights, and prepare false strongholds there, [c] fire from the flanks and depths, and [d] counterattack with the second echelon if the adversary attempts to take the false stronghold.

 However, these textbooks are not meant for military formations composed of lowlife separatists, right-wing mercenaries and privateers, and hastily put-together ethnic minority units. Russia sends those units for an assault after carpet bombing and shelling because they can’t do more even though they know the theory.

 What is noteworthy is that these Tactics books are exactly how the Ukrainian army operates. Even when the tactical units are inching backward, they do it orderly and infrequently, inflicting pain to the enemy, often regaining the heights with false strongholds in reserve troop counterattacks.

 The 2nd trimester followed a pregnancy timeline pattern too. The front stabilized and Ukraine started to prepare for a counteroffensive. Dvornikov, who was very aggressive when he commanded the Russian troops in Syria turned out to keep a low profile. He was replaced by Gen. Gennady Zhidko (b.1965) towards the end of June. In the 2nd trimester, Russia lost 14.5 thousand military personnel, totaling the losses at 43 thousand as of the end of the 24th week (August 11). 

 Traditionally, the 3rd trimester started to be tough for the invader again. In September Ukraine liberated the north east, pushing the enemy out of Kharkiv Region, and made progress in the south, beating the enemy in Kherson Region. October began with the explosion of the Crimean bridge on Putin’s 70th birthday. Two days later, on October 8, Zhidko was replaced with Gen. Sergey Surovikin (b.1966). 

The latter was declared to be the commander of not only the military but also of the formerly standalone Wagner privateers composed of convicts and army dropouts and the Russia-supported separatist. Surovikin returned to the dreadful tactic of missile strikes on civilians and infrastructure all over Ukraine. As of October 13 (33rd week, mid-3rd trimester), Russia lost 10.3 thousand military personnel, totaling the losses at 53.3 thousand. 

 It is worth noting that Russia has been reporting much lower casualties, fiddling with statistics by both lowering the military casualties and not including the casualties of the privateers and the separatists. 

 Russia has been making a bet on pressuring the EU into ending support for Ukraine by manipulating prices on the oil and gas markets via limiting supply and convincing OPEC to keep the production low. However, it is the European voters whose voice became much louder than that of the Russian high-profile agents of influence, for example:

 -        France: president Macron who leads the center-right La République En Marche! was reelected back in April, running against a staunch Putin supporter.

-        Italy: the broad coalition collapsed over the question of sanctions against Russia in June, and Fratelli d'Italia, the only opposition party that declared commitment to supporting Ukraine got the most votes in the September snap election.

-        Germany: the leftwing party Die Linke has a major dissent because other party members criticized economic sanctions against Russia, as reported in September. 

 Austria, Latvia, Sweden, Czechia and Bulgaria in Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan and most other nations elected national and local politicians who are highly critical of the Russian invasion. 

 There are notable exceptions like Hungary and Serbia in Europe who held votes in April and elected pro-Russian politicians. The October election in China is expected to anoint for his third-decade tenure the current leader Xi Jinping who will celebrate 70 y.o. next year. 

Will escalation be a Black Swan?

In the summer, Russia used the grinding tactics in the east where a large part of the troops consisted of unaccounted separatists and privateers. While in the summer, military experts were warning of Russia’s potential for a horizontal escalation, it is not a feasible threat. Just like Putin called the invasion a “special operation,” he calls general mobilization a partial mobilization. Why? Because general mobilization is not feasible politically. Russian civilians may be used for policing the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine but the day they are deployed to the grinder, they will desert. Horizontal escalation by the existing Russian troops is not feasible because Russia has been bullying Finland and Japan for years and needs to have presence at its northwest and far east.

 Military experts do talk about vertical escalation, i.e. the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. However, just like it is not feasible for Putin to carry out general mobilization domestically, the Kremlin cannot invite international ire to the point that it loses standing among his G20 friends, CIS dependencies or worse the UN Security Council permanent seat that hinges on a chorus of African and Latin American appeasers. Whatever remains from Putin’s international standing matters to him because of his domestic message about Russia being a righteous fighter admired in developing countries, including in many G20 countries.

 The world will not be the same after the past nine months. Ukraine represents a small nation with a long history of suppression, colonial domination and lack of political voice within Europe reaching its prominence. 

Is Russia on the path of a state sponsor of terrorism?

Nine months passed. All this time Kremlin troubadours have been hungry for any good news. They started saying in one voice that hostilities must go on because freezing the current configuration of the front line is not advantageous to Russia, given the sunk cost.

 So, what does the future hold if Russia can’t escalate, can’t win, and yet, can’t finish the hostilities? Changes inside Russia itself. And further rethinking of the global architecture in terms of security, economy, and international development. 

The war of aggression by the WMD-capable Russia proved again that weapons of mass destruction are not a feasible means of aggression. Nuclear capability remains the means of containment and defense but not of aggression. A similar conclusion has been drawn from the Vietnam War some fifty years ago.

 Russian PsyOps is working to stretch the definition of “defense” to include, for example, the Crimea Bridge that the Kremlin built after invading Ukraine and occupying the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. But they have no chance to win this PsyOps war, just like they didn’t have a chance to capture Kyiv, because Ukraine is a capable fighter.

The use of tactical nukes, just like chemical and biological weapons, is not feasible in a hot conflict that is closely watched internationally. Even though these tactical weapons are not WMD and won’t have the same effect militarily, they are viewed with the same notoriety and would lead to Russia’s quick demise just like WMD. Therefore, Russia cannot vertically escalate with either tactical weapons or WMDs.

With military options disappearing, Russia has no choice but to negotiate. Its elites need to come to the realization that Ukrainians are not inferior to them, that Ukraine has the right for self-determination, and that it has sovereignty over its entire territory. They also need to condemn their own militarism and neo-colonialism. 

It also needs to sink in among the Russian elites that they will need to pay for the atrocities and crimes that Russia has committed. It is not that scary and unthinkable to do because there have been plenty of cases that belligerent nations had to go through similar steps and to embrace their future.