One way Ukraine could tangibly hurt Russia in the short-term would be to shut down the gas pipelines on their territory. Consider this map:
No doubt this would annoy the Europeans who receive Russian gas. But they’re not actively helping Ukraine just now. The Russians would be terribly angry, but they’ve already invaded.
For a country with its back against the wall, I see little downside to shutting down 66% of their invader’s cash-cow
I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere, but I think it’s worth considering.
Historically, when Ukraine was ruled by Russia, it was considered “the breadbasket of Russia.” If Ukraine had a bad harvest, people all over Russia starved.
Of Ukraine’s top five exports, three of them are food.
So Putin invading Russia could be because he wants to secure his food supply. He’s worried he can’t feed his people, otherwise.
If so, it’s an expression of incredible insecurity on his part, not just flexing his steely authoritarian will.
Anyway. It’s just a thought.
The image above is a summary provided by the US Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence in their new report, the first made publicly available since 1991.
Here’s their account of the Black Sea Fleet:
4 submarines
1 cruiser
1 destroyer
2 frigates
That’s it. That’s what Putin seized Crimea for. 8 warships.
Here’s how the US Navy defines a single Carrier Strike Group:
* a carrier — The carrier provides a wide range of options to the U.S. government from simply showing the flag to attacks on airborne, afloat and ashore targets. Because carriers operate in international waters, its aircraft do not need to secure landing rights on foreign soil. These ships also engage in sustained operations in support of other forces.
* a guided missile cruiser — multi-mission surface combatant. Equipped with Tomahawks for long-range strike capability.
* two guided missile destroyers — multi-mission surface combatants, used primarily for anti-air warfare (AAW)
* an attack submarine — in a direct support role seeking out and destroying hostile surface ships and submarines
* a combined ammunition, oiler, and supply ship — provides logistic support enabling the Navy’s forward presence; on station, ready to respond
So, the Black Sea Fleet is roughly equivalent to one US Carrier Strike Group. Minus the carrier, of course.
And, um, oh yes, the US has… ten of them.
Now think about what that says of Putin’s thinking regarding the readiness and utility of his other forces.
By way of a Mark Galeotti retweet comes Humor Northern Submarine Fleet, a wacky comic by O.V. Karavashkin.
I don’t know if I can parse the subtleties of the politics, but the look is amazing. It’s very representational, while simultaneously being somewhat reminiscent of MAD Magazine in the 1970s. Here’s an appreciation by the blog War Is Boring. Below, a sample.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has a fascinating post up, “Why Russia calls a limited nuclear strike “de-escalation””.
See, the US (and NATO more broadly) developed the category of “tactical” nuclear weapons in the 1980s to counter perceived USSR conventional superiority. (Notably the Pershing II missile, from 1981-89.) The Soviets were having none of that — their stated policy was that any use of nuclear weapons would be considered a full-on strategic strike, and would be retaliated against accordingly.
In our time, though, the Russians are saying they might resort to tactical nuclear strikes, because of US conventional superiority, as demonstrated in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
“De-escalation,” indeed.
(h/t, Elisabeth Eaves, on Twitter.)
From my comments to this post at The American Interest:
“President Obama views Putin as a leader who “was operating from a position of weakness.” This is right, but only if you take the long view: This type of regime is destined to fall eventually, but for the time being Putin has an 82 percent approval rating; he hardly looks or feels weak.”
No, Russia, and Poutine (I use the French spelling, because it more closely matches the Russian pronunciation) are incredibly, tactically weak.
Why did Poutine take Crimea? Because he wanted to protect the Black Sea “Fleet,” and thought it was a valuable enough asset to cause a fuss over. Have you looked at the Black Sea “Fleet”? It’s about the size of a single US Navy carrier group – minus the carrier, of course. Mark Galeotti has said he thinks it could lose a fight against the Italians. The fact that Poutine invaded another country to be certain to hold on to such an asset that is both so valuable to him he doesn’t feel he can afford to lose it, yet so weak it has no real tactical value, says volumes. It says his other assets are even worse.
The Russians fought Chechnya — and it took years to get to a standoff. The Russians fought a virtually disarmed Georgia — and it still took a week. And that’s before we talk about Afghanistan, which provides a fine illustration in the difference between withdrawing (what the US is doing), and retreating (which the USSR was forced to do, leaving tons of matériel behind).
Poutine is an Emperor without any clothes. And the photographs to match.
Daniel Drezner has a post at Foreign Policy about the (supposedly) recently discovered Russian spy ring.
He’s less than impressed.
Here’s what I just posted in a comment to him (quotes from his post are in italics):
*^*^*^*
“(I)s there anything that the Russians gathered from this enterprise that a well-trained analyst couldn’t have picked up by trolling the interwebs?”
Probably not, but that may well be the point.
That is, it’s one thing to find information on the interwebs. It’s another thing entirely to verify it.
In fact, given that 80-90% of all intel gathered is “open source intelligence” (ie, gathered from non-secret sources), I think one purpose of this group may have been to establish a control set against the images in the press and in entertainment media. The Russians may have been asking, “How real are those images?” and trying to set up “everyday” people to compare them against.
Come to think of it, that might not be so bad a project for us.
“Why were the arrests made now?”
That’s a real puzzler, as is any prosecution against spies. Standard practice is, once you ID a spy, you feed them disinformation to then pass along to their controllers. One of the few rationales I can think of (pay attention, this might be tricky):
* We have a source in Russia
* Who told us they have a source in the US
* Who’s told them we’ve discovered this ring
* So we had to blow the ring to protect our source in Russia, as prosecution is what we’d be “expected” to do.
“(T)his sounds like a low-rent, more boring version of that movie.”
* Movies are intended to look expensive — life isn’t
* Movies are intended to not be boring — life isn’t
You’re basically saying that since reality doesn’t match a movie plot scenario (see Schneier), it’s reality that must be wrong. Er, ah, no. All this points out is how crappy movie plots are vis-à-vis reality. It also points out how dangerous movie plots are when we let them set expectations as to what intel “really” is. (Which is why 24 has probably done more damage to our intel enterprise than any other single thing in the most recent ten years.)
If you wanted to make as realistic a TV series about intel as possible, it’d probably resemble Dilbert or The Thick of It more than anything else. Or it would be The Sandbaggers, which was made 30 years ago.