Putin is caught like a rabbit in the headlights

Photo courtesy Philip Ingram / https://greyharemedia.com/philip-ingram-mbe-bio/

VAZHA TAVBERIDZE: What are Ukraine’s strategic aims when it comes to the Kursk and Belgorod incursions? What does it want to achieve?

PHILIP INGRAM: I’m obviously making a few assumptions in analysing it, but I’m doing so from someone who has planned these sorts of operations on numerous occasions. Ukraine had real difficulty in achieving any success in the east. They were almost forced into a counteroffensive last year, before they had the capability to do anything that would push the Russians back, because the Russian defences are stronger than any defensive lines that we’ve seen in any conflict ever, even defensive lines in the Second World War.

So, instead of continuing to fight against a brick wall that is not moving, or, in fact, a brick wall that is advancing slowly further into Ukraine, Kyiv decided the only way to wrestle the initiative back was to attack into Kursk. I think they’ve been planning this for some time, because we saw a couple of incursions into the Belgorod region by the Russian Legion last year. The Ukrainians attacked into Kursk for a number of reasons. The first and foremost is to capture Russian territory, because what that did was two things. One, it embarrassed Vladimir Putin significantly, made him seem weak to his inner circle and made him seem weaker than he’s been saying he is to his international supporters, particularly Xi Jinping in China, Kim Jong Un in North Korea and the Ayatollah in Iran. And two, it brought the reality of what is going on in Ukraine to the Russians, and it is indeed something that Vladimir Putin has put an enormous effort into keeping away from the Russian people, through controlling the information domain and what they’re saying. Now that there are Ukrainian troops on Russian soil and there are 200,000 estimated displaced individuals going into other Russian cities, the information can’t be kept out of the discussions that are going on amongst the population. So that further weakened Putin’s position.

The next strategic aim was to say to the West: “See? We have crossed one of Vladimir Putin’s strongest red lines and he does nothing. And therefore, if we’ve crossed one of his strongest red lines by physically invading Russia, which he has said in the past, or at least severely hinted at, would lead to a nuclear option, then he’s not going to do anything. So, international community, please give us the greenlight to use the weapons that you’ve given us against military targets further inside Russia, because if he’s not going to respond to this red line, he’s not going to respond to any of the others.” And that negotiation is still ongoing.

The next goal was to capture and hold some territory that could be used for barter should the conditions be set for negotiations at some stage in the future. If you look at the size of territory that’s currently controlled, and the potential with the attack into Belgorod, Ukraine could capture a significant part of Russian territory. It won’t be quite the same, but you’re getting close to the square kilometer-ish area that the Russians have seized in Ukraine in the east. And that would give Ukraine a very strong negotiating position. It continues to weaken Putin and the longer the Ukrainians stay in there, the weaker he will be. The final objective, and we heard this from [Ukraine’s chief commander] General [Oleksandr] Syrskiy, is to try and get the Russians to move some of their troops away from both the reserve forces and some of those that are engaged, to have to deal with the Ukrainian incursions, thereby weakening their attacks in the east and their ability to take territory. I think the Ukrainians have achieved everything apart from that last objective. There are no indications to suggest that the Russians are moving significant numbers of troops around. At the moment, there are indications to suggest that some are being moved around, but not enough to weaken the Russian attacks in the east.

As a former military intelligence officer, how would you rate these two incursions, planning-wise? Do you think this happened with a greenlight or without?

I was a military intelligence officer for most of my career. I spent a lot of my time in planning and I think the Ukrainians have shown that they are masterful planners. I tip my hat to them. They keep surprising me with their ingenuity, with the level of detail that they go into, with their operational security. And that’s why we don’t know much about what’s going on in Belgorod at the moment. And with that operational security, I don’t think they formally briefed anyone in the West. I suspect, informally, they have one or two trusted individuals that they would have talked to about certain elements, but not necessarily given the whole plan away.

Operational security is critical in all of this. You only get one opportunity and surprise, and the Ukrainians have executed that perfectly. It is a bold move, but a very intriguing and well-calculated one too. I think when planners in the West saw it, they will have had this wry smile on their face going, “ah, yes, you’ve caught us out again. Brilliant. Well done, Ukraine!”

Where do we go from here? President Volodymy Zelenskyy has said this is all a part of a bigger plan. Can I ask you to speculate what that grand plan might be?

We’ve seen reporting that President Zelenskyy is going to present his victory plan to President Joe Biden in the United States within the next month. Therefore, I think that’s the plan. I think the plan was to wrestle the initiative back again, which they have done, to embarrass Putin domestically and internationally, and to show that yet another red line has been crossed. I think Zelenskyy will give a very detailed and impassioned plan to Biden and ask him to take the gloves off and let the Ukrainians push for victory.

Biden is being very careful, not because he doesn’t want Ukraine to push for victory, but because there are people whispering to him that there could be much larger implications, that there’s no answer that will come out of this conflict that is going to be brilliant for world stability if it’s not very carefully handled.

There will be a deadline attached to this plan, considering that there is a time limit attached to President Biden’s tenure, right?

Yes, there is. There are always political time windows. And I think that this is what Zelenskyy will be looking at. He knows Biden. He’s been working with Biden and knows what his limits are and how to influence him. He doesn’t know Kamala Harris, and he has a perception of Donald Trump that may be right or may be wrong. But what he doesn’t want to do is to have to go back and start all over again, building relationships up. So that gives a degree of pressure to get things done in a specific time window.

And we’ve got the winter coming. The weather will restrict movement for heavy armour. It will change the tactics that have to be used. It will allow the Russians some time to recover some of their capability. The Ukrainians, if they retain the initiative, will use the winter to prepare for a bigger counteroffensive coming sometime next year, whenever they can get the proper air cover, now that they’re starting to get the elusive F-16s and are flying them.

How long can Ukraine sustain the Kursk and Belgorod operations? And, conversely, how long can Russia tolerate it until something gives way domestically?

The Ukrainians seem to be in it for the long term, because they’re bringing more of their civilian personnel in to deal with local security and other local issues. And they’ll also calculate how long they can sustain it, because logistics will dictate the timelines for everything. I think the Ukrainians have no problems with continuing to resupply what they need in Kursk, and potentially Belgorod, for as long as it takes. They can dig in for the long term.

Even as Russia advances in the east, slow though that advance might be?

Russian activity in the east and across the front line will always dictate whether the situation stays the same. In British military planning terms, we have an infamous question which is “Question Four,” which you ask every time you run the planning cycle. Question Four is: “has the situation changed?” If the situation has changed, you don’t continue with the same plan; you bring out either a new plan – a sequel of the old one – or you do something different. If the situation’s changed and you’re running with the same plan, then you’re going to fail. The Ukrainians have been trained in that level of planning from the West. They also have the experience of the Russian staff approaches to planning. So they can bring the two together and work that very well indeed. And they will have calculated that. If things change significantly for the worse in the east, and this is what I think Putin is trying to do, then the Ukrainians might withdraw from Kursk and go around to reinforce that. Or they might do something different. I suspect they’ll do something different, something less foreseeable.

From a Russian sustainability perspective, I would say Putin is caught like a rabbit in the headlights. He doesn’t know where to turn. There hasn’t been a decisive move from him in any way, shape or form with regard to this. He’s trying to bluff it out at the moment, even to himself – he thinks it’s like a little thorn in the side. He’s not recognizing the real difficulties that could come from it. And this is where I think the Ukrainians will have planned their next actions.

Let’s also talk about the potential western response. Will Ukraine’s actions prompt the West to provide more help, or, on the contrary, will it shackle the West with fears of escalation?

I think that the risk of escalation is something that is holding President Biden and Chancellor [Olof] Scholz of Germany back. In Europe, the United Kingdom and France want to take the shackles off. I do not think it is going to shackle decision-making any more than it shackles them at the moment.

With that in mind, do you think we will see a greenlight for the use of long range missiles on Russian soil? And will we see more F-16s delivered?

They will come when they’re needed. There are very interesting comments that have come from Zelenskyy in the last few weeks and days. The first was when they moved into Kursk, he turned around and said that this was Ukraine creating a buffer zone. He used exactly the same language that Putin had used to suggest his attack into Kharkiv and the attack in the east were dictated by the need to create a buffer zone. And that was, I think, a rude hand gesture from Zelenskyy to Putin. But, more interesting from the long-range attack perspective, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had successfully tested its own ballistic missile. It has a range of at least 700 kilometres and therefore can hit Moscow. That’s a good alternative to have, because if and when the West gives Ukraine the authorization to use western long range missiles on Russian soil, it will put forward very strong caveats, for example, that western weapons are only to be used against military targets and not against economic targets: so, no targeting factories, oil refineries, cities and other populous areas. But yes, you can target airfields and military headquarters and military logistic depots and everything else. I think that’s weeks, if not days, away.

Philip Ingram is a retired Colonel and former senior Military Intelligence officer from the British army. He is now a journalist specialising in cyber, security, counter terror, defence and intelligence.

Vazha Tavberidze is a Georgian journalist and staff writer with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. His writing has been published in various Georgian and international media outlets, including The Times, the Spectator, the Daily Beast and New Eastern Europe.

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Joe Biden, Kursk, NATO, Russia's war against Ukraine, strategy, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy