CNN –
Suddenly the Tsar might have no clothes. It’s been an amazing week on both sides of the border with Ukraine and Russia.
What remains of the curtain protecting the dignity of Russia’s military has been pulled back, and it is definitely not the second most powerful in the world.
Russia’s withdrawal from the vicinity of Kharkiv, a planned “regroupment” that some state media did not even dare to mention, is arguably more significant than its earlier collapse of positions around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. These units had been dug in for months, defending their positions effectively, as CNN witnessed in the weeks they passed through the arterial roads north of Kharkiv, and were sometimes literally minutes’ drive from the Russian border.
That Moscow could not sustain a force so painfully close to its own territory speaks volumes about the true state of its supply chain and military. It’s almost as if these retreating units are returning to the void, not the nuclear power that in February expected to invade its neighbor within 72 hours.
Second, the Russian units do not appear to have made a careful and prudent retreat. They ran and left behind both armor and valuable remaining supplies of ammunition. The open-source intelligence website Oryx estimated that from Wednesday to Sunday, at least 338 fighter jets or tanks or trucks were left behind.
There may be pockets of Russian troops to harass Ukrainian forces in the coming weeks, but the nature of the front line has changed irrevocably, as has its size. Kyiv is suddenly fighting a much smaller war now, along a much reduced front line, against an enemy that also appears much smaller.
Indeed, the Russian military now relies on forced mobilization and prisoners for its depleted ranks. Ukraine has been quite surgical, tapping supply routes to cut off already exhausted units, detecting which were the least prepared and manned. It has been incredibly effective and fast.
Whether Ukraine’s counteroffensive becomes decisive depends on how far its forces are now able to push: would it risk gaining even more territory? Or is Ukraine facing an enemy that simply has no fight left? As much as Russia’s forces were overstretched during the chaotic decades of America’s war on terror, an army that needs shells from North Korea and convicts from St. Petersburg is reduced to strength at best. minimum necessary to protect Russia itself.
so what? Unless we see a notable reversal, Russia’s bid to take all of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is over. Kherson remains the focus of sustained Ukrainian pressure. And suddenly, a return to the borders Russia stole in 2014 doesn’t seem far-fetched.
For months, the received wisdom was that Russia would “never let that happen.” But now Crimea looks strangely vulnerable: connected to Russia by the land corridor that runs along the Sea of Azov via the coast of Mariupol and an exposed bridge across the Kerch Strait. What remains of Moscow’s overstretched, depleted, poorly supplied and equipped forces in Ukraine could face the same lethal encirclement that did to its supply chain around Kharkiv.
As far as Kyiv goes now, we have had a radical change in the dynamics of European security. Russia is no longer NATO’s equal.
Last week, Russia was no match for its NATO-armed neighbor, a mainly agrarian and IT power until December that it has been slowly tormenting for eight years. Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Monday that elements of Russia’s First Guards Tank Army, an elite unit meant to defend Moscow from any NATO attack, had been part of the chaotic withdrawal from Kharkiv. they ran
The defense budgets of NATO member states have been slowly increasing towards the suggested 2% for years. But will those billions really be needed to take on an army that needed shells from Pyongyang after just six months in Ukraine?
It would also be a mistake to misinterpret the silence inside Russia – apart from a few critical analysts, politicians and talk shows – as a sign of a disturbing residual force that is about to unravel. This is not a system capable of looking in the mirror. The Kremlin remains silent on these issues because it cannot cope with the gulf between its ambitions and rhetoric, and the disorganized and hungry mercenaries it appears to have left stranded around Kharkiv.
The fact that they don’t talk about their mistakes amplifies them. The watermelon that President Vladimir Putin opened in Moscow over the weekend doesn’t become invisible when it breaks and can’t turn. The same can be said of the monolithic, uncompromising force that Putin tries to project: when he breaks, it is not in private.
The most egregious foreign policy mistakes of recent centuries have been born of hubris, but Europe now faces a series of stark choices. Do they keep pushing until Russia calls for peace that leaves its neighbors safe and energy pipelines open again? Or do they retain the old flawed logic that a humiliated and wounded bear is even more dangerous? Would a potential successor to Putin, none of whom we know of, seek détente with Europe and prioritize the Russian economy, or prove his worth in another reckless and harsh act of brutal militarism?
This is also a key moment for non-proliferation and nuclear power in the post-Cold War era. What does a nuclear power do when it is vulnerable and does not have a convinced conventional power? Russia faces no existential threat now: its borders are intact and its military is hampered only by a wild misadventure of choice. But it seems close to the limits of its conventional capabilities.
It would be a stark confirmation of the theory of mutually assured destruction that has always governed the age of nuclear weapons, if weapons that could end the world as we know it are kept off the table. It would also raise the possibility, again raised by the West’s full support for Ukraine, that the horrors of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine have not irreparably damaged the West’s moral and strategic compass, and still he is not naive expect to see these values in action.