Putin's Kherson Humiliation

Seeing Ukrainians enthusiastically welcoming soldiers on the streets of Kherson would move all but the stoniest, politically blinkered hearts. The Russian withdrawal from Kherson region - long planned but rapidly executed - is testament to the resilience. skill, and sacrifices of the Ukrainian military. The Russian Ministry of Defence's removal of all its troops, though certainly not all its heavy equipment, is just about the first outright battlefield success Vladimir Putin's regime has enjoyed since the war began. But the price paid is Russia's utter humiliation on the world stage. Its military losses are staggering and the pre-war edge the Russian army had over Ukraine in properly-trained personnel and materiel has taken such a dent that Moscow is now pressing prisoners and draftees into the line, where casualties are proving particularly horrendous. And in further blows to Putin's prestige, his military is proving to be the biggest donor to Ukraine thanks to the machinery and ammunition fleeing troops are wont to leave behind. What should have been a quick, sharp policing action has become a grind that can only imperil Putin himself.

He can't say he wasn't warned. Indeed, one of the reasons why a lot of commentators were caught on the hop by his invasion, despite his weeks of posturing and fiery rhetoric, was the fact the troops assembled for the "special military operation" were too few and that Ukraine not only had a larger and better equipped army than in 2014, when Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk were claimed by the Russian Federation, it would mobilise for total war. Forget the nonsense about the United States goading Russia into war, this catastrophic misjudgement was Putin's and Putin's alone.

Consider the last nine months. The Russians poured over the border and headed toward Kiev where their armour simply sat on the roads and was gradually worn down by determined resistance to the point they had to abandon the attack and with draw from the environs of the city. In the summer, Ukraine very loudly announced to the world that it would be undertaking a counter offensive in the south of the country to liberate Kherson region. The Ministry of Defence took it on face value and rushed troops and heavy equipment across the Dneiper. The Ukrainians then shelled and knocked out the bridges, and slammed the real counter attack into the thinly held region around Kharkhiv. The Russian lines melted and 12,000 square km of land was recaptured, along with masses of equipment and the grim findings of multiple mass graves. By October, the pressure on the southern front was too much for Russia and the withdrawal began, with all soldiers making it back to the east bank of the river within the space of 24 hours. A decrepit state can only ever field a decrepit army.

Apart from withdrawing from Kherson in a timely manner, the only other success Russia can point to presently is the fighting on the borders of Donetsk where, for the best part of two months, its has been grinding towards Bakhmut. Almost two thirds of the city are in rubble, and it's been the site of some of the most intense fighting seen in the war. Every advance by Russian forces has been countered and thrown back but, with the remorseless logic of a First World War meat grinder, hundreds of newly mobilised Russian troops are thrown into the fray day after day. Yet the price paid in blood and equipment doesn't appear to be allied to any strategic perspective. Should the town get captured, it doesn't really improve Russia's tactical position. Indeed, the Ukrainian army would, if anything, find it even easier to degrade their opponent's forces by artillery from nearby higher ground. It appears to be an operation aimed at taking the city for the sake of taking something.

That is indeed the case. This region of the front line is under control Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former caterer/restaurateur turned private military contractor. His Wagner Group (who harbour as many if not more Neo-Nazis than Ukraine's famous Azov Regiment) have fielded their own private army outside of the Ministry of Defence's chain of command. It's Wagner that have recently been allowed to recruit from prisons. The use of mercenaries on the battlefield are normally problematic. Fighting for coin rather than country marks them out as more risk averse troops, but on the face of it the modest advances made since the beginning of the Autumn compares favourably to the 'official' army's performance in the north and south of Ukraine. And this is entirely the point of the Wagner "offensive". Prigozhin, as a long time Putin crony who amassed a huge fortune from corrupt state contracts, is angling for more power. It is an instance of how, as per all authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, elites compete with one another for favour and office. What does it matter if Ukraine are chewing up hundreds of troops around Bakhmut as long as Prigozhin's star carries on rising? No amount of deaths or setbacks can stop this from being a good war, as far as he's concerned.

The question now is where does the war go next. The Russians are dug in on the south bank of the Dneiper and with crossings across the wide river out of action, a lightning fast thrust from the environs of Kherson seems unlikely. However, the two main access roads into Crimea are within range of Ukrainian artillery and so we can expect the Russian occupation there to come under pressure. Which hasn't been great since a (seeming) special forces attack severely damaged the Crimean Bridge that linked the peninsula to Russia proper. An attack further to the east to cut off Russian holdings from Donetsk would appear to be a logical choice - one so obvious even Putin's MoD should be able to anticipate it. On the other hand, there are concerns Belarus might enter the war on Russia's side, imperilling Kiev once again, and the situation in the East could do with reinforcements and added firepower to squash Wagner and prosecute an advance into Luhansk. With momentum, confidence, strategic nous and a steady stream of Western weapons, Ukraine has the initiative.

There are no good options for Putin. The recapture of Kherson underlines how unwinnable the war has become for Russia. So low are its military stocks that it's relying on Iran for drones and missiles and, incredibly, North Korea for small arms munitions. The professional army has been virtually thrown away without enough left to train the draftees, meaning hundreds are showing up on the front lines every morning who will be dead by evening. And, it was widely reported, that Russia has begged Syria to send troops and is looking at recruiting Afghan commandos abandoned by the West after the Taliban took back power. Unfortunately for Putin, his humiliation has cost tens of thousands of Russian deaths and a growing crisis of confidence in his regime. The protests that greeted the outbreak of the war have become muted under the cosh of heavy policing, but the resentment of the partial mobilisation, and the inevitable turning of grief into anger is something that no regime, let alone one as decayed as Putin's, can forestall forever. It will not be molified by crude propaganda, nor by pointless punishment bombings of Ukrainian residential blocks and power stations. In Russian history, war has had the tendency of being the midwife of revolution. Putin beware.

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