By Air Cmde TK Chatterjee (retd)
Given the tragedy that people of Ukraine and Russia have undergone since Feb 22, I do not intend to trivialise their pain and agony by calling the war “strange”. Far from it. But to a curious mind, there are far too many questions that remain unanswered in this ongoing Russo-Ukraine war. To add to that now we have another dimension added to it with the still unfolding mutiny drama by the Wagner mercenary group and their even more curious after effects.
Let us examine the beginning of this conflict. NATO has been progressively creeping towards the western border of Russia, ever since the end of WWII. In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic joined NATO. The biggest expansion came in 2004 when seven states, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the alliance. The sixth expansion in 2009 added Albania and Croatia. The seventh in 2017 added Montenegro. The eight in 2020 added North Macedonia. Finland joined NATO in 2023. There are more countries who have expressed their desire to join NATO officially, like Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Ukraine etc.
All these countries who are clamouring and stepping over each other to join NATO are doing so not because they love NATO, but to escape the fear of being swallowed by the Russian bear at some point in future. Small European nations, who came into existence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, need this alliance, at least for now, to keep the Russians away. This conclusion is obvious since China is too far away and there are no real, or even imaginary, monsters who can and will attack them. Therefore, realpolitik dictates that the USA must consider keeping the Russian bogey alive, through controlled economic sanctions and military activities, so that its fear can keep most of Europe under its sphere of influence. Otherwise without Russia as a threat USA will become a hammer without a nail.
Russia stood by as NATO expanded. To a question to AI chatbot Bing, if Russia ever raised any objections to expansion of NATO, the answer was “Yes, Russia has raised objections against NATO expansion. Russia’s sensitivities over NATO’s possible eastward expansion were well known. The current confrontation between Russia and the West is fuelled by many grievances, but the greatest is the belief in Moscow that it was betrayed by the west after the fall of the Soviet Union.” So, it can be safely deduced, what even robots have, that Ukraine was too close to home and heart for Russia to ignore.
So, that is how the conflict began. This was not a war between equals; one side was the aggressor with enormous military resources and the other was defending its sovereignty more with willpower and superior tactics, than its military might. The West, which had hitherto not catered for a Russian reaction to its alliance expansion, steps in with hardware, intelligence and promises, and a contest begins, which has already lasted for more than a year. Whether the apparent ignorance of the West of probable Russian reaction to its expansion programme was deliberate or pure stupidity, no one can tell, except the deep state that works from the shadows.
In any war the course of the war is decided by the belligerents. Not this one. Surprisingly in this war neither side has gone all out. Russians seem to have abandoned the idea of reaching Kiev and seem happy to control land east of the Dnipro river and Crimea. Ukraine on the other hand has made no effort to carry the war into Russia or open a second front to force Russia to divert some of its forces from the east. Russians have not used their air force or their navy to attack vital assets of Ukraine. While it is partly understandable from Ukraine’s point of view since they are dependent on hardware supplies from their backers, it is not at all understandable from Russia’s perspective, except that it can perhaps be attributed to poor planning and execution by the Russian general staff. They seem happy to strike residential buildings with hypersonic missiles. In contrast, in 1971 Bangladesh war, when the Indian army were fighting their way through the highly riverine terrain of East Pakistan, IAF were attacking targets in the interior at nerve centres of Pak high command including Dacca and IN blasted Karachi port from the sea, thousands of miles away from the actual war zone. It is also simply not digestible that a country will give six month notice for a counterattack to the opponents and allow them time and space to dig in. So well have the Russians dug in that now the USA has just taken a “difficult decision” to supply cluster ammunition, a banned item, to the Ukranians because they cannot supply enough 155 mm ammunition. It is not just the artillery ammunition, the Bradleys and the Leopards can also not be supplied at the rate at which they will be consumed in an offensive war. How these logistical inevitabilities were not considered before is an immense surprise too. It’s a strange war indeed.
If the war was strange, stranger was the mutiny by the mercenary component of the Russian army. This infamous clandestine army of Russia has been an integral component of Russian global strategies and it has also been a very effective cash cow for the Kremlin. In a country where dissent is not tolerated at all by the government, it allowed the Wagner group boss to criticise and insult publicly the Defence Minister and the Chief of Armed Forces for months together. As if that was not strange enough, surprisingly there was no counter to the public insinuations from the state’s side. Obviously there was a smaller war going on within the larger war, and this can never be good for the overall war effort of a nation. End result of the internal conflict resulted in the so called mutiny, and a much publicised march towards Moscow, which too ended most strangely indeed. How a group of mutineers could travel 400 odd kms towards the nation’s capital unchallenged, through national highways in broad daylight, is a humongous mystery. Actually, the motive to start the mutiny or to halt it midway is not fully understood by any expert anywhere, though I read volumes of speculation about either. As it stands, the Wagner group boss is missing somewhere between Minsk and Moscow and the disposal of his 50,000 odd troops, or whatever is left of it, is not known. This is the only truth.
The only satisfaction that the world has derived from this utterly confusing episode is that the myth of Putin’s infallibility has been shattered and surely powers that be, inside and outside Russia, are working hard to capitalise on it. That apart, speculations are on about the future of the Russian Federation in the post Putin era, if there is any. Some speculate that a cornered and cowered Putin is more dangerous than a powerful Putin, and some advocate that this is the point of inflexion and must be capitalised upon. Even the break up of Russia in smaller units is being envisaged and worries about the disposal of Russia’s huge nuclear stockpile will become the next worrisome subject. And as for the hero of the mutiny turnaround, Mr. Lukashenko of Belarus, by locating the Russian nuclear arsenal in his country, all he has done is that he has added his country’s assets to NATO’s target list.
I called this a strange war because except for the manpower everything else that is required for a war effort, including perhaps tactics, is being outsourced by one side, and it aims to drive the aggressors out of their country. The other side in spite of its adequate resources is blundering far away from their initial objective of a regime change in Kiev, in a misadventure that they have got themselves into just because somebody wanted to be the next Czar. Neither side will succeed in their aims fully, that is certain.
This simple truth is perhaps beginning to dawn on the ring masters of this circus and some quarters are reporting that the track two diplomacy is already on to find a way out of this imbroglio. The rest of the world can only hope that it succeeds and an exit strategy emerges soon.
The author is an Indian Air Force Veteran.
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