Ukraine – 8/13/2023 Sitrep
By: Bohdan Chomiak & Robert Homans
August 13, 2023
Bohdan is busy at the dacha, so in his stead I got a bit more energetic than usual.
From Bohdan
In less than a week I have received information about a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada who teaches agro chemicals at Olds College and has now made thirteen trips back to Ukraine delivering drones.
The second bit of good news comes from a Kiwi/American farmer who is involved in the private equity business. His team story follows:
The New Zealand Ambulances Have Made it to Ukraine - An epic journey that started mid-last year with a phone call to St John Ambulance from a beleaguered Kharkiv, has ended with seven decommissioned New Zealand ambulances crossing the Polish border into Ukraine at 0400 this morning.
The ambulances left New Zealand on 4 May and a combined Ukrainian / U.S. / NZ team retrieved them from the Port at Antwerp, Belgium, last Thursday.
The 2,500 km drive from Antwerp to Kyiv took us via Hamburg, Germany, to fill the vehicles with medical aid from, Kiwi K.A.R.E partner, UA Never Alone, a great bunch of displaced Ukrainians who run a big, professionally managed, humanitarian hub.
Over the next three weeks the ambulances will be fully serviced by our Kyiv based partner, UA Day by Day, before handing them over to medical units and Red Zone hospitals.
I must say, the servicing will be minimum: a couple of battery replacements, one thermostat, and an oil change each. The vehicles went like a dream and its testimony to the high level of maintenance by St John NZ.
The plan was always to keep one or two within the Kiwi K.A.R.E fleet as mobile health clinics to staff with Doctors and Nurses in newly liberated areas. I sincerely hope we can keep to that plan however we are a reasonably big beast to run now and this all takes resources, none the least of which is funds to run all our vehicles.
If you feel you can, please donate by clicking on this link: https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/kiwi-kare-ukraine-kiwi-aid-and-refugee-evacuation
Here’s a snippet of the trip as we arrived in Poznan, Poland, en route to Warsaw.
Thanks for all your amazing support New ZeLand and friends around the world.
More on Conscription
From Bohdan - Some may suspect me of going off the handle when it's not needed. Yesterday I criticized the Ukraine's Presidential Administration for presenting personnel changes at the government Military Conscription Commissions as a populist political stunt rather than a real blow against endemic corruption. My argument was that the unchecked authority of the commissioners will inevitably breed corruption, and that there needs to be a check. - In a nutshell Ukraine needs systemic changes to fight corruption not personnel changes.
Yesterday I touched on one aspect of the commissioners’ authority - control over selection of who is conscripted for military service. In addition to this authority the commissioner has the discretion to issue the following certificates that Ukrainian men require for the following:
Obtaining a passport
Obtaining a firearm
Registering property outside of your home county
Obtaining government services outside of your home county
Including marriage, divorce, birth certificates for children and death certificates for parents of relatives
International Travel
The key issue is discretion. The commissioner is not required to issue these certificates, he can choose. If he can choose, he can also ask for a reward for services.
The origin of this discretionary authority is the Soviet Union. Ukraine unlike Poland, the Baltic States and other East European countries lacked a pre-WWII legal framework and constitution. Those countries quite simply disposed of the Soviet system and readopted what was in place prior to Soviet occupation.
This did not occur in Ukraine, which is one reason the rashists think that Ukraine and other post Soviet States will be easy to bring back into the fold.
The common element the Soviets imposed on the republics was to empower their authorities to decide at their personal discretion, and not according to rules, what will happen to ordinary people. This attitude conforms with russian culture but not with Ukrainian culture, which is one of the many reasons why the russians will lose in Ukraine. The proviso is that Ukraine needs allies for this to happen.
From Andrei, a veteran of the Soviet Army (Angola), and an email recipient since 2014 (or maybe 2013) – “The whole military conscription system in Ukraine has always been rotten to the bone. Nobody has done nothing until recently. The media has been largely indifferent. The fact that Zeleneskiy (and not, I should stress, Zaluzhny who is responsible for them) is trying to do something about it is commendable. To change it in any significant way will require time and immense effort. Mind that the war is still raging on, and that significant disruptions are not desirable -- corruption or not. But at least Zelenskiy has sent a potent signal, the anti-corruption bodies are paying attention, and those responsible will think twice now before demanding or accepting bribes. In general, a good start.”
For me, this discussion speaks volumes about the profound difference between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, something that is evidentially not well appreciated in Russia. In Russia, such a debate will land you in prison.
The “Global South,” BRICS & the G-20 the Changing International System and the Russo Ukraine War/Lawrence Freedman
I’ve always been annoyed by terms like the “Global South” and the “Collective West.” To me, they’re employed by people who are intellectually lazy. As Freedman states, “The ‘Global South’ is one of those convenient shorthands that can keep conversations on international relations going without the need to list lots of different countries. If taken too seriously, as if this represents a homogenous group with a shared agenda, the label can soon become misleading. It is the latest in a sequence of attempts to group countries according to what they are not instead of who they are.” Hungary and Estonia, two countries that have polar opposite views about the war in Ukraine, are both considered to be part of the “Collective West.”
Another example of mis-placed collectivization is the term “BRICS,” standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China and S. Africa, coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs. It was originally “BRIC,” with S. Africa being added later. Originally BRIC, or BRICS, was defined as a group of large non-Western countries with fast-growing economies. Today, two BRICS are on the way to becoming failed states, Russia & S. Africa. We have likely reached “Peak China,” leaving only 2 of the BRICS that come even close of meeting O’Neill’s original organizing principle, Brazil and India. Only 3 of the BRICS, Brazil, India and S. Africa, organize themselves under the principles that have proven so successful in the West, a functioning democracy, Free Enterprise & Rule of Law. I’m being a bit generous to S. Africa.
Where all this becomes important, according to Freedman, is the attempts by various countries to craft a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine. One popular narrative is that at some point the United States can strongarm Ukraine into agreeing to a settlement, that includes Ukraine giving up territory to Russia. After the failure of the “assurances” included in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the United States will never be able to strongarm Ukraine into giving up territory.
As Freedman points out, “A common complaint from non-Western countries mirrored that of internal critics of Western support for Ukraine - far too much effort is being put into stoking the fires of war by sending arms to Ukraine and not enough into ‘diplomacy’ to end the war. There is a persistent hope that ‘dialogue’ might find a common-sense way out of the morass. This line has appealed to those who wish to sound progressive even while supporting a vicious, nationalist, aggressor state, or ‘realists’ who take it for granted that at some point Ukraine will have to concede territory to Russia. Those taking this view also tend to assume that the US is in the position to get a deal done because it can lever Kyiv into a compliant position.”
“This was always a dubious proposition. It would not be a good look for Biden, and certainly would be divisive within the alliance, to attempt to strong arm Ukraine into an unequal treaty that Russia would probably not honour anyway. Most importantly Putin has not offered any encouragement to those urging active negotiations.”
During the course of 2023, the onus for stoking the war has seemed to have moved from the United States and NATO to the Russian Federation. Freedman describes the peace initiatives that have been put forward in 2023, starting with China’s that, to Russia’s likely embarrassment, incorporated the terms of the UN Charter, including respecting national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and international humanitarian law and, most recently, the conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to which Russia wasn’t invited. There is the G-20 Summit in New Delhi in early September, closely followed by the UN General Assembly.
Freedman concludes “We are moving from the idea of a mediated peace, in which a country able to talk to both Moscow and Kyiv, such as Turkey or Israel, tries to broker an agreement that leaves both sides with honour satisfied, to a process which involves developing global pressure on Putin to back away from his stubborn insistence on Russia’s right to annex Ukrainian territory.” Both the diplomatic and military sands seem to be shifting under Russia’s feet.
News From the Battlefield
The Riverine War – Ukraine may currently be attempting to open up another vector of attack – across the Dnipro where there are fewer Russian defense lines. At the very least, Ukraine may be able to interdict a major Russian supply route, from Crimea to southern Ukraine, that passes close to the left bank of the River.
I was under the impression that the U.S. had given Ukraine larger patrol craft. Evidently not, so I’d rank these just below F-16s and ATACMS as priorities for Ukraine but, then again, I’m a “Former Naval Person.”
Battle for Hostomel Airport – This is an absolutely fascinating account of the initial battle in the war, where Ukrainians stopped the Russians from taking Hostomel Airport, and using it as a jumping off point to attack Kyiv. What makes this story relevant to today is that in their current offensive and despite criticism from the pundits, Ukraine seems to being going back to the small unit tactics that proved so successful in stopping the Russian advance on Kyiv, and away from the NATO-style combined arms operations that resulted in reversals at the beginning of the counteroffensive. According to yesterday’s NY Times, Ukraines forward movement is accelerating.
The pundits seem to forget that even combined arms operations incorporate individual initiative and small unit tactics where Ukraine excels. If it wasn’t for sergeants and small unites they commanded, American forces wouldn’t have gotten off Omaha Beach on June 6th 1944.
One of the things that makes this video so fascinating is that video includes Russian footage. The place where Russian helicopters turn inland from the Kyiv Sea, and they start dropping flares, is very near to where my brother-in-law lives, in the city of Vizhgorod.
It is amazing to look at Pres. Zelenskyy’s facial expression when he made his first speech to the nation, at 17:45 into the video, and today. It shows the toll the war has taken.
“Reporting From Ukkraine” is back. He covers yesterday’s drone attack on the Kerch Bridge which, although it may have failed to hit the bridge, it revealed the location of Russian missile launchers. I’m sure another attack will happen soon.
The Latest Denys, aka “Mr. KaBoom,” talks about Ukrainian advances in the south and, at 7:25 into his video, Ukraine’s lodgment at Kazachi Laheri, not far from a major Russian supply route between Crimea and S. Ukraine. As Denys reports, Ukraine is making a major effort to protect their forces in Kazachi Laheri, including ambushing a Russian resupply column near Nova Kakhovka.