Bob Homans May 31

20220601

Ukraine – 5/31 Sitrep
By: Robert Homans
Twitter: @rhomansjr
May 31, 2022

The Partisan War Begins

In January 2015 I attended a meeting that included several Ukrainian and American military experts.  Some of the Ukrainians present were in the Soviet Army, but were then, and still are, helping the Ukrainian Army  The meeting took place less than a month before the Ukrainian defeat at Debaltseve that led to Minsk II.

The subject was Russia’s next objective in Ukraine.   As I recall most of the experts agreed that Russia wanted to create a “land bridge,” between Russian controlled Donbas and Crimea, along the northern shore of the Sea of Azov.   One of the participants said that he believed it would take at least 50,000 Russian troops to hold the 250km. long land bridge.   He said that Russia’s biggest problem would be attacks not by the Ukrainian Army, but by local partisans.  Over the years I’ve been sending out these emails, I have often raised the subject of partisans.

The Partisan War as begun.   This is an excellent article by Alexander Motyl, chronicling recent partisan attacks inside the temporarily occupied territory that make up the land bridge.   Here is the list contained in Motyl’s article:

May 22, near Melitopol, radar stations were destroyed.

May 22, Energodar, the town near the nuclear power station, Zaporizhzhya province, unsuccessful assassination attempt against the collaborationist mayor, Andrii Shevchyk.

May 18, near Melitopol, railroad tracks were destroyed and a military train was derailed.

May 18, Melitopol, grenade attack on military command post, followed by a gun battle.

May 17, Melitopol, two officers were killed.

April 30, Berdyansk, the Berdyansk Partisan Army declared: “Russian occupiers and their collaborators, you think you’ve established control over Berdyansk? You have no idea of the mouse trap you’ve stepped in. We, the Berdyansk Partisan Army, are already growing our forces and are ready to emerge from the shadows.”

April 28, Akimovka, Zaporizhzhya province, a railroad bridge was destroyed.

April 25, Kremenna, Luhansk province, the city council and police station were bombed, with many casualties.

April 22, Melitopol, another 30 soldiers were reported killed since April 12.

April 20, Kherson, pro-Russian blogger, Valerii Kuleshov, was killed.

April 16, Berdyansk, the Berdyansk Partisan Army makes its first appearance in Telegram. It defined itself as a “movement of engaged Berdyansk residents, who defend their city in the struggle against the Russian fascist occupier.”   Berdyansk is a port on the Sea of Azov where Ukraine destroyed a Russian landing ship that was berthed in the port.

March-April 26, Kherson province, 80 soldiers were reported killed.

March 20-April 12, Melitopol, 70 soldiers were reported killed during nighttime patrols.

Early March, Kremenna, Luhansk province, the collaborationist official, Vladimir Struk, was killed.

There are also reports of partisan activity in Crimea. According to a Ukrainian official, “Today we see in the Crimea the appearance of local partisans who slash the tires of cars with Russian symbols, write slogans on park benches, and distribute pro-Ukrainian leaflets.”

It is almost certain that in anticipation of a further Russian invasion local partisan groups have been preparing, and arming themselves, for several years.   Motyl predicts that as the Ukrainian offensive now underway in western Kherson Oblast gains momentum, partisan attacks against the Russian Army will become increasingly coordinated with the Army.   Predictions about this war are a dime a dozen.  This one, made in January 2015, is proving to be spot on.

The Invasion of Kherson

Some readers have asked how, during the first few days of the war, the Russians were able to move so quickly out of Crimea, occupy Kherson and much of the surrounding territory, as well as points east, including the cities of Melitopol, Berdyansk, and Mariupol.    I was asking the same question.  Denys, a commercial airline pilot who lost his job because of the war, provides the best answer that I have seen. 

I have found Denys, along with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), to be the 2 best sources for information about what is happening on the battlefield.   They’re complementary to each other.   ISW has very good maps; Denys has excellent graphics that show developments in real time.

I was surprised about how fast Russia moved against Kherson, if only because everyone believed that the dam located near Kherson, that supplied Crimea with almost all of its surface water, would be the primary Russian invasion objective, therefore Ukraine would have developed a defensive plan to either stop, or at least delay, a Russian incursion from Crimea toward the dam.  Both routes out of Crimea are located along narrow necks of land that connect Crimea with Ukraine.  They could be cut off, or so many people thought.

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder is a historian of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and a tenured professor at Yale.  He writes a blog on Substack.   These days, Snyder’s blogs are mostly about Ukraine.  This is his latest, entitled “The Folly of Off Ramps,” referring to the oft mentioned idea that Putin needs an “off ramp,” as a condition for ending the war.   Here are some quotes from Snyder’s blog (I stipulate that I agree with all of them, so no comments are required from me):

“Wherever Russia controls Ukrainian territory, Russians commit genocidal crimes against citizens of Ukraine, including mass rape, mass killing, and mass deportation.  A democracy is defending itself against an autocracy, and the fate of democracies hangs in the balance.”

“The Russian media and political system is designed to keep Putin in power regardless of what happens in the outside world.  Russian politics takes place within a closed information environment which Putin himself designed and which Putin himself runs.  He does not need our help in the real world to craft reassuring fictions for Russians.  He has been doing this for twenty years without our help.”

“It is senseless, as the Ukrainians understand, to sentence real people of real territories to suffer and die for the sake of Russian narratives that do not even depend upon the real world.”

“What happens if Putin decides that he is losing in Ukraine?  He will act to protect himself by declaring victory and changing the subject.  He does not need an off ramp in the real world, because that is not where his power rests.  All he needs to do is change the story in Russia's virtual world, as he has been doing for decades.”

“Putin's power is coterminous with his ability to change the subject on Russian television.  He does this all the time.  Think about how the war began.  Until late February of this year, the entire Russian media was clamoring that an invasion of Ukraine was unthinkable and that all the evidence was just warmongering by the CIA.  Russians believed that, or pretended to.  Then, once Russia did in fact invade Ukraine, war was presented as inevitable and righteous.  Now Russians believe this, or pretend to.”

“It makes no sense to create an "off-ramp" in the real world, when all Putin needs is an "off-ramp" in his virtual world.  It will be built by propagandists from pixels, and we are not needed for that.  Indeed, there is something more than a little humiliating in Western leaders offering themselves as unpaid and unneeded interns for Russian television channels.” (my emphasis)

“Regardless of whether Putin falls during this war or later, his power over media will be complete until the moment when it ceases.  There is no interval where our actions in the real world will be decisive.”

“Now let's think of what we are asking of the Ukrainians when we speak of conceding Ukrainian territory for the sake of giving Putin an "off-ramp."  We are asking the people who are the victims of a genocidal war to comfort the perpetrator.  We are expecting Ukrainians, who know that Russian politics is all about fiction, to make sacrifices in the world where their families and friends live and die.  We are asking Ukrainians to sentence their own people to ethnic cleansing in order to make life slightly easier for Russian television producers whose genocidal hate speech is one cause of the atrocities.”

“When we start the story from Putin's psychic needs and run it through our own misunderstanding of Russian politics, we push Ukrainian democracy to the side.  Rather than acting like allied democracies, we behave like amateur therapists for a dictator.” (my emphasis)

“Appeasement of Russia distracts us from the people who really are cornered: the Ukrainians.  They are facing extermination as a people, and that is why they fight.”

I hope the person who wrote this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times reads Snyder’s words.  He might learn something.

More Denys

This is an excellent review of the progress of the war up to this point, and why Denys thinks time is on Ukraine’s side.