Russian Escalation Strategy in Ukraine – The North Korean Deal, Kharkiv & Putin’s “Ceasefire” demand

Russian Escalation Strategy in Ukraine – The North Korean Deal, Kharkiv & Putin’s “Ceasefire” demand

when we talk about escalation management Ukraine it’s often from the Western perspective with Ukraine’s various allies and supporters watching Moscow very closely and often appearing exceptionally cautious in decisions around Aid and escalation but throughout the war including in 2024 Russia has had to deal with escalation challenges of its own with an imperative to find ways to escalate that give it a military advantage over Ukraine without convincing Ukraine’s allies to do anything much about it with Ukraine now in a period of vulnerability and Russia holding itive along the majority of the front we’ve recently seen Russia throw the proverbial escalation dice in a number of areas they prepared and launched a new offensive in the har region exploiting restrictions on Western weapons being used against Targets in Russian territory they publicly signed a new partnership agreement with global Pariah State North Korea reintensification be enough to even pause the current fighting every one of these escalation choices likely had their potential value and motivations behind them but it’s a frequent reality in war and international competition that every action can come with a not so equal and opposite reaction and so today I want to start digging into the impact of some of these big recent Russian decisions I’ll do that by looking sequentially at hariv North Korea the longrange strike campaign and Putin’s publicly expressed demands relating to any potential ceasefire for each of them I’ll cover what Russia did what the response of Ukraine and its allies have been so far and asked two key questions firstly was it worth it for Moscow and secondly what are some of the relevant major unknowns to watch for going forward and I think it makes sense to start where we left off the last time we talked about Ukraine roughly a month ago Russia’s offensive in the hariv region as I said before we can’t be entirely sure what Russia’s political and Military goals were for the hard offensive but officially certain minor Russian figures like Vladimir Putin described the offensive as having a motive that we’ve heard many times before the creation of a so-called buffer or sanitation Zone on Ukrainian territory in order to reduce security risks to Russian territory essentially there was a complaint that Ukraine seemed to sometimes be under the impression that it could shoot back across the border just because there happened to be a war on that obviously being unacceptable the Russian military would have to try and push the military border away from the legal border what made hariv in 2024 different however wasn’t data justification for the operation but rather how brazenly it sought to leverage Western restrictions on where Ukraine could use its weapon systems to an extent Russian forces were able to openly concentrate train and prepare for their operations safe on their side of the internationally recognized border confident that while Ukraine might be able to use its limited supply of Legacy Soviet Hardware or one-way attack drones it couldn’t hit those Russian targets with potentially longer range more precise and dangerous Western systems like artillery gim’s rockets and aam’s missiles this essentially represented the weaponization of the you can’t touch me principle with Russian forces being able to exploit and even fire from their relative Safe Haven this issue had always been a major potential problem and tension in Allied policy towards Ukraine but it was only by choosing to escalate a fight in this region where often the internationally recognized border and the military front line are very closely related that Russia brought the issue very publicly to a for and when we last spoke we arguably seen Russia manage to leverage some small territorial gains out of the whole situation Russia had managed to push out two small Boulders in the line at a speed that was excruciatingly slow by the standards of most military operations but very quick compared to many of their offensive efforts that have often gone forward with tectonic drift levels of speed at that point I noted the Eastern force was still fighting through the last of the town of vunk but that if nothing major changed and sufficient Russian Force was supplied that town would likely Fall and then the question was where the offensive would go next of course things did change with the arrival of Ukrainian reinforcements and the lifting of some of the restrictions on the use of weapons against Russian territory and so after another month of very expensive military action Russia’s hard military offensive has managed to go from this to this from almost taking the city of ofans pre-invasion population 17,000 to taking slightly less of the city of ofans and having to work to avoid the encirclement of of a small pocket of troops as you see on screen there essentially for now the operation appears to have bed down not that far from its original start line while I don’t want this episode to focus too much on Battlefield developments I do think before we move on it’s worth taking a couple minutes to make some observations about what hariv and other Russian offensives have revealed about some of the current Battlefield Dynamics in Ukraine firstly at least anecdotally we’ve seen the Firepower imbalance between Russian Ukrainian forces narrow somewhat yes Russia still enjoys a significant advantage in volume of artillery fire and a massive Advantage when it comes to air delivered Munitions like Glide bombs but the shift in the balance of munition availability since the resumption of us Aid and the first deliveries under the Czech ammo initiative is seemingly apparent and as we’ve explored in the past there’s a fairly apparent relationship between the amount of Boom the ukrainians have available and how successful and costly Russian offensive actions are we’ve also seen evidence of a few edge cases of what looked like fpv drones being used at much longer distances for most this war fpvs have generally been a relatively short-range weapon system back in 2023 a number of the drones being produced only advertised ranges of 5 to 10 km and actually realizing those ranges on the battlefield might have been complicated but recently to take just one example we’ve seen a case of an fpv strike against a Target apparently roughly 30 km behind the front line that starts to creep into the sort of range brackets that are normally dominated by artillery systems or longer range loitering munition like Lancet and if fpv operators can find a way to consistently make their systems useful at those sort of distances then we might see more opportunities in the future for systems that are usually relatively safe like rocket artillery or rear area Logistics vehicles to experience all the wonders of the robot wars firsthand for the moment I expect this sort of thing to remain more of a niche case than the battlefield default but it’s certainly a point to watch we’ve also seen a few more cases of drone setion with video of drone on Drone own engagements one of the great challenges that both Ukraine and Russia face is not having access to enough affordable air defense systems to shoot down opposing fixed wi reconnaissance drones and one of the potential answers to that challenge that we’ve seen are at least two cases of Ukrainian fpv drones being used to shoot down Russian reconnaissance drones this is obviously a fairly challenging maneuver and we only have evidence of a few edge cases for the moment but it is interesting to observe how quickly Ukraine has been to slam the Drone button whenever faced with any particular ta iCal or operational problem longrange interdiction use a drone suppress enemy air defenses use a drone enemy deploying tanks equipped with anti-d drone defenses use even more drones and now we appear to have finally reached the point where sometimes the solution to drones is also drones we’ve also continued to see a series of tactical adaptations good bad and ugly this has included both the continued use of sustained small unit infantry assault tactics and the increased Russian employment of very light very fast Vehicles like motorcycles during assault actions we’ve seen a variety of videos and imagery at this point of Russian troops using motorcycles alongside armored vehicles during assault actions with the footage units choose to release often also showing an aftermath along the lines of what you might expect given how well motorbikes tend to fair at protecting their Riders against things like the road as you can imagine they tend not to do too well when shrapnel drones and heavy artillery get involved I’ve seen some suggestions online that these assaults aren’t taking place which is strange because Russian State media talks about how they are happening and how awesome they are the basic stated logic here is that yes things like golf carts and motorbikes don’t exactly provide much of any protection but what they might provide is available mobility and if you don’t have access to an unlimited supply of modern armored vehicles capable of sustaining combined arms assaults maybe the logic seems to go the better approach is just to try and cross No Man’s Land as quickly as possible so that you can initiate a close range infantry assault where you’re less likely to be vulnerable to things like artillery reportedly on some occasions it may have worked while on other occasions well I wouldn’t recommend searching for the imagery the Infantry assault tactics meanwhile I want to mention because in some of the coverage I think they’re often misrepresented the term you often see used by Ukrainian and Russian sources is meatwave which in English-speaking Western media sometimes gets rendered as human wave implying that the Russians or ukrainians are employing some sort of modern Bonsai charge where hundred of troops stand up charge at the opposing trench and die in droves the overwhelming majority of the time that’s not what Russian and Ukrainian infantry attacks look like in Ukraine the term dates back to the Soviet era it’s not without meaning and in Ukraine a lot of the Russian infantry attacks that we’re seeing are conducted not by Massive waves of troops but by small units think somewhere between 48 or 16 Personnel depending on the situation and part of the front you’re talking about the wave component comes in not because they’re massive but because they’re continuous small assaults are launched again and again and again and again and again potentially wearing down Defenders identifying weak spots or having situations where a couple of Defenders From Any Given attack can Lodge themselves forward eventually consolidate with survivors from subsequent assaults until finally there are enough troops positioned forward to actually launch a further assault now no that’s probably not how any NATO military would train its infantry to carry out assault operations but given how dangerous the combination of drone surveillance and indirect fires have been in Ukraine the sometimes continuous use of very small units has likely become a common feature those tactics can obviously sometimes come with high casualties but it’s important to understand that during this potentially very difficult period of vulnerability for Ukraine it’s not just Russia that’s been having to pay a price and make adaptations the Ukrainian Force has been under intense very painful levels of pressure and in places has arguably been under intense pressure to adapt as Russia continues to grind forward taking new Tactical positions in places like Chiva and one of the best pieces of evidence for that beyond the visually confirmed lost data in anecdotal reporting is the potentially belated removal of one of Ukraine’s most controversial generals this is another very significant move in the shake up of the Ukrainian command structure that we’ve seen through 2024 and it potentially serves to highlight at least two things firstly that the commanders and leaders on both sides aren’t caricatures not every Russian Commander is so incompetent they make zap branagan look like Alexander the Great and like any military Ukraine’s bench of leaders isn’t going to be universally Stellar in war as in business it’s often the case that you feel like you’re short on absolutely everything except for idiots the flip side of that is that it’s at least somewhat reassuring when you see evidence that incompetence are being removed from their positions the reality of trying to improve a force under wartime conditions is that it’s about more than just introducing new equipment or better training for new recruits finding the right leader is can also make all the difference in the world turning back to Har though in order to try and determine whether or not Russia got a payoff for choosing to escalate on that point in the front there are probably two things we need to look at beyond the relatively meager territorial gains what it cost on the battlefield and what the consequences were from an escalation management perspective deep state map estimates that very roughly Russia’s been able to secure about 1090 Square km on the har front over the last 2 months the question however is what the price for a mile or in this case a square kilometer has been in terms of heavy equipment in the earliest stages of the hard offensive we saw fewer Russian visually confirmed equipment losses than Ukrainian ones something which was absolutely an outlier by the standards of just about everywhere else along the front there are a lot of factors that might have gone into that from inconsistent reporting to the fact that Russia was relying to a great extent on dismounted Infantry assaults and exploiting the out of bound Zone across the international border to protect a lot of its valuable equipment Over time however the visually confirmed losses in hariv have reverted closer to what is the norm for this war so far as of 24 June a roughly 2:1 overall ratio with 91 pieces of lost Russian equipment against 45 Ukrainian those ratios are much closer to the ones we’re used to seeing in Ukraine although obviously they still come with a couple of asterisks on one hand the Russian equipment losses are inflated by the loss of a lot of engineering equipment excavators Etc that have been brought forward to try and prepare fortifications in these captured areas I know it’s probably traditional for Gres to have a pretty rough go of it everywhere but at least in most places that only means being chronically underpaid not being hit by fpv drones while you’re digging a bloody trench the other skewing factor is that on the Russian side this has often been an infantry battle meaning that anecdotally at least the ratio between Russian equipment and Russian Personnel losses is much more slanted towards the Human Side in harv than it is on some other places on the front unfortunately for us assessing the human cost from open source with any degree of confidence is always going to be difficult which is why I try not to focus on it you can have voices wildly claiming that Russia will soon be out of pensioners prisoners and wounded to push towards the front only for them to be shattered down by Voices claiming that Ukrainian losses are already so high that they’re mere days away from pushing whatever the Ukrainian equivalent of the local OS KCK team is into military service but leaving all the wild claims aside I think the evidence does suggest that between the hard offensive and other Russian offensive efforts the last couple of months have been especially costly for Russian military personnel the UK mod for example estimated that in May 2024 Russia lost on average over 1,200 Personnel per day the highest monthly figures since the start of the fullscale invasion in February 2022 there are other Western estimates out there that site a figure north of 1,000 for the same period that 1,000 plus figure is particularly significant because again according to Western estimates it’s also about the number of troops that Russia is recruiting every month stop-loss type measures might be enough to stop troops resigning but you can’t exactly stop troops being killed or wounded by passing a rule against it remember back in 2023 the Estonian Ministry of Defense assess the importance of inflicting casualties on the Russian Force to prevent it building up strength and cohesion over time they noted quote the objective therefore should be to inflict a sustained rate of attrition of at least 50,000 killed and civil wounded Russian troops per 6 months to consistently degrade the quality of Russian Force preventing Russia from regenerating offensive combat power which Ukraine has so far successfully achieved end quote there are three important asteris to add to that line of analysis firstly Ukrainian losses are also obviously relevant so we’ll discuss them more in the future secondly I think it’s important to remember that even when you start talking about these kind of very large numbers that you can see in large conventional attritional Wars that there are still very real human beings being killed or wounded behind each of those figures the final asterisk of course is all the figures I just used including those for the period after the beginning of the most recent offensive are as I’ve said Western estimates and you might see plenty of often more pro-russian voices online calling those figures into serious question suggesting either that NATO is massively inflating the troop inflow figure in order to overestimate casualties and/or that the outflow figures are significantly inflated we can go into those arguments in more detail another time but for now it’s enough to say that generally speaking those estimates line up with some of the other sources we have available to us including such famous NATO supporters as Dimitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin Putin Medvedev and previously Sergey Shu have all given us updates at various points over how many people have been recruited into the Russian army Medvedev and shyu gave us several updates over the course of 2023 Putin gave us a figure for the entire year and there have been a number of updates in 2024 far from implying the Western estimates are systematically overestimating Russian recruitment efforts most the Russian claims either line up with those numbers or are significantly higher the state goal in 2023 was to reportedly recruit around 420,000 military contract personnel which is significantly more than 30,000 per month and then in January medv reportedly said that the number of actual contract recruits through 2023 was closer to 500,000 that’s obviously north of 41,000 per month it may be here that no one is telling the exact truth but it’s notable that both sides are giving us very large numbers in roughly that range and well yes none of those Russian figures directly tell you anything about outflows from the Russian military killed wounded or otherwise that’s kind of only true if you don’t know how numbers work because we also get regular official figures on how many personnel are either in the Russian armed forces or how many it is trying to increase to about 6 months ago for example Putin announced a plan to increase the total troop strength of the Russian military by about 170,000 to 1.32 million now if it is very very difficult to leave the Russian military in a healthy condition thanks to all the stop-loss measures reduced in 2022 noting of course that Ukraine also has very severe restrictions on the ability of people in the military to leave it the change in the strength of the force every month is going to be roughly equal to the recruitment inflow minus the Personnel outflow of primarily killed and wounded meaning that if Russia had started with as many troops as it claimed was recruiting as quickly as it claimed and not seeing the kind of personnel outflows that those Western estimates are suggesting then they probably would have had to put a stop to recruitment by this point as the force reached its authorized maximum strength but of course recruitment efforts are ongoing we continue to get Sky High claims about recruitment levels and we get a bunch of official claims that when put together imply the Russian military is recruiting a huge number of people losing basically no one and yet not getting that much bigger like I’ve said accurately estimating the casualties from Russia’s recent offensive efforts is difficult there’s also always going to be outlying and conflicting data military obituaries for example tend to be a lagging indicator of military losses and haven’t yet shown a surge in Russian Kia but given the preponderance of the evidence available i’ put forward a tentative conclusion that in human terms Russian offensive operations so far in May and June have been very costly from a pure military utility perspective the Russian expenditure of material and Munitions has potentially been even more significant visually confirmed losses can give us some reasonable clues about the amount of strain of forces is under and the way it’s evolving over time and in the near future I plan to do some more significant analysis there but for the moment here’s a quick chart showing what the visually confirmed lost data look like for selected equipment categories for the updates running between 30 May and 29 June inclusive this implies that even with the shift towards more dismounted infantry actions Russia is still expanding its equipment at a significantly higher rate than the ukrainians during these offensive actions and the disparity and loss rates is actually highest when you look at some of the systems the Russians have to lean on to enable offensive actions the mechanized elements tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and if you’re wondering if June was an out liar not really here’s May while there are a huge range of caveats that I’ve repeatedly given whenever we work with visually confirmed loss data I think it’s reasonable at this point to put forward two tentative observations firstly Russian losses and the disparity between Russian and Ukrainian losses increases during periods of increased Russian offensive activity that’s fairly intuitive whenever Russia chooses to attack as it has recently it loses more stuff secondly when Ukraine has access to more explosive things to fire at the coming Russian things the loss rates for said Russian things again tend to go up and after a long pause in US assistance I’m recently confident we’re now seeing some of the effects of its resumption in the data but moving away from that kind of harsh arithmetic of war that we often deal with for a moment there’s another key aspect to the har offensive not so much what it’s cost in terms of Manpower material but what it’s meant in terms of escalation management often times I think commentators can fall into the Trap of only looking at the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Western escalation management basically the apprehension in some Western capitals they need to move carefully incrementally and slowly to avoid provoking an unexpected response from Moscow but it’s worth noting that some of those basic constraints and Game Theory rules also apply if you’re sitting in Moscow in fact in some ways they may be even more relevant and acute because the overall disparity in uncommitted and available resources between Russia and Ukraine’s various allies is so great that those allies just have a greater number of ES escalation options hypothetically available NATO States might have to worry about things like Russia flipping the proverbial table and escalating to the use of nuclear weapons Russia meanwhile is in danger of getting wrecked if its competitors take actions that are much lower on the escalation ladder 1% of NATO GDP dedicated to supporting Ukraine would probably swing the war confiscating Russian assets might matter the unrestricted provision of long-range missiles might matter I’d argue the basic strategic reality here is that Russia needs to be able to apply enough military pressure to Ukraine to break down its capacity and will to resist without provoking Ukraine’s allies into doing enough to stop it and it’s here far more than at the Tactical and operational level that I think you can argue the har of operation has come with serious drawbacks by choosing to escalate and launch an offensive there Russia was essentially publicly flaunting the advantage it had constantly but quietly be gaining from having an essential safe Zone on its side of the Border in a sense it tried to take that advantage and convert it into military and territ Toral gains on one hand trying to divert Ukrainian resources from other sections in the front a sense in which it was arguably successful while also building that buffer or security Zone to better protect potential Targets on the Russian side of the border the problem for Russia however is that most of Ukraine’s allies responded to Russia flaunting that Advantage by choosing to take it away soon after the offensive began Ukraine intensified its public appeals to be able to fire Western weapons across the border since you know there was a war on and one after another we saw Ukraine allies come out to either publicly drop or at least loosen their restrictions critically both Washington DC and Berlin didn’t fully unshackle Ukrainian longrange fires but they certainly loosen the bonds a bit the US would clarify that this didn’t mean striking things like airfields hundreds of kilometers behind the front something that you know might impact those damaging Russian Glide bombing strikes that are such a key feature of their offensive campaigns these days but it also wasn’t limited to hardev region itself it seemed now that things like ammo Depots air defense installations artillery batteries headquarters logistic Depots and a range of other potential targets that you might see relatively closed to the Border Zone were now going to be fair game legitimate targets for American systems anywhere Russia looked like it was trying to attack although to be fair between different us announcements there’s still a significant amount of ambiguity in play so basically Russia tried to exploit the rules protecting its territory to launch an offensive to better protect its territory thus causing those restrictions to drop placing its territory in much greater danger than it had been before the offensive started leaving aside the battlefield impacts for a moment that’s some serious 4D chest right there now I think it’s important not to overemphasize how important this change has been a lot of restrictions remain in place and perhaps more importantly Ukraine’s supply of long-range weapons is still very limited the total number of atacam missiles supplied for example is likely to be in the hundreds that’s enough to hurt and we’ve already seen some very impactful atacam strikes but it’s absolutely nowhere near enough to hit every Target the Ukraine probably wishes they could hit so the loss of sanctuary for Russian targets obviously matters but how much it matters probably owes a lot to what weapon Supply decisions are made in the near future but where does that potentially leave our evaluation of the Russian decision to escalate in harv overall as with many things in war the exact answer is probably very messy and hard to assess we know for example that since the offensive was launched Russia’s been able to make a number of incremental gains mostly at other points along the front but what we can’t be sure of is whether the Russians would have achieved Better or Worse results on those fronts if they diverted the resources used in hariv to those fronts instead after all the offensive did draw away Ukrainian resources but only by committing Russian resources and we probably just don’t have enough evidence available to us to fully assess that counterfactual there are also some major question marks over how much defending against this offensive has cost the ukrainians and we’ll unpack that more in the future but there are I think two things we can say with a certain degree of confidence firstly that Russian offensive actions including in harv have been very costly and that secondly in exchange for a buffer zone of so far less than 200 km at one point on the front Russia has arguably increased the threat to targets along its entire Border in Ukraine achieving in one operation what two years of dedicated Ukrainian lobbying had so far been unable to achieve so from that perspective if we’re doing a performance evaluation of this particular offensive I’m going to have to go with with a potentially overly generous needs Improvement of course that story is still being written and there’s a few points to watch going forward firstly will we see any further changes in the Restriction that Western countries place on the way Ukraine uses weapons supplied to them secondly we will see any change in the types and number of weapons that are being supplied with the range to strike targets across the border and thirdly what will the medium and long-term effects be on the overall front and the status of the two forces over the last 12 months none of the territorial gains we’ve seen either side made have much of a potential to swing the war from a strategic perspective it’s all well and good to say that Russia is nibbling their way forward but not so much of it’s only at a rate that would see them reach their final objectives around the same time other powers are starting to fight border skirmishes on Mars what potentially matters more is not how much territory offensives like this one take but how they impact the morale and endurance of both armies and their capacity to fight on and often that unfortunately is the hardest part to assess as well as escalating by opening or reopening military fronts we’ve also seen Russia make a series of international moves as it tries to distract its opponents or secure additional arms and ammunition and on that list of countries that have been willing to supply Russia with armaments North Korea probably rates as the most Brazen and perhaps the most significant now when it comes to international relations economics military planning social policy and everything really right down to the limited Suite of government approval haircuts the dprk or North Korea is not normal the country has been under significant International sanctions for years now over things like its nuclear and long-range missile programs there are significant binding International rules constraining country’s ability to trade technology and armaments with North Korea and while it’s sometimes tempting in Western analytic circles to Simply classify North Korea as an ally in inverted commers of both Russia and China it’s important to remember that the United Nations security Council resolution giving teeth to the sanctions regime only exist because Moscow and Beijing either supported or at least failed to veto them apparently even they looked at a totalitarian regime that regularly fires missiles worth a significant portion of its national GDP into the Sea of Japan and we’re like yeah maybe we should just tap the breakes on that guy’s nuclear program we almost certainly need to do a deep dive into North Korea and its military at some point but for today its outlier status if you will has at least a couple of imp ations for Russia and the war in Ukraine it means that in choosing to engage in potential military and Technical cooperation with North Korea Russia can run the risk of running a foul of international rules and sanctions and perhaps more embarrassingly rules and sanctions that it help put in place but it also means arguably that North Korea as a country is just very hard to deter the various countries supporting Ukraine have a series of tools they can deploy to discourage countries from choosing to engage with and Supply Russia with military assistance they can apply pressure in international fora withhold support and investment potentially impose sanctions and generally try and put the squeeze on the country’s economy companies or key individuals if you’re a major exporting power for example and you have an opportunity to maybe make some extra cash on the side shipping a few shells to Russia but it might potentially cost you access to those valuable Western export markets well let’s just say most countries aren’t going to take the rubles when there are dollars on the table but with North Korea there’s not really much for you to Target or try and take away you can’t sanction leaders that are already sanctioned cut the country off from systems it’s not connected to or destroy an economy that doesn’t exist this is a country that regularly suffers food crisis and reportedly resorts to means like counterfeiting currency and hacking crypto in order to balance out a government budget that somehow has to fund a grossly oversized military missile program nuclear program and of course a variety of imported luxuries for those at the very top that doesn’t leave many countries with any real way to apply pressure to North Korea other than direct military force of some kind which is usually going to be a non-starter in most scenarios because of the structure of the North Korean military and the country’s nuclear Arsenal this is a country that is previously issued such even-handed diplomatic announcements like quote the four islands of the archipelago meaning the Japanese archipelago should be sunk into the sea by the nuclear bombs of jue Japan is no longer needed to exist near us end quote basically if anyone anywhere does anything any of the time there’s a nonzero chance that North Korea will respond by threatening the nuclear annihilation of Japan or if they want to change things up the nuclear annihilation of South Korea or the United States basically once Russia decided it was willing to start dealing with North Korea in a more extensive way despite International sanctions there was very little most countries could do to stop the North Koreans quickly taking up the offer initially what we saw were a very sign ific series of Trades involving vast quantities of North Korean Munitions with South Korean officials and satellite imagery suggesting that thousands of Railway Cars full of Munitions made their way to Russia from North Green stockpiles we would then see a number of cases of Russian troops helpfully uploading their newly supplied North Korean Munitions and in some cases complaining bitterly about their quality but while North Korean quality assurance was so bad that it probably makes Boeing look Flawless by comparison a shell in the end is a shell and this agreement probably went some way towards supporting and sustaining Russia’s volume of fire advantage in Ukraine in June however we saw Russia and North Korea take things a bit further than just straight trade Putin and Kim met in person and signed a so-called partnership agreement some in the region describe this from a shift away from the recent pattern of Russian North Korean relations back to something closer to the Soviet North Korean agreement of 1961 the deal didn’t just cover trade it dealt directly with security reportedly including some real we have NATO at home Provisions including a requirement that if one side of the other was attacked the other would have to deploy all means at its disposal without delay to provide military and other assistance but in terms of how far the agreement actually goes and what it realistically means in practice I’d argue that despite signing the same document there are some indications that pyang and Moscow may not be exactly on the same page after the agreement was signed the dprk was reportedly very quick to release its official text of the agreement Moscow wasn’t in some of his language Kim reportedly used the magic a word Alliance Putin didn’t basically the whole thing has a bit of a Vibe where Kim is really into Putin and Putin is really into Kim’s ammo and while the agreement does include some of that language I talked about before requiring the parties to Aid each other if the other is attacked it reportedly also includes the caveat that those actions to assist need to be in accordance with both National and international law meaning that if going to North Korea’s aid for example was contrary either to something like the United Nations Charter or Russia’s own domestic laws then the assistance goes from being required to entirely optional which as far as caveats and car outs go is relatively significant I can’t exactly imagine a national tax Authority ever passing a rule saying that you absolutely must pay your taxes unless you decide you shouldn’t have to but as much as the agreement might carry some evidence of a lawyer or two’s handiwork it still obviously has some significance the police itical diplomatic and symbolic significance is obviously there and there are matters of concrete cooperation as well Putin has explicitly said that he wouldn’t rule out the development of so-called military technical cooperation with the dprk in accordance with the document signed and while Putin also described existing Russian North Korean trade levels as still relatively modest He suggests that increased 9fold over the past year which to me is somewhat hilarious because officially both sides have continued to deny that North Korea is sending Russia any weapons at all regarding the claim that North Korean Munitions are going to Russia Kim jong-un’s sister reportedly said that quote hostile forces are misleading public opinion with false rumors end quote which to me raises the obvious question if Putin is saying that trade is increased nine times over but no one’s willing to admit that Munitions are involved what on Earth are we meant to think Russia is meant to be buying from North Korea I’m going to guess Munitions and there may be more to come recently there was some rumors seemingly originating in the South Korean media that North Korea would soon be sending military engineers to Russia there they’d supposedly take up rear area duties in places like the dbas potentially freeing up Russian Personnel for other potentially Frontline duties there are two things to say about this particular set of reports firstly so far they are just reports neither Moscow or pyang have said this is going to be a thing nor have we seen any evidence of it happening the second thing to say is that if it did happen P precedent suggest the North Korean Personnel might not be in military uniform there are some reports that North Korean military engineers have gone overseas before but under the cover of working for civilian construction companies it feels like that kind of cover would likely stand up to close scrutiny for all of a hot minute before everyone figured out what was going on but the rumor does illustrate some of what Russia might stand to gain from signing this agreement with pyang more Munitions and Military material cooperation in a range of areas and potentially additional Manpower by escalating the North Korean connection Moscow certainly has something to gain but whether it ultimately proves to be worth it or not comes down to the price they pay for doing so and here I think there’s three main points to watch the first is how the Republic of Korea chooses to respond to Moscow coing up to its northern neighbor of all the countries in the world outside NATO that have been publicly supportive of Ukraine I’d argue there are very few and potentially none better place to resupply the Ukrainian military than South Korea they have the defense industrial base they have the ammunition stockpiles and they have a desire to break further into the European Defense market and indeed the potential of the R’s defense industrial base in stockpiles is so great that despite them being relatively cautious about Supply decisions so far the steps that we have seen taken have likely had significant impacts the South Korean agreement to send 155 mm shells to the United States back in 2023 so that it could send its shells to Ukraine UK was pretty fundamental to Ukraine’s ability to go on the offensive in the middle of that year and if Soul decides to respond to North Korea supplying the Russian military by directly supplying the ukrainians in turn well then Russia might receive the support of North Korea’s military industry in exchange for Ukraine receiving South koreas and in any Universe where the war in Ukraine becomes a North South Korea proxy war I’ll leave it to the audience to determine which Korea they’d rather have on S an important final point to note here however is that on the list of things that Sol is likely to be most concerned about with this Russian North Korean agreement the sorts of things most likely to attract a significant counter escalation in response I’d suggest the greatest concern is probably not what North Korea sends to Russia but what Russia sends back in return there are a huge array of ways that Russia could hypothetically help the North Koreans upgrade their own military capabilities and so while the north sending shells to Russia was one thing Putin’s discussion of potential military technical cooperation between Moscow and pyang may well be more concerning hence why the Russian decision to enter this agreement rather than simply continuing the previously reported ammo deals is all the more Curious and time will ultimately tell how deep the resulting Russian North Korean cooperation and South Korean response ultimately go the big watch Point number two is even more hypothetical than the first because it’s probably contingent on a scenario where Russia does decide to accept something like North Korean military engine to support rear area duties were that ever to happen and I’d suggest one of the reasons why it’s much less likely to happen the big question then would be if any of Ukraine’s supporters decided to respond to that escalation by sending support troops of their own this is a topic that’s been publicly debated and discussed but there are still a tremendous number of reservations in NATO capitals if North Korean Personnel did deploy to support Russian rear era duties however the question is would the taboo start to fall away for Ukraine’s allies as well in terms of which side would get the greater benefit out of that sort of mutual escalation obviously a lot of factors would go into it but I’d suggest that on a person for person basis Ukraine would probably get the much greater benefit other than numbers it’s not clear what North Korean Personnel would bring to the Russian military effort that Russian troops can’t whereas for Ukraine and potential NATO troops it’s a very long list with Logistics and maintenance probably being near the very top Russian and North Korean military engineers probably both have a decent understanding of how to dig fortifications but the same probably can’t be said for Ukrainian and French Personnel for example when it comes to maintaining something like a mirage 2000 and so while this kind of escalation remains purely hypothetical for the moment I think there are strong incentives on Moscow to try and keep it that way the final point to watch is how the signing this agreement affects things not just in Ukraine but also on the Korean Peninsula and the Asia Pacific more broadly what does it mean for Russia’s position in the region the broader strategic environment and of course course the policy and posture of the r USA and various Allied States so in summary Russia has probably gained something out of its increased engagement with North Korea ranging from the almost certain like an increased supply of questionable quality ammunition through to the much less certain like the commitment of North Korean Personnel to support Russian military activities whether those gains end up being worth it is probably now down to soul and various European capitals to decide similar logic probably if we want to talk about Russia’s decision to reintensification and strategic depths of their opponent with the underlying struggle here often being the ability of the defending air defense systems to keep up with the constant bombardment of drones and missiles and we’ve seen a variety of evidence suggesting that both sides a defense systems are potentially overstretched and under serious pressure for example in recent days there have been a series of videos showing Russian drones able to get close to Ukrainian airfields and then call in and do BDA following longrange missile strikes while the exact scale of damage isn’t apparent yet it does appear that Ukraine has lost a number of valuable aircraft while also once again proving just how dangerous systems like isander can be meanwhile the ukrainians appear to have been focusing a lot of attention on Russian air defense systems themselves with with a series of recorded losses to systems like P book and the larger s300 and 400 in the latter case it seems that Russia’s longer Range s systems and particularly their battery Radars are often treated as priority targets for Ukraine’s limited supply of aam’s missiles but while Russia has also been directing some of its long-range missiles against Ukrainian military assets like air defense systems or the aformentioned airfields it’s also continued to dedicate a lot of missiles and effort to an old Target set the Ukrainian power grid over the course of more than 2 years of war the Ukrainian power grid has absorbed a tremendous number of Russian missiles and longrange Tack drones there have been constant efforts to repair and Patch the grid wherever possible but over time the aggregate damage has mounted as things stand according to zinsky roughly half of Ukraine’s power infrastructure has been impacted many power plants have been seriously damaged with the relevant authorities saying that some will take years to repair and others might never come back online whereas previously Ukraine was usually a power seller into the European union now the direction of transmission has been reversed and EU generated electricity has become a key part of the supply story inside Ukraine but given all of the limitations involved none of that has been enough to stop Ukraine suffering serious continuous blackouts we’re talking outages of up to 8 hours not being uncommon in early June and there being massive questions over what the state of the grid will be once power demands begin to spike in Winter now practically speaking while Russia has a basically unlimited ability to attempt to Target Ukraine’s transmission infrastructure there is probably an upper limit on how much generation it can try and takeoff line NATO States would probably object to Russian caliber missiles being fired against generators in NATO countries and while thermal power plants in Ukraine have often been continuously battered Ukrainian energy firm detx suggested that perhaps 90% of its thermal power generation capacity had been destroyed or damaged in sequential strikes Ukraine’s nuclear power generation facilities probably aren’t open for targeting in the same way pre Invasion Ukraine actually generated a majority of its electricity using its nuclear power plants and while Russia has proven willing to occupy places like the zapia nuclear power plant escalating to fleeing long-range missiles that the remaining reactors still under Ukrainian control probably wouldn’t go down particularly well with the International Community i’ suggest there are a couple of distinct lines of analysis you could take when looking at how Russia has carried out these attacks from a military and economic perspective the question of how much damage is being done to Ukraine versus the investment in Russian resources but from an escalation management perspective it also feeds into another issue giving Ukraine something to point to and used to justify its extensive requests for additional Western air defense systems it’s no secret that Ukraine desperately needs a wide array of additional gbad resources that includes short- Range Systems like man pads the Gard or skyex and also very dangerous long ranged High complexity systems like Patriot or s that can defend against more complex threats over wider areas or as we’ve seen in the past if they’re available in large enough numbers to be able to risk some of the fronts used to Stage samb bushes threatening Russian aircraft that might be engaged in activities like Glide bombing so it’s pretty clearly in Russia’s interest to make sure that Ukraine receives as few air defense systems as possible zalinsky has said that his country needs seven Patriot air defense systems to put that in perspective for a long time Ukraine was operating with two or three now against the backdrop of those Russian attacks it seems like we might be finally seeing some progress on the supply front the United States pledged a second battery the German commitment has been increased to three there’s a multinational effort to Cobble together another battery from various B Parts scattered around the European NATO allies the Italians have pledged a battery of the very capable s t system and it was recently reported that Romania may have made the significant move of committing one of its Patriot batteries to Ukraine as well it’s obviously impossible to confidently draw any direct correlation between Russian missile strikes and air attacks and air defense Supply decisions but I bring it up to illustrate some of the challenges Russia might face when making escalation decisions around attacks like these ones it’s possible to do something that inflicts damage on the Ukrainian economy and military industrial complex only for that to then drive an Allied response with significant military connotations from Deep initial hesitation around providing Ukraine systems like Patriot during the earlier stages of the war we’re now talking about steadily larger numbers of batteries and interceptors and in terms of how that air defense Supply situation evolves going forward I think there’s three key points to watch the first is what happens to the eight Patriot batteries in Israel now the country has retired them and replaced them with domestic systems it’s been reported that the US is quote holding discussions with Israel and Ukraine about the possibility of transferring aging Patriot air defense systems currently in Israel to Ukraine although I’ll note there that while Patriot might count as an aging system in the Israeli air defense context in a Ukrainian context where parel and his mates might be gunning down drones using World War II machine guns and we have seen aircraft shot down by s200 missiles designed in the 1960s a patriot battery is probably going to look about as outdated as a 2023 Ferrari the reason I put a focus on this watch Point despite the uncertainties involved is just because of the numbers we’re talking this is a war where capabilities have mattered but mostly when they’re available in sufficient quantity Ukraine so far has been able to achieve a lot in terms of Defending locations and shooting down Russian aircraft using at any given time only a handful of active Patriot batteries with their use constrained not just by the scale of Ukraine’s geography but also by the fact that inevitably some will be destroyed damaged or require maintenance increasing that figure to seven through American and NATO efforts would allow the ukrainians to cover much more ground and potentially be more flexible even risky in how they utilize these systems and if seven is a larger number than three 15 is a much larger number than seven compared to some of the other batteries Ukraine might receive the Israeli systems are unlikely to be perfect optimized for a different threat profile not intended for certain sort of intercepted missiles and probably lacking the same sort of Mobility that the German truck mounted batteries have brought but there’s a lot of them for various reasons I suspect it’s highly unlikely that Ukraine receives all of these systems but if you’re looking for something that might move the needle on the air defense situation this is an example watch point two is what sort of decisions get made around prioritization and delivery the US recently announced that it was going to be pushing back the delivery dates for some countries that had ordered Patriot missiles so those deliveries could be prioritized for Ukraine that means for example that Switzerland might not receive its Pack 3 missiles as quickly as originally planned and the question remains whether other countries will follow suit with similar announcements regarding the systems of Munitions that they produce it’s also probably worth watching those countries with remaining stockpiles of Soviet ER air defense systems back in 2023 the Estonian mod estimated a Ukrainian requirement for about 400 air defense interceptors per month going forward but most of those don’t have to be Patriots and unless the Ukrainian Central Bank is secretly sitting on a massive pile of Invidia stock they probably can’t afford for them to be either back in April for example we saw Greece rule out handing over its old s3000s but for Ukraine leveraging concern over Russia’s ongoing air and missile campaign in order to get access to an ongoing supply of older cheaper systems whether they be Soviet or older NATO systems like Hawk is probably going to be an ongoing imperative and point to watch then there’s the final Russian decision I want to look at today that is publicly deciding what it wants to demand in exchange for any ceasefire this took place in the context of Ukraine trying to Rally different nations around its vision of a peace deal at a summit in Switzerland and while Russia wasn’t part of that Summit at some point you’d expect there to be pressure on the Russians to put forward at least some sort of alternative from a logical perspective however you could argue that in some ways that might be easier said than done we’ve talked before in the past about how Russian information Warfare and influence operations often put forward multiple narratives in parallel those distinct narratives can muddy up the information space or play differently with different audiences and there are different stakeholders out there who are probably going to want to hear very different things about the terms of any potential Russian peace offer at home you’re going to have the proar wing of the Russian population and political Elites that are going to want to hear maximalist War aims a peace proposal that is Harsh uncompromising and refle the enormous expenditure in lives and material this is probably most telling when it comes to the question of territorial annexations Russia claims to have already Incorporated donet Lans saaria and hon oblasts as well as Crimea into Russia proper and while polling inside Russia often shows majority support for moving towards some sort of peace deal with keev a lot of those survey indicate they wouldn’t support those arrangements if it involved giving up any of those territories even the ones Russia doesn’t currently control control now yes it would probably take a relatively Brave Russian to tell upholster that they think the government should abandon some of its territorial claims given the laws on the matter but the issue stands but if you’re talking about Russian information efforts in the global south or among the broader International Community that’s not going to be the push there might be audiences out there that are sympathetic to arguments CED in terms like preventing NATO expansionism combating the fire ride in Ukraine containing American influence and all the other stuff we’ve gone over before but those audiences are also likely to wonder what on Earth any of that has to bloody do with claiming zapara or Ron the list of countries out there with population sympathetic to at least some of Russia’s arguments is pretty long but the list of countries that support Russia’s land grab efforts in Ukraine is very very small that list of countries is Syria North Korea and that’s it not bricks members like Brazil India or China and not even relatively close Russian allies like or bellus and so from a messaging and influence perspective that’s the wedge to win over as much of the international audience as possible Russia has to be genuinely proposing a generous peace and this war cannot be an old-fashioned Imperial land grab but as far as some Russian domestic stakeholders and likely Putin himself are concerned this absolutely has to be an old-fashioned land grab with peace on any terms other than an abject Ukrainian surrender being publicly unacceptable from a cold old logical perspective there’s probably no clean way to square that particular Circle but this is the 21st century logic is apparently optional and so Russia seems to have tried with the basic dress being to issue what was essentially a surrender demand while calling it a ceasefire proposal maybe hoping that all the hardliners would be reassured by the content while the international media would only report the headline and arguably to an extent it kind of worked an array of international organizations as well as foreign focused Russian media all picked up on Putin proposing a ceasefire or issuing a peace deal the Associated Press managed to issue the headline on the right there saying quot Putin pledges a ceasefire in Ukraine if keave withdraws from occupied regions and drops NATO bid while somehow managing to not mention one that as far as the vast majority of the International Community is concerned those regions are partially occupied by Russia not Ukraine and secondly that a lot of the territory Russia is demanding Ukraine give up has never been occupied by Russian forces including vast SWS of territory towns and entire cities that have always been well behind the front lines and are recognized from Beijing to Berlin as parts of Ukraine and you could argue that for Russia coverage like this likely represented a massive win because as far as a lot of the global population are concerned they’re only going to be following the war in Ukraine in a very loose fashion they might digest a headline message that Russia is trying to pursue peace while being significantly less lik to read a little bit further into the detail and the actual detail if you listen to Putin himself is that this basically came down to Russia drawing some pretty aggressive lines on the map and saying give that here perhaps the most Salient demands were that one Ukraine swear off NATO membership and secondly that they withdraw all their troops from the regions of Haron zapia donet and luhansk so all of the territory that’s so far Russia has officially claimed at that point a ceasefire not a treaty a ceasefire begins and negotiations over an actual peace treaty could begin at that point to quote Vladimir Putin as soon as Ukraine quote Begins the actual pull out of forces from those regions and formally declares the abandonment of its plan to join NATO we will instantly that very second order of ceasefire and begin negotiations end quote now at a big picture level I’d suggest there’s a couple of things we could take from this proposal aside from the fact that there might be some in the media who are potentially so focused on writing a neutral quote unquote headline that they won’t call out for being the first is that by issuing these demands Russia arguably abandoned what I would call the Istanbul fig Leaf basically in the early stages of 2022 there were negotiations taking place between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul a lot has been written about those talks a lot of conspiracy theories have grown up around them and if people are over interested I can dig into what we know about some of the content in more detail at a future date the key point in the here and now is that Russian information efforts have often used those isul talks to argue that Ukraine and its Western allies aren’t serious about peace they’re just out to destroy Russia the argument which I don’t think could be called accurate but it is the argument is that after the invasion in 2022 Russia offered Ukraine some relatively generous terms and the fact those terms weren’t adopted and implemented in full just proves that Ukraine and its allies are a bunch of warmongers the sometimes unspoken implied extension to that argument is that peace could come at any moment in Ukraine if only the ukrainians were willing to accept reasonable conditions noting that reasonable here was very much in inverted commas given it reportedly included such gems as effectively leaving Ukraine helpless against future attacks getting rid of a lot of its heavy equipment largely demilitarizing the country and cutting it off from foreign potential allies and support but as I said that’s mostly beside the point in 2024 the key point is that now Russia has made clear it isn’t offering anything like the claimed isul conditions there is no quote unquote soft deal on the table that ke is refusing to accept no Russia is here and it’s clear that it wants Ukrainian dirt Ukrainian cities and of course Ukrainian homes and people leaving aside politics for a moment and just looking at Putin’s proposal from a negotiation strategy and Game Theory perspective you could argue that it is so incredibly lopsided as to be potentially purposefully unattractive with the key distinction here being that what is on offer isn’t a peace treaty it is as we said a ceas fire that means if even if this deal was accepted there would be negotiations taking place after it and negotiation Theory 101 says that what you expect to get out of a negotiations process is significantly related to the strength of your hand going in the power of your bargaining position but what the Russian proposal actually does is demand that Ukraine give up all of its leverage and negotiation position first and then start negotiating so Ukraine would abandon its defensive positions its trench lines its fortifications towns and cities that could be defended territory people political and social cohesion and of course diplomatic leverage because it has to cut off negotiations with things like NATO just in order to get to the ceasefire stage instead of having to take enormous casualties grinding forward a couple of meters at a time Russia gets all the territory it’s demanding essentially for free and it’s only at that point that everyone sits down and starts to talk for real which begs the obvious question what if you get to the negotiating table and Russia then starts to ask for just that little bit more more and then that little bit more after all Ukraine is now in militarily politically economically and diplomatically a much weaker position than before it agreed ceasefires are meant to be temporary sorry Korea and it’s not like Russia is going to withdraw its troops back to the preas fire line if negotiations do indeed break down in terms of Leverage Russia gets almost everything and offers up practically nothing which meant that even if you came from the Neville Chamberlain school of thought and thought Ukraine should be willing to give up a bunch of territory in exchange for peace you’d still probably want to reject this deal outright because peace isn’t what’s being offered and if a ceasefire on negotiations were to take place it would seem much more reasonable for them to occur at the current line of contact in summary if you’re looking at Putin’s offer even if your only negotiating experience with Shilling a couple of goods in some MMO a number of years back you can still probably recognize this for what it is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals a surrender demand wrapped in an information Warfare operation but if you’re trying to assess what Russia has so far gained or lost by putting forward this particular offer I’d argue it hasn’t been entirely clear-cut so far I still think you’re seeing a significant narrative push online and in certain Publications suggesting that Ukraine should be pushed to accept a ceasefire and negotiations with Russia despite Russia now making it very clear that the prerequisites for any ceasefire negotiations basically amount to a Ukrainian surrender that said there’s also the counter actual to consider what might have happened if Russia had publicly Advanced or teased much more generous potential terms something that might have been potentially more likely to divide those in the pro-ukrainian camp instead as it were we saw Ukraine’s peace Summit in Switzerland proceed basically as expected with around 100 countries attending in various capacities to discuss the war in Ukraine and the way it might end leading up to the summit a lot was said about the fact that Russia wasn’t invited and questions were raised about water a pieace summit in which only one side attends can actually achieve but I think that misses some of what Summits like this might aim to do this wasn’t a summit to negotiate an end to the conflict it was an attempt by Ukraine to formally rally multiple countries behind its vision of what a peace deal might look like in that sense to take a historical comparison this was arguably much closer to the Yola or tyan conferences during World War II than it was the Armistice talks for World War I it turns out if you’re members of a team trying to work out what your final demands and negotiating position should be inviting asking the people you’re going to be making those demands of may not be the most useful First Step whether or not that was well communicated and message to the general public is a question I’ll leave to the audience whatever the case may be the result was that 78 countries signed on to the final product of that Summit its content included calling for the safe operation of nuclear facilities under the full Sovereign control of Ukraine free full and safe navigation of the Black Sea a band on attacks on Merchant shipping ports and infrastructure the exchange of prisoners the return of Deport es and language around the importance of territorial Integrity sovereignty and respect for internationally recognized borders the final result was probably not as extensive as Ukraine would have liked nor signed by as many countries as it would have hoped but it did manage to secure a significant block of countries committing to a particular vision of how this war might end some of whom might have been more reluctant to do so if Russia had taken a different public stance going forward however if you’re observing the Ukrainian peace and negotiation process process there are two points I’d nominate for watching the first is how and if Russia and Ukraine end up sitting and negotiating at the same table or at least in the same forum for Ukraine things like the Swiss Summit serve a purpose of trying to get the team on side so to speak and for Russia unilateral Declarations of this is my now also serve to draw a negotiating Line in the Sand the question however is how they might find ways directly or more likely indirectly to communicate with each other even if for now that’s just for the purpose of exchanging diplomatic insults while Battlefield negotiations carry on the second is how some of the major International elections of 2024 play out with there now being a significant chance that Moscow will choose to dig in its heels and wait to see whether the overall environment changes later this year that Dynamic might also impose some escalation management constraints all of its own if you’re hoping for candidates known to be more sympathetic to the Russian position to do well in their respective elections you’re probably not going to make that job any easier if you do things that look bad internationally so where does that leave things in the final evaluation and going forward I think it’s clear at this point that despite these Russian efforts no decisive Advantage has really been gained and there’s a lot of fighting still to come the escalation in harv so far has ended up achieving relatively little in territorial terms while also backfiring in spectacular fashion by prompting several Ukrainian allies to drop some of their restrictions against hitting Targets in Russia Russian air and missile attacks continue to inflict painful damage on targets including Ukrainian infrastructure but they’ve also potentially helped catalyze further commitments that should strengthen Ukrainian air defenses going forward although arguably it seems that a lot of that Aid might arrive after significant damage has already been done and in quantity short of what the ukrainians say they need Russia’s decision to publicly Advance a series of maximalist aims as the preconditions to any ceasefire may have satisfied some hardliners and gone partially ignored by segments of the international audience but it also arguably escalated the already yawning divide between the Russian and Ukrainian peace positions and may have tilted the needle in some countries away from a strategy based on the appeasement of Moscow towards one based on deterrence and strengthening Ukraine’s bargaining position the underlying Point here is despite this being a period of Ukrainian vulnerability and despite Russia holding initiative along the majority of the front line the dilemas behind Russian escalation decisions probably remain acute some attempts to gain Advantage by escalation might go unanswered but in other cases the Galvan Allied response might simply leave the Russian military with an even taller mountain to climb increase cooperation with North Korea for example might offer increased access to valuable Munitions and Manpower but Russian decision makers will likely have to continue to weigh those potential benefits against the risk of provoking counter escalation from countries like the r or various NATO members who collectively have enormous resources that they could potentially bring to bear as for how all of this will ultimately shake out IM balance only time will tell and okay a very brief Channel update to close out because despite the fact I am somewhat better my voice is absolutely at the end of its tether linked to that apologies for the voice sounds a little bit rough this week I’m hoping it should be back to normal soon but I was happy this week to be able to record my first full length video since I got ill in terms of what’s coming up in the next few weeks I have a couple of distinct topics that I’m working on some of them are Ukraine Focus like a deep dive into losses the front and status of the two forces basically looking at the way we’ve seen their overall condition evolve and some of the challenges they now face While others are frankly just that little bit different patrons you’ll get a little bit of a preview and some input into what gets produced in what order or whether it gets produced at all and I’ll put that poll up early this coming week for the rest of you thank you very much for your ongoing patience and support especially over the last couple of weeks when I wasn’t able to publish I very much hope you enjoyed today’s episode and I hope to see you all again next week

Discussions of escalation management in Ukraine are usually framed from a Western perspective and the incremental provision of aid by Ukraine’s allies. But as the war carries on Moscow faces escalation dilemmas of its own.

It has an imperative to escalate in ways that place as much pressure on Ukraine as possible, but often attempts to do so prompt responses from Ukraine’s allies that put Russia in a worse place than when it started.

Today, we look at four recent Russian lines of escalation and effort in Ukraine, from the Kharkiv offensive to the new partnership agreement with North Korea. We ask what the logic might have been behind those moves, what the effect has been, and ask the question….will they improve Russia’s position or leave it at greater risk than before.

Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/PerunAU

Reading and Sourcing (WIP) :

Maps of territorial control per Deepstatemap as always

Visually confirmed equipment losses per Oryx

Kharkiv specific figures per @naalsio26

TASS on KCNA releasing the agreement text:
https://tass.com/politics/1805661

TASS on the Putin ‘peace plan’ (including the requirement for a Ukrainian withdrawal)
https://tass.com/pressreview/1804269

Reporting on Results of the Swiss summit
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-switzerland-war-conference-burgenstock-568cafee5fbe9c3b19b79b041583a5d6

Estonian MoD: Setting Transatlantic Defence up for Success: A Military Strategy for Ukraine’s Victory and Russia’s Defeat
https://kaitseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/kaitseministeerium_2023veeb_17.12.pdf

Reporting on US restricting Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/21/ukraine-firing-range-us-weapons-russia/

Reporting on Zelensky removing Lt Gen Yuriy Sodol
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7225wrzlpqo

Reporting on Ammunition Supply
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-gunners-finally-get-shells-stop-russians-near-kharkiv-2024-05-21/

US sending legacy SAMS to Ukraine
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-send-ukraine-air-defense-missiles-next-aid-package-officials-2024-06-28/

TASS on Russian advance in Kharkiv slowing
https://tass.com/politics/1797759

Featured Guardian article on Kharkiv
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/16/russian-soldier-says-army-suffering-heavy-losses-in-kharkiv-offensive

Reporting on the ‘buffer zone’ motive for the Kharkiv offensive
https://www.politico.eu/article/kharkiv-capture-ukraine-war-russian-invasion-vladimir-putin-buffer-zone-belgorod/#:~:text=And%20I%20have%20said%20publicly,be%20no%20comfort%20to%20Ukrainians.

Chasiv Yar
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-took-control-district-chasiv-yar-ukraine-2024-07-03/

Featured Stoltenberg quote
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_227330.htm

The response to the Putin peace offer at the Swiss summit
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cxee131gejpo

Included Kharkiv image
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-says-it-hit-latest-generation-russian-fighter-jet-for-first-time/7648644.html

BBC on Putin’s ceasefire offer
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c033eyyr20do

Caveats & Comments:
All normal caveats and comments apply. In particular – I would like to note as always that this material has been created for entertainment purposes and is not intended to be a complete or comprehensive examination of the topic in question and should not be relied upon to inform financial or other similar decisions.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Opening Words
00:01:19 — What Am I Talking About?
00:01:43 — The Russian Effort
00:04:38 — Battlefield Dynamics
00:11:32 — Losses & Costs
00:20:10 — Kharkiv And Escalation
00:26:28 — The Korean Connection
00:39:26 — The Long Range Campaign
00:47:59 — Putin’s “Peace”
01:00:58 — What Next?
01:02:56 — Channel Update