Дата публикации: 03.05.2024
The economist
The scruffy headquarters of hur, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, stands on a jagged piece of land in central Kyiv known as Fisherman’s Island. Strictly speaking, it is not an island but a peninsula. And there isn’t much fishing going on these wartime days. But sporting a piratical beard, the agency’s deputy head, Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, plays a nautical theme. Blunt, enigmatic and sharp as a captain’s hook, he exudes many of the qualities that have made hur one of the most talked about secret services in the world. But he sounds troubled as he assesses Ukraine’s battlefield prospects. Things, he says, are as difficult as they have ever been since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. And they are about to get worse.
He predicts that Russia will first press on with its plan to “liberate” all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a task unchanged since 2022. He says a Russian order has gone out to “take something” in time for the pomp of Victory Day in Moscow on May 9th, or, failing that, before Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing a week later. The speed and success of the advance will determine when and where the Russians strike next. “Our problem is very simple: we have no weapons. They always knew April and May would be a difficult time for us.”
Ukraine’s immediate concern is its high-ground stronghold in the town of Chasiv Yar, which holds the keys to an onward Russian advance to the last large cities in the Donetsk region (see map). It is probably a matter of time before that city falls in a similar way to Avdiivka, bombed to oblivion by the Russians in February, says the general. “Not today or tomorrow, of course, but all depending on our reserves and supplies.”
Russia has already won a tactical success in the south-west in the village of Ocheretyne, where a recent Ukrainian troop rotation was bungled. Russian forces succeeded in breaking through a first line of defence and have created a salient 25 square kilometres in size. Ukraine is some way from stabilising the situation, while Russia is throwing “everything” it has to achieve a bigger gain. The Russian army is not the hubristic organisation it was in 2022, says the general, and is now operating as a “single body, with a clear plan, and under a single command”.
Looking at a wider horizon, the intelligence chief suggests Russia is gearing up for an assault around the Kharkiv and Sumy regions in the north-east. The timing of this depends on the sturdiness of Ukrainian defences in the Donbas, he says. But he assumes Russia’s main push will begin at the “end of May or beginning of June”. Russia has a total of 514,000 land troops committed to the Ukrainian operation, he says, higher than the 470,000 estimate given last month by General Christopher Cavoli, nato’s top commander. The Ukrainian spymaster says Russia’s northern grouping, based across the border from Kharkiv, is currently 35,000-strong but is set to expand to between 50,000 and 70,000 troops. Russia is also “generating a division of reserves” (ie, between 15,000 and 20,000 men) in central Russia, which they can add to the main effort.
This is “not enough” for an operation to take a major city, he says—a judgment shared by Western military officials, but could be enough for a smaller task. “A quick operation to come in and come out: maybe. But an operation to take Kharkiv, or even Sumy city, is of a different order. The Russians know this. And we know this.” In any event, dark days lie ahead for Kharkiv, a city of 1.2m people that rebuffed Russia’s initial assaults in 2022.
May will be the key month, says the general, with Russia employing a “three-layered” plan to destabilise the country. The main factor is military. Even though America’s Congress belatedly gave the go-ahead for more military aid, it will take weeks before it filters through to the front line. It is unlikely to match Russia’s stock of shells or provide an effective defence against Russia’s low-tech, destructive guided aerial bombs.
The second factor is Russia’s disinformation campaign in Ukraine aimed at undermining Ukrainian mobilisation and the political legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelensky, whose presidential term notionally runs out on May 20th. While the constitution clearly allows its indefinite extension in wartime, his opponents are already emphasising the president’s vulnerability.
A third factor, says the general, is Russia’s relentless campaign to isolate Ukraine internationally. “They will be shaking things up whichever way they can.”
On top of this, an already delicate process of mobilising the population to fight has been hamstrung by political infighting and indecision in Kyiv. Conscription largely stalled in winter after Mr Zelensky fired the heads of the military draft offices. It took months for parliament to agree to a new law to extend the draft to 25-to-27-year-olds and oblige military-age males to register on a new database.
The situation has improved a bit since December, but General Skibitsky is reluctant to declare the emergency over. Ukrainian officials worry that the next wave of mobilised recruits will make for unmotivated soldiers with poor morale. One saving grace, says the general, is that Russia faces similar problems. Its army is unrecognisable from the professional corps that started the war. But Russia still has more of them to throw into battle, stretching Ukraine’s already stressed defences.
General Skibitsky says he does not see a way for Ukraine to win the war on the battlefield alone. Even if it were able to push Russian forces back to the borders—an increasingly distant prospect—it wouldn’t end the war. Such wars can only end with treaties, he says. Right now, both sides are jockeying for the “the most favourable position” ahead of potential talks. But meaningful negotiations can begin only in the second half of 2025 at the earliest, he guesses. By then, Russia will be facing serious “headwinds”. Russian military production capacity has expanded but will reach a plateau by early 2026, he reckons, due to shortages in material and engineers. Both sides could eventually run out of weapons. But if nothing changes in other respects, Ukraine will run out first.
The general says the largest unknown factor of the war is Europe. If Ukraine’s neighbours do not find a way of further increasing defence production to help Ukraine, they too will eventually find themselves in Russia’s crosshairs, he argues. He plays down Article 5 of nato’s collective-defence charter and even nato’s troop presence in states bordering Ukraine, which he says may mean little when put to the test. “The Russians will take the Baltics in seven days,” he argues, somewhat implausibly. “nato’s reaction time is ten days.”
Ukraine’s bravery and sacrifice have given Europe a multi-year head start, removing the immediate threat from Russia’s once feared airborne forces and marine corps for at least a decade, he says. The question is whether Europe will repay the favour by keeping Ukraine in the game. “We will keep fighting. We have no choice. We want to live. But the outcome of the war [...] isn’t just down to us.”
