The Coming Russian Offensive

Where do they plan to go?

A lot of commentators on places like ZeroHedge, and even ourselves as The Daily Beagle, have commented it was likely Russia would only advance up to the Dnieper river and hold the largely Russian-speaking east side of Ukraine (see our series on the history between Russia and Ukraine).

Dnieper River. Source: Knutux

However, that viewpoint has been put to bed. Like our commentary on the UK leadership race in relation to the Ukraine war, leaders can be fickle and change whims:

Question is: does Liz Truss intend an expansion of war with Russia? Does Russia intend to expand beyond Ukraine? People might answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in order, but there is no way to know for sure. Leaders can be fickle, changing whims.

Russian government sponsored Intel Slava Z have shared a US report that Russia intends a major offensive in Ukraine:

Russia is preparing for a massive offensive to end this war once and for all, they will do it in the next 30 days - military observer, retired US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor

It is worth observing Intel Slava Z don’t typically post things unless they have a news article, citation, video, image or source for it, and even then, they only post things that are of interest to Russia.

Intel Slava Z’s comment under the McGregor quote (above) shows not only do they agree with the assessment, but they even shed more details.

They've been resting and recovering for the past few weeks. They are preparing for a massive offensive to end this war once and for all. I think it's time to end this all that the Russians will do - within 30 days.

Conflict-of-interest Ex-CIA Ray McGovern (interesting nomen) notes on antiwar.com that this is likely in response to the long range HIMARS which are threatening Russia:

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov pointed specifically to HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, made by Lockheed-Martin) as the kind of “weapon that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territories of those republics who have declared their independence (Donetsk and Luhansk).”

Ray McGovern notes that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin let slip the plan was to overextend Russia 3 months ago (the same plan echoed by the RAND Corporation in 2019 and backfiring massively):

“One of the US’s goals in Ukraine is to see a weakened Russia. … The US is ready to move heaven and earth to help Ukraine win the war against Russia.”

Lloyd’s insanity in regards to Russian nukes and total absence of thought of the wider implications are alarming. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

we estimate that Russia has a stockpile of nearly 4,500 nuclear warheads assigned for use by long-range strategic launchers and shorter-range tactical nuclear forces

Paraphrasing Bulletin for Atomic Scientists’ breakdown for the nuclear warheads:

• 1,600 strategic warheads deployed

• >800 land-based ballistic missiles

• ~624 submarine-launched ballistic missiles

• 200 at heavy bomber bases

• 985 strategic warheads in storage

• 1,912 nonstrategic warheads

• 1,760 retired but intact warheads awaiting dismantlement

Which shows Lloyd is ever eager to play chicken with enough nukes to wipe out the earth many times over.

HIMARS Are A Problem

For Russia, the HIMARS might as well have been nukes because they pose a direct threat to the Russian mainland itself. Within military terminology and tactics, what Lavrov is proposing about going on the offensive makes a world of sense from a military standpoint.

In military terms, when another nation has threats you have to find and eliminate, you engage in a process called “search and destroy”. Americans did it against Iraqi targets during the Iraq war. The Israelis do it against Iranians in Syria. You search for a particular threat and you destroy it.

The problem is search and destroy only works when a country doesn’t have unlimited supplies of equipment and aren’t being replenished at a rate of knots. You search and destroy it with the expectation it won’t be replaced.

If it is replaced at a rate of knots, then you have to switch tactics, to…

Occupy-and-Hold

It is a series of tactics where you create an ‘area [of] denial’ (AD) that prevents the arrival of new weapons and equipment to an area. Essentially, is a fancy way of saying ‘occupation with the intention of stopping the supply of weapons or troops’. Or basically, occupation.

Russia doesn’t have any viable options on the table that lead to de-escalation or peace in this scenario, and this is a bad thing for everybody.

Option 1: Cease-and-Desist

If they cease at the Dneiper river (a logical strongpoint as the river offers a break-point and natural ‘moat’ of sorts), HIMARS will still be able to reach the Russian mainland with a 50 miles range, which isn’t going to sit well with Russian voters. Ukraine has shown itself eager to directly attack Russia, and naturally uses the fact Russia attacked Ukraine as justification.

This is a failure point for Russia because it endangers Russians (and not “simply” Russian-speaking Ukrainians). Ukraine has shown itself unable to keep peace treaties or promises and so the offering of a ceasefire by Ukraine will mean little to Russia.

This thus forces Russia to pick…

Option 2: Search-and-Destroy

Russia could go on a roving search-and-destroy mission to eliminate all HIMARS and other missile threats in the area. Airstrikes, artillery, roving special ops squads, besides other things, are all possible options.

Now this might work if Ukraine only had their own stockpile with no replenishments, but the US is clearly determined to replenish HIMARS. Even if the US ran out of HIMARS (which is possible, they’re running low on their own stockpiles), they would likely opt to send further range artillery and missile units, which means Russia has to get even more involved.

So Russia would likely have to keep continuously doing search-and-destroy (which means bye-bye any ceasefire or peace) to protect their mainland, or, Russia has to resort to…

Option 3: Occupy-and-Hold

And there aren’t any other nuanced options between this and search-and-destroy. They could eliminate all logistical routes in, or try to, but vehicles can still operate off-road and they’d have to destroy a lot of infrastructure to prevent logistical chains from entering. Essentially, it is less resource intensive for Russia to switch to occupy-and-hold than to some other, less world-war-3-esque approach.

Occupy-and-Hold does have naunce though, and none of the options are good from a ‘avoid World War 3’ perspective…

Option 4: Occupy-and-Hold, Up To Russian Artillery Ranges

So Russia could occupy ‘most’ of Ukraine, leaving a buffer zone which is roughly equal to their artillery range. This would be the “least” intensive option but it would mean the “buffer zone” becomes a grey area of perpetual fighting by all sides. Essentially, the grey zone remains ‘unsecured’ and permits more weapons deliveries.

This option basically makes search-and-destroy’s search area much smaller and reduces the occupational footprint, but it is a worst-of-both-world’s scenario. You have to both occupy and search-and-destroy. So then there’s…

Option 5: Occupy-and-Hold, Leaving Only A Tiny Buffer Zone

Russia could try to occupy all the way to the border of Ukraine. Now, in theory, it can’t risk getting too close to the border, because it could trigger a war with another country if one of their weapons crosses over. Indeed, a country may dispute the border anyway and argue something ‘within’ Ukraine was actually ‘outside’ Ukraine.

The tiny buffer zone is an attempt to avoid that, but it encounters a similar problem to Option 4, in that it can still contain military weapons and hostiles who work within that grey area, crossing and bunnyhopping between borders.

There is a risk, for example, of a Ukrainian soldier attacking Russia from within the Polish border within those sorts of ranges. This is another ‘no-win, leads to World War 3’ scenario as either Russia keeps taking casualties and never retaliates (lose), or Russia attacks the border-hopper in the territory of another country provoking a wider war (lose; for everybody).

Option 6: Occupy-and-Hold, Up To The Border

This has all the risks of annoying territorial powers but it eliminates the pretence of cross-border attacks originating from within Ukraine when they in-fact originate outside of it. Of course, as Ukrainian forces retreat across the border, they can still hypothetically shoot.

So it has all the issues of Option 5, but it is much, much closer to other countries. Obviously those other countries would be very uncomfortable, even aggressive to having Russia right on their doorstep (ironic given what the US were doing to Russia via Ukraine), and thus the risks of World War 3 would be very high.

There is one other option, and it’s basically the ‘Nazy Germany’ option…

Option 7: Pre-emptively Attack Other States

It is unlikely Russia will dive into this option unless somehow forced, given it is suicidal, but the slow boil of continuous involvement by a large number of warring states in Ukraine is likely to drag all participants into this scenario.

The idea of aggressively attacking in order to defend has been known since antiquity. Sun Tzu is claimed to have said that “attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack.”. It’s not always advisible for a state to go on the offence, but a state may do so to prevent a country from achieving build-up.

In this case, Russia could, hypothetically, strike other nations to try to prevent the issues in options 6 and 5 between themselves and other nations, but I think nearly everyone would agree this is purely suicidal.

It’s All World War 3 From Here On Out

Regardless of what options Russia pick, it leads to no ideal scenarios for Russia. This is extremely bad for everybody concerned, because if the punishment (possible destruction of Russia) is the same for all options, including peace and the cessation of hostilities, they might as well commit all-in to war. So what if they get destroyed nuking everybody? The west were intending to destroy them anyway.

It’s a bit like a cornered bank robber where the penalty for every crime is the death penalty. Some countries actually tried to implement this sort of system which sounds “good on paper” for the vengeful, but actually turns out to be far worse because it causes criminals to go ‘all in’ if they commit a minor crime.

If the penalty is death for everything, then they will fight to the death in order to avoid it, which was often the case in such countries. Robbers would fight to the death and never surrender, because stealing the money was sufficient to justify the death penalty in that country, which ultimately resulted in more people dying.

It is why a lot of countries have life imprisonment rather than death penalties for a lot of crimes, because criminals are more likely to surrender (read: not kill more people) if they don’t feel like they’re going to get executed.

There is no breathing room option being offered to Russia that enables peace. It is an all-or-nothing scenario for them.

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