In July of 2022, Mother Jones reported that two of the most prominent members had resigned from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in direct reaction to that institute’s positions on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is a completely unjustified, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state. There was no justification for this,” former Quincy member Joe Cirincione said in an interview with Mother Jones. “And yet Quincy keeps justifying it.”
In October of last year, the Quincy Institute was deeply involved in that profoundly embarrassing letter from members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing President Biden to shift tactics and force Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table. Just one day later, the letter was withdrawn with a statement from Rep. Pramila Jayapal reading in part, “The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting.”
According to Vox, an early draft of that letter was “reviewed by the Quincy Institute, which helped build support for it and has advocated for more avenues of diplomacy outside this letter.”
With that as a foundation, it shouldn’t be surprising to find Quincy once again finding an imaginary reason why Ukraine is the one threatening the possibility of peace. If they are not outright tankies, they are at least tankie-adjacent.
When it comes to the specific issue of Crimea, they’re also simply wrong.
The biggest reason that calling on Ukraine to step back from liberating Crimea is a profoundly silly idea is simply that Ukraine may be forced to do exactly that.
At the end of the day, there’s a real possibility that Russia’s flag will still be over Sevastopol when the guns go silent. But that understanding, if it comes, will come because Ukraine also understands and accepts this conclusion, and will depend on factors (military, economic, political) that we have no way of knowing ahead of time. it’s up to Ukraine to ultimately determine whether it is somewhere they are willing to go, and in the case of Crimea, there is a particular reason for them to argue that it is not a concession they will ever make.
Russia, and particularly Vladimir Putin, really, really wants Crimea. Grabbing Crimea is probably the top feather in Putin’s cap. He loves his shiny (though now pockmarked) bridge. He loves having territory that wasn’t under Russian control when he stepped in.
Take away Crimea, and what does he have? With Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin has to pretend he did it for the locals. Crimea is for—clamp hand over heart—Mother Russia.
So, yes, he wants it. Giving up Crimea would probably hurt Putin more than anything short of one of his fellow oligarchs deciding it was time for new management. And that’s exactly why Ukraine should insist, and keep insisting, that they will not stop short of expelling Russia from Crimea. Because if some day, thanks to Ukrainian battlefield victories, Putin finally decides that he stands more at risk in continuing the invasion than in conceding defeat and going home, negotiation about control of Crimea cannot start from the position of “Russia really wants it, and we’re willing to give it to them.”
Lieven further argues that its naval base in Sevastopol is of such importance to Russia that liberating it “might be the point on which Moscow would be willing to escalate toward nuclear war.” Like every nuclear threat that has preceded this one, it’s ridiculous.
If there’s anything the climate crisis has done to relieve international tensions, it’s that many of Russia’s northern ports, previously unusable for weeks to months each winter, are now much more open. Shipping along the northern sea route has exploded over the last decade. Russia is making significant investments in Baltic Sea ports and is openly bragging about these “year round” ports.
Sevastopol is of much less value to Russia now than it was in the past. And that’s ignoring the fact that Russia has a perfectly good naval base for anything it wants to put on the Black Sea at Novorossiysk, barely 100 km from Crimea. The primary oil terminals are also on mainland Russia, on the other side of the Kerch Straits.
Sevastopol is a nostalgia play. It was vital to Soviet Union interests at one time. It’s much less important to Russia today.
Russia is not going to launch a nuclear war over Sevastopol. Also … Putin does a perfectly adequate job of rattling the nuclear saber at the smallest excuse. Watching other people do it for him in the name of “peace” is more than a little irritating.
Wagner reportedly unleashes banned incendiary weapons in Bakhmut
The line between what is and what is not allowed when it comes to incendiary weapons and international law is almost completely arbitrary. Whether it’s “closely regulated” white phosphorus, or the use-it-by-the-ton thermite, both burn at over 2,200° C, enough to set fire to even a slightly flammable structure and make even the smallest contact with flesh into a serious, long-term injury.
Throughout this conflict, Russia has bombarded cities across Ukraine with munitions that were clearly intended to spark fires, but most of them were barely on the acceptable side of that poorly-drawn line. But on Friday, multiple reports from Bakhmut indicated that Wagner Group forces, in the midst of Prigozhin’s complaints about an ammunition shortage, have broken out MLRS to bombard the city with incendiary bombs that may be way over the line, creating localized infernos.
The images are horrendous.
With Ukrainian forces hanging on in a small section in the western quarter of the city, it becomes more possible for Russian artillery to concentrate its fire at Ukrainian positions. In the case of Wagner, it becomes possible to concentrate on the atrocities.
Prigozhin and Kadyrov go gonzo e gonzo
Anyone wondering when we might witness the beginning of a war between Russia’s privately owned armies should circle today on their calendar.
First up In the ongoing saga of Wagner Group getting slaughtered wholesale in Bakhmut, owner Yevgeny Prigozhin stepped away from his backdrop of dead mercenaries and stumbled over to the couch to explain how the general he complained about for months is actually great, because he picked through old ammunition dumps to find a thing or two for Prigo’s boys. The maneuvering that turned Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev from the object of Prigozhin’s daily scorn into a “great man” remains incomprehensible.
Meanwhile, a half-forgotten face emerged from the mists of time as Ramzan Kadyrov returned to sneed over Prigozhin’s whining, and to claim that his men would fill the gap if Wagner mercenaries were so set on living rather than getting killed by the tens of thousands.
The first suspicion was that Kadyrov was asked to get out of a hammock somewhere and film this, so it could be used to goad Prigozhin back to work. Of course, Kadyrov would probably be happy to bring his boys to a suitably scenic location, far from any danger, declare that they’re in Bakhmut, shoot up the neighborhood for a few minutes, and put the whole event on TikTok. Then he could go back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest.
Except this time, Prigozhin didn’t ignore his blowhard rival. On Saturday, Prigozhin was back with a new statement in which he made a formal request that Kadyrov’s forces replace the Wagner positions in the city.
Prigozhin also went back in front of the cameras to send a message through his press service. Because of course Prigozhin has a press service. “I thank Ramzan Akhmatovich for agreeing,” said Prigozhin, “and for having, most likely, the opportunity to obtain everything necessary and all the necessary resources, to stand in Bakhmut in our positions. “
Prigozhin went on to claim that he had contacted Kadyrov’s representatives, “in order to start transferring positions immediately” so that a handover from Wagner to Kadyrov’s Akhmat special forces could take place at midnight on May 10.
Finally, because this whole series of events has been so deeply, deeply strange, Prigozhin finished by saying what critics of Russia’s attack on Bakhmut have been saying from the beginning—the human wave attacks have cost tens of thousands of Wagner forces and that the handover would occur, “exactly at the moment when, according to our calculations, we will completely exhaust our combat potential.”
That selection of the May 10 date might suggest that Prigozhin intends to use the remaining days before Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations to clear the last of Bakhmut of Ukrainian forces, and give Vladimir Putin something to brag about. With Wagner dousing the city in what certainly appears to be heavily restricted white phosphorus munitions on Friday night, it certainly doesn’t appear they are backing away. Only Prigozhin finished his statement by declaring that he was sure the Chechens would have few problems clearing Ukrainian forces that controlled “a little more than two square kilometers” of Bakhmut. Which makes it seem he expects to leave this little problem unresolved for Kadyrov.
Will any of this hot air actually translate into movements on the ground? That’s hard to say. According to the Ukrainian general staff, Russia launched around fifty attacks on Ukrainian positions on Friday, with the majority of those attacks happening in and around Bakhmut. That doesn’t seem like the actions of a force that is either exhausted or preparing to hand off control.
There remains the possibility that all of this is just theater designed to distract from the fact that Russia continues to engage in the same tactics on the ground that it has employed for nine grinding months. But probably not. None of these guys is that good an actor.
Avdiivka
The level of fighting at Avdiivka, just northwest of Donetsk, has been second only to Bakhmut over the last several months. However, unlike Bakhmut where it seems that Russia has made a slow but inexorable advance, Avdiivka has held out right on the border of occupied territory since the invasion began.
In the last week, Ukrainian forces have reportedly expanded their area of control, bringing them next to the H20 highway and actually overrunning a portion of Russia’s defensive lines. That means Ukraine now reportedly controls areas it hasn’t held since they were lost in 2014.
This progress makes the idea that Ukraine might throw some or all of their counteroffensive in this direction seem a bit more possible. However, Russia has spent a lot of time in the last months worrying about that possibility, and some Ukrainian Telegraph sources claim Russia has rushed reinforcements into a previously undermanned Donetsk city.
Even if Ukraine doesn’t direct their forces through Avdiivka, this would work exceedingly well as a feint—any troops sent to garrison Donetsk means the other potential avenues of counterattack have been thinned out. Russia may be finding itself in an unwinnable game of Whac-A-Mole.
HIMARS may be less effective due to electronic warfare
The problem with any precision weapon that depends—completely or in part—on GPS to determine its location, is that GPS signals can be impaired. The U.S. can do it directly by altering signals from satellites, however ground based jammers can also broadcast false signals that make positions appear to shift significantly. According to CNN, that’s just what Russia has been doing: Jamming GPS signals so that precision guided weapons, and in particular rockets fired by HIMARS, have been less effective.
In theory, HIMARS rockets fired from 80 kilometers away can still land within 3 meters of their target. So once a gathering of equipment, an ammunition depot, a fuel supply, or other high value target has been identified, Ukraine can deliver devastating 100 kg explosive missiles directly to target within seconds. But if Russia is interfering with GPS readings, those incoming rockets may land far outside their effective range. This can be done either by altering the coordinates that the rocket itself uses to help determine position, or by interfering with surveillance drones so that they feed back incorrect locations.
This vulnerability of GPS has long been recognized and systems such as those in HIMARS have electronics which can recognize when the GPS positions diverge between launch position and target position. But obtaining accurate coordinates, or dealing with GPS coordinates that are being distorted across a portion of the battlefield, is making HIMARS less efficient than it was when it first appeared in Ukraine.
Now Ukraine and the U.S. appeared to be engaged in a kind of invisible battle with Russia, one in which Russia steps up the level and sophistication of their jamming, as Ukrainian operators and U.S. software engineers work out ways to get around the new obstacles.
Russia also pays a price for the level of jamming it is using, in that any of its own systems that depend on GPS (or the Russian GLONASS satellites) are also rendered ineffective. That’s not just MLRS, but drones and missiles. In fact, the systems that are making it harder for HIMARS to hit the bullseye are just part of the general effort to make all precision weapons less valuable. In doing so, Russia increases the value of brute-force: massive artillery and human wave attacks.
However, something seems to be working on the Ukraine side of this struggle. In the last week, Ukraine has averaged over a dozen Russian artillery or MLRS systems taken out each day, Wagner ammunition depots near Bakmut have been destroyed, and Ukrainian drones have penetrated far behind the lines to hit Russian fuel storage facilities.
Russia reportedly evacuating “border towns” in Zaporizhzhia
Multiple sources on Telegram and Twitter are reporting that Russia has begun evacuating civilians from towns along the northern edge of their area of occupation in Zaporizhzhia. This is apparently being done in anticipation of the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive, with some sources indicating Russia fears that locals would help Ukrainian forces to identify Russian positions.
Included in the evacuations are larger towns such as Vasylivka and Polohy as well as a number of smaller towns and villages along the same stretch of the front line. However, this one in particular comes as a surprise.
Tokmak is located better than 20 km from the current front lines and Russia has been working for months to surround this strategic location with a network of defensive lines. Kos has talked about why a move on Tokmak might be one of the most decisive directions for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. So has community member RO37 in his post on why Tokmak could be key to breaking through Russian occupied territory in the south.
Tokmak’s importance, as is so often the case, lies in logistics, logistics, and logistics.
Tokmak represents both the best way to sever Russian lines of communication in the area, and to guard further Ukrainian advances from a potential attack in their rear. Right now, it seems like Russia is bracing for a blow in exactly this location.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian milbloggers are pointing to Tokmak as a sign that Russia is prepared and that any attempt by Ukraine to advance in the area will be a “debacle.” They’re preparing to celebrate “burning Bradleys and Leopards” as Russia turns the Ukrainian counteroffensive away.
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be taking bets.
Mark Sumner
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