Angry Planet - The Sad and Dumb Reality of Russia’s Kerch Kerfuffle

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

On November 25, Russia seized three Ukranian gunboats in the Kerch strait—a strip of water connecting the Black Sea to Azov Sea. Ukraine claimed it was an act of aggression and, possibly, a prelude to war. Russia said it was just policing its territory. Then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attempted to institute martial law and things got … weird.With us today to unpack what’s going on is Michael Kofman. Kofman is a Senior Research Scientist with the Center for Naval Analyses. He’s an expert on Russia and he’s been following the Kerch kerfuffle. You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. And they fail to account for the likelihood that the other side is experiencing, one, confusion, two, for decision making based on time constraints and limited information, and three, the stability of people involved, because these are human processes and not all people are smart. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. It's me, your host, Matthew Galt. On November 25th, Russia seized three Ukrainian gunboats in the Kerch Strait, a strip of water connecting the Black Sea to the Azov Sea. Ukraine claimed it was an act of aggression and possibly a prelude to war. Russia said it was just policing its territory.

Then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, attempted to institute martial law and things got weird. With us today to unpack what's going on is Michael Kaufman. Kaufman is a senior research scientist with the Center for Naval Analysis. He's an expert on Russia, and he's been following the Kirch kerfuffle. Mike, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be on your program. Okay, so let's start with the basics.

What exactly happened on November 25th? what happened on November 25th is that Ukrainian Navy set sail the day before from Port of Adassa on the Black Sea with two small armored artillery boats on a tugboat and a refueling ship. And their plan was to basically sail around Crimea and then tried to get access to the Azov Sea

via the Kirk Street. And it's important to give a little background for those who don't know, the Azov seized jointly administered by Russia and Ukraine through a bilateral treaty signed in 2003, is considered sort of an internal waterway. But ever since Russia has seized and annexed Crimea in 2014, and they subsequently built the Curve Street Bridge, a large bridge across the strait that was officially opened back in May of the year. they've de facto been asserting with sovereignty over access to the whole sea and the waterway traffic and have imposed somewhat in formal inspections regime and partial blockade or slow down to traffic.

So with that context and background, Ukraine has been trying to kind of confess this changing status quo in reality. They had previously in September sailed two unarmed ships, a kind of repair, command ship into the sea and with a tugboat and that had gone all right the Russians let them through this time they tried to get these two armored gun what you call gunboats armored artillery boats and this tugboat through and they showed up outside of the strait asking to be let through to gain passage And the Russians told them, well, the street is blocked. The waterways blocked and no, we're not laying it through. And Ukraine said, why not?

Russia said, well, there's a tanker or something that's run the ground, which wasn't true. Well, and then outside of the street, as Ukrainians approached, they were met by Russian FSB border guard. It's the Russian Coast Guard, a number of ships. and they were ordered to cut engines and Ukrainians refused to comply and then this whole cat-mouse game when maneuvers unfolded in the sea outside the street one of the bigger Russian border guard ships rammed the Ukrainian tug then things seem to have settled down Russians blocked the actual bridge with a cargo ship that they moved to

to literally physically block passage through it. A bit later on in the day, Ukrainian ships started heading back home and we're trying to basically exit the waters and Russian ships pursued them, ordered them to stop, and after a brief exchange of gunfire, the Ukrainian ships de facto surrendered

and then the Russians captured them and their crews and towed them away to the Kurch port. All right. And what did what did Russia say about this at the time? What were the justifications? Why did they do it? So the Russian view, at least their position, is that this was a planned Ukrainian provocation and that Ukrainians did not follow quote unquote proper procedure, did not give sufficient notice of their intent to gain passage, innocent passage through the straight, which is obviously at this point administered by Russia, given they built this bridge. And that subsequently, you know, Ukrainians refused to stop movement when they were already in Russian territorial waters. And this somehow gave the Russian FSB the right to de facto attack him. And then later on, they basically said that, well, Ukrainians were still in their territorial waters and Russians had the right to capture them and attack them. That's basically the Russian position on the whole thing.

And what's the Ukrainian position? Well, the Ukrainian position is based on a couple things. First and foremost, that they have the right of innocent passage to the Azov Sea, since it's by treaty and internal waterway, and that they do not have to go through special procedures and give Russians advance notice of their plan to gain access. That's one, that even though physical realities aside, the legal reality is such that Russia is supposed to grant them access.

Two, that, well, they were not in Russian territorial waters. They may have been territorial waters from the Russian perspective that is in the territorial waters. That's a 12 nautical mile zone, the range of Crimea, but Ukraine does not recognize Russian annexation of Crimea, and almost nobody does internationally, right? So the whole thing, whether or not they were in territorial waters, really depends on whether or not your Russia or almost in the other country. So their position was, no, they weren't in Russian territorial waters. Actually, technically, they were almost in their own territorial waters because, you know, they don't recognize the annexation of Crimea. And that the whole thing was an unprovoked attack afterwards by Russian FSB border guards and the Russian military.

And how new is this bridge? There wasn't a bridge there before at all. It's brand new. I mean, the bridge de facto got built in March and officially opened in May of this year. Okay. So the bridge kind of reminds me of and tell me if this is a poor analogy, it reminds me of kind of what China's doing in the South China Sea, right, where they're building these islands to kind of expand their territorial claims. Is that kind of a similar thing here? It feels like Russia built this bridge just so it could assert control over an area? So the bridge was built in order for Russia to establish a ground line of communication to Crimea, which they really need. Prior to that, it was a ferryway, right? And it's obviously much better to have a bridge to 2 million people on the peninsula that's not physically attached to you than it is to have to go by ferry. That said, once they built the bridge, yes.

It's very much like the various geoengineering projects that China has to go. going that as an attempt to annex the sea there, it does the fact to allow Russia to then annex the sea as well along with the peninsula and to control commercial traffic even more beyond it, because it's much more, it's much more problematic to Ukraine than what China's doing in South China Sea, because beyond the port of Adasa, in the as of sea, Ukraine has two ports, port of Maripol and Port of Berdianz. a good deal of commercial traffic goes to those ports. By building those bridge, first of all, the height of the bridge alone now already restricts certain big Panamax ships from going there and cuts down on traffic automatically because they physically can't go through. And then, after a bit of a kerfuffle with inspecting and holding fishing vessels, Russians instituted a pretty stern inspection regime creating backups of shepherds. ships waiting to enter and exit the sea. And these lines on average can last like up to 50 hours, which is a lot. It's very expensive delay. So they're actually slowly economically strangling the commercial maritime traffic to the Ukrainian ports. Okay. So what how have things

shaken out since then? Where kind of where does it's where's the conflict sit, such as it is now? Well, I mean, okay, Ukraine predictably pointed to this as an unprovoked attack. and, of course, went to allies in the West and United States and NATO and asked everybody to condemn them, which they did. NATO's condemnation was kind of lukewarm, but it was fine. And Russia organized the UN Security Council session the next day, which didn't go well for it because everybody else in the UN Security Council kind of condemned them for it as well. Russians then decide that they're going to hold the crews and quote unquote try them,

which is basically an indicator that they're going to hold them potentially for some months before trading them back and the ships. Keep in mind the political context that there's a presidential election coming up in Ukraine early next year. And this whole interaction while, well, militarily, of course,

it was a clear Russian demonstration that they're not going to abide by the 2003 bilateral treaty with Ukraine and that they're going to basically assert the fact that, well, they're an uncontested military power de facto in that region and they're not going to care about the legal obligations that they're no longer relevant ever since they've annexed Crimea and built its bridge. So for Ukraine, on one respect vis-a-vis Russia, it's an obvious defeat. On the other hand, it allowed Ukraine to galvanize further support from the West, so in the bigger picture, it may be a bit of a success story. For Russia, well, Russians may try to use this all to embarrass the Ukrainian president in a run-up to an election, an election which he very will may not win.

So they are likely, I suspect, to hold on to the Ukrainian sailors for simple reason that they see this is an intention. Ukrainian provocation, a PR activity that the president was doing in part and parcel of his own electoral campaign at home. And they now, they don't want to deal with Petra Praschenko because they don't want to give him the appearance of a statesman resolving the problem, right? So they don't want them to have any victory to settle this issue. So they might well hold on to them for the coming three months. All right. Let's talk about that president a little bit. What's the deal with the martial law? Like why did he try to institute that?

Why was that his reaction? I mean, that's a very good question. So now we're going to leave this conflict a bit and get someone to Ukrainian politics. So that was a pretty hotly contested issue as to why, even though martial law has never been instituted throughout the course of the conflict and the war between Russia and Ukraine, going back to 2014, that now is the result of this incident over a couple of boats where nobody dies. The Ukrainian president, quite clearly a few months before the election, proposed to institute martial law for 60 days. And instituting martial law for 60 days, even partial martial law across a large part of Ukraine, would be de facto like canceling the election. And of course, the opposition and Ukrainian parliament protested. They settled on 30 days to be renewed by the parliament, which still quite a bit.

And partial martial law that is only across 10 regions of Ukraine. these are principally the bordering regions running from northern Ukraine, Belarus all the way around to Vinica in the southwest. We can deduce us to why, because the president-self said that they're not instituting martial law because they expect an imminent Russian attack. They're only going to do a partial mobilization of first-round reservists, and they're not playing for any major combat operations themselves, which really begs the question as to what does martial law have to do with anything,

if they're neither planning for a major attack nor planning a full mobilization either. And I think the short answer, of course, is probably political. It's both a face-saving measure because this is a thing that in some ways definitely went wrong in Ukrainian domestic politics, given the optics of it.

And secondarily, I think it's no consensus that the martial law is in regions that are not likely to be very supportive of the president. and that, you know, that it is a somewhat cynical decision. The counter argument to what I've just said would be, well, the presidential administration would have been criticized if it didn't do something in response to Russian aggression.

And if they hadn't understood martial law, they could have been attacked by opposition campaigns for not having done enough. And more importantly, and governments do tend to think this way, if there was some other action to follow this, some a second level of let's say Russian aggression, an attack or what's people say, a clear Russian desire to conduct a target escalation in the simmering conflict in Ukraine's zone-boss region.

And the Ukrainian leadership hadn't done anything for it. They would have been really badly criticized afterwards, right? They would have basically been called idiots. I'm skeptical of all this. I think it mostly has to do with Ukrainian upcoming elections and politics. So it's if it would de facto suspend the election. election in those areas, the martial law would? Well, so if it's only for 30 days, I don't think it will, but it will not suspend the election.

It will give the government and administration a lot of leeway to play games, right? And they tried to make clear that martial law is not going to fully suspend civil liberties and freedoms, as many people were concerned, early on, when they were. this idea was first proposed. However, it will give the incumbent administration considerable advantages over the coming in those 30 days. Obviously, martial law favors the sitting government and the sitting government's up for re-election in a matter of months. Then it gives them very clear advantages in the things that they can do in those regions. What's Russia's stake in the politics of Ukraine in the present moment? Who?

would they be, who would they like to win? Yeah, it's kind of interesting because they, they like both options, either Petro Kuroshenko or the only likely contender, serious contender in a runoff, Yulayev Timo Schenko, which is a long, known political figure and an oligarchy figure in Ukrainian politics as well. For them, both outcomes, I think, are probably suitable. However, I suspect they might, they might prefer Yudu Yuduette Timoshenko to Trapuroshenko, just because of the exchange of a policy platform in some ways,

but also, to be honest, the ideal scenario for them is probably Ukraine largely as it is. And I don't think that they expect any particular politics to change towards them as a result of the election. What they're looking to play is the internal makeup of forces in Ukraine. And my current sense is that they probably would prefer Yulay Tjoumashenko to Petroposhenko, but either outcome is more or less satisfactory. Another point I want to hit here that I think is important is that this kind of represents an overt action by Russia. Well, obviously, it's kind of a given now that Russia is backing the separatists and the Donbos but it's never been, you know, quite out in the open with that stuff.

This is something that they put their stamp on, right? Right. Well, this around Crimea, and if you recall back in 2014, after they seized an act. Crimea, Vladimir Putin then later came out and said, yeah, those were our soldiers actually in the whole thing. But they were volunteer soldiers, though, quote unquote, correct? Yeah, I mean, he, yeah, it's the fact to admit it to it.

But what's going on now in the ASO-C, of course, is particularly dangerous because it's an overt act, right? It's an act whereby Russia is now leveraging the fact that they have annexed Kremlin, to say these are territorial warders and then assert sovereignty over ASOFC. And more importantly, look, it's very hard to do deniable actions the way they play out. on land the same way in the maritime domain, right? So what it shows is that, well, whatever you may think of Western policies to both punish Russia and sanction it and the hope that it will have some coercive effect and demonstrate that certainly at the very least has very little to no course of impact in terms of changing Russian behavior and shaping it such that there is no desire for folks. the aggression. That said, the way the system played out, it was very ad hoc and improvised on the Russian side. That's very obvious that they were reacting to the fact that Ukrainians showed up outside.

And then things escalated, and you can tell by Russian actions, by communication intercepts, by the conversation around it, that Russians were also making it up on the spot that day as events were unfolding. See, that's very interesting to me, because the way that the way that the stories kind of played out in the media and at first blush, it feels almost like the that Russia baited Ukraine. But you're saying that based on things that you've seen, it was all kind of, it's kind of tumbled out this way. No, no, no. I mean, it was Ukrainian choice to sail all the way from a duster to the curve straight with a couple of ships that they could have

easily moved by rail into the Azov Sea. That was one of my other, that was actually one of my other questions. Yeah. I mean, no, no. Yeah, I mean, yeah, sure. If Russia was secretly in charge of Ukrainian Navy, then definitely would have baited for them. And if that's the case, it was hard to explain why Russian border guards were completely unprepared for this scenario when the Ukrainians showed up. And throughout as that day unfolds, you can see that first, they're kind of improvbing right there. Then second, they have a couple unplanned events. They take a pause. They were not prepared to be given the order to board the Ukrainian ships and capture them.

So they have to wait to get special forces on board their own ships. They then chase the Ukrainian ships. The Russian ships, two of them actually run into each other and collide with each other as well. And the communications are very hectic whereby the Russian military is not waiting for the Ukrainians to show up. So only once the conflict unfolds and the Russian ships, Russian ship rams the Ukrainian tugboat, then a pair of Russian helicopters show up, and then a pair of Russian strike aircraft show up as well to support them. But you can tell from a lot of communication what's going on

that the Russian military is trying to gain information on the situation from the Border Guard service, and the whole thing is kind of unfolding in the moment. Yes, you're very right the way it's portraying the media, but the media likes to portray these things, and the media likes to write a good story. And unfortunately, as you know, facts often get into the way of a good story. And the thing is, the reality of what happened is no less interesting than the fiction

that this is some brilliant Russian scheme and plan, and that Russia somehow convinced Ukrainians to come to the Kirk Strait and then got into this complete cluster that unfolded that day. So then that begs the question in my mind, why did Ukraine go this way? Oh, well, I mean, to me, I think the answer to that we can reasonably derive because Ukraine is really stuck in that it has almost no cards to play in this scenario. The new unfolding reality in status quo is the fact that Russian control of access to the Azov Sea

and a huge hand over commerce and maritime traffic there. The government's being criticized for not doing enough to challenge it, even though there's not much they can do to challenge it in reality. So the only viable course of actions for them to, one, publicly demonstrate that they retain the ability to access the sea to show the Ukrainian flag on what small mosquito navy that they have. However, to do it, they also have to challenge the assertion of Russian sovereignty over access because they actually have the right of innocent passage. And if they were to call Russians ahead and give them, let's say, 48 hours notice and to then go for Russian procedures and wait in line, they would be politically conceding Russian sovereignty. I mean, that's the reality of it, right?

They would be conceding to those rules and to the Russian position. And that's why they did it this way. They did this intentionally, so as to both have the opportunity to demonstrate that they retain presence, and presence is important. And secondarily, to also try to do it in a way so it's not to validate the current Russian position. But, of course, the reality is that, well, Ukraine is a non-military power on the seas. and the asymmetry of power in general between Russian Ukraine is dramatic. It's tremendous. And if Russians want to leverage the opportunity to create an embarrassment or to just demonstrate how much stronger they are

or to overreact in the moment and simply have kind of events escalate and then from their on just choose to take it to kind of next level of aggression, they can. It feels more and more like war and conflict are becoming political. theater. Not just there. Like, that's a big picture thing. Okay, so if we can, that's kind of funny. This is not how the way I expected this conversation to go. And you're right, the truth here, or at least the truth as you see it, is much more interesting, I think, than kind of the mainstream media presentation of this moment. So I guess you kind of debunked, like, this is not probably going to lead to a widening of the conflict. The West probably doesn't need to get involved? Well, it depends on the choices people make moving forward. So it is not Russia's intent

to widen the conflict and it hasn't been for some time because they are engaged in a very different sort of conflict in Ukraine to the depth of Ukraine. And that's mostly one of political warfare, unconventional warfare, and in any ways, economic warfare and coercion. But to them, they're more than satisfied with just keeping a submarine conflict going that occasionally seriously fliers up in the Donbos, but remains a problem on the Thorn and Ukraine's side and on resolve. But most of their approach is fundamentally indirect. On the Ukrainian side, well, Ukraine has no interest in a conflict either because it would lose in any scenario and any level of escalation and in any domain, which is not very viable for Ukraine.

And, of course, they didn't go there when they intend to get into a fight with the Russians and get their ship captured or worse killed, which could have easily happened too, right? However, some of understanding that conflicts oftentimes emerge in places where neither party involved intended it to happen that way. For any number of reasons. One, states ultimately, when they react to episodes are on their framework of bounded rationality, right? They make decisions with limited information on their time constraints, and those decisions can be pretty poor or stupid. Second, there are plenty of times where people making the best decisions trying to avoid conflict can end up in conflict as a consequence of them. So while there is not a strong desire amongst Western countries to further escalate the situation, nor do they particularly have any serious cards to play, you can see. sorry about that dog's barking you can see a scenario whereby let's say if there was an introduction of western or NATO ships

which can can enter the black sea and maintain presence in the black sea obviously heavily constrained by the Montreal Convention but nonetheless you could see depending on what Russians used to do and what Western supporters of Ukraine choose to do, a follow-on sort of altercation, and you can see that there are going to be perhaps multiple blips or iterations of this conflict now in the maritime domain. That is, look, Russia and Ukraine are not done, and the story is not over. It's very likely that there'll be some further altercation that see down the line, just not right now. And, well, yeah, Western countries could have chosen to react to this any number of ways, and

it's not fully clear what the consequences of this confrontation ultimately are yet. We're a little bit too early into it to see what the follow-on results will be. As I'm saying, it's not, it's a little too early to judge what the rest of the reaction will be and what the Russian reaction to that reaction. But do you think that Western countries have the political will or desire to even get involved here? Well, they're not at all a homogenous block. So for most of them, I would say they neither have the will nor the capability. For some of them, I definitely say they have the capability and they could potentially find the will, depending on how they choose to interpret these events.

Certainly the United States could choose to play a much more active role, still heavily constrained. Ultimately, I'm going to say no, but you could see you can see downline choices being made. for example, U.S.C.B.'s building, I think, in Nikolai of a naval facility, right, and a growing U.S. presence, an actual physical presence in Ukraine, that down the line could see, it's not just increasing contact between U.S. forces and Russian forces, but a real U.K. real American physical presence in that part of Ukraine. So my short answer is that it is quite possible. that there could be a crisis or a conflict with real ramifications for the United States in the West,

years from now, as a result of decisions made in response to what just happened in the Kirk's Strait, and we will only be able to look back years from now on this particular episode and say that this was the beginning of that thing. Well, I hope that we are not fumbling our way into a wider war as often happens. It's all, I always like when I get a more interesting or nuanced kind of answer to the question. And like nothing I had read, you know, I'm always, you know, every, every op-ed is about how, oh, this is, this thing's going to get hot. Here comes the war.

Oh, yeah. You know, it's interesting to drill down and like really look at what happened. Um, and learned that it was this, as often the case, this kind of fumbling, like, everyone's reacting in the moment. And it's not, it's not always. overt and controlled as you think it is, you know. And that's interesting to me. Yeah, because, okay, here's my view.

Well, first, like, obviously, two weeks have passed, and there's no war. So, okay. Right. So that's clear. One, two. Obviously, it's not going to be a war. Ukraine's election coming up, and they don't want it, and neither do Russians. And they can have a war anytime they like.

But the other part of it is, okay, well, the media story is always super, conspirological and it paints Russia as like the super well-oiled machine where everything's planned, right? And the answer to me, like my view is I, this is what I do professionally, right, follow Russia. I can safely tell you that this whole thing was a Jang shit show. And it's very clear from the Russian reaction and the coordination that they didn't seriously plan to the response until the moment right there and they were improvising. And sort of their intentions were evolving over the course that day.

And Ukrainians didn't plan for this reaction either. They planned for a pure opportunity and they thought stuff would go down. But they didn't think it would be anything at this level. And this is a very good example of what happens when bad decisions are made in crisis. But oftentimes, like, basically, oftentimes the outcome was then painted by the media into this wonderful story and, like, a complete narrative of how it was all planned. and it's all part of some bigger thing. Right. We really, we really right now want to turn Russia into this villain with Putin as this,

as this brilliant mastermind, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a tragic comedy, right? Because Russia's very much an adocracy in like any big country with a lot of moving pieces. I mean, I can tell you from plenty of experience in government. No, it's a conspiratorial mindset, right? Things are much more, things are much more chaotic and less controlled than we

all want to believe. Yeah, as Robert Jervis teaches us, perception, misperception, international politics, that confusion like stupidity is rarely given its true due. Like, that's just the reality of it, is that typically both policy establishments imagine the other policy establishment, their counterparty, to be a well-organized machine driven by pre-prepared strategy and policy, and they can spritologically link various different events as being part of a grander plan that never exists usually. And they fail to account for the likelihood that the other side is experiencing, one, confusion, two, for decision making based on time constraints and limited information, and three, the stupidity of people involved, because these are human processes and not all people are smart. Yeah, I mean, that's the reality of it, right? And if you look at the outcome, you know, the Russians did okay, but they didn't fare that brilliantly.

I mean, they sounded chaotic confused. They hit their own ships in the process. They couldn't, you know, they didn't have a lot of things prepared. Like, it's not a trap. If it was a trap, if it was a trap, then they would have been there ready waiting for them with all these things. I wouldn't have to be talking to each other to figure out what's on first or the second. I mean, all you have to do is look at the history of the Cold War and it's littered with, you know, exactly what you're talking about. people making split decisions with little to no information and everyone being very confused and very frightened all of the time.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. And then you ultimately hope that the cooler minds prevail and whatnot. And they tend to. More often than not, they tend to. When the context is there, that neither party really wants a much greater configuration or has a license to engage in it, then... then ultimately you end up having a dangerous crisis rather than a war. But what I was trying to say is that I didn't like looking at, you know,

the kind of short-term outcome of this conflict over the course of a couple of weeks. And to basically say that on the one hand, no, I don't think there's going to be any larger war between Russia and Ukraine added to the conflict that they're experiencing right now. On the other hand, we're understanding that events have. consequences and ripple effects. Those ripple effects lead the external actors involved to make choices. Those choices are structural choices.

They're choices that will have follow-on consequences. And some years down the line, they may be very consequential in a different crisis. And then only then will we be able to look back onto this moment and say that this was a pivotal moment that we'd let the certain decisions made that, you know, then had much greater consequences years from now. I think that's a really great note to end on. I got a, I got, do you need to hop on to the next thing. Thank you so much for talking to me. Okay, absolutely. Hey, thanks for having.

Thank you so much for tuning in. War College was created by me, Matthew Galt, and Jason, Jason Fields. Some of you may have noticed that Jason hasn't been around a whole lot lately, and I promise he'll be back to let us know what's going on soon. This is the last episode for the year. I'm going to run a rerun over the holidays next week, and we'll be back in 2019 to talk to Jason and explore the wide world of war. There's going to be some changes soon, but I promise they'll be for the better.