The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - And Now We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Program (Ukraine War Updates) || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Despite all the hullabaloo about the not-coup in Russia over the weekend, this assessment that we had initially planned to publish still holds true for the tactical situation in Ukraine...as well as some of the strategic implications with the Russians. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/and-now-we-return-to-our-regularly-scheduled-program

Hey, everybody, Peter Zine here. It's the 23rd of June coming to you from Iowa and my parents, where I'm in town for a birthday, so I'm here on the front porch talking about Ukraine, because why the hell not? There have been a lot of reports over the course of the last week about how the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not going particularly well. I'd be lying if I would to say that that is a thought that hasn't occurred to me, but I've always tried to step back and not use tactical developments to inform strategic discussions. because there's the whole thog of war thing going on. The Ukrainians are keeping mum about a lot of the details, whereas the Russians are just flat out lying, and no one really has an accurate picture of what's actually going on on the various fronts.

That's said, we're now well into the third week of the conflict, and the Ukrainians haven't achieved any sort of breakthrough. There's two main lines of defense that the Russians are trying to hold. The first is a series of minefields, And the second is a series of more strategic defensive emplacements like dragons teeth and trenches. And the Ukrainians haven't really been able to get past the minefields to get to the real defenses yet. And what that means is they've just kind of been balked down in a traditional fighting. And because the Russians have an order of magnitude more industrial plan to reserves

and at least a factor of three more population, any battle in which the Ukrainians are duking a mono, Amano is not one that they're going to do well. In fact, any battle where the Ukrainians only kill three times as many Russians as they lose in their own troops is a battle they've lost. So instead of seeing the dramatic breakthroughs that we saw in Kirsten and Kharkiv last summer, it's been a slug fest and it hasn't gone well. That said, a couple things. Number one, we're still early in the offensive.

They're still probing for weaknesses. They're still going after command and control. And then second, in the last 96 hours, a few things have changed. First of all, three, four days ago, Ukrainians shifted from using their missiles to target command and control systems to going after ammo dumps. And you would do that when you're getting to the next phase of the operation. You feel like you've broken up their ability to react, and now you're trying to not just to trip their forces,

but make sure that the forces cannot actually get meaningful supplies. But the real issue happened with the morning of Thursday, the 22nd of June, when the Ukraine has put some serious holes in a few supply bridges that are critical for Russian forces. And to understand the significance of that targeting shift, we need to look at a few maps. Here's our first map of the Ukrainian space, nothing too exciting here. The red line is roughly where the front is. The Russians occupy the territory to the east and south of that line, and the yellow bars are where the Ukrainians have put their primary thrusts.

Now, the one on the left there, that's the Zaparneeds the front. The Ukrainians have been expected to go in that direction since the very beginning of this conflict. Because if they can push down to the Sea of Azab, they can basically isolate the entirety of the southwestern front and Crimea. Because not only would there no longer be a land bridge between Russia proper and Crimea, but the Ukrainians would be able to target the Kerch-Straight bridge directly. But they've had more success going further into the east because there are fewer defensive works. But still, in all these cases, you're talking about advances in the single digits of kilometers. No sort of strategic breakthrough where mobile Russian forces, excuse me, where mobile Ukrainian forces and get in behind the Russians and isolate them and break them up and enforce strategic retreats and routes.

Okay, here's a zoom in on Ukraine. The single most important thing here is, of course, the Kerch Bridge. An attack, unclaimed attack, we don't really know who did it, but either of the Americans, the Ukrainians, took out. one of the spans of the Kerch Bridge last summer. Now, the Kerch Bridge has three lines to it. Two two-lane road connections and one rail connection. The Ukrainians, Americans, whoever it happened to be, were able to take out one of those two-lane road connections

and start a series of fires on a rail car that was going by on the rail bridge at that time, which warped the bridge and made it impossible. to handle cargo. So no more trains in and out of Crimea from this route, and he used to be the primary route, and only two of the four road lanes. So everything has to go on truck, and when they do have convoys coming or going, they have to shut it down to other traffic. So that was a big hit, and it forced the Russians to shift their supply route over to this area, to the land connections that go into Crimea. So let's zoom in there. Now, first thing to understand about this area is a lot of this is not land. This entire zone here is a series of brackish lakes, which obviously you're not

going to be running cargo across. In fact, there's only really two ways to cross. On the left, you've got the proper land connection, which is an all-land route that goes through southern Ukraine. It is the furthest connection from the front. It's not that the infrastructure there doesn't work. It's just that it's not great. However, if you, you go to the yellow era, the one further to the right to the east, you're looking at the Chanhar crossing. Now, Chanhar has a rail connection and a road connection. And it's these connections that the Ukrainians put some holes in. They use a special kind of warhead, which I'm not going to go into detail because it's not my focus, but it blew all the way

through the concrete, blew all the way through the rebar, put a giant hole right in the middle of the thing. You're not taking trucks across that. You're not taking rail across that until such time as these are repaired. Repair it is not beyond the capacity of the Russians, but keep in mind that it's been months since Kirch had that hole put at it and the rail connection there has still not been rebuilt. One of the many, many downsides of the Soviet dissolution is we've had a simultaneous education crisis

and demographic crisis now decades in progress. The technical education system in Russia collapsed back in the 80s, and their demographics, they've had a death rate that's been higher, than the birth rate for 30 years now, which means that the youngest suite of people who have the full skill set to be technical experts, they're in their 50s right now. They'll turn 60 this year on average.

They still haven't replaced the span and courage. They still haven't replaced the rail system. There's a question as to whether they can. Now, the Chonar Crossing is not nearly sophisticated. Instead of being a high elevated suspension bridge, it's a low block bridge, it's not blocking navigation or anything. This is not a navigable waterway system. They probably can do it.

But it's going to take them a few weeks, which means in the meantime, any cargo going to and from Ukraine has to come from that western bridge. And this means that the soldiers in Ukraine, the Russian soldiers in occupied Ukraine, are facing a double bind. Back to this map.

Notice the city of Miriel. Basically, any Russian, troops that are west of that zone have basically been cut off from supplies that come from Russia proper off in the east. They got everything they needed from Crimea, which is, you know, more difficult to support now. And now with the China Bridge offline, it's going to take about a week for the Russians to reroute everything further west to then cross a larger distant chunk of territory. That would suggest to me that the Ukrainians are as ready as they can possibly be to make a push in that direction. Now, coming down,

from Zepernicia, it doesn't really matter where they penetrate as long as they reach the Sea of Azab. It could be east of Miripal, it could be west of Militopol, it could be anywhere in between, any way that they can cut that land bridge forever and then have the range in order to hit the remains of the Kerch Bridge direct. If we're going to see an attack, if this counteroffensive is going to really manifest as something, these are exactly the circumstances you would expect the Ukrainians to shape, and now they've done it. And since there's going to be a window before the Russians can redirect supplies further to the west,

the troops in the Melitopol area are now completely cut off, vulnerable. They're not going to get reinforcements. They're not going to get fuel. They're not going to get artillery shells and ammo. Now would be the time. Now, that's the strategic picture that we're seeing right now. There is also something going on with the politics. Also in the 22nd, 22nd was a big day.

Senators Blumenthal from Connecticut and Graham from South Carolina, Democrat and a Republican, put out a joint resolution that they're trying to get passed that would basically say that any Russian use or Belarusian use directly or indirectly through the proxies of a strategic nuclear weapon, a tactical nuclear weapon, or taking actions that by omission or commission cause a meltdown at a nuclear power plant would be considered an active war under Article 5 of NATO. The Russians have, we know from satellite photos, mind the coolant problem of the Zabranesza power plants. Those fuckers.

Anyway, the idea is to warn not just Putin, but the people who would get the orders, that if they follow those orders, that they're not just simply going to be causing a nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine proper, but it will be perceived by the United States and its allies as an act of war, and they will be choosing to initiate a direct military conflict with the United States and the natural alliance. Now, interpretation of Article 5 is an executive privilege.

It is not something Congress can really put their fingers in. In addition, a joint resolution is just that. It's a resolution. It's not a law. It's a statement of intent. So there's no legal weight here. Also, Article 5 is something that will be decided among the allies. not by the United States unilaterally.

So this is probably not the right tool to affect the right tool for the job. But I'm very glad that the two senators have started the conversation because the Russians have long considered for several years that Crimea is an integral part of their own territory. They annexed it back in 2014.

And so anything that pushes towards Crimea, you're crossing a gray zone where the Russians might actually consider that to be a real war, where the use of defensive nuclear weapons might be warranted. Now, that is not accepted in the United States or in the West. In fact, it's not accepted in China. It's not accepted by Ortega in Nicaragua.

No country in the world has recognized the annexation of Crimea by the Russians. In fact, aside from some foreign pro-Russian shills like Tucker Carlson, no one in the United States considers Crimea to be Russian territory. But it doesn't matter what we think. It matters what the Russians think and whether or not they're going to treat crime. like Moscow, and there's only one way to find out. In addition, if the Ukrainians are going to win this war, eventually they're going to have to cross the international border, not just into Crimea, but into Russia proper, and take out some

logistical hubs that are in Russian territory. That is clearly crossing into what is internationally recognized Russian space. And again, the defensive nuclear question comes into play. So while this isn't the right tool for the job that the senators have picked up, I'm very happy that they have decided to at least start the conversation in the country about something we haven't had a conversation on since the 1980s. Strategic nuclear policy vis-a-vis the Russians. This is a conversation we have to have.

And this is going to sound really weird, but we probably have the best president in 30 years to have that conversation. Say what you will about Biden, and there is a lot to say. He was there as an old man when the first night. nuclear weapon was detonated back in 1945. 44, 40s. So he's seen the entire arc of nuclear policy in this country. It gives him a unique

perspective that we're going to need in the months to come. So things have broken loose. It looks like we're on the verge of seeing the real counter-refundsive, or at least if it's going to happen, it's going to happen now. And we're at the dawn of a new stage of the conflict where we need to be thinking about some much deeper questions. All right. That's it for me. Everybody take care.

See you next time.