Ukraine
The Ukrainian counter-offensive has begun. It has coincided with the at least partial collapse of the Nova Kakhovka Dam which has literally muddied the waters.
Ukraine’s generals are continuing to wrap their military plans in a dense fog of war. For weeks artillery barrages, drone strikes and the occasional incursive attack have been softening up the roughly 600-mile Russian defensive line. Then the attack started Tuesday with the war’s first night attacks on Wednesday and Thursday.
Given the length of the frontline, Russian troops are inevitably spread thinly. But at the same time they are well dug in. Moscow’s ground forces may be lacking but, according to the Royal United Services Institute, their army’s engineers are world class. They have constructed several lines of defense involving minefields, trenches, mini-fortresses and “dragon’s teeth” tank traps.
Ukraine’s main thrust appears to be aimed at the politically strategic town of Bakhmut and in the Zaporizhia Region. Detailed reports are being withheld but President Biden declared he was “optimistic” and Volodomyr Zelensky said he was in hourly contact with his generals.
There have been some reports that Ukrainian troops advanced a mile into the area around Bakhmut and a slightly greater distance near Zaporizhia. In the case of the latter, however, the Russians are believed to have beaten the Ukrainians back and regained most of the ground lost. It is too soon to declare any successes or failures by either side.
It is believed that the Ukrainian objective is to drive a 20-mile-wide corridor to either Melitopol or Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. This would sever the land bridge connecting Russia to the bulk of its forces in Crimea and, it is hoped at the very least, force Putin to the negotiating table.
According to Western experts, the apparent sabotage of the Nova Kakhovka Dam should be seen in the context of the Russian defensive effort. A sort of literal opposite of a scorched earth policy.
The road across the dam was one of the main intact links across the Dnieper River from Ukraine to the Russian-occupied eastern region. And the flooding downstream has tied up the Ukrainian military in rescuing thousands. It has also left 2,250 square miles of Ukrainian agricultural without vital irrigation water; poisoned drinking water with spilled sewage, oil and chemicals; and renewed fears about the safety of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant whose reactors were cooled by water from the reservoir created by the dam.
At the same time, however, the Russians have to deal with the problems of flooding on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. On top of that, the strategic Crimean Peninsula is almost completely dependent for drinking water on a canal which starts just north of the dam. This canal is running dry as reservoir levels drop.
Britain and China
Britain will host an AI summit – without China. This is one of the outcomes of this week’s Washington visit by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The exclusion and containment of China was one of the underlying themes that ran through the Biden-Sunak White House talks.
But first Artificial Intelligence. The summit will be held in London sometime in the autumn. It will involve all Western countries. Its purpose will be to establish international regulatory ground rules.
Britain is keen to take the lead in AI research and its regulation and implementation. It also wants that regulation to be as lax as possible in order to compete with the US and EU and repair its Brexit-damaged economy. “We are the natural country to lead the conversation,” declared Sunak after his talks with President Biden.
The Chinese will, of course, see their exclusion from any discussions on this all-embracing new technology as a continuation of the Anglo-Saxon community’s attempts to write the world’s rule book. They are right. And the trend is increasing in response to Chinese-led attempts to end Western dominance.
Sunak and Biden also agreed on further attempts to side line China. One is to establish a supply-chain pipeline that would bypass Chinese manufacturing. This would be coupled with increased interoperability in manufacturing and investment. This agreement could be London’s much sought after post-Brexit US-UK trade deal by the back door.
The Special Relationship took a major hit with Brexit, the Northern Ireland Protocol, Boris Johnson and the disastrous short-lived premiership of Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak is re-establishing the American pillar of British foreign policy, but at the expense of surrendering to America’s fear of China.
India
India has one of the largest railway systems in the world. To be precise it is the world’s fourth largest. The country’s railways also has one of the world’s worst safety records. The recent crash on the Coromandel Coast which killed 285 people is only the latest in a long grisly string of fatalities. Over the past ten years thousands have died on Indian railways.
The recent crash is an example of the reason why. It occurred as the result of antiquated safety measures clashing with high-profile sexy new train services.
The average speed of an Indian train is 20.8 miles per hour. The new high-speed Coromandel Express was travelling at 80-plus miles per hour when it collided with a stationary freight train because of a signal failure.
Railway experts have been arguing for years that the Indian signalling system needs to be upgraded and trains should be fitted with an anti-train collision system. To date only two percent of Indian trains are equipped with such a system and the signalling system is hopelessly antiquated.
Billions of dollars have, however, been invested in prestige high-speed trains which befits India’s image as a modern high-speed country. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to inaugurate a new such service just days after the Coromandel crash. He wisely cancelled the event.
The Balkans
The Balkans are warming up. They are not as hot as the 90s, but there are renewed signs of problems.
The centre of the difficulties is Kosovo. The tiny country is sandwiched between Serbia and Albania and its population is divided between ethnic Serbs (who are Orthodox Christians) and ethnic Albanians (Muslims).
For years Kosovo was part of Greater Serbia and in fact, Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic recently wrote: “Kosovo is our cradle, our stronghold, centre of the most important things for our country.” Then in 2008, Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia and has so far been recognised by nearly 100 countries. It has not been recognised by Serbia, Russia, China and five EU countries.
Most of the ethnic Serbs are located in northern Kosovo. Last month, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti (an ethnic Albanian) called snap local elections in the area. The turnout was an appalling 3.47 percent of the electorate and, not surprisingly, all of the officials elected were ethnic Albanians.
Despite the obvious issues, Kurti decided to recognise the result and riot police had to be called in to install the new mayors and their staffs in their offices. Forty NATO peacekeepers were injured in the subsequent riots. .
Kurti and Serbian counterpart, President Aleksandr Vucic have accused each other of stirring up troubles. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has criticised Kurti for a lack of judgment.
The problems of Kosovo might be dismissed as a little local difficulty if it were not for the wider geopolitical considerations. Historically, culturally and politically, Serbia is closely allied with Russia. It is regarded as a “Southern Slav state,” and it was this close Russian-Serb alliance that was one of the causes of World War I.
Putin’s war in Ukraine has strong public and government support in Serbia. Belgrade and Moscow have recently signed an agreement to “consult” on foreign policy issues; Serbia has ignored Western sanctions; signed a new gas deal with Russia and doubled flights between Belgrade and Moscow.
According to recent opinion polls, Putin is the world leader that Serbs admire most and 95 percent of Serbs regard Russia as its “true ally.” Sixty-eight percent of Serbs say that NATO started the war in Ukraine and 82 percent oppose sanctions against Russia. Serbia has proven to be a loyal ally in Ukraine. It will expect Russia to be the same in Kosovo.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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10 Comments
There are few wars where the distinction between right and wrong are as clear as they are in the Russo-Ukraine war. Perhaps only the US/UK attack on Iraq was as blatantly wrong, but in that war it had been a resumption of hostilities following the ousting of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the first gulf war and US/UK public opinion was swayed to a great extent by the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.
Liberals need to be able to call out blatant aggression and a web of lies when it occurs and take a stand for the victims of aggression as Charlie Kennedy did over the invasion of Iraq.
Equally important is avoiding whataboutery. Western democracies have been guilty of hypocrisy and only paying lip service to the Universal declaration of human rights in pursuit of narrow self-interest. But two wrongs never make a right.
This week, to the disdain of many of its members, the UCU passed a motion at its congress in Edinburgh calling on the government to stop sending arms to Ukraine UCU sparks row with call to stop sending arms to Ukraine 29th May
Russian state propagandists immediately jumped on the news calling for active Russian encouragement of dissension in the ranks of UK trade unionists on that basis that the cost of supporting Ukraine was being met by suppression of their wages. The opposition of British trade unionists to UK government material support to White Russians in the civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution was cited as a precedent.
“Equally important is avoiding whataboutery. Western democracies have been guilty of hypocrisy and only paying lip service to the Universal declaration of human rights in pursuit of narrow self-interest. But two wrongs never make a right”
Until that time happens – Western Liberal governments will have no credibility whatsoever…
How is it that China is accepted as a trading partner but not acceptable as a discussion partner?
Might promoting peace talks between Russia and Ukraine help everyone?
Steve, ‘might promoting peace talks between Russia and Ukraine help everyone?’
YES. The party should support the POPE in bringing this crazy war to an end.
Recently the Pope saw both sides of the war. He declared the war is driven by the interests of several ‘empires’ and not just Russia
The pontiff added: ‘On the second day of the war I went to the Russian embassy at the Holy See to say that I was willing to go to Moscow if Putin would give me a window to negotiate.
Lavrov wrote to me saying thank you but now is not the time. Putin knows I am available. But there are imperial interests there, not only of the Russian empire.’
The Pope has repeatedly called for an end to the war and denied being pro-Putin. However, he has previously suggested the invasion of Ukraine was ‘perhaps in some way provoked’.
In a conversation with editors of Jesuit media he also said the situation was not black and white and that the war was ‘perhaps in some way provoked’ by NATO.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11844067/Pope-declares-war-Ukraine-driven-interests-empires-not-just-Russia.html
Then Sunak told Zelensky that the UK would back Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. This confirms Putin’s fear and makes negotiation to end this tragic war ever less likely.
https://app.inews.co.uk/full_page_image/page-6-1446/content.html
Now NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg wants to expand NATO to Tokyo.
“There are few wars where the distinction between right and wrong are as clear as they are in the Russo-Ukraine war. ”
Possibly. But the history of international conflict is rarely about what we might perceive to be “right and wrong”. It does seem to be a rule of history that when Empires crumble, wars follow in their wake as the surviving and competing Empires seek to extend their own control. In this case, it was the demise of the former USSR, with the EU, and more generally NATO, seeking to extend their own influence.
There are conflicting accounts of what was actually agreed in the 90’s as the Russian Federation took over from the USSR. Probably they should have struck a harder bargain and demanded a UN guarantee over whatever what was unambiguously agreed. However, they didn’t. This has led to a conflict which could, in turn, lead to WW3.
It’s ironic that having loosened our selves from the EU, we now are destined to be constrained by American foreign policy at least as far as China is concerned. Jumping from one bloc to another is a dubious way to regain our sovereignty. We risk being throttled by both and I know which I’d prefer to be closer to.
@Peter Hirst
Not ironic – it was inevitable that Britain would be destined to play 2nd fiddle to the USA.
As Peter Martin says, when empires crumble wars follow as new challengers arise and/or the old hegemon seeks to reassert its dominance.
In this case the collapse of the USSR lead to a ‘unipolar moment’ for the US but the astonishing rise of China and renaissance of Russia has ended that moment. The US doesn’t like its loss of control and is attempting to reassert it.
The trouble for declining hegemons is that their decline is due to multiple deep-seated pathologies that they are typically blind to, while rising powers rise because they have effective and innovative leadership and learns from their mistakes. Brains beats brawn in the long run.
US/NATO convinced itself that Russia was a basket case, a view the MSM still promotes. In reality, Russia saw the danger and has been developing fast, developing a strong economy. Pictures of Russian cities from, say, 12 years ago show decay and dilapidation. Current views show new buildings, full shops, new cars on the road.
As for the military, in February 2022 quality was very patchy but has since been improving rapidly as dead wood is identified and cleared out. Some experts argue Russia now has the best military in the world. Some of their weapons systems are best in class and loss ratios are massively in Russia’s favour so, although fighting continues, they will soon be dictating terms.
Meanwhile even Goebbels would be impressed by the performance of the BBC and other MSM.
“what was unambiguously agreed” was recorded in the Budapest Memorandum signed at the OSCE conference in 1994, to provide security assurances by Russia, the US and UK (later joined by the other two P5 members China and France) relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
In return for these countries abandoning their nuclear arsenals to Russia, the signatories agreed the following guarantees:
1.Respect the signatory’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.
2. Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory.
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”.
5. Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory.
6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.
Since the Budapest memorandum 1994, relations between other ex-Soviet countries have been remarkably mutually respectful given their immense differences. Ukraine differs because it has been run by intensely Russsophobic factions since a US-sponsored coup put them into power. Some describe these factions as Neo-Nazi with much justification. Some are certainly militarised former football hooligans. Not a lovely lot.
The immediate result of the coup was a civil war in which the Ukrainian army killed around 12,000 ethnic Russians. Russia pushed very hard for a settlement whereby ethnic Russian Oblasts would become self-governing within Ukraine – an arrangement that was codified in the Minsk Agreements, guaranteed by France & Germany.
Macron and Merkel (German Chancellor at the time) have since admitted that they had no intention of honouring those agreements and that it was all about buying time for Ukraine to build its military.
As for the US, I am old enough to remember the Iraq war, promoted with sexed-up dossiers and a tidal wave of stories about non-existent WMD etc. Has the leopard really changed its spots because unless there is convincing evidence that it has, Russia had every reason to b alarmed. It is an existential risk for them and there is abundant evidence – just not reported by the MSM.
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/ptgsxtcrx525gxk8a5rlnerc5sr4yz