When the first big push of the new year unfolds, will battlefield outcomes lead to a putsch in Moscow that lets either Westernizers or ultra-nationalists end the war against Ukraine for the good of Russia?
Gerasimov’s appointment as theater commander likely advances two Kremlin efforts: an attempt to improve Russian command and control for a decisive military effort in 2023, and a political move to strengthen the Russian MoD against challenges from the Russian millbloggers and siloviki, such as Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, who have criticized the Kremlin’s conduct of the war.
This makes the stakes high, no? Putin can't change commanders forever and expect his supporters to blindly agree that the newest replacement is the one to turn things around. Gerasimov needs to produce results. Either Ukrainian success in a new counteroffensive or a Russian failure in their own renewed offensive to try to win the war could shake Moscow apart.
The Russian defeat in the war against Japan in 1904-05 shook Russia but that distant defeat on the frontier didn't topple the Russian Empire.
Does that suggest Russia's government would survive being shaken enough by defeat that it agrees to peace terms that recognize Ukraine's victory? Perhaps. But that defeat was far from European Russia unlike Ukraine which is within a good blitzkrieg advance away from Moscow. Could Russia admit defeat in those circumstances or would it have to fight on and risk even worse outcomes.
In 1917, larger Russian defeats against Germany led Russians to reject their czar. Nicholas II abdicated and a weak democratic-leaning government took control. But that radical change in government didn't end the war. The new government tried to continue the war. But even more Russian defeats and loss of territory shook apart that government and opened the way for a Bolsehvik revolution, a humiliating exit from the war, and subsequent civil war.
So defeat might destroy the Russian government. Yet a putsch by Russian nationalists unhappy with Putin's leadership in the Winter War of 2022 might see the war continue. They might see no choice with nationalists upset with Putin not for fighting the war, but for failing to do what it takes to win it.
It might take even more battlefield defeats to pressure the new Russian rulers--or even more ruthless rulers who replace the initial putsch leaders--to accept very favorable terms to Ukraine, perhaps even Crimea, to secure peace and allow the new regime to survive.
Or would those putsch leaders have the foresight to get out of the war quickly on bad but not severe terms to save Russia from that kind of potential chaos rather than double down on fighting to win?
Of course, a Ukrainian failure could have similar results in the opposite direction. Western backers may balk at continuing financial sacrifices to bolster Ukraine in a long war with shrinking hopes of Ukrainian battlefield victory.
And Ukrainians might decide that further sacrifice for a long struggle to regain more territory from Russian occupation is too much to ask from them any more. Ukrainians may demand new leaders who Russia will negotiate with.
Still, Ukraine has not failed and has not suffered enough to trigger either of those conditions. Ukraine will attack while Russia occupies Ukrainian territory. This seems like a deadline to complete a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south:
Russian occupation authorities continued efforts to restore the Kerch Strait Bridge. Russian occupation authorities announced on January 10 that Russian authorities laid the first new span of the west (left) road bridge. Occupation authorities claim that they plan to complete repairs to the road bridge by March 2023.
Will Ukraine attack before the bridge is repaired and Russian logistics improve? Can Ukraine be ready before that Russian window of vulnerability ends?
And will Ukraine strike first in the winter or try to blunt an expected Russian spring offensive? And is Russia going to strike in the spring or is it just a bluff to forestall a Ukrainian winter offensive?
The ground is finally freezing in Ukraine. We may find out soon who strikes first and who wins.
All wars end. I don't know how this one does.
UPDATE: Putin is pushing back against the Wagner Group's influence. I don't hear much about the Chechens as an independent force lately.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Is Putin's fate irrelevant to ending the war?
It may outlast him because at least two of his principal supporters — Wagner Group creator and commander Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev — are positioning themselves to succeed him. Both are eager to conquer Ukraine.
Possibly correct. Putin is on top of a pyramid of paranoid aggression.
But the eagerness may just be a lever to replace Putin. Once in office they might say Putin hid the dire straits the Russian ground forces are in, so the war must end to save the army and Mother Russia from his folly.
UPDATE: Can Putin afford to let these voices continue undermining him?
[Wagner Group's] Prigozhin and other prominent Russian nationalists such as Igor Girkin, a former Russian militant commander and prominent critical voice in the Russian milblogger information space, have been opening a new sector in the Russian information space where certain figures can criticize Putin and the highest echelons of the Russian government without any apparent retribution. Igor Girkin heavily implied that he would support the removal of Russian President Vladimir Putin from office in his most direct criticism of Putin to date on January 10, for example.
But can Putin afford to destroy them? This is just bizarre.
UPDATE (Thursday): The Russians are slowing grinding forward in the Donbas. Which isn't too shocking while Russia is willing to endure the casualties. Effectively giving prisoners death sentences as Wagner cannon fodder is one way to make enduring casualties easier.
My main question is whether the Ukrainians are withholding troops from the front to build a reserve for a counteroffensive. Or are the Russians successfully drawing Ukrainian reserves into the front by the seemingly pointless offensives in the Donbas?
UPDATE (Friday): I worry that too much hope is being placed on a relative handful of Western armored vehicles. Ukraine uses the same tanks Russia uses more effectively. Western tanks help. But aren't necessary. I'm disappointed in Ukraine's counteroffensive efforts thus war. I expected more battlefield success despite regaining significant territory. Delay means Russia gets the most precious commodity in war--time. Time to rebuild after initial war losses. I can only assume that notwithstanding Russia's open failures in the war, Russia damaged the Ukrainian military more than it appeared.
UPDATE (Saturday): Russia has had two seasonal recruit intake cycles plus a mobilization. But they have a lot to replace. And the Russian army wasn't that big before Russia invaded:
At the end of 2021 the Russian ground forces had about 400,000 men while the navy and air force each had about 150,000. About a third of air force personnel were paratroopers or air mobile infantry. The navy had about 12,000 marines, who guarded naval bases in peacetime. Right now that means the heavy Russian losses since the invasion began, and failure to mobilize many replacements, reduced the army to about 250,000 personnel. The airborne forces and marines also suffered heavy losses but more of them are still in service.
Just 250,000 in the army? Good Lord. That doesn't include other para-military ground forces, which in many cases have armored vehicles with "police" stenciled on them.
With casualties and discharges of draftees at the end of their service, how does Russia expand their ground forces? Even if they can find leaders and equipment for them? And find the personnel, facilities, and equipment to train them?
UPDATE (Sunday): American intelligence estimates Russia has suffered 188,000 casualties in their invasion (implying 47,000 dead) and has lost 2,000 tanks (destroyed or captured). Via ISW.
UPDATE: ISW thinks Ukraine's stubborn defenses of urban areas in the Donbas pays off both on the metric of military effect and in political terms where the citizens frown on abandoning cities to the invader.
UPDATE: Via ISW, divisions in the Russian defense establishment between pro-establishment and non-state military actors are more apparent. Russia's slow grind forward in parts of the Donbas inspire fierce battles to claim credit for the paltry gains made at high cost.
UPDATE: The failure of Ukraine's counteroffensives to really inflict battlefield defeats on Russia's ground forces led me to wonder if Russia hurt the Ukrainians more than I thought.
But I've come to demote that issue--without setting it aside--in favor of Ukraine learning an important lesson from its Kharkov and Kherson counteroffensives. Namely that those two attacks were too shallow, lacking the reserve forces to exploit attacks that pushed the Russians back.
I'm still uncertain whether Ukraine has those reserves already and we'll see a winter offensive; or whether Ukraine still needs to create more of that reserve, and is looking toward the spring. Although the spring has mud. So are we looking at summer, now?
Ukraine is giving Russia time. Normally that is a bad thing to do. Even if Ukraine is slowly gaining an advantage as time passes, Russia has more need of time to find some solution to its battlefield problems.
Russia might find a solution.
UPDATE: ISW thinks we've passed Peak Wagner Group. Still, his star could rise if the Russian ground forces endure a major defeat, no? And with Putin putting himself forward as directly in charge of the war, that would be dangerous for himself, wouldn't it?
NOTE: ISW updates continue here.
