Romeo Squared

Defense with a Baltic edge

Ukraine

Russia challenges international law with Black Sea prohibition zones

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Over the last month we witnessed a massive Russian mobilization on the Ukrainian borders. The exact purpose of the show of force is still uncertain, but the immediate risk of war seems to be over as most of the soldiers are now back in their barracks. However, the closed areas in the Black Sea that Russia established remain in place.

There has been much confusion as to what exactly it is that Russia is doing with these zones. For example there are reports like this one saying that the Kerch Strait is closed for Ukrainian vessels, while others say that the Kerch Strait will stay open. So I thought it would be useful to look into the question.

What is Russia doing?

Russia has announced that from 24 April until 31 October 2021, the right to innocent passage of Russian territorial waters is suspended for foreign warships and other state ships in three defined zones in the Black Sea. The coordinates are listed on page 28 in the Russian navigational warnings 17/21.

I have marked the three zones in the image below. As can be seen, one of the zones covers the southern approaches to the Kerch Strait. This means that in practical terms the Kerch Strait is closed for Ukrainian warships and other government ships. The two other zones cover the westernmost and southernmost areas of Crimea.

Prohibited zones off Crimea
The areas that Russia says are closed for foreign warships and government vessels. Map from OpenSeaMap.org.

Innocent passage is defined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) articles 17-19. The gist is that all ships have the right to navigation through the territorial sea of another state. The passage must take place in a continuous and expeditious manner, and it is not allowed to engage in activities other than those related to the passage such as weapons practice or intelligence collection.

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Rumors of imminent Russian attacks on Ukraine are usually wrong

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Over Christmas there was much talk about an imminent Russian attack on Ukraine. Headlines described “perfect storm” conditions and Russia seeking to catch the West off guard while everyone was away on holidays.

Then Ukraine’s one month state of martial law expired as planned after the November 25 Kerch Strait incident, and the talks about a Russian invasion faded somewhat. After all, why would Ukraine reduce the alert state if a Russian attack was expected?

The speculations bordered on hysteria from the beginning. In this Newsweek article, for example, Christina Maza argues that Christmas is a distraction for the West that leaves an opportunity for Russia to attack Ukraine. Maza quotes former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst for saying that “Moscow likes to commit aggression when the world is not paying attention. It invaded Afghanistan during the Christmas season in 1979 and attacked Georgia during August vacation season”.

Herbst’s two examples hardly prove anything about Russian predilections for starting wars at particular points in time. In 1979 they invaded a Muslim country during Christmas, and in 2008 they engaged in a war during summer time. If anything, the Georgia war caught Russia off guard. It was initiated just after Putin had arrived to the Beijing Olympics when Georgian military forces engaged South Ossetia.

The notion that Russia needs to catch the West on Christmas vacation before attacking Ukraine is militarily nonsense. The West would not commit forces to the fight anyways, so delaying the Western reaction by a few days would not be a factor. To catch the Ukrainians off guard makes sense, but Christmas in Ukraine is not until 7 January.

It is puzzling that the Christmas argument could get so much attention in the news. Frankly, it reflects an overblown Western self-perception. We are just not important enough in this conflict to dictate anything for Russia about the timing of tactical events.

Will Russia attack Ukraine this winter? I don’t know. There certainly are tensions, and it may escalate into something larger. But as Michael Kofman points out, false alarms are often sounded in this conflict, and actual points of escalation are rarely predicted. The concern that there would be an increased likelihood of a Russian attack during the Western Christmas holidays was unfounded. However, as Kofman notes, a sizable artillery duel often takes place in January after the Orthodox Christmas. So that may be the event to look for.

Two Russian ships also collided when Ukrainian tug was rammed

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Michael Kofman on the incident where a Russian coastguard vessel rammed a Ukrainian tug close to the Kerch Strait earlier this week:

On approach they twice radioed the Russian FSB Border Guard of their intention, but did not receive a response confirming passage. Upon arriving at the strait they were told the waterway was closed for security reasons, though no international notice of closure was filed by Russia, i.e. it was closed just for Ukraine’s small trio of boats. Then Russia’s coast guard ordered them to cut engines. A series of maneuvers ensued outside the strait.

One of Russia’s larger patrol ships, the Don, struck Ukraine’s tugboat (which actually appeared to cut engines and sit still)

Then he struck his flanking partner, the Rubin-class patrol ship Izumrud. Russia’s border guard service didn’t upload any videos of this one, but we will have to imagine what it looked like on the basis of the hull damage.

Someone hit him really high, about the height of the Don patrol ship.

I did not notice that the two Russian ships collided. Judging by the photos on Kofman’s blog, Izumrud was hit hard.

It does seem likely that this could happen. The video that Russia has released of the collision with the Ukrainian tug hints at poor control. The directions from the commanding officer are sloppy. He changes orders in rapid pace, which is silly because the ship can’t respond that quickly. At one point he seems unaware that the rudder is already hard to port, and at another he orders the engine astern without stating how much. And some of his commands are not about ship controls at all but formulated as intended outcomes like “press him from starboard”. So even without all the cursing, this is far from a textbook example of how to run a bridge crew.

Ukraine adopts warship pennant number system from NATO

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Ukraine has adopted NATO’s standard system for numbering warships. This is the originally British pennant number system that most NATO countries use. By this system the number is preceded by a letter to identify the kind of ship (A = Auxiliary, F = Frigates or corvettes, P = Patrol vessels, M = Minelayers or mine hunters, L = Landing ships, etc.). That writes the Russian defense blog bmpd.ru with a link to ukrmilitary.com.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine made their own system of numbering warships whereby all numbers were preceded by the letter “U”. However, at a celebration in Odesa on 29 April 2018 it was noticed that some ships have changed numbers. Some patrol boats now show the letter “P”, and some auxiliary vessels have the letter “A”. The numbers themselves are unchanged, so only the letters are new.

This is a possible source of future confusion. The Ukrainian training vessels Chygyryn, Smila, and Nova Kakhovka have received the numbers A540, A541, and A542. Incidentally these are also the pennant numbers of the Danish royal yacht Dannebrog (A540), and the hydrographic surveying ships Birkholm (A541) and Fyrholm (A542).

NATO’s pennant number system was originally invented in the British Royal Navy in 1910. It was revised in 1948, and in 1954 it was adopted as a common system for the European NATO countries. However, it is not really a NATO standard. The United States, Canada, and some countries that became members after 1992 still use national systems.

Lessons for Western armies from the war in Ukraine

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Liam Collins has an interesting look at the lessons armies can learn from the war in Ukraine on the website of The Association of the United States Army.

He describes the war in Ukraine as “World War I with technology” – a kind of frozen situation where the greatest threats facing a Ukrainian soldier are snipers and Russian artillery, but where modern technology is applied in that process.

Collins identifies several things that armies can learn about fighting a near-pear adversary. Some of these are lessons that need to be relearned after almost a generation of counter-insurgency operations, and others are truly new.

The list includes:

  • Electronic warfare: Russia has deployed a range of EW technologies. Armies need to relearn to minimize radio transmissions, and tactical operation centers must run their antennas hundreds of meters away to avoid artillery fire. This will make communications much more complicated, and commanders will have to get comfortable with not knowing the status of their units at all times. Soldiers need to rely less on GPS, so skills related to navigation with a map and a compass will be important again.
  • Information operations: The West needs to get used to information operations again. 1 The fact that Russia has targeted individual soldiers and their families creates a new challenge in information operations.
  • Air superiority: We can no longer expect undisputed air superiority.
  • Camouflage: With the proliferation of UAVs, camouflage is essential for survival. A unit may find itself in a rain of artillery shells just minutes after being spotted with a drone.
  • Cyber: Russian hackers have been extremely active in Ukraine. The list of networks and technologies that have been penetrated is impressive. This is a challenge for an army which is used to sharing a lot of information on many different networks.
  • UAVs: Developments in UAV and counter-UAV technology will push the boundaries of our understanding of the concept of air superiority.
  • Dense urban terrain: The West needs to get better at managing urban warfare.

The article is well worth reading. It is the first piece in a recurring column that the Modern War Institute at West Point will make where they examine the implications of “modern war”.

  1. Collins seems to be of the opinion that the West has not conducted information operations since The Cold War. I think this is a problematic assumption. But I do agree that we largely stopped preparing our own societies against the information operations of our adversaries. ↩

Lessons from Ukraine’s decision to give up nuclear weapons

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Mariana Budjeryn and Polina Sinovets have an interesting look on Ukraine’s decision to give up their nuclear weapons in War on the Rocks.

The Soviet nuclear arsenal was distributed among Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Belarus and Kazakhstan quickly agreed to hand over their nuclear weapons to Russia, and after some hesitation Ukraine followed suit in 1994. This makes Ukraine an example of a successful nonproliferation effort, as in the end only one nuclear state emerged from the Soviet collapse.

Budjeryn and Sinovets identify three insights from Ukraine’s denuclearization that may be relevant in today’s nonproliferation debates.

  1. Don’t focus too much on supply-side drivers for nuclear acquisition: Ukraine inherited some nuclear weapons, but they were tied into the old Soviet command system, and it would take some work to develop an independent nuclear capability. Ukraine also inherited substantial know-how and the military-industrial capacity to complete such a project, but there just wasn’t the political will to choose to do so.
  2. Nuclear weapons are nice, but a good reputation is better: Ukraine aspired to become a part of the Western-led international order. If they had insisted on building a nuclear capacity, they would undoubtedly have been subject to sanctions and international isolation which would have been counterproductive to the country’s desire to become a liberal democracy. The lesson is that states not only relinquish nuclear weapons because they want to get or avoid something, but also because they want to become a certain kind of state. So if we want nonproliferation, we should not forget to encourage those voices in potential nuclear states who see the benefits of joining the international community.
  3. Not everyone thinks about nuclear weapons as a deterrent: Analysts in both America and Russia often become prisoners of the concepts and modes of thinking that are familiar to them. But traditional deterrence theory has difficulty explaining why anybody would renounce a nuclear option. For Ukraine’s leadership, the nuclear weapons were rather seen as an entitlement to a fair deal than as a deterrence. The military-industrial lobby focused on keeping the production lines busy, but it didn’t matter much whether the missiles were nuclear or conventional. And the military thinking in Ukraine did not support the idea of nuclear deterrence as a credible road ahead. Instead of focusing on nuclear weapons as a possible insurance against a conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian leadership saw nuclear weapons as inapplicable in those kinds of conflict that could arise.

Finally, Budjeryn and Sinovets conclude that future nonproliferation deals will be much more expensive than with Ukraine. For any prospective nuclear state, it is hard to look at Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas as anything but a violation of the security commitments that were pledged to Ukraine in exchange for denuclearization. So it must be expected that future deals will come at a higher cost and will require much more robust security commitments.

Book review: Near Abroad — Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus

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Title: Near Abroad — Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus
Author: Gerard Toal
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (2017)
ISBN-13: 978-0190253301

Near abroad cover

Gerard Toal has written an insightful book about the geopolitics of the former Soviet Union. Through case studies of South Ossetia and Ukraine, Toal unfolds the complexities of the geopolitical field and exposes prejudices on all sides.

Professor Gerard Toal is one of the prominent proponents of critical geopolitics. Through his career, he has contributed extensively to the development of this theoretical framework which places itself in opposition to more traditional schools of international relations theory like realism and liberalism.

His latest book, Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus, is not a book about the theoretical framework. Toal’s intention is to contribute to a scholarly understanding of the unfolding conflicts between Russia, its neighbors, and the West. He does this by examining the conflicts in South Ossetia and Ukraine which erupted into wars in 2008 and 2014 respectively.

…Continue reading

Ukraine’s military suffers from corruption

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In Ukraine, the military is suffering under corruption. Andrew Higgins has a good piece in The New York Times about the movement of large-scale corruption from the gas business to military procurement:

Nearly four years into a grinding war against rebels armed by Russia, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry proudly announced last month that it had improved its previously meager medical services for its wounded troops with the purchase and delivery of 100 new military ambulances.

Not mentioned, however, was that many of the ambulances had already broken down. Or that they had been sold to the military under a no-bid contract by an auto company owned by a senior official in charge of procurement for Ukraine’s armed forces. Or that the official, Oleg Gladkovskyi, is an old friend and business partner of Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko.

Russia has lost its economic leverage over Ukraine

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Nicu Popescu has written a great article for Carnegie Moscow Center about the future relationship between Russia and Ukraine.

“Those in Moscow who believe that all is not lost for Russia in Ukraine, citing the example of Georgia, which is gradually normalizing relations with Russia despite the 2008 war, are being overly optimistic. While the current animosity in Russian-Ukrainian relations will almost certainly cool down in a few years, the underlying foundation of that relationship has been fundamentally altered. Most crucially, Ukraine’s economic dependence on Russia has been decreasing — and with it, Russian leverage over its neighbor.”

This is an interesting point. The important thing is not how the conflict is hurting Russia’s economy, but how it is changing Ukraine’s.