Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 22 April 2023. © Richard Kemp

On Wednesday the European Parliament voted to set up a new force of 5,000 troops to allow the EU to ‘respond decisively … in order to assert itself as a credible security and defense actor’. The plan is to start exercising this year and have full operational capability by 2025.

This amounts to nothing more than another military white elephant. Even its name – the Rapid Deployment Capability – smacks of bureaucratic impotence. And the very idea is absurd: given the wide array of national self-interests and often fundamentally diverging geopolitical priorities among member nations, its deployment would inevitably be met with opposition by one country or another, even if – as is planned – there was no need for agreement from all members. You just have to look at the dithering and division in the EU when Putin invaded Ukraine, which was a black and white case compared to pretty much any future conflict scenario: Germany initially sent only combat helmets to help Kyiv in its hour of need, and for months vetoed plans by other countries to donate German-manufactured tanks and other lethal weapons. So much for responding decisively.

Underlining the nonsensical thinking behind this plan, Brussels has actually had such a force at its disposal since 2007, the EU Battlegroups, each 1,500 strong and intended for exactly the same purpose as is now proposed. But they have never once been used despite several compelling opportunities to do so over those years. As the EU itself admits: ‘Issues relating to political will, usability, and financial solidarity have prevented them from being deployed.’

This latest Brussels vanity project could be dismissed as just another waste of EU taxpayers’ money, but it has much more serious consequences. It is the latest of many attempts to create an EU army through the back door. That would be a disaster: centrally controlled, languid, neutered by 1,001 national caveats and pulled in a hundred different directions. Had an EU army been responsible for arming and training Kyiv’s forces then Ukraine would have collapsed. Continue reading →

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 16 April 2023. © Richard Kemp

With more than 50 civilians and many more military killed already in the power struggle between rival governing factions that erupted in Sudan over the weekend, there is no good side in this battle. But as with so many other conflicts in Africa and the Middle East in recent years, one thing we do know is that Russian troublemakers are not far from the action.

The fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country was triggered by clashes between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese armed forces, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or ‘Hemedti’ for short. Burhan and Hemedti staged a coup in 2021, seizing power from the transitional council put in place following the ousting of the Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir. Hemedti is commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group formed from the Janjaweed militias that helped conduct, under Bashir, the Darfur genocide, which is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people in western Sudan.

Rather unsurprisingly, the RSF has been linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, which has reportedly helped train and equip them. Wagner is believed to have been brought into Sudan by Bashir to help shore up his faltering regime in 2017, following a meeting with Putin in which Bashir promised to make the country Russia’s ‘key to Africa’. Among his plans was a Red Sea base for the Russian navy at Port Sudan, a Wagner-supported project.

Ever since, Wagner has supplied large quantities of weapons and equipment to Sudan, including military trucks, amphibious vehicles and two transport helicopters. And after the downfall of Bashir, the Russian mercenary group realigned with Burhan and especially Hemedti. It continues to operate the Meroe Gold company, which reportedly exploits Sudan’s mines and smuggles vast quantities of gold out of the country, supposedly lining Prigozhin’s pockets and denying much-needed revenue to Sudan. For Putin, this would help efforts to evade Western sanctions, allowing him to fuel his illegal war in Ukraine. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2023. © Richard Kemp

President Biden’s visit to Ireland this week gifts the country an opportunity to sell itself to the world. Pomp, pubs and progressive values are the order of the day; a nation portraying itself as historically oppressed yet forward-thinking and open for business. Through such spin, it is inviting us to just ignore its woeful contributions to Western defence, the elephant in the room given the current war in Europe.

While Biden spoke with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar about the conflict in Ukraine, there is no evidence the President asked for anything tangible to support the Ukrainian war effort. When was the last time an American president included Ireland in their vocal – and justified – criticism of Europe for slacking on its commitments? The fact is, with so many American voters claiming Irish heritage, Ireland gets a free pass, something it shamelessly exploits.

Even if Biden had asked for more military support from Dublin, he’d have been wasting his time. The Irish cupboard is bare. Yes, they have provided some humanitarian aid to Ukraine, including seed potatoes, but their military commitment is limited to an agreement to assign ‘up to 30’ soldiers to help train Ukrainian troops in de-mining. By percentage of GDP, Dublin has the lowest defence spend of all 27 EU members – just 0.3 per cent.Former Foreign Minister Simon Coveney admitted this is ‘roughly a quarter to a half of what other similar-sized countries in Europe spend’.

Ireland’s army is less than 8,000 strong. It has no combat planes and its navy has just mothballed two of six patrol vessels for lack of crew. It is neither capable of monitoring its own air space nor conducting subsurface maritime surveillance. A 2021 Irish government Commission on the Defence Forces damningly concluded that Ireland cannot ‘meaningfully defend’ its own territory.

Most of the country’s military capacity, such as it is, has been used not for self-defence but for international peacekeeping. Whilst valuable, and convenient for virtue-signalling, the dose of reality Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 4 April 2023. © Richard Kemp

Are we seeing the beginning of a Night of the Long Knives in Russia? In the summer of 1934, Hitler ordered the murder of leaders of the SA, a Nazi private militia that was running out of control and threatening his power. The apparent assassination of Maksim Fomin, aka Vladlen Tartarsky – a vocal pro-war critic of the Kremlin’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine and cheerleader for the Wagner Group of mercenaries – has been interpreted by some as a shot across the bows of Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin is sometimes spoken of as a potential successor to Putin and in recent months has frequently crossed swords with Putin’s inner circle, publicly alleging incompetence and even accusing defence minister Sergei Shoigu of treason. This appears to have rattled Putin as well as the military top brass to the extent that the army has been accused of deliberately and needlessly expending Wagner mercenaries’ lives and depriving them of ammunition in order to clip their wings and even get rid of them.

Now the UK Ministry of Defence reports that Russia is looking to sponsor and develop alternative private military companies (PMC) to replace Wagner in Ukraine. Wagner, with 30,000-50,000 fighters in the country, has been essential to Putin’s faltering war effort, undertaking missions the regular army wouldn’t do, and so the apparent moves against the group indicate just how great a threat Putin must believe Prigozhin poses.

Wagner will not be easy to replace. Aside from its activities in Ukraine, its web, entwined with Russian foreign and economic policy, extends from Syria to Africa, Europe to Latin America. It was fed and engorged by this war, and has arguably become too large to eradicate entirely.

Yet while Putin may be better off dispensing with private military outfits and the internal risks they represent, they bring him many benefits. For one, he knows that past Russian leaders have been Continue reading →

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 1 April 2023. © Richard Kemp

Last June – on the day the UN gave a Ukrainian civilian casualty count of 9,931 so far in Russia’s war – I sat at the UN Human Rights Council as the Russian ambassador excoriated Israel over its latest defensive operations in Gaza. Such unjust condemnation of Israel is common fare at the Human Rights Council and we are all used to the Kremlin’s hypocrisy, but how could the Russian Federation use the council as an international platform for its anti-Western bile, despite being suspended in April last year?

In the parody of international order that is the UN, that is no more surprising than Russia’s assumption yesterday of chair of the Security Council, despite its president being indicted for war crimes. It epitomises the failure of the UN, formed to bring world powers together to maintain international peace and security. There have been more wars in the 78 years since its founding than in the equivalent period beforehand. The Security Council has failed to put any kind of brake on nuclear proliferation, with Russia’s accomplice Iran now on the cusp of becoming a nuclear state. Its impact on the war in Ukraine, the most deadly in Europe since 1945, has been zero.

The danger of the Russian Security Council presidency is more in optics than reality. Foreign Minister Lavrov can use his temporary platform to grandstand, but the inbuilt impotence of the Security Council means he can do nothing to advance Russia’s cause. With the exception of China, the other permanent members are likely to show their contempt by downgrading diplomatic representation while Russia is in the chair. Lavrov’s lack of authority in the council reflects his country’s marginalisation. The successor to a superpower – albeit a malign one – is no longer even a great power.

Its economy is flatlining and its leader, through incompetence, is systematically dismantling an army that was once so powerful that half a million US troops were permanently stationed in Europe to counter it. Russia’s demographic turmoil has long been a nightmare Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 21 March 2023. © Richard Kemp

Images of Putin gripping his chair and squirming next to President Xi in Moscow have again fuelled speculation about his health. He was filmed limping during a visit to Crimea a few days ago and during a February meeting with Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko his leg was shaking uncontrollably. Since Putin invaded Ukraine last year, rumours of his physical well-being have been rife, with a range of theories from cancer to Parkinson’s.

This may amount to little more than wishful thinking that the man whose actions have led directly to the deaths of tens of thousands may be falling apart, and CIA Director William Burns said last year: ‘As far as we can tell, he’s entirely too healthy.’

But if we imagine, for a moment, that he is suffering from some serious affliction, then that would have big ramifications. For one, the immense stress that must press upon him could rapidly exacerbate his illness and directly affect his mental processes and judgement. Even if Burns is right, the demands of running a country in any circumstances are huge, and we’ve all seen the way many national leaders appear to age prematurely over their time in office.

The pressure cooker inside 70-year-old Putin’s head must sometimes reach bursting point after leading Russia for a quarter of a century, presiding over a war which has been going catastrophically wrong for the last year. Such a crushing burden would be tough enough for the leader of a democracy, but as ruler of the Russian autocracy Putin is well aware that his end could come in a violent death. Short of that, he will also know that he could face jail time following the arrest warrant for war crimes issued last week by the ICC. If he is deposed, it is possible a new regime in Moscow might hand him over as happened to Slobodan Milosevic in 2021.

All this will be playing on Putin’s mind, although his troubles could have been eased by a lifeline from Xi during his visit, perhaps with Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 7 March 2023. © Richard Kemp

A shocking video has been circulating in the last few days that appears to show a Ukrainian prisoner of war being gunned down by his Russian captors as he utters what he knows are the last words he will ever say: ‘Slava Ukraini’ – glory to Ukraine. This image of heroic defiance against appalling brutality should send a chilling message to Vladimir Putin after a year of butchery in Ukraine: you can murder and torture us all you like, but you cannot defeat our will to fight.

This defiance is the opposite of what Putin expected when his forces rolled into Ukraine last February. His ‘special military operation’ was not planned as a war at all: it was an armed, psychological action intended to instil fear, install a puppet regime, and bring the country back to heel. That’s why he attacked with too few forces to defeat a determined opponent.

Putin’s intelligence services, led by the FSB, successors to his own KGB, told him that Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome the invaders with open arms. Russia’s security services had been paid vast sums over many years to ensure that this would happen, and to position collaborators to take over the government and whip opponents into line (or do away with them).

Before the invasion, the FSB knew that they were on shaky ground, with sources giving them a very different picture. But how were they to explain that to the Kremlin after all the resources that had been ploughed into subverting Ukraine?

Indeed, it turned out Russia’s intelligence agencies were wrong on all counts. Collaborators in Kyiv and elsewhere did not deliver the goods. Woefully ill-prepared Russian forces encountered a level of resistance that took them by surprise, including subsequently in Russian-speaking areas where partisans have been fighting against them. And it was not only Russia that was left humbled by its initial intelligence failures. The assessment of US agencies, in an inversion of their over-confident predictions about Afghan forces’ ability Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2023. © Richard Kemp

As Moscow’s latest offensive in Ukraine slowly but bloodily cranks up, the next phase of this ghastly war has well and truly arrived. Contrary to expectations, the Ukrainians are bravely, and successfully, resisting the tens of thousands of fresh Russian recruits being thrown at them. Nevertheless, according to many Western observers, the chances of a total Russian collapse in the coming year are slim.

I am less certain; we could be surprised. Far from being cowed, Zelensky’s government is emboldened. Kyiv is openly preparing its own major thrust against Russian ground forces in the spring. Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy military intelligence chief, said this week that this counter-offensive will aim to ‘drive a wedge’ between Crimea and the Russian mainland. The Ukrainians are determined to, in his words, ‘liberate all occupied territories – including Crimea’.

Now, General Ben Hodges, former commander of US forces in Europe, has devised a strategy he believes would not only enable Ukraine to retake Crimea, but would precipitate a total Russian military implosion.

His suggestion is as follows: isolate the peninsula by precision strikes against the two land routes connecting it with Russian territory – the Kerch bridge and the corridor that runs along the Azov sea. Then follow up with a large-scale armoured drive towards the Azov, penetrating Russian defences north of Crimea, bringing rocket and artillery systems into closer range. Russian air, ground and naval forces in the peninsula would then be reduced by precision strike and bombardment, until the point when Ukrainian forces could launch a ground offensive along the Perekop Isthmus and into Crimea.

This concerted attack against the peninsula – isolating it, neutralising and inflicting severe damage against its military infrastructure Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2023. © Richard Kemp

When I first said we should send tanks and planes to Ukraine, I was told I was mad. Eventually, after much indecision and delay, Nato finally agreed to send tanks. But a year after the war began they’re still not there, and we’re now seeing the same heel-dragging over whether or not to supply jets. If we had seized the day months ago Ukraine would be in a totally different situation, likely taking fewer casualties and perhaps even in a position to have pre-empted Russia’s offensive rather than being forced into a very costly defence.

When this war started Western leaders made the same mistake as Putin, expecting that Ukraine would be defeated in short order. Many therefore calculated that big talk accompanied by modest action would be enough to show that they were on the right side. When Putin inevitably won, it would simply have been an unfortunate fact that Kyiv had been unable to withstand Russian might; the West had done all it could, and now it was time for the negotiations and concessions that its leaders were much more at home with.

Unfortunately for them, the Ukrainians had other ideas. But Russia’s unexpected battlefield failures led to another reason for procrastinating: fear of a cornered Putin lashing out with nuclear weapons, stoked of course by the Kremlin’s sabre-rattling threats. Added to that was the concern over Russia’s stranglehold on energy supplies. This was particularly pronounced in Berlin, which just weeks ago tried to excuse its hesitancy with nonsensical excuses about the history of sending tanks to the east.

Now, as we hit the first anniversary of the start of this terrible war, it seems clear that many leaders have still not learnt from the consequences of their reluctance to switch to war time thinking – something that really does require a significant step-change from the consensus, compromise and risk-aversion that has so dominated European politics since the end of the Cold War. Continue reading →