Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 10 September 2023. © Richard Kemp

Time is running out for Ukraine. After 18 months of war, it is no longer a question of if the Western alliance will falter, but when. Since the start, despite making many of the right noises and supplying some military hardware, France and Germany, in particular, have been reluctant partners. Their leaders have often seemed more concerned with finding an ‘off-ramp’ for Vladimir Putin than ejecting his forces from Ukraine. As well as dependency on Russian energy, a pacifist instinct among Western European political classes has led to neglect of their armed forces and a corresponding fear of escalation.

As the provider of the lion’s share of backing for Ukraine, it is the US calling the shots in this war. Yet, since the earliest days, President Biden, too, has been dragging his heels, giving just about enough military assistance to keep Ukraine fighting, but intentionally not enough to enable a victory.

Like his Western European allies, Biden has been successfully deterred by Putin’s empty threats of widening the war. Faint-hearted concerns over provoking Putin explains his failure to provide urgently-needed weapons, including combat planes and long-range missiles, and for his obstinate resistance against Nato membership for Ukraine.

Now, polls in both Europe and the US show public support for military aid to Kyiv dropping away, with one recent survey indicating that less than 50 per cent of Americans are in favour of additional funding. This at least partially reflects sluggish progress in Ukraine’s counter-offensive, which has seen only limited gains so far.

Western military analysts and the media built expectations that, this summer, Kyiv would repeat its striking victories of last autumn at Kharkiv and Kherson. Now, people are wondering how much bang Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 5 September 2023. © Richard Kemp

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s planned meeting with Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, as revealed by US intelligence, gives us a new insight into Russia’s strategy in Ukraine as well as a warning of wider dangers for the world.

As Kyiv’s offensive wears on into its fourth month, with only limited success and a few Russian counter attacks, it is becoming clear that Moscow’s plan may be to allow Ukraine to exhaust its men, tanks, shells and missiles against the Surovikin Line’s hardest edge. The thinking could be that, once Ukraine’s Western equipped and trained manoeuvre forces have been ground down, Russia will then be able to launch its own major offensive, perhaps as early as January.

After almost two years of fighting that has been compared more to the First World War than the Second, this plan is reminiscent of the Germans’ Kaiserschlacht, the spring offensive which began in March 1918 and drove the allies back, seizing more territory than had been taken by either side in the preceding four years of war. This was achieved by the Germans bleeding the enemy dry while building massive reserves of men and munitions behind the lines, ready to unleash a devastating assault not unlike what the British aimed for, but failed to achieve, during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

The problem for Putin is that, as he seeks to grind down Ukrainian forces, he is expending vast quantities of ammunition, especially artillery shells and ballistic missiles, and very large numbers of tanks. While Russia has a greater volume of military industrial production than much of the West, and continues to mobilise tens of thousands of men each quarter on a rolling basis, its core supplies remain inadequate for the level of expenditure required for a major new offensive.

That is where Pyongyang could come in. North Korea has been sending large quantities of shells, rockets and missiles to Russia for Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2023. © Richard Kemp

‘Enlargement [of the European Union] is no longer a dream,’ said Charles Michel, president of the European Council, in Slovenia this week. ‘It is time to move forward.’ It is rare I find myself agreeing with a Brussels bureaucrat, but on this he is absolutely right: the EU should be bold and accept new members by 2030. And Ukraine should be chief among them.

Yet, as Mr Michel must know, it is a false hope. The chances of the EU admitting a country the size of Ukraine or any of the other candidates further east, such as Moldova, is a fantasy, and for two reasons: the consequences for France and Germany’s power within the bloc, and the sheer financial cost for an organisation not known for its open-hearted charity.

Let’s consider the economic impact first. Were it to join, Ukraine would be the poorest member of the EU by some margin, with a per capita income half of that of Bulgaria. Taking into account the economic damage sustained from Putin’s war and the astronomic costs of post-war reconstruction, Ukraine would suck in eye-watering quantities of the EU’s development aid spending, already around one quarter of the total budget.

Then there is the EU’s largest budgetary item: agricultural subsidies. With 55 per cent of its land used for arable farming, Ukraine has one of the largest agricultural sectors in Europe and its farmers would be entitled to a huge slice of Common Agricultural Policy cash – all presumably at the expense of France, which receives the largest share of all member states.

Ukrainian membership would also very likely deprive funds from other poorer members: Romania, Hungary, Greece and Poland chief among them. Some current net beneficiaries like Czechia and Portugal would likely become net contributors overnight. To reduce some of the impact, the richest countries, such as France and Germany, would have no choice other than to dramatically step up Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 25 August 2023. © Richard Kemp

Those predicting the decline of Russian influence in Africa after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s suspected assassination could not be more wrong. Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, is right to think that, under Putin’s direct control, Wagner will become even more effective – and more dangerous. He was talking about the threat in Eastern Europe, but the same applies elsewhere in the world, especially Africa where Wagner has fuelled instability, bolstered authoritarian regimes and plundered natural resources.

We don’t yet know how Wagner will be restructured or led in the post-Prigozhin world, but those are second order questions. The most important fact is that the group’s malignant political, military and economic activities will undoubtedly endure. They are far too valuable for Moscow to allow them to wither, given the group’s ability to insert itself in key strategic regions and fuel anti-Western sentiment. To see how effective this has been, just look at the influence they have over the government of Mali.

As commercial contractors, Wagner fighters are able to project Russian military force where its open use would be politically impossible. Economically, too, the group is crucial, generating huge revenues for the Kremlin war chest from gold, diamonds and other minerals, often smuggled out of Africa to evade Western sanctions.

As the war wears on, Moscow will need not only to maintain these activities but also expand them, and getting rid of Prigozhin may have helped to enable that. It removes a man who had become too powerful and allows Putin to secure greater loyalty from African governments that he maintains in power with the help of Russian mercenary services. That Prigozhin, even after the aborted coup, was allowed to meet national leaders and diplomats at last month’s Africa-Russia summit in St Petersburg is a testament how seriously the Kremlin takes this matter.

In many cases, African leaders are firmly locked in to their proxy relationships with Russia, whoever is in charge. An adviser to President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Continue reading →

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 19 August 2023. © Richard Kemp

Nato appears to have abandoned hopes of a Ukrainian victory. Speaking in Norway, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff, Stian Jenssen, said that a peace deal might involve Kyiv ceding territory to Russia in return for Nato membership.

His comments sparked fury in Ukraine, and rightly so. While Jenssen later apologised for the way he had expressed his views, he did not retract them. Stoltenberg’s subsequent insistence that peace talks will happen on Kyiv’s terms will not have quashed suspicions that Jenssen has revealed how the West really sees the war.

A recent US intelligence assessment indicated that Kyiv’s counteroffensive will fail to achieve its objective of cutting Russia’s land corridor to Crimea. The gloomy conclusion drawn by some is that despite ongoing offensives by both Russia and Ukraine, neither side will make gains of strategic significance.

The answer to this apparent stalemate is not to pressure Ukraine into conceding Russian annexation of its land, but to change the facts on the ground. That can only be done by redoubling efforts to supply Kyiv with sufficient combat resources to drive Russia out, if not this year then next.

Yet two years after the ignominious retreat from Afghanistan, the West seems again to be on the brink of embracing defeat. A peace deal on these terms would mean victory for Russia and defeat for Ukraine. How could surrendering territory to the aggressor be anything else?

We must instead give Kyiv the support that we have failed to provide so far. The latest reports from Washington tell us nothing new. They only confirm identical assessments made in February, which predicted that shortfalls in equipment and force strength would lead to the failure of the counteroffensive. Continue reading →

Article published by Ynetnews.com, 11 August 2023. © Richard Kemp

Iran is clearly Israel’s number one security threat — but it may come as a surprise that it is also Britain’s. With its nuclear weapons program and network of terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Judea and Samaria and elsewhere, the danger from Tehran has long been understood in Israel.

Now the Sunday Times has revealed that UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman believes Iran to be the biggest threat to Britain’s national security. Even more so, it seems, than the growing hostility from Russia since the UK so strongly backed Ukraine following Putin’s invasion last year.

In February, the Metropolitan Police Service, Britain’s policing lead on counterterrorism, reported that 15 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) terrorist plots against Iranian dissidents and British citizens had been identified in the UK during the previous year. Braverman believes the IRGC is stepping up its activities even further, including attempts to recruit organised crime gangs to target regime opponents.

Iran’s terrorist targeting of the UK and British interests elsewhere goes way back. Several years ago, when I worked in British intelligence, we knew that IRGC cells in the UK were actively laying the groundwork for terrorist attacks on our own soil, as well as elsewhere in Europe, both against dissidents and to be launched in the event of a major US or Israeli attack against the Iranian nuclear programme.

In 2015, Israeli intelligence enabled British security agencies to disrupt a bomb factory in north-west London, including three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, that had been set up by Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah under the direction of the IRGC. Turned into explosives this material would have been enough to kill hundreds of people. During the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the IRGC and its proxies killed large numbers of British soldiers as well as over 1,000 American and allied troops. Continue reading →

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

While all eyes are on the land war in Ukraine, the greater strategic prize for Kyiv could well be found in the war at sea – something quite remarkable for a country without a conventional navy. In two days, two major Russian ships have been hit by maritime attack drones, both operating in the vicinity of Novorossiysk, Russia’s main Black Sea oil port which exports 600,000 barrels a day.

They illustrate both Russia’s vulnerability at sea and the potential opportunity to inflict severe economic damage on Moscow. This was particularly true of the attack on the oil tanker Sig, thought to have been sailing to Feodosia on the Crimean coast to load a cargo of jet fuel. Damaging or even sinking vessels like the Sig and the Olenegorsky Gornyak will have an impact on Russian military logistics, but the consequences go well beyond that.

Just hours before the Sig was hit, the Ukrainian State Hydrographic Office issued a warning that the whole of Russia’s Black Sea coast, from Taman to Sochi, was now a ‘war risk’ zone to all ships. That followed a declaration from Ukraine’s ministry of defence in July that all vessels heading to Russian controlled ports on the Black Sea may be treated as carrying military cargo.

Perhaps that was considered rhetorical payback for Moscow’s threats against shipping headed to Ukrainian seaports. But backed up by the two drone strikes in a few days – with perhaps more to follow – the latest warning could be enough to deter many civilian cargo vessels from plying to any port in the designated area, inflicting a severe shock on Russia’s economy.

To understand the extent of this threat to Moscow, just follow the oil exports. They have become the lifeblood of Russian government revenues. The oil trade – mainly to China and India – generates the foreign currency needed to keep the rouble in equilibrium. And for all the talk of Russian pipelines, Putin is still reliant on Black Sea Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2023. © Richard Kemp

ime is not on the side of the Ukrainian armed forces in their long-running counter-offensive. They are battling not just against the strongest Russian defences but also the clocks of eastern European weather and US electoral politics.

Despite frustration at the slow pace of Ukraine’s advance, no one can question the need for extensive ‘battlefield shaping’, in military language, before attempting to break through the heavily defended Surovikin line and striking deep into Russian controlled territory. After all, before attacking into Iraq in 1991, the US-led coalition conducted a shaping air campaign that lasted almost as long as the Ukrainian advance has so far.

Denied any comparable ability to soften up enemy defences with airpower, Ukraine’s preparation has had to rely on reconnaissance in force, missiles and artillery to whittle down front line positions and hit headquarters and supply lines while probing for weaknesses to exploit with ground forces. Now it looks like the Ukrainians have identified the most favourable axis of attack, from south of Zaporizhia towards Melitopol, and they seem to be committing elements of the Nato-equipped and trained 10th Operational Corps. Of the various options, that would be the most productive, potentially enabling Kyiv to break Russia’s land corridor from the east, isolating Crimea and cutting off forces in the west of the country.

But if and when Ukrainian troops succeed in smashing through the first line of defences – which they have not yet achieved – the road ahead will be very long and very bloody. They face mile after mile of obstacles including tank traps, barbed wire and minefields, plus dug-in infantry, pillboxes, machine guns, tanks, artillery fire, combat planes, attack helicopters, drones and missiles.

War is more unpredictable than any other human activity, and no one, not even those directing events in Kyiv or Moscow, can possibly Continue reading →