Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 16 November 2022. © Richard Kemp

The missile strike in Poland that killed two people on Tuesday and triggered an emergency meeting of G7 leaders caused Western media and pundits to raise fears of an escalation in Russian aggression – and the outbreak of a larger war.

It soon became clear, though, that what happened was accidental and, although there have been some close calls, it is rare for major wars to start by accident.

The de-escalation of the Poland incident, however, does not mean fears of Ukraine exploding into a full-blown European conflict are unfounded. Alarm about the outbreak of World War Three was understandable. Indeed, we are closer to such an eventuality than many are prepared to admit.

Russia has already expanded this war, which started with a focus on military targets, by launching greatly intensified strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, most recently on Tuesday, with a barrage of around 100 missiles causing devastation in Ukraine as well as massive power outages in neighbouring Moldova.

The situation is increasingly fragile. Despite Russian setbacks, this is not the time for complacency.

The important question is: with Putin under immense pressure and desperate to regain the initiative, at what point might he decide to attack Nato weapons supplies entering the battle zone via Poland, which are so crucial to Ukraine’s combat power? Will he take military action against Nato surveillance planes, which play a pivotal role in providing the intelligence that helps keep Ukrainian forces fighting effectively? Will he initiate cyber attacks against Nato military capabilities involved in supporting Ukraine? Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2022. © Richard Kemp

Several months ago, the supply of combat planes to Ukraine seemed a step too far. A decision to provide Polish MiGs at the beginning of the conflict was vetoed by President Biden amid fears of provoking Russia. Today, however, this is not only a much safer option but a no-brainer. We should give them combat planes as soon as possible.

Almost our entire effort until now has been sending equipment for the ground campaign, such as Himars rockets, fighting vehicles and precision munitions as well as planning support and target intelligence. These have been incredibly effective, but as every military professional knows, modern warfare is about joint operations – land, sea and air. It is from the air that Russia has been doing the greatest damage to Ukraine in recent weeks, using air-launched cruise missiles and Iranian-supplied kamikaze drones to destroy 30 per cent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the last month, irreplaceable in the medium term.

This air campaign has a simple goal: to destroy as much of Ukraine as possible, in keeping with the principles of Putin’s new commander, General Sergei Surovikin, who deployed similar tactics in Syria. In response, we have pledged to donate hundreds of new air defence systems. But again, this only amounts to a partial answer to a threat that cannot be properly countered without additional and more sophisticated combat planes. As the respected think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has suggested, modern Nato jets, such as US F-16s, could make an enormous difference in the Ukrainians’ favour.

One of the excuses used by the Americans to scupper the Polish MiGs deal was that it would take too long to train pilots for a war that many believed would end in a few weeks. Today we hear a new set of objections, on the grounds that while fighter jets may help Ukrainians in the short term, it could provoke a disastrous Russian escalation in the longer term, thus backfiring on the West. Frankly, this is a strange line of thinking. We have already transferred a very large number of deadly weapons to Kyiv without provoking a devastating response. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 2022. © Richard Kemp

The reported hacking of Liz Truss’s mobile phone over the summer, suspected to have been conducted by people working on behalf of the Kremlin, should raise alarm bells across Whitehall. Britain is under fierce attack in this new era of hybrid warfare. While we may not be exchanging fire on the battlefield, our critical national infrastructure will be severely undermined and potentially destroyed if we fail to get a grip.

Currently, it is quite clear that our political establishment is not taking the threat seriously enough. The compromised information on Ms Truss’s personal phone, it is reported, may have included sensitive information about the Ukraine war. If true, that would be an extraordinary dereliction of security. Even in the analogue days of the Second World War, it is hard to imagine any government minister making calls or sending cables about sensitive military or diplomatic issues through devices otherwise used for personal matters.

We may indeed have extraordinary technology these days, allowing us to encrypt messages as soon as they are sent, but this amounts to nothing if we continue to see Ukraine as a far-off battle that affects us only on our television screens. At times of war – and this is a war the UK is heavily engaged in – even encrypted communications should be carefully guarded by Whitehall’s security apparatus.

For Putin considers Britain to be his second biggest enemy in Europe, behind Ukraine. He demonstrated his particular hatred for us four years ago, with the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury. His authorities will use any means possible to damage us.

We therefore cannot put anything past him. That includes the severing of the Shefa-2 fibre-optic cables between Scotland, Shetland and the Faroes. These have been played down as accidents – ‘probably by a fishing vessel’ – but how likely is it that an accident would produce two separate cuts on the same day, especially when there was a Russian ‘research’ vessel in the same seaway? We should at the very least investigate the possibility of sabotage. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2022. © Richard Kemp

Killing thousands of people and unleashing untold environmental damage by blowing up a hydroelectric dam is unlikely to give the slightest pause to Russia’s new supreme commander in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, if he thinks it will bring him military advantage. President Zelensky has suggested that is exactly what Surovikin has in mind to counter a potential Ukrainian breakthrough that threatens defeat for Russia around Kherson.

Immediately after taking overall command of Putin’s special military operation this month, Surovikin launched wave after wave of indiscriminate rocket and drone attacks against Kiev and other cities, bringing to Ukraine the merciless tactics he used to subjugate opposition in Syria, bombing homes, schools and hospitals.

Known also for his butchery in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Surovikin now faces his greatest challenge: putting an end to Russia’s humiliation in Ukraine. In an unusual admission for a Russian commander he has said ‘the situation is tense’ in the south, ominously adding: ‘we will not exclude taking the most difficult decisions’.

One of those decisions will be on the Kherson front which holds the key to defending Crimea. For weeks the Ukrainian army has been pressing attacks against Russian troops on the west bank of the River Dnieper, some of which have been repelled. Surovikin also faces huge difficulties keeping an over-stretched Kherson defence force stocked with ammunition, fuel and combat equipment, partly due to the damage inflicted earlier this month on the Kerch bridge from Russia to Crimea, a major supply artery.

If Surovikin decides he cannot hold Kherson city, he may order a withdrawal to the east of the river and, as well as evacuating civilians, there is evidence that Russia has already begun pulling back military equipment and troops rather than risk the significant losses sustained in the north east of the country. If Ukrainian forces do break through there, one option would be to blow up the dam of the Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 3 October 2022. © Richard Kemp

Putin constantly invokes parallels with the Second World War to justify his war. European assault on Russia, denazification of Ukraine, the list goes on. In reality the closest parallel is his own resemblance to Hitler, an effective political strategist but an incompetent commander-in-chief, whose greatest blunder was perhaps to hold the Wehrmacht back from Dunkirk in 1940, allowing the British army to escape. History is likely to judge Putin’s most ruinous decision as invading Ukraine with grossly inadequate numbers.

As Russian fortunes go from bad to worse, Putin, like Hitler, is increasingly micromanaging events on the battlefield, sometimes directing operations down to battalion level. For example, as Ukraine attacks strategically important cities in the east and south, Putin insists his over-stretched troops continue a slow, grinding assault against the eastern town of Bakhmut, squandering forces that could reinforce Russian defences elsewhere, in the vain hope of being able to assuage his critics in Moscow by announcing some kind of offensive success.

Meanwhile the sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkov was deeply humiliating for Putin, not only losing territory close to Russia’s border but also boosting Ukrainian national morale and re-invigorating support from the West, which finally saw real results from its immense financial and military investment in Ukrainian fighting capability.

Of course Putin’s strategic incompetence could not be blamed for this disaster so, as in previous setbacks, he fired generals and replaced them with even greater sycophants, once also the habit of the Nazi leader. The fall of Lyman in Donetsk a few days ago, just hours after Putin declared the province to be Russia’s ‘forever’ was a major strategic and political blow. Although the defenders knew they couldn’t hold, Putin refused to allow them to withdraw and so hundreds were reportedly captured and their equipment seized or destroyed, further diminishing Russian combat power. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 27 September 2022. © Richard Kemp

Putin’s latest nuclear threats signify above all that he is in grave danger at home. It was intended not just to cow the West but also to show strength to his henchmen who think he’s not been tough enough in Ukraine and to warn the plotters in Moscow that he will stop at nothing to hold on to power, no matter how many must die in the process.

His intended annexation of the areas of Ukraine now occupied by Russia means he could lawfully use nuclear weapons to defend them as they will formally be part of the Russian Federation. The fact that no other country will recognise Moscow’s sovereignty is beside the point – seen from the Kremlin, an attack on these areas with Nato munitions will be an attack on Russia itself.

Whether or not Putin was bluffing about using weapons of mass destruction – and we shouldn’t forget he also has a large chemical arsenal – his threat was a sign that he is running out of options in this war. Battlefield nuclear or chemical strikes could be a game-changer, inflicting severe physical and psychological damage on the Ukrainian defenders.

They would also have the potential for uncontrollable escalation, perhaps violently engulfing the whole of Europe and even beyond. The US president was right to publicly threaten catastrophic consequences for Russia if Putin used nuclear weapons and he would be right to inflict such consequences if his warnings went unheeded. In military terms that can only be direct NATO intervention in Ukraine or strikes against key targets inside Russia. Either would mean a Europe-wide war.

The White House says it has ‘communicated directly, privately to the Russians at very high levels’ how it would respond if Putin took the nuclear option. That message will have been delivered to others in the nuclear command chain, including the defence minister and chief of staff of the armed forces. We can only hope that it was sufficiently Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2022. © Richard Kemp

Some have predicted that Russia will disintegrate in the face of humiliation in Ukraine. Perhaps, but we are already beginning to see signs of the weakening of Moscow’s hold on its ‘near abroad’ – the former Soviet states that have remained under close Russian influence. Domination of Moscow’s erstwhile empire is vital for Putin’s rehabilitation of Russia as a great power, but his disastrous war in Ukraine may have fatally undermined it.

The conflict has inflicted economic damage on all of the former Soviet states, mostly dependent to one degree or another on Moscow. It has also affected their own security concerns in different ways: some emboldened by Russian setbacks, some fearful for their own independence, and some realising they may not be able to rely on hobbled Moscow for help when they need it.

Azerbaijan last week, for example, launched a deadly attack on Armenian towns outside Nagorno-Karabakh, testing Moscow’s appetite for intervention while on the back foot in Ukraine. Since brokering a cease-fire between the two sides in 2020, Russia has maintained a 2,000 strong peace-keeping force in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, now reportedly scaled-back to stoke the fighting in Ukraine.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have been looking increasingly to the West, including for mediation, a bitter pill for Moscow to swallow with its own regional influence diminished. Last month Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan voiced unprecedented criticism of his Russian ally, questioning the effectiveness of the peacekeepers, and last week called for assistance that he knows Moscow is not in a position to deliver.

Armenia’s concern is twofold – first that Azerbaijan will continue to exploit Russian weakness and, second, that Moscow will pressure it to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus after emerging from the Ukraine war. Neighbouring Georgia, 20 per cent of whose territory has been occupied by Russia since the invasion in 2008, shares Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 12 September 2022. © Richard Kemp

For the first time in this war Russia is on the defensive. A lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east over the last few days has created a turning point from which Putin will struggle to recover. Since their withdrawal from Kyiv in March Russian forces concentrated offensive action in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, making slow but substantial progress and inflicting severe casualties on the Ukrainian defenders. That changed last month when Kyiv began an offensive against Kherson in the south, threatening Crimea — Russia’s most vital possession in Ukraine. Putin had to hold it at all costs and sent up to 30,000 troops to reinforce the Kherson front.

Those troops came from the east, leaving a paper-thin defence, made up largely of poorly trained, equipped and motivated local militias, with many forced conscripts. Kyiv seized the opportunity to exploit this weakness and has now re-taken most of the Kharkiv district, including the strategically vital town of Izyum, as well as parts of Donetsk, so far reportedly capturing some 3,000 square kilometres of territory against little Russian resistance. Russia’s troops were so badly prepared they had not constructed proper fortifications and were forced to abandon vast quantities of combat equipment and supplies, most of which are being re-purposed by Ukraine to strengthen its own units.

As Ukrainian forces continue attacking in the Kherson area, from the east they are now also poised to drive south, potentially threatening both Donbas and Crimea. On the ground Putin has few options and all of them are bad. Although Ukraine will face stiffer resistance in Donbas and the south, the kind of defeat Russia has now suffered at Kharkiv often leads to a domino effect as morale is undermined and panic sets in, including among commanders. Continue reading →