Russia is raising the stakes in eastern Ukraine. In the past couple of weeks we've seen:
- August 14: An "aid" convoy from Russia, which included military vehicles . . . which proceeded into the Ukraine even though the main convoy stopped at the border for a while.
- August 25: The Ukrainian army halts Russian armored column trying to carve a path to the Azov Sea port city of Novoazovsk.
- August 26: Russia admits that its soldiers have been captured in Ukraine.
- August 27: Russia takes a second shot at Novazovsk . . . and succeeds this time.
- August 27: Putin washes his hands of negotiations with Ukraine and leaves Russians wondering if they are at war.
It seems things didn't "just happen" this way. I started smelling a rat when I read an article from Reuters titled "Pushing locals aside, Russians take top rebel posts in east Ukraine," so I started digging around on the interwebs looking for anything that would shed any light on the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that seemed to be going on in the rebel camp.
I hit paydirt when I found a policy paper published by the National Defense Academy of Latvia titled: "RUSSIA’S NEW GENERATION WARFARE IN UKRAINE: IMPLICATIONS FOR LATVIAN DEFENSE POLICY." Like Ukraine, Latvia is on Russia's western border and was "annexed" by the Soviet Union. As a result of the Soviet occupation, a quarter of its population is Russian, many of whom are not Latvian citizens. Though Latvia is now a member of NATO, it is prudently very wary of the 600 lb. bear in its back yard. Given its history and its location, it has paid very close attention to what the Russian military has been up to, and, since things heated up in Ukraine, learning lessons from how Russia has gone about things there was of great importance. They really need to understand what's going there and what the implications are for them. Hence, the policy paper.
I had no idea what to expect when I started reading it, but along with the *facepalm*s and *headdesk*s, what the Russians were up to in Ukraine became crystal clear. It's like a football scout getting a copy of an opposing team's playbook. I am going to quote extensively from it because I haven't read anything close to this in providing insight into what Putin has up his sleeve, and I believe that it is crucial to understanding what's going on. These events and the way the crisis has been choreographed since Yanukovitch was on the ropes follow straight from Russia's New Generation Warfare tactical and strategic planning. The good stuff is after the fleur-de-kos.
The introduction of the paper explains why Ukraine is so important to Russia, what it has at stake there and why it will do everything in its power to keep Ukraine in its orbit:
Russia considers Ukraine (and Belarus) as part of itself, something that was lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Henry Kissinger put it, in an open editorial in the Washington Post, “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.” Moreover, it is considered, together with Belarus, to be a guarantee of Russia's territorial integrity.
Since for Russia, Ukraine is supposed to be a close ally or, at best, neutral, it considers the involvement of the United States and the European Union in Ukrainian internal affairs to be a direct confrontation to its regional interests. Moscow is rightly convinced that the United States and the European Union were working to attract the Ukraine to their sphere of influence, ignoring Russia's natural right to the region.
. . .
Ukraine always represented a red line for Russia; therefore, it decided to act to preserve its regional interests. First, and most important, its military interests. Crimea has been the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet for more than 250 years. An anti-Russian government could cancel the agreement which permits Russia to have military bases there. Second, because it considers Crimea’s becoming a part of Ukraine in 1954 a mistake, since it has always been a part of Russia. Third, to give a clear message to the West that the Ukrainian issue is a real red line and it should remain in the Russian sphere of influence. Fourth, to show that Russia is to be respected and considered to be of a similar stature to the United States. It does not want to be integrated into the West, but to be an independent actor. Fifth, to divert public attention from Russia's own internal social and economic problems. However, this is only effective in the short-run. Although Putin's popularity has been increasing since the occupation of Crimea, it is to be expected that Russia's structural problems, combined with the economic sanctions, will make it decline again soon. Sixth, to make clear that any attempt to split off from the Russian Federation will not be tolerated.
The author then analyzes Russia's campaign in Ukraine from within the context of what he calls Russia's Next Generation Warfare.
Russia's military strategy can be divided into three interrelated levels. First, doctrinal unilateralism, or the idea that the successful use of force results in legitimacy. The weak reaction of the United States and the European Union has indicated that the strategy is correct. Second, by strongly adhering to legalism. Without discussing the legal merit of Russian actions, they were all backed by some form of legal act. Putin asked the Russian parliament for authorization to use military power in the Ukraine if necessary. Naturally, it was granted. Russia uses this fact together with the argument that it never used military power in Crimea as a sign of its peaceful intentions. Third, Russia denies the idea of it having militarily occupied Crimea, since the troops there were local self-defense forces. In addition, that although it is true that the number of troops stationed there increased, this is still within the limits of the bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
Third, Russia obviously supported the referendum promoted by Crimean pro-Russian political forces, who were trying to legitimize Crimea's incorporation. It argues that this is a case of self-determination similar to Kosovo. The West considers the referendum to be illegitimate, first, because it violates the constitution of the Ukraine; second, because it was organized in such haste that there was no option in the ballot paper for voting for Crimea to remain part of the Ukraine. Russia considers this to be merely legal cynicism, and argues that the West considers some events to be legitimate, but others to be illegitimate, despite being of the same nature, according to whether it’s in its own interests or not. Russia has also been arguing that its actions are the result of its commitment to defend the Ukraine's territorial integrity in accordance with the many international agreements signed during the 1990s.
The Crimean campaign has been an impressive demonstration of strategic communication, one which shares many similarities with their intervention in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, while at the same time being essentially different, since it reflects the operational realization of the new military guidelines to be implemented by 2020. Its success can be measured by the fact that in just three weeks, and without a shot being fired, the morale of the Ukrainian military was broken and all of their 190 bases had surrendered. Instead of relying on a mass deployment of tanks and artillery, the Crimean campaign deployed less than 10,000 assault troops – mostly naval infantry, already stationed in Crimea, backed by a few battalions of airborne troops and Spetsnaz commandos – against 16,000 Ukrainian military personnel. In addition, the heaviest vehicle used was the wheeled BTR-80 armored personal carrier.
Comparison of the character of traditional and "New Generation" warfare.
After blocking Ukrainian troops in their bases, the Russians started the second operational phase, consisting of psychological warfare, intimidation, bribery, and internet/media propaganda to undermine resistance, thus avoiding the use of firepower. The operation was also characterized by the great discipline of the Russian troops, the display of new personnel equipment, body armor, and light wheeled armored vehicles. The result was a clear military victory on the battlefield by the operationalization of a well-orchestrated campaign of strategic communication, using clear political, psychological, and information strategies (Ripley & Jones, 2014), the fully operationalization of what Russian military thinkers call “New Generation Warfare”.
As a result, it follows that the main guidelines for developing Russian military capabilities by 2020 are:
i. From direct destruction to direct influence;
ii. from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay;
iii. from a war with weapons and technology to a culture war;
iv. from a war with conventional forces to specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings;
v. from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of perceptions;
vi. from direct clash to contactless war;
vii. from a superficial and compartmented war to a total war, including the enemy’s internal side and base;
viii. from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace;
ix. from symmetric to asymmetric warfare by a combination of political, economic, information, technological, and ecological campaigns;
x. From war in a defined period of time to a state of permanent war as the natural condition in national life.
Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population. The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker to the detriment of their own government and country. It is interesting to note the notion of permanent war, since it denotes a permanent enemy. In the current geopolitical structure, the clear enemy is Western civilization, its values, culture, political system, and ideology.
Take a moment to mull this over . . .
The author then proceeds to describe the phases of "new-generation war."
First Phase: non-military asymmetric warfare (encompassing information, moral, psychological, ideological, diplomatic, and economic measures as part of a plan to establish a favorable political, economic, and military setup).
Second Phase: special operations to mislead political and military leaders by coordinated measures carried out by diplomatic channels, media, and top government and military agencies by leaking false data, orders, directives, and instructions.
Third Phase: intimidation, deceiving, and bribing government and military officers, with the objective of making them abandon their service duties.
Fourth Phase: destabilizing propaganda to increase discontent among the population, boosted by the arrival of Russian bands of militants, escalating subversion.
Fifth Phase: establishment of no-fly zones over the country to be attacked, imposition of blockades, and extensive use of private military companies in close cooperation with armed opposition units.
Sixth Phase: commencement of military action, immediately preceded by large-scale reconnaissance and subversive missions. All types, forms, methods, and forces, including special operations forces, space, radio, radio engineering, electronic, diplomatic, and secret service intelligence, and industrial espionage.
Seventh Phase: combination of targeted information operation, electronic warfare operation, aerospace operation, continuous airforce harassment, combined with the use of highrecision weapons launched from various platforms (long-range artillery, and weapons based on new physical principles, including microwaves, radiation, non-lethal biological weapons).
Eighth Phase: roll over the remaining points of resistance and destroy surviving enemy units by special operations conducted by reconnaissance units to spot which enemy units have survived and transmit their coordinates to the attacker's missile and artillery units; fire barrages to annihilate the defender's resisting army units by effective advanced weapons; airdrop operations to surround points of resistance; and territory mopping-up operations by ground troops.
Any of this sound familiar?
Here's the take-away:
In other words, the Russians have placed the idea of influence at the very center of their operational planning and used all possible levers to achieve this: skillful internal communications; deception operations; psychological operations and well-constructed external communications. Crucially, they have demonstrated an innate understanding of the three key target audiences and their probably behavior: the Russian speaking majority in Crimea; the Ukrainian government; the international community, specifically NATO and the EU. Armed with this information they knew what to do, when and what the outcomes were likely to be, demonstrating that the ancient Soviet art of reflexive control is alive and well in the Kremlin.
This is very relevant to understanding its strategic significance, since it is the operationalization of a new form of warfare that cannot be characterized as a military campaign in the classic sense of the term. The invisible military occupation cannot be considered an occupation by definition. Not only were the troops already on Crimean territory stationed at Russian naval bases, but they were also “officially” part of the autochthone civilian militia. The deception operations occurred inside Russian territory as military exercises, including ones in Kaliningrad to increase the insecurity of the Baltic States and Poland. At the same time, the Crimean parliament officially - although not legally by the Ukrainian constitution - asked to join the Russian Federation, and the Ukrainian media became inaccessible. As a result, Russian channels of communication propagating the Kremlin’s version of facts were able to establish a parallel material reality, legitimizing the Russian actions in the realm of ideas.
The rest of the paper goes into the implications for Latvian defense policy. His observations are pretty much universal, though. For instance, he brings up problem this new-generation warfare presents to deciding, given the way traditional rules of engagement work, when it's "OK" to respond, and how to do so. For instance, NATO's Article 5 says that an
armed attack on one member is an attack on everyone. But, look back at the phases of new-gen warfare . . . actual armed activity doesn't commence until Phase 5 . . . but Russia's active war has been going on for quite a while and the chances are pretty good that by that time, the end game is already in motion.
This is really something to be aware of and to take into consideration. Watch closely what happens with Ukraine. It will be very informative.