In his first speech to the nation since the one in which he announced the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared partial mobilisation (concerning 300,000 reservists) and support for the referendums on annexation to Russia organised by the pro-Russians in Luhans’k, Donec’k, Kherson and Zaporižžja in the coming days. Putin also accused the West of ’nuclear blackmail’ and of wanting to destroy Russia, adding: ’We will use all means at our disposal to defend ourselves’.

This is Russia’s response to the Ukrainian offensive in the Kharkiv and Kherson region.

The annexation of the ’rebel’ republics to Russia will in fact cause a decisive change in the military policy of the Russian Federation because they will become an integral part of Russian territory, just as was done for Crimea. It is news from a few days ago that the annexation should also entail the inclusion of the combatant volunteers from those territories in the Armed Forces of Russia, with all the ensuing consequences.

The mobilisation of 300,000 reservists (less than 1.1% of the mobile reserve) in the Crimea will mainly concern citizens with combat experience and a military training specialty, who will be able to go to the front after three to six months training. This partial mobilisation will solve the main problem of the Armed Forces deployed in Ukraine, the shortage of numbers, and allow some breathing space for the forces currently deployed at the front.

The Duma also approved amendments to the Russian Criminal Code to toughen the penalties for deserters or draft dodgers in particular, in the case of ’mobilisation’, ’martial law’, ’wartime’ and ’armed conflict’.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on his return from the Samarkand summit, declared, perhaps in order to remain the focus of international media attention, that Putin would be ready to negotiate peace with Ukraine, but there seems to be no prospect of reaching serious talks quickly as the Ukrainian government emboldened by recent victories continues to demand the return to Ukraine of all occupied territories including Crimea, while Russia proceeds on the path towards the annexation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Ukrainian offensive

The Ukrainian offensive in early September led to the reconquest of a portion of territory in the north-eastern oblast of Kharkiv, an area roughly the size, for those who know Italy, of the provinces of Siena and Grosseto. Approximately 8,000 square kilometres.

The announced Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Kherson oblast was an excellent diversion to facilitate the breakthrough into the Kharkiv oblast, where the Ukrainian Forces took advantage of the clear numerical advantage over the Russian and auxiliary troops (separatist militias and Wagner mercenaries) estimated at a ratio of 8 to 1, achieved thanks to the work of US intelligence.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has been organised in recent months in close coordination with the US and UK military and intelligence leadership. The Americans and British provided information on command posts, ammunition depots, and other nodal points of the Russian military infrastructure. Washington has provided most of the weapons (with a total value of over $15 billion since the beginning of this year). Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained in Britain, Germany, and other countries. British special forces apparently coordinated the operations.

The long-announced push towards Kherson, which came into full swing in early September, met with strong resistance from well-equipped Russian defences and caused heavy casualties in the Ukrainian ranks, about which little is reported.

The second offensive, to the north-east, instead started secretly on 9 September, encountering only weak Russian defence (part of which had, moreover, been diverted to the south), and therefore led to a rapid advance.

Russia’s Response

While there is excessive euphoria in the West, among Russian analysts and strategists there is a prevailing conviction that Moscow still holds the reins of the conflict. If the situation on the ground is getting more complicated, they say in Moscow, it depends solely on the increasingly open support provided to Kiev by NATO, all the more reason to continue the war.

According to the Russians, this is a war between Russia and NATO, and as such represents an existential threat: a defeat cannot be contemplated. NATO’s deep involvement is confirmed by the Pentagon’s own sources, quoted in at least two articles in the New York Times.

The successful outcome of the Ukrainian counter-offensive was essentially caused by the weakness of Russian forces on the ground determined by the very nature of Russia’s so-called ’special military operation’. Since the Kremlin wanted to maintain a low-profile military commitment in Ukraine, it still deploys a limited number of troops in the country: 150,000, other sources speak of 120,000, regular soldiers, and about 50,000 men from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics and other corps.

These forces are deployed on a front of over 1,000 kilometres, which inevitably has poorly defended points.

The Ukrainians have mobilised the entire population and deployed thousands of well-equipped and freshly trained men at a point on the front, in the Kharkiv region, garrisoned only by men of the Rosgvardia (the Russian National Guard) and of the two separatist republics with a force ratio, it is said, of 8 to 1.

Taking note of the situation, the Russian military leadership simply decided to withdraw their forces to a more defensible front. The Ukrainians advanced in depth, virtually without a fight, but still suffering numerous losses from the massive defensive fire of Russian artillery. Due to both the losses suffered and the lengthening supply lines, the Kiev forces probably exhausted their propulsive thrust along that line.

This may explain the stalemate the two sides currently find themselves in.

The Kremlin’s choice to conduct a low-intensity war, slowly recapturing the territory of the Donbass, also allows Kiev’s Western allies to replace losses in men and material by sending new weapons and training more soldiers.

One might have thought that the Russian General Staff would have resorted to massive deployment of the only fully mobilisable force to try to block the Ukrainian advance, given the legal impossibility of deploying newly enlisted troops, i.e. the air force, but Russian air operations have proved sporadic and without results. According to some commentators, the reason is that the Russian commanders fear exposing their aircraft to Ukrainian anti-aircraft action, which has very effective weapons provided by NATO.

Kiev’s renewed determination, the absence of chances for negotiation, and Russia’s need to re-establish its military prestige after its recent defeat, are pushing all the actors involved towards a probable escalation of the conflict and a prolongation of the economic war connected to it, in the hope of forcing the adversary to give in first.

Militarily, as a first response, Russia’s Armed Forces bombed the Kharkiv and Kremenčuk thermoelectric power plants, adding further energy distress to Ukraine, which is helplessly watching the last reactor of the Zaporižžja nuclear power plant shut down.

Moscow’s strategy is clear: cut off Kiev’s electricity at the gates of the cold season, while the occupied territories will enjoy the advantage of being connected to the Russian Federation’s power grid.

But to adequately respond militarily, Russia will have to sustain a more pronounced war effort that could change the course of this war.

On the Kherson front

On the evening of 14 September, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation bombed a dam on the Inhulec’ River near the town of Kryvyi Rih (Krivoj Rog). The dam collapse was not an accident, but the result of a deliberate attack. The aim of the Russians was to raise the water level in the southern section of the river, obstructing its crossing. The Ukrainian soldiers engaged in the Kherson counter-offensive were not only forced to block the advance, but are now partly stranded to the east of the watercourse with no further connection to the bulk of the troops remaining on the west bank. The increased inflow of water on the course of the Inhulec’ has wiped out the Ukrainian military pontoons in one fell swoop.

According to the Rivista Italiana Difesa, Moscow is pouring new troops onto the long Ukrainian border.

These would be units of the 4th Guards Armoured Guard Division, one of the elite units of the Russian Army. Such a unit is generally stationed in the Moscow oblast and operates as a strategic reserve. The fact that it has been deployed close to the Ukrainian border suggests that one of the possible main lines of action may develop from here to push south and cut off Ukrainian units close to the separatist Donbass. With these forces, Moscow can threaten more areas and force the Ukrainian Forces to ’stretch’ and garrison essentially every area of the border with Russia and Belarus, because the threat on the capital itself is far from negligible

But this does not mean that Russia intends to invade the whole country. The forces in the field are not sufficient for such a complex and large-scale action, especially considering the size of the territory in question and the hostility that would be encountered west of the Dniepr river.

More likely, then, to envisage a circumscribed action whose objective would be to secure Donetsk (still under Ukrainian artillery fire) and take control of part of the area east of the Dniepr – the so-called Western Donbass – and of some strategic nodes such as the port city of Mariupol, the cities of Kherson, Kharkiv, etc. Areas, moreover, where hostility could be lower considering the high percentages of Russian mother tongue.

In this way, Moscow could expand its security buffer in Ukraine while at the same time guaranteeing itself complete control over a region that is very important in terms of mineral wealth.

On the Kherson front

However, this war, despite being seven months old, has not lost its ambiguity, its paradoxes.

A few days ago, the Ukrainians themselves admitted that Russian troops were back in control of Kreminna, a town in the Donbass north of Lysychansk and Severodentsk in the Luhansk region, which they had evacuated the previous day; an actual occupation of the town centre by Kiev troops had however not been done.

Kiev sources confirm, without providing clarification, that the same thing happened in the same sector in Starobilsk and Svatove where the Russians were able to return in force, without Ukrainian troops taking control of the settlements that would have allowed them to consolidate their penetration into the Donbass territories.

Still on the subject of contradictory elements, the Russian company Gazprom reported that on 17 September, the Russian gas supply transiting via pipeline through Ukrainian territory amounted to 42.4 million cubic metres. More would have transited if, as the Russian energy company’s press office specified, Ukraine had not once again rejected the transport of gas through the Sokharanivka (Luhansk) entry station, which has been under the control of Russian forces since 11 May.

Gazprom has stated that the transfer of all export volumes via the Sudzha entry point, accepted by Kiev because it is under its control, is technically impossible. Despite everything, the Russian company claims to be fulfilling all its obligations to European consumers and to have paid for all transit services.

As a matter of fact, after 7 months of war, no one has yet hit or closed the gas pipelines that cross Ukraine and supply energy to European countries, despite the fact that the European Union has renewed sanctions on Moscow, and arms and finances Kiev and Ukraine.

Even on the financial and energy fronts, ambiguities abound: the Russians pay their Ukrainian enemies the transit rights for the gas they sell to the EU, while the latter since the beginning of the conflict, on 24 February, has paid the Russians as much as 85 of the 158 billion euro that Moscow has collected from energy exports.

So Europe, which risks an energy and economic meltdown in the coming months, with one hand is arming the Ukrainians and sanctioning the Russians, while with the other it has financed and is still abundantly financing the Russian military campaign in Ukraine with energy purchases.

NATO’s involvement

The victorious Ukrainian counteroffensive in the north certifies that the US has partly taken control of the war effort.

The American decision to openly flaunt its key role in the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive seems almost a provocation towards Moscow, a dangerous attempt to push the Kremlin towards greater military involvement.

A bitter tug-of-war between Kiev and Washington seems to have taken place in the summer. The Ukrainians wanted to deliver a defeat to the Russians to show that aid in arms and money was not useless. The Americans wanted the ally not to waste a decisive blow and especially did not want to touch Moscow’s red lines. This is why they dissuaded the Ukrainians from focusing only on Kherson. Not only because it was more heavily guarded by enemy troops, but because it was a buffer for Crimea. The lands around Kharkiv in the north are less strategic than those around the peninsula snatched in 2014.

The US government has been pressing Kiev hard. It complained that it knew more about the Russian moves than the Ukrainians. It expressed doubts that their army was really capable of regaining territory. He sent a general to the banks of the Dnepr to avert misuse of long-range weaponry. In any case, without American weapons, intelligence and planning, the Kharkiv uprising would not have been possible.

While acknowledging the success of the counteroffensive, current senior Pentagon and White House officials have urged caution, expressing doubts about the ability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to bring Russia back to the pre-war lines.

Kiev’s intransigent stance is not likely to continue to receive the appreciation of the Ukrainian proletariat, provided it has it now. Many evacuees from the Kharkiv region (and collaborators) are heading towards the territory of Russia these hours, generating kilometre-long queues at border points. Already busy with the delivery of military supplies, an economically and energy-strapped Western Europe could ignore the aggrieved nation’s pressing social problems (heating and electricity) and turn a deaf ear to the future reconstruction of its basic infrastructure.

The role of Turkey

A central country in this war crisis is Turkey. Turkey’s is the only government that devotes great energy to diplomatic activity aimed at finding a peace agreement.

At the recent Samarkand summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Turkey expressed its willingness to join the organisation, although it is hard not to notice that it was the only NATO member State to attend the summit and, if accepted, would be the only one to be a member of both organisations.

A not insignificant ’detail’ considering that Ankara does not apply sanctions to Russia, sells (not donates) arms to Ukraine and will join a security organisation with China, Russia and Iran after buying S-400 long-range air defence batteries in Russia: all without anyone having asked it to leave NATO. Respect for the ’rules’ in international diplomacy proves to be quite elastic.

Turkey has every intention of using the decision not to impose sanctions against Russia and its role as mediator in the war to its advantage, especially to extract lower prices on gas supplies.

In an attempt to convince Putin, Erdogan addressed harsh words against the West during his trip through the Balkans, accusing the countries that support Kiev of having provoked Russia and of being responsible for the ongoing energy crisis due to the sanctions imposed against Moscow, but on 20 September Erdogan himself declared that Russia must return all occupied territories, including Crimea, to Ukraine.

The sanctions have allowed the Turkish president to direct Russian capital towards his country, which is useful for replenishing the Central Bank’s foreign reserves and being able to buy the Turkish lira on the financial markets. The sanctions regime imposed by the West has also led to an increase in Turkish exports to the Federation, which increased by 60% following the invasion of Ukraine.

But among the flows of money uniting Russia and Turkey there is also the 20 billion paid by Moscow for the construction of the first nuclear power plant in the Anatolian country, a project entrusted to the Russian State company Rosatom. The plant should guarantee Turkey greater independence from the foreign market, in line with President Erdogan’s goal of transforming the country from an importer to a regional energy hub.

Turkey, faced with US Congress’ reluctance to provide it with F16 fighter jets, accused Congress of siding with Greece and threatened to turn to Russia for the purchase of urgently needed aircraft.

Germany’s position

When the Ukrainian Prime Minister met with German Chancellor Scholz in early September, he demanded that Germany deliver modern armoured vehicles to Ukraine in addition to PzH-2000 self-propelled artillery. “We expect the US to supply us with Abrams tanks and from Germany we expect Leopard 2s”.

On 6 September, however, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected the request to send additional heavy weapons to Kiev, thus denying the supply of additional artillery vehicles and especially the delivery of the Leopard 2 tanks that Kiev was counting on.

Regarding the supply of equipment by the Berlin armed forces, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht stated on 30 August that ’the German armed forces need to retain possession of all available equipment and armaments to guarantee national and alliance defence’.

This does not mean that Berlin no longer intends to supply weapons to Kiev, but that Ukrainian needs can be met with orders and contracts awarded to the defence industry, which, however, entails delivery times of a few years.

The refusal to supply the newly produced Leopard 2A7, however, also leaves room for the hypothesis that Berlin does not want to further exacerbate the already very tense relations with Moscow.

It could be Russian gas purchases that influence Germany’s decisions. As Corriere della Sera has pointed out in these months of price emergency, Germany is paying much less for Russian gas than the rest of Europe. For example, last June German supplies from Gazprom had a unit cost of one third of what the rest of the EU, on average, and Italy pay for the same product.

Corriere sell Sera speculates that ’the German contracts enjoy special treatment in the context of the agreements on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines and the sale of Germany’s largest storage centre to Gazprom in 2015’.

In recent days, an article in Il Giornale noted that ’after the invasion of Ukraine, Germany has not unilaterally withdrawn from the framework agreements for gas supplies from Moscow, nor has it seen Russia do the same. Of course, Russia is using energy as a weapon – in July it reduced gas supplies via Nord Stream by two-thirds and often uses Baltic pipeline closures as a weapon – but Germany is not the victim of a price offensive’. The article also adds the weight of a geopolitical and, at the same time, psychological effect: Russia has no incentive to sell at higher prices to Berlin, because it is precisely the maintenance of this residual share of dependency that can be the greatest of blackmail weapons towards Germany in winter.

The Russian Energy Minister, Nikolai Shulginov, also recently called it ’impossible’ to sell gas or oil to countries that set price caps on raw materials. ’Definitely, we will not sell at or below cost,’ Shulginov said in a TV interview. In this context, one can understand why Berlin is reluctant to impose a cap on gas prices as the Italian government demands.

The question of the heavy weapons that the Europeans can still supply to Kiev affects not only Germany, but now all NATO members who have exhausted the surplus of equipment in service or in warehouses that can be sold without ’disarming’ their own units. A problem that also concerns Eastern European nations that still lined up or kept in reserve Russian/Soviet type tanks, combat vehicles and artillery and that have already been largely transferred to Ukraine.

Russia-Iran collaboration in the military field

Another country that should not be overlooked and continues to have excellent relations with Moscow is Iran. A few months ago, Russia and Iran concluded a 20-year agreement on security and defence cooperation

This agreement led to the purchase of Russian arms by Tehran to the amount of over $10 billion: the wish list included 24 Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and two batteries of S-400 long-range air defence systems.

The two countries seem more than ever to be working together in numerous sectors (defence first and foremost), without forgetting the further sign of collaboration that has arisen on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict considering the recent documented evidence of a supply of Iranian drones for the Russian Armed Forces.

Trouble for Russia in Central Asia

The war effort in Ukraine is weakening Russia’s commitment and focus on Central Asia (part of the troops deployed in Tajikistan have been deployed in Ukraine) even though Putin has confirmed that in Ukraine ’we are only fighting with part of the armed forces’.

A context that seems to favour the opening of new hotbeds of tension in the former USSR: from the border clashes between Tajiks and Kyrgyz to those between Armenians and Azeris to the pressure from Georgian nationalist circles for military action to take control of Russian-protected North Ossetia. Unmistakable signs of turmoil seeking to take advantage of the Russian engagement in Ukraine.

China confirms its willingness to penetrate not only economically but also politically and militarily into the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and has said it is willing to guarantee Kazakhstan’s security from ’external (i.e. Russian) intervention’. Kazakhstan is the former Soviet State that has distinguished itself more than any other in showing coldness to Russian military intervention against Kiev to the point of not recognising the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

In this vast region of Central Asia, the contrasts between Russia and China have escalated despite the extension of cooperation in many areas and the common need to defend themselves against the pressure of the United States and their allies.

The position of China and India

Beijing does in fact support Russia against the United States and its allies, perceived as a threat also by the Chinese, especially after the latest clashes over Taiwan, but this does not mean that the two powers do not also have divergent interests that also affect the ongoing war in Ukraine and especially its prolongation with the related macro-economic consequences. However, it does not seem to us that these divergences have led to the ’frost’ between the two countries as the press in the West writes.

It seems that China has not supplied arms to Russia, but military cooperation between the two countries has certainly been increased. Russia continues to export a lot of technology to China and Beijing’s armed forces, besides being Moscow’s customers, have developed many weapon systems, platforms, engines and other components starting from Russian products. After the Samarkand summit, the leaders of the Russian Security Council and the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party met to strengthen military and security cooperation by enhancing joint exercises and attention to the most critical scenarios.

It is clear that if the war continues, it will be the economies of European countries that will be hardest hit by the energy crisis, which will only add its negative effects to those of the economic crisis that is already underway. For the other industrialised countries, which all pay much less for energy than Europe, there could be important opportunities to acquire new quotas on the global markets, but China and India have significant trade and investments in Europe and risk significant damage, also taking into account that the economic collapse of the European countries could lead to a global recession that would also undermine the growth of the two Asian giants. This is why they are pushing for an end to the conflict.

However, the strategic objective of the Russians and Chinese remains that of stemming the US unipolar system (which has also encompassed the States of Europe that have proved incapable of assuming the role of independent geopolitical subjects) by aiming to counter Western penetration also with strengthened military agreements and to strengthen financial and commercial cooperation and fight the hegemony of the dollar in the global economy.

Russia, unlike its Asian partners, may have an interest in continuing the war not only because it is aware that Europe cannot survive economically without the ample supplies of Russian gas, but also because it probably estimates that the energy crisis will make many European governments wobble this winter with consequences that could undermine the ability and willingness to continue supporting Ukraine with weapons, and the internal stability of NATO, with possible rifts between the United States and its allies on this side of the Atlantic

Russia therefore seems to have every interest in stalling on the Ukrainian fronts and it is no coincidence that Putin in Samarkand, declaring that "the special military operation will continue", added that Moscow "is in no hurry to achieve its objectives, which remain unchanged".

China wants time and puts the brakes on war

China and Russia have grown closer in recent years in a friendship – not an alliance – "without limits" that has resulted in joint strategic action to counter US and Western global domination: the Kremlin’s latest moves, however, have raised strong fears in Beijing that the situation could get out of hand and this has inevitably cooled relations.

This is why Beijing did not welcome the Kremlin chief’s speech and the announcement of the partial mobilisation. According to an editorial in the Global Times, a CCP newspaper, the annexation of the independentist republics would give Moscow the legal pretext ’to threaten’ the use of nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory. The article then sets aside the usual criticism of the US and NATO over responsibility for the crisis, urging ’an emergency brake on the situation in Ukraine at a stage when the scale of the war is still manageable. What is needed is a ceasefire and negotiations rather than an escalating showdown between Russia and Nato’NATO’. Because, the editorial concludes, between nuclear powers there can be no winners and losers: ’Anyone who attempts to completely overwhelm the other side can only be a fool’.

Beijing, which does not yet consider itself ready for a direct confrontation with the United States, fears, rightly so, that the continuation and deepening of the war could lead to its enlargement involving all the major world powers in a hellish cycle. That is why it throws its full weight on the scales to call on Moscow to be more thoughtful and prudent in the conduct of the war. Beijing must buy time to catch up with its main antagonist, the United States, especially in military power. From this point of view, certainly the war in Ukraine represents a very interesting opportunity to observe in corpore vili the functioning of the different war machines, and probably the Kremlin’s Armed Forces have shown quite a few problems that could also affect China’s.

Conclusions

The Russian government cannot afford to go back on its decisions, despite the protests within Russia, still limited to small pacifist groups, and despite the warnings coming from its Chinese friend.

Even the Ukrainian government, despite the desperate state of the economy, despite the population being exhausted by deprivation, despite the approaching winter, can afford to accept negotiations that the United States and its allied governments are refusing for the time being.

The war, in the will of the governments concerned, will continue at least through the winter season during which the two armies will prepare to resume military operations with greater impetus in the spring.

But weighing on all this are the uncertainties of the consequences of the economic and energy crisis in the major industrialised countries and the reaction of the international proletariat to the worsening of its living and working conditions.