A boiling cauldron may burst

The current “no peace, no war” situation in the Donbas is fraught with major dangers to Ukrainian statehood. Whenever troops stay in trenches for months, without achieving noticeable successes but suffering sensitive, albeit not catastrophic, defeats and incurring almost daily losses, this has a most deleterious effect on their morale even if it is quite an official war “for faith, the tsar, and the fatherland.” The classical example is when a stagnant period in World War One gave birth to the February Revolution in Russia. Naturally, the Russian revolution also needed such objective domestic conditions as a conflict between an autocratic leadership and the bourgeoisie, the presence of revolutionary parties in the country, a colossal gap between the rich and the poor, and many other factors. What followed this is common knowledge. The inability of a new revolutionary government to continue the war or to make peace as well as to solve the acutest domestic problems, particularly the national and the agrarian questions, brought radical Bolsheviks with Lenin at the head to power in October 1917, which cost Russia dozens of millions of deaths and 70 years of totalitarian rule.

Although the new leadership of Ukraine has been in power for more than a year, there is no essential progress so far in corruption control or improvement of the socioeconomic situation. Therefore, the armed man develops an irresistible temptation either to “make short work of bureaucrats and corruptionists” in Kyiv or to wipe out separatists and Russian troops in the Donbas (to what extent this goal is achievable is a different question).

The current Ukrainian government has not yet produced new Cavours, Bismarcks, or Pilsudskis, and is behaving rather awkwardly. It is in conflict with very diverse forces that favor restoration of the country’s territorial integrity and true national independence and is trying not to quarrel with oligarchs and corruptionists. This creates a major domestic tension, and any wide-scale armed provocation on the part of militants can trigger an uncontrollable revolutionary explosion with unpredictable consequences. Quite probably, the Kremlin puppeteers are counting on this very course of developments, on a grassroots protest. Both options seem a zero-risk enterprise to Moscow, at least at the first stage. If some of the Ukrainian troops launch an unsanctioned offensive, this will not only be doomed to failure, but will also give Russia an excellent occasion to withdraw from the Minsk agreements and send its troops openly to the Donbas or even the entire Ukraine. The hybrid war has considerably exhausted its resource, and all Putin can do is either switch to an open armed invasion, at least under the flag of a “peacekeeping operation,” or use the method of terrorist acts, sabotage, economic and political pressure, or admit his defeat in the Donbas and Ukraine as a whole. And, to opt for an open invasion, he has to legalize in some way the war and Russia’s involvement in it.

Likewise, the march on Kyiv and deposition of a government legitimately chosen in a fair election, no matter what your attitude to it is, will give Moscow an even better occasion to finally spurn the Minsk agreements and move its army against Kyiv under the pretext of “restoring the constitutional order.” Under this scenario, the West will find it very difficult to resist the Russian aggression and support the new revolutionary government. And in case of a one-on-one clash with Russia, Ukraine is sure to lose due to different human and economic potentials.

For this reason, the Ukrainian government’s No.1 domestic task is to forestall a grassroots explosion. But what can really lead to this kind of explosion is a capitulatory policy in the Donbas. In this case, Poroshenko should take into account the following basic factor: Putin will not opt for a wide-scale invasion of Ukraine unless there are catastrophic developments in Kyiv itself. At worst, he will confine himself to a major military provocation and a limited offensive operation that may resemble the earlier attack on the Debaltseve bridgehead. In this connection, the current aggravation of situation near Mariupol looks particularly alarming. This may be just a big military provocation of the militants aimed at pressuring the Ukrainian side to be more pliable in the negotiations on the withdrawal of weapons, a special status of the Donbas, and holding of the local elections under the supervision and on the conditions of the militants. But, at the same time, the attack near Starohnativka may only be sort of reconnaissance in force as part of a local offensive operation to seize Mariupol. And if the Ukrainian political leadership and military command behave again the way they did during the attack on Debaltseve, this operation may be a success for the separatists and their Russian allies.

The fall of Mariupol may have very serious and rather unpredictable consequences for the current Ukrainian leadership. And Putin may well be counting on this because he will much more prefer chaos in Ukraine than preservation of the existing government. To prevent military failures and a revolutionary explosion in the army, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief has to do very little, for all the necessary steps are quite feasible. Analysts have already written about them more than once.

It is high time to allow Ukrainian soldiers to strike in response to a strike. There are no, and perhaps there will not be for a long time, political conditions for a wide-scale operation to liberate the entire Donbas – like Operation Storm in Croatia. But limited strikes at the militants and the Russian troops in the guise of militants are quite a realistic thing. Debaltseve fell because the separatists managed to concentrate the bulk of their forces against this bridgehead, fearing no Ukrainian attacks in the other segments of the front line. Since then, the Ukrainian troops have essentially reinforced their positions thanks to the fresh supplies of weapons and equipment and building of fortifications. Naturally, it is easier to hold the line if there are fortifications.

However, we should not cherish illusions. The operational density of the Ukrainian troops in the Donbas is not at all sufficient for them to resort to a classical trench warfare with a continuous front line and various defensive “ramparts.” The Ukrainian side will hardly achieve the required density of its troops in the foreseeable future. Therefore, the key to success is in maneuverable actions coupled with a stubborn defense of fortified positions and strongholds. If separatists are on the offensive, the Ukrainian army should try to destroy their strike groupings by a turning movement and encirclement. If this kind of local-level successes is achieved, this will radically change the situation in the Donbas and will surely ward off a wide-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin will simply have no pretext, more or less convincing for Western states, while he is really in fear of devastating sanctions. Even local-level defeats will demoralize separatists and, on the contrary, boost the Ukrainian army’s morale.

It is too naive to hope that the establishment of demilitarized zones and withdrawal of heavy weapons off the contact line will halt the Donbas war. The burning of the OSCE mission’s armored cars in Donetsk is a good illustration to the ability of OSCE to monitor actions of the Donbas warring parties. It is equally naive to propose local elections in the Donbas’ occupied areas under OSCE supervision, when militants and Russian troops are holding sway there. In that case observers will only care about their own safety rather than about fair and free elections. Only a strong Ukrainian army can guarantee the halt of an armed face-off in the Donbas and domestic stability in Ukraine.

And, for the army to be strong, it should be made professional right now. It should consist, above all, of those who want to serve and fight with the aggressor – not of the marginalized strata of society, who failed to buy themselves out of mobilization and were sent to the army by military commissars in order to fulfill the recruitment plan. This kind of people only corrupt the army, as was the case in 1917, when soldiers of Petrograd’s reserve units, who had been dodging the battle area for years, corrupted the Russian army. And the service-motivated volunteers should be decently paid even today. To this end, any other budget expenditures can be sacrificed. In the long term, the entire Ukrainian army should become professional.

More often than not, politicians are afraid that a professional (volunteer) army is a potential instrument for a Bonapartist-style coup. But in the case of today’s Ukrainian army, such fears are totally groundless. When the army is in an armed confrontation with a strong and aggressive enemy, its professionalism will be fully used for fighting the external enemy. On the contrary, gradual transformation of the current Ukrainian army into a professional entity will help boost its morale and rule out any possibility of a “march on Kyiv.” But all these measures should be no longer put on hold.