Robert Clark
Curia’s Director of Foreign PolicyRussia’s latest advances in Ukraine highlight competing pressures on western intelligence and military resources.
This week the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps described the deteriorating situation in north-east Ukraine as one caused by ‘the world sleeping’, in remarks aimed at highlighting Russia’s recent advances and operational successes in Ukraine.
Thousands of Russian forces crossed over the border into Ukrainian territory last week in an attempted push for Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv. The advance isn’t likely enough to cause a major Russian breakthrough, but it is enough to stress-test Ukraine’s armed forces across the north-east front and demonstrating Russia’s capability to keep on fighting.
The Horrors of February 2022 Revisited
Bordering the southern Russian region of Belgorod, Kharkiv lies just 40 kilometres from the Russian border, and was subjected to an intense siege of the city in the early days and weeks of Russia’s reinvasion of the country in February and March 2022.
After repelling the attack and routing the Russians during a lighting offensive in September that year, Kharkiv province became the site of the greatest Ukrainian victory of the war so far; liberating at least 12,000 square kilometres from Russian control and providing real hope that Ukraine could defeat Russia on the battlefield.
After pushing the Russians out of the sprawling and largely destroyed city, and even back across the border, Ukraine reinforced its defences and secured its hard-fought territory.
Unfortunately, the ‘front’ in Ukraine runs for approximately 900 – 1,000 kilometres, making it virtually impossible for the Ukrainians to constantly cover.
The World Was Caught Sleeping: Failure of Intelligence
This is what Shapps was referring to as ‘the world sleeping’; it’s not just Ukrainian eyes, and intelligence, watching this immensely vast network of trenches and platoon-level pitched battles – it’s the Americans, and the British, as well, feeding intelligence to the Ukrainian staff officers and government, helping Kyiv build up the battle picture across 1,000 kilometres of frontage.
There were indeed gaps which would be missed – but this ‘gap’ really was too big to justify missing due to the scale of the battlefield. Moving thousands of troops, equipment, armour and artillery into position takes enormous amounts of time and resources – particularly for an army as lethargic and top-heavy as Russia’s.
Indeed, as the west’s military intelligence assets have been temporarily re-routed due to the threats to Israel from Iran and its proxies across the Middle East, it highlights just how thinly spread military and intelligence resources are for both Washington and London, at a time of competing pressures for resources not seen for almost a quarter of a century.
The UK’s Growing Commitment to Ukraine
Whilst the UK government have repeatedly ruled out sending British troops to Ukraine, it has continued to make marginal increases in offers of military and civilian aid to Kyiv – most recently by the Prime Minister’s pledge last month to ringfence (under a future Conservative government) at least £3 billion per year for Ukraine.
This political and financial pledge by the Prime Minister has been matched by a military one, to continue training at scale Ukrainian troops in the UK, whilst increasing investments into the Ukrainian defence and industrial bases to help propel Ukrainian industry during a war economy, whilst also investing into British suppliers of long-range missiles, anti-tank rockets, and artillery shells, all donated to Ukraine which have left British stocks largely empty.
The Defence Secretary used the opportunity this week of Russia’s renewed offensive into Kharkiv region to not only highlight how delayed funding by allies and partners to Kyiv has demonstrable knock-on effects on the battlefield, but to also highlight the recent UK leadership promising increases of aid to Ukraine as part of a safeguarded annual promise, to keep supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’ – in stark contrast to US President Biden’s message last year of supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as we can’.
This article was written by Curia’s Director of Foreign Policy, Rob Clark. For more information on foreign and defence policy, please click here.