have inflicted almost 5,000 missile strikes, 3,500 air strikes, and more than 1,100 drone strikes on the territory of Ukraine24 February 2023

Life During Wartime, Part 2

It is an anniversary this morning, and has been for a few hours. The featured event is in Ukraine and has been highly anticipated, and the fireworks about it have been going on for days as it loomed. The numbers are stark. This morning, a tally floated by: almost 5,000 missile strikes, 3,500 air strikes, and more than 1,100 drone strikes. That is just by one side, the horror of those numbers only accounting for the ones conducted in Ukraine.

We thought it appropriate to look back on what the Writer’s Section, an independent contracting group, thought about the invasion at the time. We stipulate up front that we let you gentle Readers down a bit. But we were not paying much attention. Our thoughts had been on the last war in which we wore the uniform of our nation. It went on for nearly twenty years, and the ignominious end of part of it that had just occurred.

What did we say one year ago today? “The Russians are going at it in Ukraine today. It is interesting on several levels of former expertise for the crowd that had just yesterday breathed warmer air and felt the slumbering earth begin to breath again.”

That is a glimpse of what is to come. First, the Earth. We naturally mean the stuff that we walk on. Or tanks can tread. It is still solid enough to walk on with winter’s chill. That will change to oozy muck in the transition to Spring and not be amenable to movement until Mid-April or May. So, ground warfare will have a spark as we are. seeing now, and then focus will change until the forces in the field can move. But movement last year determined the date we observe today.

Today? Engagement across the eastern Oblasts, the Russian-leaning Ukrainian provinces. Gray and steel cold just above freezing. Will ceding the Donbas enclaves to the Russians, providing them an ensured pathway to Crimea provide a basis for an armistice? Neither side looks ready for peace. Including the United States, for some reason.

It is interesting to look back at how this came as a bolt from the blue. It wasn’t, of course. Some of the information about the events in Ukraine since 2014 have emerged. It is startling. It would have been worth a look if anyone had cared. But that is not now how this all works. There is a drive afoot to unseat Mr. Putin that is quite unlike the way we treated a Russia bristling with nuclear arms in our time.

But timess have changed along with the strategic calculus. Russia’s economy ranks 11th in the world. California, if independent, would be ranked 5th. Add China, now #2, and their support to Russia could change outcomes. But the weather gets a vote as well. If there is to be a major ground offensive in Ukraine, it will be slowed by season. That may provide an opportunity for mischief and diversion in the pervasive information war. Withdrawal from the START treaty framework could permit a “legal” showcase for a nuclear demonstration not directly connected to the conflict and without mass casualties but with major psycological impact.

Last year it would have been difficult to frame this new year in those sorts of apocalyptic terms.

We noted last year that the confirmation bias from old times often needs a moment to correct. It impacts the beginning of our assessment about many of the issues, all across the spectrum. We have often commented on the dramatic changes the end of the Cold War brought to Russia. What we hadn’t considered in the same context is what we have also brought to these shores.

For the first time in a while, some of us have drawn back. We were participants in similar giant machines. Old consequence management habits are hard to break. The fact that there are nukes in the hands of at least one of the active participants in the conflict means something significant might need managing.

With that, we have to correct the narrative from last year on the war in Ukraine. Then we said: “We are just spectators in this, not collaborators or victims.” Turns out that was wrong. We are participants. Last year we noted that it was “curious that a thing so far away is so personal.”

So, correction noted. We actually had no idea how personal it was going to be.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com