*** MILITARY SITUATION ***
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 30th
Russia is withdrawing some elements of its forces around Kyiv into Belarus for likely redeployment to other axes of advance and did not conduct any offensive operations around the city in the past 24 hours, but Russian forces will likely continue to hold their forwardmost positions and shell Ukrainian forces and residential areas. Ukrainian forces repelled several Russian attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the past 24 hours and Russian forces likely continued to take territory in Mariupol. Russian forces held their positions and did not conduct offensive operations throughout the rest of the country. Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol in the coming days but likely suffered high casualties taking the city, and Russian force generation efforts and the redeployment of damaged units from the Kyiv axis are increasingly unlikely to enable Russian forces to make rapid gains in the Donbas region.
Russia is reportedly increasingly deploying support personnel and auxiliary units to replace combat losses in Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russia is deploying servicemen from military support units, including educational institutions, to replace combat losses. Russian officer casualties and the decision to strip Russian training units of personnel will further impede the Russian military’s ability to train new conscripts and replacements. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that three battalion tactical groups (BTGs) including up to 2,000 Russian and South Ossetian personnel from Russia’s 4th and 7th Military Bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, respectively, deployed to unspecified locations in Ukraine. Social media users observed South Ossetian forces in the Donbas region on March 29, but ISW cannot independently confirm if the entirety of these reinforcements were deployed to Donbas.
The Ukrainian General Staff additionally stated that Russia faces continuing morale and supply issues, including contract servicemen (volunteer troops, not conscripts) in the 26th Tank Regiment requesting to terminate their contracts and relocate to garrison service, and elements of the 150th Motor Rifle Division receiving inoperable equipment from military storage. The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate additionally claimed that Russian military procurement is “on the verge of failure” due to western sanctions and that Russia cannot produce modern weapons and equipment without foreign electronics. ISW cannot independently confirm these Ukrainian intelligence reports, but they are largely consistent with previously confirmed reports of low Russian morale and equipment failures.
-Russian forces around Kyiv held their forward positions and continued to defend against limited Ukrainian counterattacks. Russian forces are unlikely to give up their secured territory around the city and are continuing to dig in.
-ISW can confirm Russia is withdrawing some units around Kyiv for likely redeployment to other axes of advance, but cannot confirm any changes in Russian force posture around Chernihiv as of this time.
-Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations in northeastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours.
-Elements of the 20th Combined Arms Army and 1st Guards Tank Army are redeploying to support Russian operations on Izyum, but are unlikely to take the city in the near future.
-Ukrainian forces repelled continuing Russian assaults in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts. Russian forces continued to take territory in Mariupol but are likely suffering high casualties.
*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***
-Two Russian planes that violated Swedish airspace earlier this month were equipped with nuclear weapons, it has emerged. The flyover near the island of Gotland on March 2 was a deliberate act designed to intimidate Sweden, according to Swedish news channel TV4 Nyheterna. A total of four planes had taken off from the Russian air base of Kaliningrad. They consisted of two Sukhoi 24 attack planes, which were escorted by two Sukhoi 27 fighter jets. It was the two attack planes which were, according to TV4 Nyheter sources, equipped with nuclear weapons. The violation of Swedish territory lasted for about a minute. The country's air force deployed two JAS 39 Gripen which took pictures of the intruders. It was then, say Swedish media, that it was confirmed the Russian planes were equipped with nuclear warheads.
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| Two Russian aircrafts SU 27 and two nuclear armed SU 24 are pictured after violating Swedish airspace east of Gotland |
-A would-be fighter tells VICE World News that concerns over a lack of firepower, war tourists, and potentially being executed by the Russians have put him off joining Ukraine's foreign legion. When Phil, a 35-year-old former officer in the British Army, heard Ukraine’s call for foreign fighters to help defend the country from the Russian invasion, he felt he had to join the fight. But after a fact-finding trip into Ukraine to get a better handle on the situation, he’s had second thoughts. “There’s no point wasting my life for nothing,” he told VICE World News. “If I think I can go and support in a way that’s going to contribute to the security of Ukraine and the safety of Europe, then I will. But I don’t want to go on a suicide mission.”
A month on, there’s growing evidence that the reality of life as a foreign volunteer in Ukraine isn’t squaring with the romantic fantasy. Many foreign fighters, disenchanted with what they encountered, have already gone home early, with gripes ranging from a lack of adequate equipment and poor organisation, to the calibre of fellow foreign recruits. One group of volunteers fled across the Polish border after a Russian missile attack on Yavoriv military base, where international recruits were receiving training, last month.
Canada’s Globe and Mail recently spoke to fighters who had abandoned the battle amid concerns over the lack of equipment, and being required to sign indefinite contracts, and were now doing humanitarian relief work in the country instead. A recent report in Belgium’s Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper claimed that more than half of the country’s foreign fighters in Ukraine had already returned home. “I didn't feel like serving as foreign cannon fodder,” one returnee told the outlet.
-Russia’s defence ministry said its forces were regrouping near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv in order to focus on other key areas and complete the “liberation” of the breakaway Donbas region, Russian news agencies reported. The announcement comes after it said it would drastically scale back military operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv. The Pentagon press secretary John Kirby later said the US believed the strategy chance was “a repositioning, not a real withdrawal”.
-Over the last 24 hours, the first six of “around 30” shipments of US security assistance arrived in Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said. “Material is getting into the region every single day, including over the last 24 hours,” Kirby said. According to CNN, Kirby said the US is prioritizing “the kinds of material that we know the Ukrainians need the most”, including anti-armor and anti-air systems. He also said the Switchblade drones promised to Ukraine will begin shipping in “relatively soon”.
-Washington made a “prudent decision” to withdraw two US Navy destroyers from the Black Sea in January, and their eventual return will be decided based on national security considerations, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The US Navy “routinely” moves ships into or out of the Black Sea, but made the call to withdraw the two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers sometime in January, Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon daily briefing. Kirby was commenting on the revelation made by the European Command head, General Tod Wolters, earlier in the day, when he told the House Armed Services Committee that the two destroyers were withdrawn due to the worsening situation in Ukraine.
-Putin’s approval ratings surged in March to levels not seen in five years as the war in Ukraine enters its second month, according to an independent survey. According to the Levada Center, Putin’s job approval grew to 83% in March from 71% in February. The last time Putin reached similar approval ratings was in 2017.
-Russian hackers have recently attempted to penetrate the networks of NATO and the militaries of some eastern European countries, Google’s Threat Analysis Group said in a report published on Wednesday.
-Less than 20% of Russian forces that are stationed around Kyiv are being repositioned, according to the Pentagon. But they are unlikely to head home and are instead expected to be resupplied and redeployed, Reuters is reporting. Some of them may have already moved into Belarus, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, and Russian contractor Wagner Group has also deployed about 1,000 contractors into Ukraine’s Donbas region.
-Russian forces are starting to withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear site, reports AFP citing the US Pentagon. A senior US official said that Russian troops are “walking away” from the facility and going into Belarus.
-The United States will provide $500m (£380m) in budgetary assistance to Ukraine, President Joe Biden told Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy on a call today.
-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson allegedly told his cabinet on Tuesday that he wants to provide Ukraine with “more lethal” military aid to help the country repel the Russian attack, The Times reported on Wednesday, citing a government source. Western countries have been urgently supplying Ukraine with weapons after Moscow launched its military campaign on February 24. Kiev, however, has repeatedly asked for more aid, arguing that the current level of support is not enough.
-Russia has been accused of intensifying its bombardment of the besieged Ukrainian city of Chernihiv despite claims the Kremlin would drawback out of respect for ongoing peace talks. Vladyslav Atroshenko, Chernihiv’s mayor, said the Russians had lied and that they were continuing to heavily hit his city. “They’re saying reducing intensity, they actually have increased the intensity of strikes,” he told CNN.
-There was also continued barraging of Kyiv’s suburbs, Ukrainian officials said, said although a defence ministry spokesperson said there were some signs of troop movements away from the two cities. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces were regrouping near Kyiv and Chernihiv in order to focus on other key areas and complete the “liberation” of the breakaway Donbas region, Russian news agencies reported.
-The Ukrainian military said Russian troops were also intensifying their attacks around the eastern city of Izyum and the eastern Donetsk region, after redeploying some units from other areas. The regional Donetsk governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Russian forces are shelling nearly all cities along the frontline separating Ukrainian government-controlled territory from the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk in the east.
-Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that Russian shelling of Mariupol will end only when Ukrainian troops surrender, the Kremlin said.
-Following Zelenskiy's earlier comments, Interfax is now reporting anything-but-peaceful comments from Russia as the Ministry of Defense says "The Russian army has created conditions for the final stage of the operation to liberate Donbas." The Ministry also stated that "all main tasks of the armed forces of Russia in Kiev and Chernigov have been completed."
-The West will not agree to Russia’s request to pay for gas in rubles, French President Emmanuel Macron told his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, according to Reuters. Macron told Putin it was impossible for Western clients to pay for gas in Russian currency, the news agency reported on Tuesday, citing an Elysee official.
-Beijing has condemned US attempts to “contain and suppress” China and Russia, saying they would not succeed, after it was reported that the Biden administration had described China in its new National Defense Strategy as its “most consequential strategic competitor.” President Joe Biden briefed members of Congress on the classified version of the new strategy on Monday, which comes as Washington looks to increase its defense budget to $773 billion. Responding to a summary of the strategy documents, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said they were “full of Cold War and bloc confrontation mentality.”
-On Tuesday, BlackRock Inc. President Rob Kapito told an audience in Austin, Texas, hosted by the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, that an entire younger generation is quickly finding out what it means to suffer from shortages, according to Bloomberg. "For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want," Kapito said. "And we have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice." He said the economy suffers from "scarcity inflation" due to the fallout of labor shortages, lack of agricultural supplies and affordable housing, and high energy prices.
-Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, hailed China as part of a new “just, democratic world order” ahead of a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. In his first visit to China since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, Lavrov said the world was “living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations”. Wang said Beijing and Moscow are “more determined” to develop bilateral ties and boost cooperation and reaffirmed China’s support for continued peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
-The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has promoted Ramzan Kadyrov to lieutenant-general for his role in the invasion of Ukraine, which the Chechen leader is using to showcase his loyalty to Moscow and his own impunity, Emma Graham-Harrison and Vera Mironova report.
-The status of Crimea is settled for Russia, and Moscow will not discuss the issue with Ukraine or any other party, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Wednesday. He was commenting on the outcome of peace talks in Turkey.
-Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated on Wednesday that all of the nation's energy and commodity exports could be priced in rubles. Moscow has already demanded that gas exports to hostile countries should be paid for in the Russian currency. Peskov was asked about the comments by parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who earlier in the day called for pricing all of Russian commodity exports in domestic currency. “This is an idea that should definitely be worked on,” the Kremlin spokesman said.
-What if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again? The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The Times’s Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.
Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean? “There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”
Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s). Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.
“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.
It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.
Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.
This alternative analysis of Putin’s performance could be wrong. Then again, in war, politics and life, it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.
-Germany and Austria have triggered emergency plans over possible gas supply disruption amid a payments stand-off with Russia. Russia had demanded "unfriendly" countries pay for its gas in roubles from 31 March, but the EU, which mainly pays in euros, rejected the idea. Moscow later appeared to soften its stance, saying on Wednesday rouble payments would be introduced gradually. But Germany and Austria have taken the first steps towards gas rationing Germany urged consumers and companies to reduce consumption in anticipation of possible shortages, while Austria said it was tightening its monitoring of the gas market.
-Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke by phone on Wednesday to discuss Moscow's demand that Berlin pay for Russian gas with rubles, rather than in euros or dollars. According to the German version of events, Putin agreed that payments would continue for the moment in either of the two Western currencies, with the Kremlin stating that these payments would then be converted into the Russian currency. Moscow claimed that Putin explained to Scholz that his government is now demanding payment in rubles “due to the fact that, in violation of international law, the foreign exchange reserves of the Bank of Russia were frozen by the EU
-South Ossetia, a partially recognized republic in the Caucasus region, will soon be taking legal steps in an attempt to join the Russian Federation, its president, Anatoly Bibilov, has announced. Most of the world officially regards the territory as part of Georgia, although Tbilisi hasn't held control since the Soviet collapse in 1991.member states.” However, Putin told Scholz that the switchover would not result in less advantageous contract conditions for German importers.
-Reuters reports that local authorities have begun locking down some western parts of Shanghai two days ahead of schedule as the number of new cases detected in China's most populous city increased by one-third despite stringent measures already in place to try to stop the virus spreading. The city's lockdown is only in its third day.
-Bloomberg reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, the Biden administration is weighing a plan to release roughly one million barrels of oil a day for several months. The total release may be as much as 180 million barrels, the people said, which is quite a step up from the 30mm barrel release 'mulled' on March 25th (yes 5 days ago). However... as much as we want lower gas prices, these actions by the administration are bordering on the insane. Of course, just like last year's SPR release, which actually sent oil prices higher as the strategy backfired spectacularly, another shot of supplies from the reserve would probably be futile. To further illustrate this point, the chart below shows that a release of 180M barrels from the reserve (which is supposed to be reserved for emergencies) would take the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest since 1984...and so far has done absolutely nothing to slow the surge in prices.
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