GWYNNE DYER “This obviously does not happen because of a thrown butt,” British Defence minister Ben Wallace said. But the Russian Ministry of Defence insisted that the explosions that destroyed at least eight warplanes at Saki Air Base in Russian-occupied Crimea on August 9 were due to “a violation of fire safety requirements”.
The implication is that some careless Russian smoker tossed away his cigarette butt and caused a fire that set off explosions. That’s hardly a testimonial to the discipline of the Russian air force’s ground crews, but it’s better than admitting that Ukrainian missiles have reached 225km behind Russian lines to destroy a whole squadron of Russian fighters.
Moscow also claimed that no Russian aircraft had been damaged by the explosions in Crimea, although the wreckage of the destroyed fighters was clearly visible on the “overheads” from satellite observations.
The Russian Defence ministry played the same silly game in April when Ukrainian cruise missiles sank the “Moskva”, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It claimed that a fire had caused munitions to explode, and that the ship then sank while under tow due to “stormy seas” (although the sea was actually flat calm at the time).
And what caused that fire? Careless smokers again, presumably, because even the most damning statements about the indiscipline and incompetence of Russian sailors and airmen are preferable to an admission that the Ukrainians are really hurting Russia.
Ukraine’s Defence ministry is having fun with this, reporting that it “cannot establish the cause of the fire (at the Russian airfield), but once again reminds of fire safety rules and a ban on smoking in unauthorised places”.
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Taking responsibility for these strikes deep in Russian-controlled territory is not in Ukraine’s interest, so it’s happy for Russia to take the blame. Various anonymous defence officials in Kyiv further muddied the waters by suggesting that Ukrainian partisans were responsible, or Ukrainian special forces already operating far behind Russian front lines.
But why is it not in Ukraine’s interest to take ownership of these small, but symbolically important victories?
It’s because the really decisive front in this war is how fast American and other Nato weapons systems are sent to Ukraine, and that is determined by a process that seems to be derived largely from the old children’s game of “Mother May I” (also known as “Giant Steps”).
The opening move is quite straightforward: Kyiv asks Washington for a hundred HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems so that it can counter Russia’s huge superiority in older artillery and rocket systems and drive Moscow’s forces from Ukrainian soil.
Washington replies that it can take two giant steps and a frog hop. No, wait a minute, it replies that Ukraine can have four HIMARS systems now. Once the crews have been trained and have demonstrated their proficiency in using the weapons, Kyiv can start the next round of the game by asking for more. This takes four weeks.
Getting into the spirit of the game, Ukraine then asks for only 20 more HIMARs, leaving the rest for later. Washington replies that it can take four baby steps and a pirouette — or rather, four more HIMARs now, but with the range still restricted to 70km and no thermobaric ammunition (fuel-air explosives). And so on.
We are now in the fourth round of this game, with 16 HIMARs promised of which Ukraine has already deployed between eight and 12 on the battlefield. At this rate, Ukraine will have the 100 HIMARs it needs to expel the Russians around April of 2024.
Similar games are being played with other badly needed weapons from Nato stockpiles like Western-made combat aircraft, modern anti-air defence systems and longer-range missiles for attacks like the one on Saki Air Base. This is all driven by an excess of caution about such “escalation” at the White House and in the National Security Council.
Washington is right to be concerned about Russia’s reactions, but it is prone to see the Russians as dangerously excitable children. They are not. They are poker players (not chess-players) who bet over-confidently and are now trying to bluff their way out of trouble. The Russian ruling elite, or at least most of it, remains rational.
The Ukrainians, however, have to take American anxieties into account even when they use their own weapons, some of which have been modified for extended range, on distant Russian targets. The simplest way is just to pretend it wasn’t their weapons that did the damage.
The same policy applies to the numerous acts of sabotage carried out in Russia by Ukrainian agents — and by a happy accident the Russians are willing to collaborate in this fiction. They would rather blame the clumsiness, ignorance and incompetence of their own troops than give the credit to the Ukrainians.
- Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His new book is titled The Shortest History of War.