177 - Rogue Ukrainians: Unleashing Havoc Inside Russia

Washington Frets Needlessly

            As Ukraine has endlessly surprised Putin and Russia with its ability to resist conventional kinetic assaults, so it has now unleashed a third force that operates behind the Russian lines. Even as its regular soldiers slogged away keeping the Russians pinned down in Bakhmut and its anti-aircraft specialists battled Russian missile and drone sorties, so its irregulars managed to do damage within Russia itself.

            The latest leaked signals intelligence suggests (but not definitively) that a clandestine cabal of Ukrainian activists indeed sent eight-foot- wide drones into the Kremlin, symbolically invading Putin’s administrative fortress.  But Putin was not in residence. In any event, the drones were too lightly armed to do any real damage – except to some roofing tiles.

            Earlier, a similar brigade brought down one-third of the Kerch Bridge that links Crimea to Russia across the mouth of the Sea of Azov. That was a spectacular blow. So was the underwater bombing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany before it had ever been used to transport natural gas.

            Ukraine denied detonating explosives on the pipeline, flying drones into the Kremlin, assassinating a prominent Putin backer, or sponsoring the self-styled pro-Ukrainian Russian “patriotic” detachments that have torched ammunition depots within Russia. These same anti-war Russian partisans have successfully attacked munition-carrying trains inside Russia not far from Ukraine’s border, and set fires even east of Moscow.

            President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top Ukrainian military leaders repeatedly assert that Ukraine fights only within its own territory. Officially, every outrage within Russia is perpetrated, say Ukrainian military officers, by Russian saboteurs, not Ukrainians with any connection to the official Ukrainian defensive machine.  They welcome the attacks behind the lines but deny any culpability.

            Nevertheless, all of these guerrilla actions make Washington nervous. Since American intelligence increasingly believes that Ukraine is behind the secret sorties inside their adversary’s immense land mass, and since the White House and the Pentagon fear Putin escalating the assault on Ukraine or even daring to retaliate wildly against other European countries -- even those within NATO -- they are outspoken in trying to curb such Ukrainian adventurism.  American intelligence even wonders whether the successful perpetrators are purposely rogue units, and even out of Zelensky’s purview.  Apparently, unlike the largely unified control of most Western paramilitary operations, Ukraine’s comparable offensive maneuvering inside Russia maybe running as sets of operatives who report only very loosely and occasionally to headquarters in Kyiv. In other words, even Zelensky may purposely be walled off from any detailed knowledge of his most secretive legions intriguing at a distance.

            Readers of this Substack column ought probably to cheer anything that sabotages the Russian war machine, no matter how deeply into Russia it occurs. Given Putin’s unprovoked invasion, given the bombardments that still rain fire down upon civilian apartment houses inside Ukraine, given the many atrocities committed inside Ukraine by Putin’s henchmen, and despite the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children, anything that undermines Russia behind the lines can only be a plus – even if it worries the Pentagon.

            What we do not want the Pentagon to do is to stop supplying advanced weapons and  training to Ukraine. President Biden finally agreed to send some of our F-16s to take the skies of Ukraine back from Putin. He also permitted Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway. And Poland to shift their many locally based F-16s to Ukraine. Furthermore, Washington has permitted Ukrainian pilots to be trained to fly and service the F-16s, a much more sophisticated and electronically modern fighting craft than the Mig-29s that Ukraine have been employing against more powerful and more numerous Russian aircraft.  Encouraging words are emerging, even reluctantly, from the Pentagon about how quickly the Ukrainians learn to fly the F-16s. (The U.S. Air Force now favors F-35s.)

            There are other U.S. craft which Washington could provide, even the A-10 ground attack plane, known as the “warthog.” Or old-fashioned bombers. If the coming Ukrainian offensive is to succeed -- if Russia is to be pushed back on the defensive – then Ukraine’s effort requires increasingly sophisticated weaponry to defend itself and to force the Russians back on their proverbial haunches,.

            Neither Ukraine nor the West can sustain a war that plods on for months and years. Putin is counting on the West eventually tiring of supporting Ukraine.  President Biden publicly says the opposite, but with Washington perpetually fussing perilously over debt limits, the rising candidacy of aspiring heads-of-state who disdain the existential nature of Ukraine’s defensive endeavor, and heightened pre-electoral fever, could all play into Putin’s hands and harm our support for Ukraine.  That is why this is the time to go for the jugular vein.  The more we give Zelensky what he requests and fill up his coffers with the materiel of war (and possible victory) the better.

            Time is running out. Washington should celebrate all of Ukraine’s accomplishments – including those that are unacknowledged and chancy.  Ukraine’s fight is our fight. What Ukraine has managed to achieve needs to be sustained, however provocative and dangerous Ukraine’s clandestine methods initially seem to be.