In Ukraine, Russia is nearly down to its nukes

It was another bad week in Ukraine for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his commanding general, Valery Gerasimov — bad enough to launch criminal retaliation strikes against civilian targets in Kyiv, which largely failed anyway.

Even the most loyal of the Russian propagandists are at this point bewildered by the self-defeating military strategy and lack of resolve by the Kremlin to go all-in. Vladimir Solovyov called upon Russian citizens to “recognize there is a war going on,” “move to a war footing” and recognize “we’re fighting against NATO.” He then called for more airstrikes on Ukrainian cities.

Sixteen months into the war, Putin and his generals still do not have an answer to Ukraine. Russian ground forces are being routed and humiliated routinely. Entire formations with their officers have surrendered. UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles strike with impunity at locations once considered not at risk.

And Russia’s border is not secure, either. Elements of the pro-Ukrainian Russian Volunteer Corps, alongside the Freedom of Russia Legion, demonstrated this on May 22 when they conducted a raid in the Belgorod Oblast. The skies over Moscow remain porous as well. The drone strike on the flagpole atop the Kremlin prior to the May 9 Victory Day Parade was repeated on May 30, inviting yet again the wrath of Wagner CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin and ultra-nationalist Igor Strelkov on Putin’s inability to protect Russian citizens living in the capital city.

No amount of spin from the Kremlin can change those inconvenient truths, not that some haven’t tried. A Baghdad Bob-like moment occurred on May 30 when Shoigu reported incredible battlefield successes. “Russian troops continue to inflict effective fire on the enemy,” he wrote. He added that “196 HIMARS [rockets] were intercepted and destroyed, along with 16 HARM missiles and 29 Storm Shadow cruise missiles.” 

Shoigu went on to claim that Russia had struck a U.S. Patriot missile system in Kyiv and “liquidated” 70 Ukrainian raiders during a “counterterrorism operation in Belgorod.” He concluded by claiming that eight Ukrainian drones launched in a “terrorist action targeting civilians” in Moscow were destroyed. The assembled military officers in the audience sat stoically, listening to what they surely recognized as farcical Kremlin propaganda. 

Retired Russian naval officer Konstantin Sivkov, tried deluding his audience that the drone attacks on Moscow had been, in actuality, “very positive, because they’ll help to mobilize Russian society against the enemy.” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin likewise downplayed the effectiveness of the attack saying the “UAV attack caused minor damage to several buildings. All the city’s emergency services are on the scene. They are investigating the circumstances of what happened. No one has been seriously injured so far.” 

Russian spin notwithstanding, the drone strikes provided yet another psychological jab that is picking at the scab of the Russian psyche. What was described as a “special military operation” is in its 16th month now, and as Igor Girkin apprised, something as militarily limited as the special military operation should not have involved Ukrainian strikes “against Engels or Moscow, where since Soviet times [they had] the best air defense and missile defense system in Russia.”

The Kremlin, in the absence of a sustained conventional offensive capability, was increasingly resorting to propagandists selling Putin’s retaliation strikes against Ukrainian civilians as though they were decisive battlefield successes. Yet as Russian missile and drone strikes lose effectiveness against a U.S. and NATO supplied integrated air defense network, Putin is shifting back to implied threats of nuclear escalation and Chernobyl-like environmental disasters. 

This past week, Putin signed two documents designed to send one nuclear message to the U.S. and NATO. The first provided for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, although control is solely retained by the Kremlin. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko claimed that the “tactical nuclear weapons were already on the move.” 

Then, on Monday, Putin signed legislation into law withdrawing Russia from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. Both decrees are creating an ominous new dimension in regard to the four Ukrainian regions Moscow illegally annexed — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. In the past, Putin has vowed to defend Russia territories, “including the annexed regions, with any means at his military’s disposal, including nuclear weapons.”

Short of using nukes and lacking adequate conventional options, Moscow is for now electing to create environmental disasters instead. On May 26, Russian forces blew up the Karlivka Dam in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine with a missile strike, sending water downstream and leading to the evacuation of civilians from their homes along the Vovcha River. The resulting floods did disrupt “Ukrainian military operations near the front lines,” while disrupting Kyiv’s ability to resupply and sustain deployment of those units.

New reports from the Ukraine Defense Ministry on May 26 also suggest Russia is planning a major accident at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in a ‘false flag’ operation to “thwart Ukraine’s imminently expected counteroffensive.” In faking a Ukrainian attack on the plant and causing “the leakage of the radioactive substances,” the Kremlin is apparently anticipating it can “trigger an international investigation which would require a ceasefire, allowing Russia to use the break in fighting to better prepare for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.”

Ukraine, however, remains undeterred and unwilling to give in to Russian nuclear blackmail. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly announced on May 29 that a decision had been made concerning the timing of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The head games continue — real and imagined, including action, reaction, counteraction — only this time, it is Ukraine dictating the conditions.

Deep strikes, raids, reconnaissance in force, supporting efforts, main effort — Gerasimov must now prepare for all contingencies along a 900-mile front. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army gets stronger and the Russian soldier in his foxhole is left to wonder.

Putin, essentially, is down to his nukes in Ukraine. And even he likely knows that they are not a viable or winning option. The question is no longer whether Russia conventionally loses in Ukraine, but when. 

Jonathan Sweet (@JESweet2022), a retired Army colonel and 30-year military intelligence officer, led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. Mark Toth (@MCTothSTL), an economist, entrepreneur, and former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis, writes on national security and foreign policy.