Western Analysts Continue to Push Delusions About Russia

I want to flag another article that reflects a profound misunderstanding of Russia and the war in Ukraine… It is from a pundit by the name of Kamran Bokhari.

Although Bokhari appears to be a young guy who was not an adult during the cold war, he is trapped in the old style of thinking about Russia and US relations. He writes:

Trump must act decisively to show that he controls the rules of the engagement and to counter the perception that Moscow is exploiting his desire for diplomacy. Washington’s move on Wednesday to sanction Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil companies, is evidence of the administration’s sensitivity to charges of weakness….

Certainly, the war in Ukraine has shown that Russia falls well short of the military and industrial might that the Soviets possessed. After nearly four years of fighting, Moscow’s failures underscore the erosion of its conventional power and the limits of its mobilization capacity. Russia will need years to rebuild its economic base, replenish its arsenal and restore force readiness, diminishing its ability to threaten Europe in the near term. In the meantime, Russia will try to gain as much territory in eastern Ukraine as possible as it waits for Washington to continue its withdrawal from the global stage, after which it will exploit strategic opportunities in Europe as they emerge.

This strategy has a couple of problems that Moscow is all too aware of. First and more immediately, the continued rejection of Trump’s diplomatic overtures risks escalation. The US could respond by supplying additional military aid to Ukraine that could lead to real battlefield reversals. The Kremlin, for its part, recognizes how Trump’s political imperatives will influence his willingness to act decisively. As a result, there are limits to how far Russia can delay or continue to manipulate negotiations without incurring costs.

First a comment about the latest sanctions the US Department of the Treasury, through its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), imposed on Russia’s two largest oil companies: Rosneft and Lukoil. These sanctions come under Executive Order 14024 and are ostensibly part of a broader effort to weaken the Kremlin’s war machine by cutting off key sources of revenue from the energy sector amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

To be specific, the sanctions are supposed to block Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as many of their subsidiaries and any entities they own 50 percent or more, directly or indirectly, from accessing the US financial system and prohibits US persons from dealing with them. Only one tiny problem… Rosneft and Lukoil are doing business outside of the US financial system. These sanctions will have no substantive effect on either company. This is simply window dressing from Donald Trump to convince the anti-Russian Americans that he is trying to play hardball with Moscow. The clowns in Washington do not understand that Russia’s economy is not dependent on oil exports… And that is according to Mr. Alexander Galushka, the Deputy Secretary of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.

Second, Bokhari continues to repeat the false Western memes that Russia’s military operation is a failure, that the Russian economy is collapsing and that its stocks of military supplies are depleted. Russia continues to recruit and expand its army, which now has more than 1.5 million soldiers. The cooling of the Russian economy this year is a direct result of the action by Russia’s Central Bank to cool inflation… Last year’s boost in interest rates has achieved the desired result and inflation in Russia is now in single-digits. And Bokhari’s claim that, “Russia will need years to rebuild its economic base, replenish its arsenal and restore force readiness,” is complete nonsense. Russia’s massive industrial base is operating on all cylinders, churning out artillery shells, artillery barrels, drones, tanks, armored personnel carriers and hypersonic missiles. It is NATO, not Russia, that is depleted and facing an uphill challenge in trying to revive a ransacked industrial base. It is NATO, not Russia, that is incapable of matching Russia’s production of ammunition and weapons.

Finally, Bokhari displays his ignorance of military capabilities, especially with respect to the United States. He asserts, “The US could respond by supplying additional military aid to Ukraine that could lead to real battlefield reversals.” What weapons or aid would that be? The US can’t produce drones or artillery shells in quantities needed by Ukraine, but the more important deficit is Ukraine’s lack of trained military personnel. No amount of aid can fix that, especially since Russia is expanding its offensive operations all along the 1400 kilometer front, which is producing more Ukrainian casualties.

Donald Trump wrongly believes that he can pressure Russia and compel it to halt its military campaign to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. The Russians are not going to stop until those objectives are achieved… Whether by force or diplomacy.

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