A worried Russian
Igor Girkin is a Russian nationalist and former FSB officer, heavily involved in the operation to take Crimea 8 years ago, later defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. He may have been involved in the downing of MH17 as well. He’s a weird character, an ardent war-monger who has been quite critical of the present war for what he views (correctly) as military failures. He recently offered some comments on the future of the “special operation” on Telegram, which were translated and posted to Twitter by @mdmitri91.
His thoughts echo a lot of the points I made last week, in my overview of plausible outcomes. He thinks Russia can’t win in the Donbas. Why?
1. The Russian advantage in airpower and artillery is limited, because Ukraine has plenty of AA weapons and better artillery reconnaissance, thanks to effective use of light drones. Ukraine is also well-equipped to stop Russian armored advances, thanks to an enormous supply of anti-tank missiles.
2. Russia has serious manpower problems. An attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Donbas will create exposed salients, which the Ukrainians can, in turn, cut off and eliminate. Russia does not have enough troops to hold these salients after creating them.
3. Ukraine is doing a better job preparing, training, and equipping reserves. In a few months, they can mount a counter-offensive—which will be even harder to stop if Russia has spent the intervening time throwing its troops at fortified Ukrainian positions.
4. In short, “Without conducting at least a partial mobilization in RF (Russian Forces) it is impossible to conduct deep strategic advancing operations in so-called ‘Ukraine,’ impossible and extremely dangerous.”
See his full complaints here. Here’s the Russian original (he has quite a following on Telegram, which is especially popular in Russia).
Population size and national security?
On a completely different note, a short contribution of mine is featured in this week’s Wall Street Journal Future View. I argued that America’s relative population disadvantage will be a major weakness in a long-term great-power contest with China—a weakness that only grows more serious if America suffers the same demographic issues China now faces. (We’re well on the way.) It’s therefore appropriate to think of birth rates and strong families as a national security issue. The same is true of immigration, which may be a topic for another time. People like to talk about the national security threat of too much immigration, but not enough immigration could be even more serious depending on domestic demographics.