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War In Ukraine: Putin Can’t Win — But the US Can Lose
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam demonstrates that Russia is resorting to increasingly desperate measures. The question is how the West will respond.
If the fighting goes on even another year, the West may find itself losing – with dramatic repercussions for the United States’ leadership role in the world. Following the three failed early 21st century wars – in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – the global image of the U.S. was badly tarnished. Its ardent pursuit of global leadership had been dealt a triple blow.
A godsend for the U.S.
Against that backdrop, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was in many ways a godsend for the United States.
In addition to tangible economic benefits – such as increased sales of liquified natural gas and arms – the United States has not only seen NATO revived and solidified, but broadened with the addition of Finland (and, soon, also Sweden).
Given the brutality of the Russian attack, NATO member states are finally expanding their military budgets, which has been Washington’s long-standing demand.
Russia’s military machine completely demystified itself
What’s more, as the U.S. military leadership recognized early on in this conflict the insights gained into the (in)ability of the Russian military from its brutal, but largely inept actions against Ukraine are a tremendous strategic benefit to the West.
Nobody had ever expected that, absent a major global conflict, the opportunity for such a “live” experiment would ever arise. Russia’s military machine has completely demystified itself.
On top of all that Ukraine’s heroic, battle-hardened military – after its potential victory – could become a highly valuable addition for the Western alliance as.
As if we are back in the early post-World War II era
In sum, the United States’ leadership position in the alliance has been bolstered and, most importantly, the country once more sees itself – and is regarded around vital parts of the world – as a defender of freedom, self-determination and rule of law.
It is as if we are back in the early post-World War II era, when the United States was viewed with hope by people around the world.
He not only lacks modern weapons and advanced technology but, equally crucially, the Russian people’s lukewarm desire to wage a war of conquest is no match for the determination of the Ukrainians to defend their country and to liberate occupied territories.
Towards a war of attrition?
However, unless things on the ground change dramatically, those facts of life do not mean that Putin is lacking the resources to keep on fighting indefinitely.
A war of attrition is what the United States and its allies seem to have in mind as well. Fearing to be drawn into the conflict, NATO under the direction from Washington has been providing weapons by dribs and drabs.
Accordingly, NATO allies have been favoring defensive armaments and holding back more advanced systems. Even the F-16s, fighter planes developed half a century ago, have not yet been given to Ukraine, to say nothing of more modern sophisticated flying machines.
Considerable restrictions have been placed on the use of Western weapons, especially in attacking Russian territory, for fear of “provoking Putin.”
If Ukraine is not allowed to win decisively and if the war drags on for another year, the United States will risk missing out on the exceptional opportunities provided by Putin’s blunder and squandering many of the benefits it is now enjoying.
How many more atrocities?
In addition to the flooding that destroyed or damaged numerous settlements, the Kakhovka dam and power plant was vital for much of Ukraine’s south. Cities and towns, highly productive farms and industrial plants relied on the water and power from that source. Jobs will disappear and the region will lose a substantial portion of the population.
The destructions of the dam and the massive human, environmental, economic and social calamity it will cause is a warning what the prolongation of the conflict will mean. There will be other atrocities which Putin will commit in his impotent rage against Ukraine which is refusing to submit to his will.
Ukraine’s ability to recover economically
But even if no other comparable war crimes will be committed by Russia, a long war will be a disaster for Ukraine, since it will impair it ability to recover economically. Some eight million Ukrainians are already refugees abroad — mainly women and children since draft-age men are not allowed to leave.
As the war continues, many will choose to stay where they are rather than return, given that Russian bombings destroy more and more houses and factories in Ukraine. Their kids are already assimilating in their new countries. Exhausted and depopulated, Ukraine may become an enormous failed state in the heart of Europe.
Many possible scenarios
There are many possible scenarios of what will happen to Ukraine if the war drags on. For example, Volodymyr Zelensky’s pro-Western government may fall and, Ukraine may turn on the West. It may look to form other alliances, notably with China.
Ukrainians know that they are fighting not only for their own independence but for the freedom, democracy and peace in the rest of Europe. To that end, they are losing tens of thousands of their best and brightest young men while the Western world remains on the sidelines. Eventually, this will breed resentment.
NATO unity will come under strain
Moreover, in a long war, NATO unity will come under strain. As it is, Turkey and Hungary already pursue their own agendas. Right-wing parties have seen their strength grow in other European countries as well, and a Republican may win the White House next year.
Eventually, the countries in Europe that are further away from the conflict may insist on freezing the conflict. On the other hand, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and other frontline nations will be concerned with the future fate of Ukraine.
They have been strong supporters of Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion, but they will certainly not want to see Ukraine become a pauperized failed state in the heart of Europe. Before long, they may feel they need to get involved directly – if only to safeguard their own security.
This may be what former NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen had in mind when he warned that some alliance members may have to send troops to Ukraine.
Conclusion
In short, Washington must make sure not only that Ukraine liberates its occupied territories, but that it does so quickly. Ukraine must get all the modern weapons it needs, including advanced fighter planes and long-range artillery.
But if the war shows signs of stalling, both Russia and the United States may find themselves losing the war in Ukraine – with dramatic repercussions for U.S. leadership role in the world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held more than four hours of talks in Moscow on Monday, kicking off a much-anticipated state visit that represents a symbolic joint stand against the United States and its Western allies, which the two leaders have characterized as domineering and hypocritical.
Xi exchanged compliments and pleasantries with Putin even as Russia persists in its brutal war in Ukraine and Putin stands personally accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the visit “suggests that China feels no responsibility to hold the Kremlin accountable for the atrocities committed to Ukraine.”
“And instead of even condemning it,” Blinken added, “it would rather provide diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit those very crimes.”
Putin and Xi, each positioned as leader for life of a nuclear power, celebrated their “no limits” relationship in Beijing together in early 2022, just weeks before Putin ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and over the years they have met about 40 times. Monday’s visit, however, signaled a deepening alliance. It represented a display of tacit support for the war by China and a personal triumph for Putin, who is eager to show he is not isolated on the world stage.
At an initial meeting on Monday afternoon, the leaders appeared relaxed, smiling as they shook hands. “Dear friend, welcome to Russia,” Putin said.
Putin praised Xi’s leadership and complimented China’s “colossal leap forward,” adding: “All over the world, this is of genuine interest, and we even envy you a little.”
Xi, in similarly flattering terms, said he thought Russia had made “significant progress in prosperity” under Putin’s leadership. “You have elections next year, and I’m sure the Russian people will support you,” Xi said.
Elections in Russia are not free or fair. Opposition politicians often are subject to persecution and arrest or face other obstacles to running for office. Putin also pushed through constitutional changes that will let him stay in power at least through 2036.
Xi’s plane arrived at Vnukovo International Airport just southwest of the Russian capital at about 1 p.m. local time Monday. The presidential motorcade then made its way to the center of Moscow, where dozens of people waving Chinese and Russian flags greeted the delegation at the Soluxe Hotel in the north of the city.
Putin and Xi also ate dinner together on Monday and, according to a menu posted by one Kremlin pool reporter, were served quail and mushroom pancakes, venison, and Russian wine.
Before the talks started, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the leaders would discuss the prospects for peace “one way or another” and that Ukraine would “undoubtedly be on the agenda.”
With the world’s attention focused on Xi’s appearance in Moscow, the Ukrainian government urged the Chinese leader to press Putin to respect the U.N. Charter, withdraw Russia’s occupying forces and restore Kyiv’s territorial integrity.
“We expect Beijing to use its influence on Moscow to make it put an end to the aggressive war against Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told The Washington Post. “We stand ready to engage in a closer dialogue with China in order to restore peace in Ukraine in accordance with the principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter, and the latest [U.N. General Assembly] resolution on this matter.”
The General Assembly voted late last month, by 141 to 7, to call for an end to the war, as well as Russia’s full withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. China was among 32 countries that abstained from the vote.
Ahead of the meeting, the Russian and Chinese leaders each published articles — Xi’s carried in Rossiyskaya Gazeta; Putin’s in the People’s Daily — in which they denounced what they portrayed as the U.S.-led West’s hegemony and arrogance.
Putin attacked the United States directly in his article. “The U.S.’s policy of simultaneously deterring Russia and China, as well as all those who do not bend to American dictation, is getting ever more fierce and aggressive,” Putin wrote. “The international security and cooperation architecture is being dismantled. Russia has been labeled an ‘immediate threat’ and China a ‘strategic competitor.’”
Xi merely alluded to Washington, writing: “The international community is well aware that no country in the world is superior to all others. There is no universal model of government and there is no world order where the decisive word belongs to a single country. Solidarity and peace on the planet without splits and upheavals meet the common interests of all mankind.”
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has pursued an increasingly assertive foreign policy to counter what Beijing sees as U.S. efforts to contain China. Its friendship with Moscow is a key part of China’s strategy to subvert Western-imposed isolation.
Xi and Putin were expected to discuss opportunities to build their bilateral partnership, including economic cooperation, which has soared over the past year and become increasingly vital to Russia amid the bite of Western sanctions. In 2022, Chinese exports to Russia increased by 12.8 percent, while Russian exports to China of crude oil increased, in dollar terms, by 44 percent and exports of natural gas more than doubled, according to industry data.
The leaders may also address Russia’s needfor lethal weapons from China, as Moscow’s troops have stalled on the battlefield and as Kyiv awaits deliveries of more powerful and sophisticated weapons from the West, including tanks and air defenses.
“There has been a lot of speculation about military aid, but China has not promised Russia anything,” said Ma Fengshu, director of the Russian and Central Asian Studies Center at Shandong University. “Of course President Xi and Putin will talk about the Ukraine issue, but this meeting will be primarily about enhancing bilateral cooperation between China and Russia, rather than working out a solution to the Ukraine crisis.”
China professes to be neutral in the war, but Xi has not condemned Russia’s invasion or Putin’s effort to annex four Ukrainian regions in a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and international law.
Still, Xi is expected to raise to a 12-point peace plan he put forward last month, which called for an end to “unilateral sanctions” but notably did not demand Russia’s withdrawal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed openness to speaking with Xi but has vowed to reclaim all occupied lands.
At Monday’s opening meeting, Putin told Xi that Russia was “open to the negotiation process.”
Xi’s trip, while delivering Putin a much-needed distraction from Russia’s failures on the battlefield, also highlights his country’s growing dependence on China, one of its few remaining allies and partners.
“We have high expectations for the upcoming talks,” Putin wrote in the People’s Daily article.
Meanwhile, Xi wrote that the visit aimed to strengthen the countries’ “friendship, cooperation and peace.”
“I am ready, together with President Vladimir Putin, to outline new plans and measures in the name of opening up new prospects for China-Russia relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation,” he wrote.
Xi is expected to speak to Zelensky following his Russia trip A spokesman for Zelensky, Serhiy Nykyforov, said Friday that “there are no specific agreements” about when the call would take place but that “the work is in progress.”
David L. Stern in Kyiv; Robyn Dixon, Mary Ilyushina and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia; and Lyric Li in Seoulcontributed to this report.
A year of living apart: Russia’s invasion, coupled with Ukraine’s martial law preventing fighting-age men from leaving the country, has forced agonizing decisions for millions of Ukrainian families about how to balance safety, duty and love, with once-intertwined lives having become unrecognizable. Here’s what a train station full of goodbyes looked like last year.
As 2022 comes to a close, here are five foreign policy news stories to follow in the coming year.
Foreign Affairs, December 2022
Two thousand twenty-two had its fair share ofbig news stories. The same will be true of 2023. Some of the events that will make the news will surprise. Here are five that won’t. Each of them figures to make headlines in 2023—and to absorb the time and energy of policymakers in the United States and abroad.
1. The War in Ukraine. Many policymakers and experts a year ago dismissed U.S. and British intelligence reports that Russia would invade Ukraine. Almost everyone expected a quick Russian victory if it did. As 2022 ended, Ukraine had not only turned back the Russian military offensive but gained the upper hand in the fighting. Rather than seeking a face-saving diplomatic exit from his grievous miscalculation, Russian President Vladimir doubled down on his brazen aggression by deliberately targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. The specter of a brutal winter appears not to have shaken Ukrainian resolve. Western support for Ukraine also appears to be holding, even as European publics recoil at the war’s economic fallout. For his part, Putin has suppressed domestic criticism of his war, dashing hopes that his ouster from office might bring peace. So bitter fighting is likely to continue throughout the winter, even if the prospects for significant breakthroughs on the ground seem slim. That could change in the spring, either because Russia launches a new military offensive, perhaps with Belarus’s support, or Ukraine seeks to reclaim Crimea. Major advances on the ground by either side might create space for diplomacy. But such advances could also spur escalation. Putin has not renounced his implicit threat to use nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, fighting in Ukraine will continue to roil global markets, driving up energy prices and heightening food insecurity across the Global South. One sobering possibility is that the world will live under the shadow of the war in Ukraine for years to come.
2. The Axis of the Aggrieved. President Joe Biden came to office insisting that the contest between democracies and autocracies is the defining division in world affairs. Regardless of whether that framing is the best one for U.S. foreign policy, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped solidify what might be called the “axis of the aggrieved”—authoritarian powers that resent U.S. preeminence and Western influence more broadly. On the eve of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping affirmed what they called a “friendship without limits.” While Beijing declined to help Moscow rebuild its depleted weapons stocks as its war in Ukraine faltered, it has failed to criticize the Russian invasion and instead has used its media power to blame the West for the war. North Korea moved closer to both China and Russia, including by selling rockets and artillery to help Moscow sustain its war in Ukraine. Iran similarly deepened its military ties with Russia, first by selling Moscow drones and then by selling other advanced military systems and parts. Whether and how these ties deepen remains an open question. Mutual contempt of the U.S.-dominated world order may not provide the firmest foundation for collaboration. China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helps make the Biden administration’s case that U.S. friends and partners should limit China’s rise. Likewise, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program complicates life for Beijing in northeast Asia. And Iran worries that China may find Saudi Arabia a more appealing Middle Eastern partner.
3. Tensions Over Taiwan. President Xi has vowed to reunify what China regards as the wayward province of Taiwan. He has set not forth a timetable for accomplishing this goal, or ruled out using force to achieve it. The U.S. Chief of Naval Operations is among the experts warning that China might invade Taiwan before 2024. On balance, that seems unlikely. Mounting a successful amphibious invasion of an island that sits one hundred miles off the mainland is a daunting task, especially for a military that has not seen significant combat in more than four decades. President Biden has said the United States will defend Taiwan in the event of an attack, even though no treaty obligates it to do so. Washington clearly would prefer not to have make good on that vow. Some war games show the United States losingany fight over Taiwan; others show it winning. Either way, the costs would be ruinous for all involved. But an outright invasion is only one possibility. China could also accelerate “grey-zone activities” that probe Taiwan’s defenses and pressure Taipei. China did just that in retaliation for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan. The next House Speaker may repeat Pelosi’s visit, which will give Beijing justification to step up pressure on Taiwan. A gradual intensification of Chinese grey-zone activities could present the United States with escalatory dilemmas where the challenge becomes conveying resolve without triggering a clash between Chinese and U.S. forces. A controversy is already brewing in Washington over whether promised military aid is getting to Taiwan fast enough to deter Beijing—or possibly defeat it.
4. Turmoil in Iran. Will the Islamic Republic of Iran still exist on December 31, 2023? The mullahs who have governed Iran for four decades now face the most significant domestic challenge to their rule. The immediate cause of the protests buffeting the regime is the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman. The reason for her arrest? She wasn’t wearing the required hijab properly. Her death touched a nerve in a country already angry about a stagnant economy, high inequality, government corruption, and growing climate-related challenges. The government has responded to demonstrators chanting “Women, life, freedom!” with more repression. However, shooting some demonstrators in the street and publicly executing others after sham trials has only fueled public opposition. The regime may continue to double down on repression, fearing that conciliatory gestures will just generate more demands. But more repression could also lead the European Union and others to toughen sanctions on Iran. A wild card is the health of eighty-three-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He is rumored to be ill. A leadership change in the midst of nationwide protests could split the regime. The protests have likely extinguished the already dim prospects for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Iran blames the United States and Israel for engineering the protests, and the Biden administration isn’t likely to sign any agreements while the regime is shooting protesters in the street. The question preoccupying the White House is whether Iran might try to distract attention from its problems at home by acting more malignly abroad.
5. The Biden Administration’s America First Economic Policy. When 2022 started, geopolitical divisions buffeted the West. European leaders dismissed the Biden administration’s warning that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine, and experts worried that a Russia attacked limited to the Donbass might split the transatlantic alliance. But Putin ordered a large-scale invasion that united the West in opposition. Despite predictions that Western solidarity would quickly crumble, it held up. But as 2022 ended, a new dividing line emerged between the United States and its closest allies: economic policy. Contrary to the hopes of most U.S. trading partners, President Biden left many of Donald Trump’s tariffs in place. In 2022, the U.S. Congress passed, and Biden signed into law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. They subsidized U.S. industries and discriminated against producers outside of North America. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the two laws might “fragment the West.” Many other U.S. allies were equally scathing in criticizing the U.S. embrace of industrial policy. Biden admitted that the Inflation Reduction Act had “glitches” and spoke of making “tweaks” to the law. However, Congress isn’t likely to revise its handiwork. The Biden administration also banned the export of advanced semiconductor chips and equipment that use U.S. technology to China, forcing U.S. trade partners to choosebetween complying or losing critical export opportunities. The U.S. actions came as the war in Ukraine rocked the European economy. That prompted some leading European officials to complain that Washington was championing the Ukrainian cause only because the U.S. economy was profiting from the fighting.
Sinet Adous and Michelle Kurilla assisted in the preparation of this post.
The Washington Post, December 16, 2022 at 1:00 a.m. EST
HELSINKI — Nuclear-armed submarines slip in and out of the frigid waters along the coast of Russia’s Kola Peninsula at the northern edge of Europe. Missiles capable of destroying cities are stored by the dozens in bunkers burrowed into the inland hills.
Since the Cold War, this Arctic arsenal has been protected by a combat unit considered one of Russia’s most formidable — the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade — until it sent its best fighters and weapons to Ukraine this year and was effectively destroyed.
The 200th was among the first units to plunge into Ukraine on Feb. 24, as part of a fearsome assault on the city of Kharkiv. By May, the unit was staggering back across the Russian border desperate to regroup, according to internal brigade documents reviewed by The Washington Post and to previously undisclosed details provided by Ukrainian andWestern military and intelligence officials.
A document detailing a mid-war inventory of its ranks shows that by late May, fewer than 900 soldiers were left in twobattalion tactical groups that, according to Western officials, had departed the brigade’s garrison in Russia with more than 1,400. The brigade’s commander was badly wounded. And some of those still being counted as part of the unit were listed as hospitalized, missing or “refuseniks” unwilling to fight, according to the document, part of a trove of internal Russian military files obtained by Ukraine’s security services and provided to The Post.
The brigade’s collapse in part reflects the difficulty of its assignment in the war and the valiant performance of Ukraine’s military. But a closer examination of the 200th shows that its fate was also shaped by many of the same forces that derailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasionplans — endemic corruption, strategic miscalculations and a Kremlin failure to grasp the true capabilities of its own military or those of its adversary.
After months of ceding territory and losing thousands of troops, Putin is now trying to salvage his grandiose aims with an entire force that resembles the 200th: badly depleted, significantly demoralized, and backfilled with inexperienced conscripts.
This reconstruction of the brigade’s decimation is based on the document trove, interviews with members of the unit and their families, as well as accounts from officers in Ukraine’s military units that faced the 200th in battle. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence or, in the case of Russian soldiers, to maintain their own security. The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
The record reveals a brigade in crisis, according to officials and experts who examined the documents at The Post’s request.
An internal personnel document for the 200th shows its depleted strength on May 28 after three months of war in Ukraine. Rows 2 and 3 show that the two battalion tactical groups counted 454 and 439 soldiers "present" in a roll call after their retreat across the Russian border. Western security officials said each had deployed to Ukraine with more than 700 soldiers. The document also shows that the brigade was waiting for 138 reinforcements.
“They are barely at 60 percent strength, being forced to rely on reinforcements that aren’t near enough,” Pekka Toveri, former director of Finland’s defense intelligence service, said in an interview. “You have guys who are refusing to fight, guys who are missing. It all tells us that for Russia the war has gone terribly wrong.”
The unit’s commander sustained such severe head injuries in a strike that he was left vomiting, disoriented and unable to remember battlefield events, and would soon have to be hospitalized, the internal brigade documents show. Many of the unit’s most potent weapons, including mobile rocket launchers and tanks, were either destroyed or captured.
In the months since the May inventory, the brigade has sustained further losses in engagements including a July firefight in the northeastern village of Hrakove, and it was among the Russian forces routed in Ukraine’s September offensive to recapture large parts of the Kharkiv region.
All the while, the brigade was being degraded from within. The skilled troops and professional officers sent into battle at the start of the war with state-of-the-art T-80BVM tanks have given way to an assemblage of poorly trained conscripts pressed into service with paltry or outdated gear.
Some of the brigade’s own soldiers described its condition as dire.
“The unit is in a state of decay,” said a soldier now serving in the 200th after being drafted under mobilization orders that Putin issued in September. He and others were initially issued “painted helmets from 1941 and vests without plates,” he said in an interview with The Post this month. “They are not even training us. … They just tell you, ‘You are a shooter now. Here you go, here is a machine gun.’”
In a war that has been disastrous for much of Russia’s military, the dismemberment of the 200th stands out. It entered the conflict with better training, newer equipment and more experience — including prior combat missions in Ukraine — than most other units. Now, given the magnitude of its losses, one European military official said, it “cannot be considered a fighting force.”
‘There will be shooting’
In peacetime, the 200th is garrisoned at spartan bases that lie inside the Arctic Circle, less than 10 miles from Russia’s border with Norway. The location in the municipality of Pechenga, northwest of Murmansk, underscores its mission: to serve as a wedge between the NATO powers to the west and the Barents Sea bases of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
The ports, which served as a point of departure for the fictional submarine in “The Hunt for Red October,” have existential significance in Russian strategic doctrine. The Northern Fleet forms the core of Russia’s “second strike” nuclear capability, meaning that its subs are expected to maneuver into the Atlantic and unleash a final, cataclysmic barrage if the United States manages to knock out Russia’s land-based missile silos.
The 200th is part of an interlocking system of defenses for the fleet and its bases, one that also relies on their remote location, layers of perimeter security and additional units on the Kola Peninsula.
Despite the stakes of this Arctic assignment, the 200th has repeatedly been tapped by the Kremlin for priority missions. Officers were sent to Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad maintain his grip on power and, according to Ukrainian officials and a report by the investigative outlet Bellingcat, the unit was clandestinely involved in Russia’s 2014 attempt to seize territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
In January of this year, two heavily armed battalion tactical groups from the 200th began boarding trains for the Ukraine border. Images online show flatbed rail cars carrying tanks across a snow-swept landscape and soldiers playing cards in packed passenger cabins.
The troops, like others in the invading force, were led to believe they were deploying to take part in drills, according to Ukrainian officials citing accounts of captured 200th soldiers. Only at 3 a.m. on Feb. 24 were they told, “There will be shooting,” an official said.
A convoy of about 100 brigade vehicles began streaming across the border that morning. Photos taken by civilians show one of the unit’s tanks being used to set up a roadblock on the northern outskirts of Kharkiv — an attempt to impose order that soon proved futile.
By day’s end, multiple units of the 200th had been ambushed or attacked, dozens of soldiers killed or wounded, and equipment including tanks and “Grad” mobile rocket launchers destroyed or abandoned on roadsides, according to Ukrainian and Western accounts.
The devastation was due in part to the 200th’s drawing one of the most difficult tasks of the invasion. “The front they were assigned proved to be well defended with very motivated Ukrainians,” a senior European intelligence official said.
The Ukrainian war plan was organized above all around protecting Kyiv, the country’s capital, but it also called for multiple armored units, including the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, to focus their firepower on defending Ukraine’s second-largest city — Kharkiv.
Putin insists Russia has gained from Ukraine conflict
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sept. 7 that Russia had gained, not lost, from the conflict in Ukraine because it was embarking on a new sovereign path.
The punishment inflicted on the 200th in those early battles and dozens more that followed remain a point of martial pride for senior Ukrainian officers. “What’s there to know about them?” Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, who later commanded the Kharkiv offensive, said recently in an interview when asked about the 200th. “They run away very well.”
The brigade was also hobbled by problems that plagued other Russian units. It was low on food and fuel after consuming or selling critical stores in the weeks leading up to the invasion, officials said. Putin’s decision to keep even senior advisers in the dark left commanders scant time to prepare troops, let alone coordinate attack plans with other units.
Stunned by Ukraine’s resistance, the 200th spent the ensuing weeks fending off further attacks while digging into defensive positions north of Kharkiv, officials said. It was during this stretch that the brigade commander, Col. Denis Kurilo, 44, was severely injured in a strike that Western officials said obliterated his vehicle. Ukrainian officials initially reported that the strike occurred in late March and that Kurilo had been killed. But internal brigade records refer to a “combat injury dated April 22” that ultimately required him to be hospitalized.
Only hints of the carnage were made public back at brigade headquarters. In mid-March, the governor of Russia’s Murmansk region, which encompasses the 200th’s garrison, announced online that three soldiers and one officer had been killed in Ukraine, calling them “real heroes.”
But these were only a small fraction of the true casualties.
The internal brigade records include a detailed count of surviving personnel in May after they had retreated across the Russian border into the Belgorod region. The authenticity of the documents was confirmed by Western security officials.
One page includes a table that lists 892 servicemen still “present” and attached to the two battalion tactical groups that had deployed from Pechenga in the run-up to the war. Officials with European security services that closely monitor the 200th said those two units had started out with a combined 1,400 to 1,600 soldiers.
One official described the damage that such losses would have done to the unit’s effectiveness and morale as “catastrophic.”
Among those remaining, the table lists 21 as hospitalized, six as missing and nine as “refuseniks.” It also shows that the brigade was awaiting 138 reinforcements, though it does not indicate their training or background.
Wording at the top of the document indicates that it was to be approved on May 28 by Kurilo, suggesting that he was still with the unit despite his recentinjury. A medical file in the trove, however, indicates that he was suffering severe symptoms from a “craniocerebral injury,” including nausea, vomiting, memory loss and “short-term disorientation.” It says he left the unit on July 11 to be treated at Burdenko military hospital in Moscow and was released in late August. The medical file alsosays his duties were temporarily assigned to another officer.
Kurilo, whose passport and military résumé also appear in the trove,could not be reached for comment. On Wednesday, a woman identifying herself as his wife answered a number associated with Kurilo. She said he had not served with the 200th for about half a year, a period that would correspond with the start of his hospitalization. She said he has since been transferred to another military unit and is unreachable.
The avatar for Kurilo’s WhatsApp account is a “Z” sign used by Russian forces in Ukraine, along with Russian words meaning “for victory.”
For all the seeming exactitude of the brigade’s roll call record, certain categories are conspicuously missing. It does not say how many soldiers had initially been part of the two battalion tactical groups, and makes no mention of those wounded or killed to that point in combat.
Toveri, the former Finland intelligence chief, said the record appears to represent an effort by commanders to take stock of their force without accounting for the causes of its attrition.
“They just did new bookkeeping,” Toveri said, adding that doing so would be consistent with a Russian military culture seen as more calloused than its Western counterparts about casualties. “They had been at war for three months and don’t mention any killed in action,” Toveri said. “Let bygones be bygones.”
‘They just bled to death’
The losses created a two-front crisis for the 200th: It was scrambling to find reinforcements back in Murmansk, even as the broken battalions in Belgorodwere being ordered to return to Ukraine.
In a sign of growing desperation, the brigade in June began forming what it called a “mixed volunteer battalion” including sailors pulled off Northern Fleet ships, logistics specialists from depots and others often coerced into action despite having little or no experience or training in ground combat, according to Western officials.
The battalion remnants in Belgorod tentatively crossed back into Ukraine in late spring and took positions hugging the Russia border.
Ukrainian military officials described the returning 200th force, though degraded, as more professional than the Russian-backed separatists they had previously faced outside Kharkiv.
The 200th soldiers were less prone to talking on open phone lines, brought far greater firepower and proved adept at targeting, said Taras Shevchenko, commander of an artillery and reconnaissance unitin Ukraine’s 127th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade.
In early June, he said, his unit encountered the 200th in the village of Velyki Prokhody, north of Kharkiv. The Ukrainians were caught off guard by a flurry of strikes, including one that tore off the third floor of a building being used as a base of operations, Shevchenko said, leaving him with a concussion.
After a series of inconclusive exchanges, Shevchenko said, he convinced Ukrainian artillery units to hold their fire for several days, hoping to create the impression they were low on ammunition as quadcopter drones were used to get a clearer fix on Russian positions.
Amid the lull, surveillance images showed 200th troops letting down their guard.
“Nothing was attacking them, so they could safely sunbathe,” Shevchenko said. “They took outdoor showers. They were running around without body armor, without helmets.”
Ukrainian forces took advantage by unleashing a 40-minute barrage involving mortars, tanks and Soviet-era artillery pieces, then launched a follow-on attack the next day after nightfall.
“They didn’t know where to run,” Shevchenko said. After the village was liberated, he said, he spoke with residents who estimated that about 100 Russian troops had died as a result of the two-day engagement, though there are no official numbers. He said the strikes dismantled vehicles that could have evacuated the wounded. “The locals said that many died during the night,” Shevchenko said. “They just bled to death, because those who were injured — they couldn’t evacuate them.”
‘Unauthorized abandonment of military unit’
In that one sequence, the 200th had shown that it could be both lethally effective and fatally undisciplined. The erratic performance is characteristic of a unit that Western security officials describe as one of Russia’s higher-performing brigades but nevertheless plagued by systemic rot and dysfunction.
Attached to the elite Northern Fleet, 200th troops get special gear and training for Arctic conditions and are often first in line for Russia’s most advanced equipment. In 2017, the brigade was the first in Russia’s armed services to receive new T-80BVM tanks rolling off assembly lines.
And yet Westerners who ventured to Pechenga before Russia restricted travel describe the base as a grim garrison where officers neglected troops’ morale and soldiers could seem clueless about the brigade’s identity and mission.
Thomas Nilsen, editor of the Barents Observer — a Norwegian news site that closely follows the 200th — described an encounter several years ago with soldiers at a bar near the base who were oblivious to their proximity to NATO, until he pulled up a map on his phone to show them.
In 2020, three servicemen died — including one by suicide and another by choking on vomit — and several were injured in incidents that raised concerns about brigade conditions and safety, according toan investigation by the Russian news outlet Sever.Realii. One soldier was blinded and another reportedly lost a hand while training with a miniature drone armed with high-power explosives.
That same year, a warrant officer in the 200th posted videos on social media accusing superiors of neglect and corruption. One showed scenes of squalor in apartments reserved for officers, with rusted appliances, mold creeping up walls, and piles of trash stuffed into unoccupied units.
“This is how ensigns and officers of the Russian army live!” the warrant officer, Mikhail Balenko, said on the video, describing the compound with an expletive. “The brigade commander does not even come here. He doesn’t care how his subordinates live.”
In another video, Balenko accused commanders of stealing supplies, bribing military inspectors and selling fuel meant for brigade vehicles. Balenko did not respond to attempts to reach him for comment.
The war appears to have exacerbated these problems of morale and cohesion.
Dozens of soldiers in Pechenga refused to deploy during the initial months of the invasion, according to officials from Western security services. It’s unclear what happened to them.
Ukrainian commanders described battles in which 200th soldiers wouldn’t fight or defied orders. In mid-July, a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit captured audio of a Russian tank commander in Hrakove screaming at subordinates.
“Should I show you how to kill Ukrainians? I’ll get in the tank myself,” the commander shouted, shortly before the tank was destroyed by a Javelin missile, according to Oleksandr, a reconnaissance scout in Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, who spoke on the condition that his surname not be published to maintain his security.
By the end of that battle, dozens of Russian troops had been killed or wounded and 12 tanks had been destroyed, Oleksandr said, adding that additional intercepts indicated that numerous soldiers had at one point or another refused to use their weapons.
The brigade documents also hint at inner turmoil. One set of files lists criminal referrals made to Russian military prosecutors regarding four 200th soldiers — a senior lieutenant, two corporals and a private.
Two were accused of the “illegal sale of explosives,” and two others of “unauthorized abandonment of military unit.” The documents indicate that prosecutors declined to proceed with charges against the soldiers, though no reasons are cited. The soldiers’ surnames appear in the records, but attempts to reach them were unsuccessful.
Accurate casualty counts for the 200th remain elusive. No figures have been released by the brigade, and only a handful of soldier deaths have been acknowledged in public statements from the Murmansk government.
Still, there have been other clues to the war’s toll on military families in Murmansk. In late August, the regional legislature passed a law providing free meals to schoolchildren whose parents were serving in Ukraine or had been killed or wounded, and announced that 1,274 students qualified.
‘It will take years to rebuild’
The 200th’s involvement in the siege of Kharkiv concluded in September when it was routed near Kupiansk in the Ukrainian offensive, said Col. Pavlo Fedosenko, commander of Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, the unit that delivered the blow and has faced off against the 200th more than any other.
Afterward, only fragments of a single battalion were left, composed of a hodgepodge of soldiers that bore little resemblance to the skilled units that had set out for Ukraine seven months earlier, Fedosenko said.
Most of the unit’s officers had been killed or injured, Fedosenko said, and about 70 percent of its equipment — including about 32 tanks and 100 vehicles — had been destroyed or captured.
“Nothing of that brigade is left,” he said in a recent interview with The Post. “It’s completely wiped out.”
Western security officials provided similar assessments. Because so many of its contract soldiers and senior members of its officer cadre were lost, “it will take years to rebuild the 200th,” said a senior European intelligence official.
On Sept. 17, Kurilo left command of the brigade to become deputy chief of another motor rifle division, according to a copy of an order by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that was in the document trove.
Remnants of the 200th later surfaced in the Luhansk region, where intercepted communications provided to The Post by a Ukrainian military official showed Russian officers raging about insubordination. In one exchange, a regimental commander berates a subordinate over soldiers abandoning their positions.
“I am f-----g tired after one and a half months of these people,” the commander said. He goes on to describe platoons melting away and his efforts to drag soldiers back into battle. In one case, “there were 30 people leaving their positions, and now it is f-----g over 60, 75, maybe the entire platoon,” he said. After listing similar problems in other units, he said, “What the f--- are you doing? Are you going to assemble the battalion or not?”
At least 20 of the 200th’s troops were wounded in recent skirmishes in Luhansk, the Ukrainian intelligence official said. A fact sheet provided by the official lists the wounded soldiers’ names and birth dates; their ages range from the low 20s to the early 50s.
Contacted by The Post, one of those soldiers acknowledged that he was at home recuperating, but declined to discuss his deployment or injuries in detail. He described himself as “a civilian person. I have a family, kids. I never even had a thought about needing to go fight” before being swept up by Putin’s mobilization.
“When I was in the hospital, there were guys from Moscow, just simple guys, some worked in car repairs or some other places,” he said. “They were just pulled out of their civilian lives and sent to ‘take villages.’” Many were reassured that “we are going to be in the rear, not on the front line,” he said. “But it turned out to be the opposite.”
The soldier, who could face prison if caught speaking about the war, was one of a tattered group of about 500 conscripts who were sent to Ukraine in Octoberas part of yet anotherattempt to replenish the 200th there, according to Western security officials. The conscripts’ departure from the Kola Peninsula capped a remarkable hollowing out of a unit that is supposed to defend Russia’s border with Norway, a NATO country, and with Finland, now seeking to join the alliance.
In August and September, Russia moved a squadron of bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons to an air base near Finland, according to satellite images and a report in the Israeli press. Western officials said they interpreted that as a sign Russia is likely to rely more than ever on nuclear deterrence in the Kola Peninsula given the reduced state of the 200th and other units.
“In the Murmansk region we now have our borders bare,” the wounded soldier said. “They are all empty now. No one is left there.”
Miller reported from Helsinki, Oslo and London; Ilyushina from Riga, Latvia; Belton from London; Khurshudyan from Kharkiv and Kyiv; and Sonne from Washington. Serhiy Morgunov in Kyiv contributed to this report.
