As soon as mid-January, Ukraine may be ready to start pushing for the control of Crimea, former commander of US ground forces in Europe, retired General Ben Hodges, tells LRT.lt.
“The liberation of Crimea, I think, will be completed by the end of the summer,” he stressed in an interview.
But the Western camp is now also facing new challenges, from a lack of air defence systems to unexpectedly high consumption of munitions.
We talked a few months ago about situation in Ukraine and then you said that, by the end of the year, Russia will be pushed to the pre- February 24 positions. How do you see the situation two months later?
I still believe that, but I think a more useful way to frame it is that in about two months, around mid-January, Ukrainian forces will be in position to begin the decisive phase of the campaign, which is the liberation of Crimea.
So the liberation of Crimea, I believe, will be complete by the summertime. In order to do that, you have to eliminate Russian resistance that’s in the southern part of Ukraine as you go into Crimea.
That means also you’ve got to make sure that the Kerch Bridge is not repaired. […] Your other land bridge for Russian resupply from Rostov comes down to Mariupol, Melitopol. These are the only two ways that they can re-supply here.
If you think of the Ukrainian counter-offensive they started in September, it has two wings – the right wing, which is in Kherson, and the left wing, which started to appear and is working its way down there, huge fighting around Bahmut, so it’s converging. We would say all roads lead to Crimea, because that’s the prize. But to do that, you’ve got to cut off the logistics.
There may be some parts of the Dombass not yet fully liberated by the end of the year. What matters is to start the liberation of Crimea, and I would say in January, yes.
Some observers say that Russia will launch an attack from Belarus on Kyiv. Do you think it is possible?
Certainly, it is a possibility, but I think it’s extremely unlikely. [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko has his own armed forces.
He has 10 BTGs, they’re in a worse condition than the Russian, they’re not trained. What we see is a lot of equipment from Belarus and ammunition going east to Russia. So I think that yes, of course, Belarus continues to allow Russia to launch missiles and rockets and drones from the soil of Belarus, but I don’t see it as a strong likelihood of a ground assault from Belarus.
Of course, the more they talk about it, Ukrainians have to be prepared for it and so that means they are putting some resources there, but it seems to me that is an unlikely scenario.
Last week, a missile – quite likely launched by Ukraine – hit Poland and killed two people. Warsaw is now talking about the need to have air defence systems on the border. Ukraine has also asked for NASAM or IRIS-T defence systems, but do NATO countries have enough for themselves?
We have a real problem. Clearly, the number one requirement to help Ukraine from a material standpoint is more air and missile defence capability. The Russians failed everywhere else, the only thing they can do now is continue murdering innocent people and continue attacking the power grid, which is what they’re doing.
The reason they’re attacking the power grid is to make Ukrainian cities uninhabitable during the winter in hopes that millions of people will go to Western Europe, which would put more pressure on European capitals, so that’s what this is about.
So what do you do about that? The first logical thing is to provide air and missile defence capabilities to Ukraine. But then you also have to go back to the source. We’re going to figure out a way to stop these drones coming from Iran, for example, somehow to intercept them along the way: whether the factory catching on fire or killing the Iranian technicians who were there helping. I think people are working on this.
Also, a lot of these weapons are being launched from Crimea. Give the Ukrainians weapons that have a 300km range, and they could start hitting these sites now.
The other part of your question, though, absolutely there is not enough. We do not have enough air-missile defence because I think it’s very expensive, but we underestimated the requirement. The requirement is to protect hundreds of millions of European citizens. In the past, we focused on the airports, the seaports, the critical transportation networks, that would be the priority.
But now we see that the Russians will launch multimillion-dollar missiles at an apartment building. So the requirement for missile defence is significantly different.
Some observers were also saying in the beginning that Russia had a limited supply of missiles and will run out soon enough. But nine months into the war, it is still firing missiles into Ukraine. So will they really run out?
That’s a good question and I don’t know what they started with. If we knew how many they started with, you could count off. I imagine that they’re below 50 percent but still alive. And they also have a poor performance rate, a lot of duds or failures. They still have a lot missiles and they’re not stupid.
Even without the parts that they used to import, but due to the sanctions can no longer get, they still are able to manufacture some relatively crude things that can kill people.
What do you make of Russia’s seeming ties with Iran, North Korea, China? Do they benefit from this sort of collaboration?
Not China. I’ve seen no evidence actually of the Chinese actively helping Russia. I think the Chinese are actually quite unhappy about this.
Iran is most obvious that is providing help and they obviously are getting something in return, whether it’s technology for nuclear weapons or some other technologies. There’s no doubt that there is a transaction involved here that needs to be investigated and exposed. By the way, what they’re discovering is that some of the components in their Iranian drones come from the West, including the US. How is that happening?
North Korea, of course, has agreed to provide, I think, winter uniforms for Russian forces. Think about how bad must Russia’s economy be that they’re having to import?
We’ve been hearing that European and American weapon stocks are not endless and that they cannot supply everything that Ukraine asks for. What do you think, can the West supply enough weapons to Ukraine?
It’s true. I don’t know how much we have remaining, but for sure, all of us are discovering that the ammunition consumption rate now is much more than what we had anticipated. It’s a completely different war than 20 years ago in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know the US Department of Defense is talking to industry about how fast they can accelerate. Our European allies, the Canadians are going to do the same thing.
Ukraine’s intelligence recently said that Russia might resort to terrorist attacks on targets in Belarus, including the nuclear power plant in Astravyets, which is very close to the Lithuanian border and to Vilnius. Do you think that is possible?
I think this is where the EU should have long ago been raising hell with Belarus and Russia for the construction of this nuclear power plant that I think violates several different norms about proximity, the geology. Now I think it’s unlikely that somebody, the Russians or Belarussians, would intentionally sabotage to create a Chernobyl-type incident because people in Belarus would suffer, Russians would suffer.
I think, this is for the international community to keep shining the light on, to get observers in there, just like they sent that team to Zaporizhzhia.
Do you think that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, is playing an important part in the Ukrainian war?
Actually, I see it differently, I think he sees himself as extremely important and he’s got this large military capability, and I think he’s looking at what happens next. You know, Dr [Timothy] Snyder said: Yes, it’s bad for the Kremlin to lose in Ukraine, it’s much worse to lose in Russia.
And so Prigozhin, [Ramzan] Kadyrov, Putin, others see what a catastrophe this war is and they’re trying to line themselves up to be in position to protect themselves and take over if the Russian Federation begins to crack.
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