UKRAINE WAR PREDICTIONS

As you may recall from previous columns, in 1987 I was offered a job at the CIA as an analyst and writer for the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), but took a position with “Beltway Bandit” Booz-Allen-Hamilton instead.  As a BAH and indie policy and management consultant I was fortunate to support and advise the US DoD/Defense Communications Agency, FEMA, World Bank, USAID, US NTIA, US TDA, the British Commonwealth Telecoms Office, Australian DFAT, Vanuatu PM’s Office, Egyptian Ministry of Telecoms and IT, etc. Today I’ll put on a PDB hat, and make some bold predictions for the Ukraine war, given all the recent incredible developments, in which the mainstream press has finally noticed that the Ukrainians are doing pretty well!

BTW, in May of 2024, over two years ago in this column, I analyzed the 11 major domains of the war, and found then that the Ukrainians were already winning in 6 of 11.  Duh!

The official PDB looks forward only six months; this improved “LT PDB” will look forward 24 months or even more — buckle up, here we go!

Europeans are slowly getting their act together to help Ukraine, as symbolized by the July 14 French Bastille Day parade in Paris, which featured military units of 35 nations in the “Coalition of the Willing” (to help Ukraine).  The parade was the largest since World War II, President Zelenskyy was the guest of honor, and Ukrainian Mirage 2000B jets participated with the Patrouille de France, the French elite acrobatic team, in the opening flyover. The US was not invited.

Putin’s United Russia party will of course win the upcoming September rigged parliamentary elections, but the turnout will be lower than usual and a supermajority may not be achieved, due to widespread voter dissatisfaction, and lack of gasoline to get to the polls.

Immediately after the elections, Putin will announce a full “mobilization” (really a mandatory draft of able-bodied and eligible men) of 500,000 men, a huge number.  Such a mobilization will be cheaper on a per man basis, since recruitment bonuses will not have to be paid. Many men will try to flee Russia, but most border crossings have recently been closed in preparation for this.  Many more will try to evade the draft.  Most of the 500,000 will be killed or wounded within one year, and this mobilization will not succeed in changing the front-line positions much.  Trump stated at the recent NATO summit that he is “very unhappy with NATO” – this was a clear signal to Putin that he could go ahead with this massive escalation of the war, since Trump is actually saying, in effect, “I am on your side, Vladimir, and I won’t help Poland and NATO when you launch a provocation against Poland or any other NATO Article 5 country, or escalate your attempt to commit genocide against the Ukrainians.”  (Don’t be fooled by Trump’s “offer” to give the Ukrainians a license to build Patriot missiles.  Trump knows that this will take 2+ years, and he can and will easily derail or stall this complex process.)

About 40-50% of Russia’s oil refining capacity has already been destroyed or severely damaged, hurting the country enormously, since Russia is basically a large gas station run by a Mafia gang.  Gas lines in many areas of Russia are already up to 14 kilometers long, and many Russians across the country are sleeping and living in their cars in line, hoping for a small ration of 20-30 liters (about 5 to 8 US gallons) of gas.  Gas and diesel shortages and price increases will ripple through the economy, causing inflation, higher interest rates, bankruptcies, runs on banks, partial harvest failure, and widespread discontent.  But Putin will continue to prosecute the war, unless he is deposed or pulls back, which is very unlikely.

Yale Fellow Elvira Nabiullina, the brilliant but dangerous Governor of the Central Bank of Russia, and one of Putin’s most important technocrats, recently was “sick with a cold” for a month and did not attend key meetings and conferences.  It seems likely that she was being punished for warning Putin about the failure of his economic and military policies.  I predict that she will be dead by the fall of 2027, likely a victim of FSB defenestration (now common in Russia, but invented in Prague in 1419 for unpopular city councilors).

Over the next year, the Russians will continue ballistic missile attacks on Ukrainian apartment blocks, kindergartens, maternity hospitals, markets, cafes, theaters and other civilian targets, intentionally murdering at least 4000 children, women and men.  These are all war crimes.  This death rate will not slow until the Ukrainians receive more Patriot or other defensive missiles and launch their new, homegrown Freya anti-missile system.

Russian attacks using Shahed and similar drones will continue and increase in lethality, as they build more fast, jet-powered drones.  Ukraine’s current rate of downing these, at 90-95%, will drop to about 80% by the fall of 2027.  Thus, more civilians will be murdered.

Russian-occupied Crimea will be totally isolated and made largely uninhabitable by Ukrainian drone strikes within the next five months.  Already there is no gasoline and diesel available for civilians, and only intermittent electricity, Internet and water.  Most Russian troops will be killed or gradually withdrawn.  Many loyal Russian civilians and all Russian tourists will flee.  The $3.5 billion Kerch Bridge (Putin’s pet project) linking Russia to Ukraine will then be destroyed by the Ukrainians. There will be a long period, lasting into 2027, when the Ukrainians will be unable to retake Crimea due to fierce Russian missile and drone attacks.  However, the strategic Kinburn Spit in NW Crimea has already been totally evacuated by Russian forces, and has already been invaded by a Ukrainian unmanned barge carrying an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) armed with a machine gun. (This was a world first!) By the fall of 2027 all of Crimea will finally be under total Ukrainian air dominance and partially under their ground forces’ control.

The ratio of Ukrainian to Russian soldiers killed each month is now about 1 to 8, an astounding success for the Ukrainian armed forces.  (In most attritional wars with one side attacking, the ratio is 1 to 3.)  Ninety percent of these Russian deaths are from small first-person view (FPV) drones.  This ratio will rise to 1 to 16 by the end of the war, due to the use of UGVs by the Ukrainians to transport supplies and replacements to the front and evacuate the wounded. This is where most Ukrainian casualties occur, in the 30 kilometer-wide “drone death zone” front line.

Speaking of aerial drones, my estimate is that the world leader by far in innovative, cost-effective drone warfare is Ukraine, followed about a year behind by Russia, next Iran, Israel, Turkey and China, then the United States (about 4-6 years behind Ukraine).  Think I am being rough on the US?  Consider this: in the last four months, the Iranians have shot down 30 American MQ-9 Reaper drones, each costing $40-50 million USD.  That is a fifth of all the Reapers the US has ever built, for a loss of about $1.3 billion!  With that amount, Ukraine (or the US) could have built 337,500 Dart or Hornet highly effective drones, with a range of 150 to 200 kilometers.  (OR, the US could have built 50,000+ 800-square foot, 2-bedroom, high quality foldout shipping container homes from China!)

Also consider that in two recent massive war games in Gotland, Sweden (Exercise Aurora) and Estonia (Exercise Hedgehog), a small team of 10 to 14 Ukrainian drone operators completely destroyed entire battalions of NATO forces, including US units, in one or two days.  The NATO forces were totally outmatched (and would have been destroyed almost as fast by a similar Russian unit).

Turning back to the ground war, the Ukrainians will replace the majority of their ground troops in the front-line death zone, now stationed in bunkers and basements, with remotely directed fighting UGVs, armed mostly with reliable and readily available US .50 caliber machine guns.  This has already started, will happen gradually, but will be at least 60% complete within two years.

Zelenskyy has just announced a new armed forces directorate to take the war on a world-wide basis to the Russians – something I have been urging for three years.  I predict that this directorate will launch attacks on Russian “research vessels” (spy ships), naval vessels, some of the 1000+ shadow fleet tankers and 2000+ other shadow vessels, and naval and military bases and units as far afield as Vladivostok and central Africa. (Such attacks have already begun in the Sea of Azov, where Ukraine successfully attacked and put out of commission 117 medium-sized oil tankers, naval and other vessels in just nine days in July!  (This incredible feat will be studied by naval war colleges around the world for generations.) Pipelines, fiber optic cables, refineries and electrical installations will also be targets. These attacks will be carried out by drones, drone swarms, and missile attacks launched from shipping containers on Q-ship merchant vessels, by naval drones, and by saboteurs and special forces, OSS-style.

Putin is sick and will likely die within the next two to three years.  There will be a massive and deadly scramble to replace him. But even if that is not settled, within two weeks of his death, a ceasefire line will be established and serious negotiations begin.

While alive, Putin will not be overthrown by the 80+ cowardly, subservient oligarchs remaining in Russia, by the brainwashed serf masses in the provinces or the annoyed middle classes in Moscow and St. Petersburg, or by the incompetent military or the loyal FSB (ex-KGB) or GU (ex-GRU, military intelligence).  Only his death will stop the war – EXCEPT, if for a while his henchmen use one or more of the “doppelganger” Putins as a puppet to prop up the Putin regime!  Could happen!

The model for the eventual “peace process” between Russia and Ukraine (and NATO) will be the death of Stalin.  Stalin (Putin’s hero) died on March 5, 1953.  His death removed the major obstacle to armistice negotiations in the on-going Korean War, and within two weeks negotiations for a ceasefire began.  A ceasefire/armistice – but NOT a real peace treaty – was signed in Korea on July 27, 1953.  An on-going cold/warm hybrid war has continued ever since, for 73 years.

Putin’s replacement will be a man (of course) drawn from the military, FSB or GU, and will not be a West-leaning reformer.  He will be like Putin or perhaps worse, but will understand Lenin’s maxim that he will “probe with a bayonet, but withdraw if steel is encountered.”  He will withdraw, sort of.

Thus a North Korea-style hostile existence is Russia’s likely future, and Ukraine and NATO must prepare for that level of barbarism, hybrid warfare, bizarre behavior and the need for containment.  Russia has been an expansionist, ruthless, murderous, imperialist power since the late 1600s, when Peter “the Great” turned from Muscovite consolidation to outward expansion. For 350+ years Russia has brainwashed its people into subservience while keeping most of them in poverty, had imperialist leaders and massive corruption, and drained all its enormous resources from the provinces and sent the proceeds to the appraratchiks in Moscow and St. Petersburg.  This will not change, unless the country is broken up into 10-15 separate countries along ethnic, linguistic and geographical lines.  That is unlikely, hence the North Korean-style “solution.”

Within five years about ten more nations will have or will be building nuclear weapons, up from the current nine, due to the Ukraine and Gulf war fiascos.  This will substantially increase the likelihood of at least limited nuclear war.

Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, and Donald Trump could have prevented all this by quickly and dramatically enforcing the rules-based order of international affairs, but it’s too late now.

Slava Ukraini!