Economic sanctions are not enough. Russians must be killed on a daily basis in a sustained insurgency financed and supported by America and NATO.
According to the Daily Mail, one prominent Russian official said yesterday that Vladimir Putin “doesn’t give a s**t” about the risk of Western economic sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine.
That official, Viktor Tatarintsev, Russia’s ambassador to Sweden, told the Aftonbladet newspaper: “The more the West pushes Russia, the stronger the Russian response will be.”
That’s probably true, especially since the economic sanctions that would hurt Russia’s ruling oligarchic elite the most are off the table.
Economic Sanctions. The West, for instance, could bar Russia from the global banking system by denying it access to SWIFT, the international network of financial institutions that underlie cross-border trade and investment worldwide.
Such a move would devastate the Russian economy, but also hurt the West Europeans, who depend on Russian gas and commodities. Which is why, sadly, Russian SWIFT denial is off the table.
President Biden has unwisely ruled out the use of American ground troops in Ukraine. However, this doesn’t mean he necessarily has precluded any and all military options.
In fact, any deterrence strategy that is designed to stop Russian subjugation of Ukraine must have a military component. And that military component must be widely telegraphed and loudly trumpeted to have a full deterrent effect.
The West’s military strategy must be to maximize the number of invading Russians killed, maimed, and crippled on a daily basis over a period of years. To bleed Russia in an asymmetric war of attrition.
To wage a guerrilla war that saps the Russian will to fight and to occupy foreign lands. To send Russians home in body bags each and every day. To make their occupation of Ukraine, or any other free and independent state, a living hell.
This is eminently doable—especially with American military aid and assistance.
Russian, after all, was utterly incapable of subduing Afghanistan in the 1980s. American military aid to the Afghan mujahideen made the Russian occupation there untenable.
Too many Russian boys were coming home in body bags; and so, the Soviets gave up and abjectly withdrew. The price of occupation was too high; the cost too great.
A similar stiff-armed resistance to any Russian occupation would form in western Ukraine. Ukrainians there despise Putin’s Russia. They seek Ukrainian independence and to align their country with the West.
Ukrainian Insurgency. A “Russian invasion would be deeply unpopular and Kremlin forces would find themselves operating in a hostile environment ideal for asymmetric warfare,” writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian minister of defense who left office in 2020.
In fact, armed and capable militias already exist in western Ukraine and would eagerly take the fight to the Russians. American military advisers should work with these militias and other remnants of the Ukrainian military, so that Ukraine can wage an effective guerrilla war against Russia.
Of course, no one expects Ukraine to defeat Russia militarily, because it can’t. Ukraine is overmatched. But success in a guerrilla war depends on political success, not outright military victory.
Politically, Ukraine can win by ensuring that Russia pays a high, exorbitant, and ongoing price for invading and occupying their country.
The key to success lies in ensuring that, each and every day, Russians are killed, maimed, and crippled. The casualty and death toll matters, not battlefield victories.
Russia cannot sustain an unceasing daily death toll. Putin may be a dictator, but his legitimacy as the Russian ruler, and the legitimacy of his government, still requires popular acquiescence.
This acquiescence will quickly dissipate if Russians come home each and every day for months on end in body bags: dead, maimed, and crippled.
American Support. The good news is that, according to press reports, American Green Berets and other U.S. Special Forces have been working closely with their Ukrainian counterparts to prepare them for a guerrilla war against Russia.
The U.S. Sun reports:
Behind the scenes, several hundred US Green Beret special forces have been working with the Ukrainians to ensure Russia faces a bloodbath in the country.
The CIA has also been working on secret training that has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians”, a former agency official has said.
And Ukrainian forces are already being equipped with anti-tank weapons by the UK, which guerrilla forces would use to create killing zones for massed Russian armoured forces.
“By combining serving military units with combat veterans, reservists, territorial defense units and large numbers of volunteers,”Zagorodnyuk writes,
Ukraine can create tens of thousands of small and highly mobile groups capable of attacking Russian forces. This will make it virtually impossible for the Kremlin to establish any kind of administration over occupied areas or secure its lines of supply.
Of course, the success of any Ukrainian insurgency depends in large measure on how much material support it receives from the United States and other NATO countries.
And the deterrent effect of any potential Ukrainian insurgency depends on how well that insurgency is trained and resourced, and how real or credible it appears to Putin and his generals.
The bottom line: the economic sanctions that America and NATO have conjured up likely will do little to stop or stymie Russian efforts to subjugate Ukraine.
But what might well cause Putin to say “nyet” is the possibility of a real and sustained insurgency financed and supported indefinitely by America and NATO.
We haven’t heard much about it, unfortunately; but let’s hope and pray that Putin and his generals have. It may be Ukraine’s only chance to retain its independence—and it may be Europe’s only chance for peace.
Feature photo credit: The U.S. Sun.