Putins Nightmare Ukraine Sinks Russian Warship As Fuel Crisis Explodes

The innovation and speed of innovation is in favor of the Ukrainians and it's that which is catching the Russians out. The special military operation is now turning into something that they didn't think would ever happen. It's this which is really altering the psychological aspect of the Russian population. This really is part of this 40-day campaign which Zelensky announced on the 25th of June this year, which is both a strategic influence campaign both for the international audiences and to influence the Russian public and elites in terms of long-range strikes. So they began on the 25th of June. The 40-day campaign of course should conclude sometime in the 1st of August. What that really seeks to do is apply technical, military, logistical and economic pressure on Russia to try and force an aid to this war. Now any ship which is hit either in the Sea of Azov or in the Black Sea at the moment has either one of two functions. It's either a shadow ship trying to export oil products of Russia or it's a ship which is trying to resupply the Crimea Peninsula and the isolation of the Crimea Peninsula is also another part of that. So it's those two things which we need to put this in the random. So it's both the cutting off and choking the Russian oil export potential, cutting off and choking the internal oil to go to Crimea and degrading and destroying the capability of the Russian fleet at the same time. All those look like they're being successfully done at the moment. That doesn't necessarily mean that we will lead to a cessation of violence and to a ceasefire, I don't think. It's more likely that Putin will double down in the future, particularly after the Duma elections in September and that's when you may have further escalation. Well I think anything which plays into the psychological sphere from a Ukrainian perspective is worthwhile and that is a minor tactical thing. It's a minor tactical success in the same way, for example, as early in the war sinking the Moskva, the Russian destroyer was a success. But I think in more strategic terms, it is actually both the rear campaign, the fact that Russia has no sanctuary anywhere, both in the maritime domain and now on the air domain in really European Russia. And if you add that to the fact that Crimea is under siege, it's this which is really altering the psychological aspect of the Russian population. The special military operation is now turning into something that they didn't think would ever happen. And it's also for this reason that, for example, in the last 10 days you've heard Putin talking about notions of we are at war, particularly with a Ukrainian deep strike, for example, on the Voronezh semiconductor plant, where Putin, for example, said that that was enabled by Western targeting and American and European technology. In my view, he's really saying those sorts of things to condition the population of Russia for the fact that he is not just fighting Ukraine and the setbacks are because they are fighting NATO and the US. None of that is true, of course, because it was Russia who invaded Ukraine. But he's conditioning those people for what I think will be a future escalation. That is the only way that he can hopefully get the population on his side. However, there are sort of not necessarily cracks and fissures at the moment, but there are certain things which could upset the dynamic for Putin going forward because the notion of decisive military victory is just not there at the moment for them. There is an improbability of victory and therefore what Ukraine is trying to do is to produce, particularly by this 40-day campaign, the unacceptable costs either demographically, economically, psychologically, which would lead Putin to come to the negotiating table. The innovation and speed of innovation is in favour of the Ukrainians and it's that which is catching the Russians out. So what you're going towards with the Ukrainians is absolutely more autonomous vehicles and it's their ability to use that which is shaping the battlefield. Indeed, the one that we saw most recently in Crimea was almost a sort of amphibious landing by Ukrainian autonomous vehicles with a sea drone delivering a vehicle which could fight on land and destroy Russian positions. It's that sort of innovation and the scaling within that of the systems they produce which is turning the tide of the battlefield. It's also worth saying that I think that one of the things we're seeing in this war is not the military-industrial complex as much, although that is still there, but it's the military-technical complex, particularly in how Western technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, is now being used to shape the battlefield and indeed what will happen in future battlefields. It's that sort of thing which we're all trying to get our heads around in terms of has the future character of war absolutely been altered by what has been going on in Ukraine. Well, there's a number of things which translate between both the land and the maritime area in this sense which encompasses all this. The key thing here is that Ukraine has been able to do what we call an A2AD pushback. That is anti-access area denial. So they've gone through a sort of targeting cycle which began with demolishing those air defence systems which would have protected most of the fleet and it's that, or fleet or land systems, and it's that which has given Ukraine more freedom of action to take the targeting measures they have, allied with this AI and Western-enabled technologies at scale, as I've said, and it's that which has enabled them to push through both in terms of destroying major elements of the shadow fleet, because it is that of course which also sustains the Russian economy, as well as the sort of land systems and particularly the oil refineries. And it's that in the round which I think is really, really important from what they're doing at the moment. It's the strategic isolation of their ability to maintain Crimea and maintain a coherent posture for the war. I think there's also another thing which is interesting in the last week which plays into this, and that is really the death of Lindsey Graham in America, because he, along with John McCain, certainly in my time in America, was known as one of the war twins. So Lindsey Graham and John McCain were known as the war twins. And of course it was John McCain who said that Russia is nothing more than a gas station with nukes masquerading as a country. And one of the things that the legacy of Lindsey Graham is likely to be is that he was the chap who introduced last year the sledgehammer sanctions. At the time that was going to be a package of measures which would impose 500 percent sanctions on those dealing with Russian exports, particularly their oil exports. Now his death means that there's likely to be in the Senate in America a rally round effect, and that means that the bill is likely to go through. It was originally called the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, and it's that which will potentially, along with these Ukrainian measures, have a real strategic effect, because it will absolutely impose costs on the Russian energy sector, the shadow fleet, their financial institutions, and major buyers, you know, China and Russia. Not at 500 percent anymore, but probably 100 percent. So if you put that all in the round, you will find that the phrase that I've used a number of times about an eroding stalemate is in favor of Ukraine and against Russia, and there potentially comes a time when erosion becomes a landslide against Russia, and that is when the regime becomes potentially very vulnerable. And that vulnerability is really in three areas. Either firstly, with the army at the front, they may just walk off the battlefield if they can't be logistically supplied, which is part of the cutting off of the mid logistics, which Ukraine is trying to do. Secondly, there might be elite defection. That doesn't mean you'll have a benign regime, should Putin fall, because the people who will be the deal makers, should Putin fall, are what we call the Sylviki, those securocrats, ex-KGB, army, whatever. They're the ones who are likely to define who would come after Putin, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be on side. But the real crack at the moment is in the population. If you can't get fuel to fuel your car, the special military operation absolutely looks something that it shouldn't be, and that causes potentially a problem for Russia or for Putin. Now, the one way he can still overcome that at the moment is if you've been a dictator for 26 years, then you control the information domain. If he does manage to successfully say that we're not fighting just Ukraine, we're fighting NATO and America, then it might be that the patriotic mother Russia preempts all the stuff about where am I going to get my gas to fuel my car or my home, or indeed to have the products for gathering the agricultural harvesting, because of course the petroleum-based products are key in Russian fertilizers. So what level of pain are the Russian population prepared to endure? And of course that is a question it's very, very difficult to know the answer to. If we knew the answer to that, you would know when Putin would fall, if indeed he is to fall. Well, one of the things that we always say is that I've said previously here that protection is a responsibility, not a mission. That's a phrase I learned under General Jim Mattis in CENTCOM. But what you should always do after an attack is do what we call a measurement of effectiveness assessment. What works and what doesn't, and therefore from both sides, what do Now, you know, they're probably protecting the wrong thing. A cope cage, which we've seen on tanks and now around tankers, means you're protecting the citadel, as it were, how you actually sort of drive the ship. There are other ways to disable the ship so that you can't get the product out, and that's probably very difficult to do without adding more incumbents to it. And of course, if you alter the configuration of the ship, then it becomes pretty obvious that it is a shadow tanker, either dark, that is those that go completely off grid in a sort of trying in a covert way, or a grey ship. We talk about dark ships and grey ships. If you alter those ships to look like something that is not a ship because you're trying to protect it, then it becomes pretty obvious to the western authorities what is a legitimate ship and what is not a legitimate ship. So it may be a legitimate tactic if you're only looking at internal waters, that is trying to resupply, for example, Crimea across the Sea of Azov. It won't help you if you're trying to export fuel either, you know, obviously via the Baltic or the Pacific, because the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov is one of the minor elements of the Shadow Fleet operation, probably somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of how they do operations.