PUTIN’S INVASION OF Ukraine – originally planned as a ‘three-day special military operation’ – has now reached 1000 days of gruelling combat. As temperatures plummet, Moscow and Kyiv will both be keen to seek maximum military advantage in the next 10 weeks leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration on the 20 January.

Putin’s forces have been making a steady grinding advance on the Donetsk front and have reportedly taken the town of Novoselydyvka, close to the strategic Ukrainian town of Kurakhove. Kurakhove is reportedly surrounded by Russian forces on three sides. If it falls, Putin will advance on Pokrovsk – a major set-back for Kyiv.

Russia has also concentrated a combat formation of over 50,000 troops in form-up areas in Bryansk and east of Voronezh in order to expel Ukrainian forces from Russian territory in the Kursk Oblast. It is believed that 11,000 North Korean troops comprise a part of this force. It is also reported that it is the presence of these North Korean troops that convinced US President Joe Biden to give Kyiv permission to fire US-manufactured long-range missiles into Russia proper.

Tensions

Today, it was reported that Zelenskyy’s forces fired a salvo of US ATACM missiles at targets in Karachev near Bryansk. These US Army Tactical Missile System (ATACM) missiles have a range of up to 300 km – allowing Zelenskyy to reach targets deep inside the Russian border region with Ukraine.

This attack is of great symbolic significance – taking place on the 1000th day of Putin’s invasion – and reportedly targeting an ammunition depot containing North Korean munitions supplied by Pyongyang to Moscow.

The Kremlin’s reaction has been swift. At the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reacted angrily to reports of the ATACM strikes. He asserted that ATACMs ‘cannot be used without American military experts … we will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia, and we will react accordingly’.

The attack also took place on the day that Putin signed into law a military policy document – drafted in September – that lowers the threshold for the ‘legitimate’ use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Putin’s nuclear doctrine has now been amended to legitimise the use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks – involving ‘conventional’ weapons such as long-range ATACM missiles. The policy also legitimises the use of tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear adversary – for example, a country like Ukraine.

Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons on many occasions during his invasion of Ukraine – normally at pressure points in his campaign, when his conventional forces are tactically or strategically under pressure. Despite the implied threat of nuclear intervention in today’s developments, Lavrov has qualified his remarks somewhat by stating that Russia would do everything in its power to ‘avoid’ a nuclear escalation.

The Biden administration along with the UK is also expected to give Zelenskyy the green light to fire ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles into Russian territory. Pressure is mounting on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to permit Kyiv to fire long-range German ‘Taurus’ missiles into Russian territory. These events have had an immediate impact on Putin’s forces – particularly in relation to their air support, reinforcement routes and logistics and supply.

Already, the Russian air force has begun moving its aircraft, drone and missile arsenals out of range of the ATACMs missile system. This includes 14 strategically important Russian airbases – including seven in the Rostov on Don region, three in the Kursk area and two in Smolensk. This will have the immediate effect of frustrating Russian drone and air launched missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and power infrastructure – a hallmark of their recent offensive. In the last 48 hours alone, Putin’s drones and missiles have killed over 20 civilians in the port city of Odesa and in Hlukhiv in the Sumy border region. Whilst these drone and missile attacks may be temporarily interrupted, however, the use of US and UK/French-manufactured long-range missiles against Russian targets will not halt such strikes.

Greater capacity

To put these weapon systems in context, conventional heavy artillery – such as the US-manufactured M777 long-range system – has a range of approximately 40 km. As a feature of this war, massed artillery has been crucial in containing Russian advances, with the EU and NATO struggling to manufacture and supply over 1 million 155 mm artillery shells to Zelenskyy’s forces.

The much-vaunted US-manufactured High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, HIMARS, gave Ukrainian forces a valuable tactical advantage in extending their artillery range out to 80 km. This has allowed them to target Russian start-lines, form-up points and troop concentrations behind the front lines in occupied Luhansk and Donetsk. However, the long range missile systems allow Ukraine to target Putin’s ground and air assets deep within Russia.

Part of the advantage at this critical moment for Kyiv is the ‘inter-operability’ of these long-range missile systems. ATACMs can be fired from Ukraine’s pre-existing HIMARS M142 multi-launch rocket systems (MLRS). These missiles are also likely to defeat Russian in-depth integrated air defence systems in that they are capable of travelling at speeds of up to 3,500 km per hour.

Most cruise missiles travel at a maximum speed of 1,000 km per hour, making them relatively easier to intercept. At Mach 3, ATACM missiles are almost impossible to track and destroy in flight. These missiles also deliver a very large payload of high-explosives in penetrating warheads.

The Storm Shadow system – developed by the UK in partnership with France – will be equally challenging for Russian air defences. Once launched, these missiles travel at very low altitudes, evading detection and interdiction. They weigh over 1,000kg and are capable of ‘bunker-busting’ attacks on heavily defended or fortified targets.

Whilst these weapon systems will give Zelenskyy a much-needed strategic advantage at a time of Russian advances in Donetsk – they are unlikely, in the long run, to yield decisive, game-changing outcomes in this grinding war of attrition. In the short term, however, they will impact negatively on Putin’s Winter campaign in Donetsk and his counter-offensive in Kursk. It will assist Kyiv in retaining – or perhaps regaining – some of Ukraine’s territorial integrity in the 10-week window to Trump’s presidency.

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As the invasion nears its third anniversary, the war is taking an immense toll on its principal victims – the Ukrainian people. Russian losses have been catastrophic – with up to 200,000 killed in action. For context, the Soviet Union lost 15,000 troops in their ten-year occupation of Afghanistan. This pales into insignificance when compared to almost half a million troops killed and injured in just 1000 days.

Putin’s war in Ukraine is unsustainable in the long run. Tragically, Ukraine’s defence is also unsustainable without ongoing and significantly increased Western aid. Trump’s presidency will determine – to a great extent – what happens next in this conflict. A ‘deal’ brokered by Trump, may give Putin an ‘off-ramp’ to save face, re-group and re-arm.

Whatever the outcome, however, there will be a continued escalation in ‘grey-zone’ operations against EU and NATO member states. Hybrid warfare – including cyber attacks and attacks on critical infrastructure will continue in the current political environment. This will include attacks on communication and digital targets such as the two subsea cables – between Germany and Finland, Sweden and Lithuania that were sabotaged this week.

As a result of Putin’s actions, Europe will return to cold-war defence spending in order to underpin its collective defence and deterrence. Ireland – also a target for hybrid warfare by state actors – will also be forced to increase spending on its woefully inadequate defence, intelligence and security assets. At a time of nuclear sabre-rattling, as 2025 approaches, we can only fear the worst and hope for the best. Ethical leadership and visionary statecraft – normally the solutions to such challenges – are conspicuously absent in these febrile times.

Dr Tom Clonan is a retired Army Officer and former Lecturer at TU Dublin. He is an Independent Senator on the Trinity College Dublin Panel, Seanad Éireann.