Tag Archive for: Russia-Ukraine war

Military denial: the basis of deterrence, and of response if deterrence fails

A strategy of denial is now the cornerstone concept for Australia’s National Defence Strategy. The term’s use as an overarching guide to defence policy, however, has led to some confusion on what it actually means in tangible, military terms.

According to the 2024 National Defence Strategy, the core aim of the strategy is to thwart our adversaries’ objectives through deterrence by denial—meaning to make the other side think its objectives are militarily unachievable without great costs. The practical capacity to do this is called ‘military denial’.

It now falls to Australian policy makers and planners to consider how strong a capacity for military denial we need—how robust our military capability to actually deny an adversary must be to achieve our broader aim of deterrence and to respond to its potential failure.

As two historical case studies in this article show, deterrence fails without persuasive capacity for military denial. And if it does fail, actual military denial is the foundation of response.

Degradation of a strategy of denial: the interwar Singapore Strategy

After nearly 20 years of defence planning, the 1942 collapse of the British and Commonwealth position in the Far East became a pivotal moment in the early phases of the war in the Pacific and in British military history.

Britain had devoted great resources following World War I to a strategy of deterring Japanese incursions into British territories through a credible capacity to apply military denial. Known as the Singapore Strategy, this involved building a naval base large enough to support and supply a British naval fleet in the region. In the event of war, the Royal Navy’s main fleet would head east from Singapore to overmatch and neutralise Japanese naval power. It would use either economic pressure through blockade or engage in a prolonged conflict of attrition. Through its ability to facilitate powerful and credible actions of military denial, the Singapore Strategy would serve as a deterrent, pressuring Japan to reconsider military actions against Commonwealth nations.

In the 1920s, however, fiscal limitations led to noticeable decline in relative British naval strength. Strategy shifted from maintaining global naval superiority to achieving dominance mainly in European waters. Only the main fleet, located in Europe, was strong enough to confront the Imperial Japanese Navy. As the threat from a revitalised Germany grew during the 1930s, it became impossible to contemplate deploying the entire main fleet to the Far East without risking the security of the Britain and its territories in the Middle East.

The newly established Singapore Naval Base therefore had no fleet ready for deployment. The credibility of the Royal Navy’s threat to apply military denial declined, with a consequent loss of deterrence effect. There remained optimism in London that the land and air elements of the Singapore strategy could deny a possible Japanese advance. The strategy informally pivoted from naval denial to relying on aerial and ground forces to counter potential aggression against the Malay Peninsula.

By 1941, the planned British fleet response was not available to use the base, nor was there a strong enough air force to deny offensives against the peninsula. Only the land forces on the ground remained to hold and physically deny the Japanese the ability to capture it. The original Singapore Strategy, however, had not prioritised the preparedness of the land forces on the peninsula. In optimistic assessments in 1940 nine land brigades would be enough to deny Singapore to the Japanese. With Japanese encroachment in the region, by late 1941, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival revised this higher, to a requirement for 48 battalions with armoured support. These forces were unavailable. Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942.

The fall of Singapore offers lessons around the role of military denial in deterrence. London failed to recognise the impact that the loss of a credible naval capacity for military denial had on the strength of deterrence. It overestimated the deterrent effect of bases alone, underestimated Japanese resolve and failed to prepare replacement forces to fill the military-denial gap as British naval power faded. When deterrence failed, the British government was fatally unable to generate sufficient or credible military forces for the actual—physical—military denial of Singapore to the Japanese. The result was catastrophic.

Denial when deterrence fails: military denial at Kyiv, 2022

Despite increasing capability since 2014, the Ukrainian government and Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) failed to deter Russia’s invasion in 2022. Ukraine’s immediate response to the invasion, however, exemplified a successful military denial of Russian objectives. The AFU skilfully executed this strategy, even in the face of a near-fatal surprise at the operational level from the main Russian attack.

A central element of Russia’s military plan was to capture Kyiv in three to four days with coordinated airborne and mechanised forces. The Ukrainians recognised this, and when deterrence failed, they fought aggressively to deny the Russians their initial objectives. The AFU used initiative and tactical adaptation to initially slow the Russian advance on the Gomel and Chernihiv-Sumy fronts, overcoming a 12-to-1 force disparity between defenders and aggressors. They then exploited operational adaptability, bolstered by artillery support and modernised systems acquired since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and conflict in Donbas, to shift to military denial around Kiev.

The Battle for Hostomel Airport exemplified the AFU’s effective application of military denial. Russian planners chose the airfield as a target due to its proximity to Kyiv, its location along the Gomel axis of advance and because of lacked defences. It was a military airfield with a 3,500-metre long runway and could support large transport aircraft.  The Russian operational plan called for a rapid air assault. A company-size contingent of Russian troops conducted a successful air-mobile assault in transport helicopters in two waves and quickly began to take control of the control tower and adjacent airfield administrative buildings.

AFU leadership immediately recognised the strategic importance of the airstrip and ordered a counterattack to deny it to the enemy. The AFU aggressively fixed Russian forces at the airfield and then rendered it unusable through artillery strikes and aerial bombardment, cratering the runway before withdrawing. A lack of an air bridge significantly hampered Russia’s logistic system. By applying effective military denial at Hostomel, the AFU denied the Russians the ability to hold key terrain, expand their foothold or link up with penetrating armoured forces.

As the Russians saw their offensive falter and faced the possibility of encirclement by Ukrainian counterattacks, they withdrew from Kyiv Oblast, leading to an initial Ukrainian victory. The application of credible and effective military denial prevented Russian forces from consolidating, forcing them to abandon their objective of swiftly subjugating Ukraine and decapitating the Zelensky regime in Kyiv. Like Singapore, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates a failure of deterrence by denial. Nevertheless, it also reflects the criticality of still being able to achieve actual military denial should deterrence fail. The AFU’s capacity for military denial was their saviour.

Learning from history

The case studies above suggest that credible and relevant capacity for military denial is the foundation of an effective strategy of deterrence. It is then just as important in responding when deterrence fails.

In Singapore, the British underestimated their declining credibility in military denial and misread the effect this had on the strength of deterrence. Even worse, they failed to prepare sufficient forces to respond when deterrence failed. They instead fell foul to political and bureaucratic frugality, faulty planning assumptions, poor coalition cooperation and a fatal underestimation of their enemy. They fundamentally lacked the ability to transition from deterrence by denial to actual military denial, leading to one of the most profound losses in British military history.

In the Ukrainian example, the AFU lacked sufficient capacity in military denial to effectively deter the Russians from invading. However, when deterrence failed, they had credible, relevant and prepared forces ready to actually deny the objectives of the Russian Armed Forces in the immediate transition to war. Evidence shows that the Ukrainians expected deterrence to hold and that the Russians would not invade. This was wrong. Nevertheless, they were ready to respond to this error in a manner that ultimately saved Kiev, and prevented a Russian coup de main.

The critical lesson is that a strategy of deterrence by denial rests on a credible capability for military denial. Without credible capability, deterrence is nothing more than an illusion: one that a sophisticated adversary will quickly see through. When deterrence fails, it is important that states in our region then possess the integrated, credible and relevant capability to actually deny objectives to an enemy, even if only in the short term. The only alternatives will be defeat or surrender.

Diplomacy is the newest front in the Russia-Ukraine war

The war between Russia and Ukraine continues unabated. Neither side is in a position to achieve its stated objectives through military force. But now there is significant diplomatic activity as well.

Ukraine has agreed to a 30-day ceasefire, in large part to patch up relations with US President Donald Trump’s administration, which unravelled during a 28 February Oval Office confrontation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia rejected the ceasefire proposal, instead suggesting (but not implementing) a prohibition on attacking energy infrastructure. Both sides also indicated a readiness to accept a ceasefire in the Black Sea, but with Russia linking its support to a relaxation of sanctions, it is far from clear when—or even if—such a limited ceasefire would start, much less what it would encompass.

Such partial steps, if implemented, could be a way-station to something more significant. But it is at least equally possible that partial steps would not lead to a comprehensive peace agreement. Russia could prosecute the war even if the Black Sea were not an active theatre.

The biggest question remains US policy. The Trump administration has used a combination of pressure and incentives to persuade the two sides to stop fighting. But its approach has been skewed toward offering benefits to Russia while bringing heavy pressure to bear on Ukraine.

To be clear, it is appropriate to offer Russia certain incentives. This could include a willingness to resume high-level contacts and restaff embassies, support for limited relaxation of sanctions if specified conditions are met, and to allow Russia to keep its long-term objectives for Ukraine on the table.

What is not acceptable is to embrace flawed Russian positions, such as its claims to Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia based on the results of illegal referenda conducted by Russian occupation forces. It is one thing for Trump’s envoy to the Kremlin, the property-developer-turned-novice-diplomat Steve Witkoff, to characterise Russia’s stance and quite another for him to adopt it as his own.

More broadly, there is no good reason to introduce final-status considerations at this point. The goal for now should be an open-ended ceasefire agreement, not a permanent peace treaty. In this instance, excessive ambition is likely to be the enemy of the possible.

To achieve a cessation of hostilities, the agreement ought to be as clean and simple as possible. Only two elements are essential for a viable ceasefire: a cessation of all hostilities, and a separation of forces, ideally with a peacekeeping contingent between them.

Everything else, including the disposition of territory and populations, should be left for final-status negotiations. For now, both sides should be allowed to arm or agree to security arrangements with third parties. Nothing should be done to preclude measures that would buttress a ceasefire. Russia should be permitted to retain North Korean troops on its territory; Ukraine could invite forces from European countries.

What is essential is for the United States to continue providing military and intelligence support to Ukraine. Such support is the only way to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that further stalling is not in his interest, and is essential to Ukraine’s ability to deter renewed Russian aggression even if there is a ceasefire agreement. But it need not be unlimited: such US assistance has totalled around US$40 billion a year for three years—a level that is likely to suffice for the foreseeable future.

The goal should be to give Ukraine what it needs to deter and defend against Russian aggression, not to liberate its lands. To assert, as Witkoff did, that there is no reason to worry about renewed Russian aggression is not serious. After all, the current war is Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine since 2014, when it illegally annexed Crimea. Given Putin’s intentions, what matters are capabilities.

Matters could come to a head by summer, when the pipeline of congressionally-approved arms for Ukraine runs out. The Trump administration will have to decide (if it has not already done so) on the connection between the security relationship with Ukraine and US diplomacy.

As we attempt to discern what the administration will choose to do, the February 2020 deal that the first Trump administration signed with the Taliban should give us pause. The agreement was negotiated over the head of the US’s Afghan partners through direct talks with the Taliban, paving the way for the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan a year and a half later. One can only hope that the price President Joe Biden paid, both domestically and internationally, for implementing Trump’s deal will lead Trump to think twice before abandoning Ukraine to a similar fate.

Trump should also keep in mind that abandoning Ukraine would not bring peace. Zelensky, who is more popular than ever at home (thanks in no small part to the infamous Oval Office meeting) would likely opt for no ceasefire or peace treaty rather than one that compromised Ukraine’s core interests. It could fight on in one form or another for years using domestically produced arms and weapons imported from Europe and Asia—and, free of US restrictions as a condition of aid, it might even be tempted to act more aggressively in its choice of targets within Russia.

At the same time, Russia would most likely view US separation from Ukraine as an opportunity to press or even escalate militarily. Far from bringing peace, a US military cutoff of Ukraine could actually bring about an escalation in the fighting.

The stakes are high, and not just for Ukraine. What plays out with Russia will have a significant effect on the future of Europe, on whether China uses force against Taiwan, or North Korea against South Korea, and on how the US is perceived both by its friends and enemies around the world.

I, too, got a few things wrong

I agree with Will Leben, who wrote in The Strategist about his mistakes, that an important element of being a commentator is being accountable and taking responsibility for things you got wrong.

In that spirit, I’ve taken up his challenge and have thought back on what I got wrong in a long, long career.

I haven’t chosen easy examples, which are almost a form of self-congratulation. I didn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin would order the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because it was not in Russia’s interests. I stand by that. Or that the United States and its coalition of the willing should invade Iraq in 2003 with flimsy evidence. These are good reminders that international relations is not about just rationality.

So, my first mistake is one of tactics. I was wrong to believe that Australia should have tried to repair its relationship with China in 2020. After China imposed trade restrictions, it was better for Australia to hold its position and show that it could weather China’s economic coercion. I stand by my view that the relationship should never have been allowed to get that bad. But once it was, it was the right call to hold firm to show China, other countries and, crucially, the Australian public that Australia had the strength and resilience to survive and even thrive.

The situation would’ve been different had China imposed trade restrictions on iron ore rather than lobsters and red wine—that would have been mutually assured destruction of both economies’ growth. (And on this, we should be watching when China’s African sources of iron ore come on line.) But in the actual situation, affected industries were right to find other markets, showing China that its tactics were counterproductive.

My second is a failure of communication. I’m on the record saying that Australia should not go to war with China in defence of Taiwan. That sounds more definite than anyone can be, given the range of scenarios that might lead to a contingency in the Taiwan Strait. I stated it better when I said Taiwan should not rely on Australia to come to its defence. I regret that I bought into narratives focussing on military options and end games rather than how we can support Taiwan right now.

The starting point for any Taiwan discussion should be the welfare of the Taiwanese people. I worry that some who say they are pro-Taiwan are just raring for a fight and aren’t thinking about the catastrophe this would bring for Taiwan, one of the places I love most on earth. I don’t think they have Taiwan’s best interests at heart.

Being a friend means talking frankly with Taiwanese contacts about risk and the importance of avoiding all-out war. Many in Taiwan understandably want independence. There’s a danger that after 80 years Taiwan sees China as all bluster and bluff and underestimates China’s resolve. I can’t overstate how unwise it would be to take reckless action assuming that Taiwan can rely on external support.

Taiwan’s strategy must remain the same—preserve the status quo and maintain maximum space—in the hope that better options may emerge. I’m a status quo-ist because anything else would be a calamity for Taiwan. But that doesn’t mean acquiescence.

Friends of Taiwan should counter narratives presenting Taiwan as a Chinese province by explaining its history and diversity. I try to explain this in terms of decolonisation. Taiwan is less like Catalonia and more like the Philippines, handed between empires with a distinct identity from a myriad of heritages. Nowhere on earth is quite like it.

My third failure is one of courage. I’m conscious that I have never written anything about Israel or Palestine in all my decades as an international affairs commentator.

The glib answer is that I’m not a Middle East expert. And that’s true. Some people I studied with in Boston have dedicated their entire careers to the Israel-Palestine conflict. They can talk about 1967-this and 1948-that at a level of detail I don’t pretend to understand. As one conflict resolution expert described it to me: ‘you either do Israel-Palestine, or you do everything else’. I chose everything else.

But that’s not the whole answer. I’m happy to do media spots about the NATO Summit, not because I know today’s battlefield details in Ukraine but because I understand conflict concepts such as victory, best alternative and zone of possible agreement.

With Israel and Palestine, the divisiveness of the topic stops me. Whatever I say, I’ll be hated. And I don’t like being hated. This is not something I like about myself.

But if we all stop ourselves, we end up with a shouting match between the absolutely convinced. We lose the opportunity for civil debate that actually changes minds, builds empathy and tries to find solutions. That means understanding both Israel’s sense of insecurity and the hopelessness of Palestinian dispossession. It means taking international law and humanitarian law seriously, whoever breaches it.

So I’ve decided I’ll do something I have never done before. I will speak out, if anyone will publish me. In a decade’s time, I don’t want to regret that I missed an opportunity to be a voice.

Putin’s march of folly

In a lengthy address at the annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to outline his view of the world. Rambling on about a global ‘minority’ that is stymying the ambitions of the ‘majority’, he would have us believe that Russia belongs to the latter. Yet when Russia attempted to derail the final communique at the United Nations Summit of the Future this fall, countries from across the Global South firmly rebuffed the attempt.

Throughout his Valdai appearance, Putin struggled to hide the fact that what he really cares about is avoiding a ‘strategic defeat’ in Ukraine. In fact, Russia has already suffered a strategic defeat, inflicted not by the West or even by Ukraine, but by Putin himself. For the past two decades, his own myopic, destructive policies have forced Ukraine to turn toward the West for support and solidarity.

One of Putin’s first blunders came after Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election, when his ham-fisted attempt to choose the winner ended up provoking the Orange Revolution, which swept the moderate former central banker Viktor Yushchenko into the Ukrainian presidency. Putin has been trying to exert influence over the country ever since.

But the pattern is clear: time after time, the Kremlin’s heavy-handed efforts have backfired, leaving Ukrainians even more determined to align themselves with the West. Contrary to what some Western commentators and Kremlin propagandists claim, this was never a case of the West expanding eastward as part of some malevolent plot. It was the Ukrainians who were making the strategic moves, which reflected Putin’s efforts to curtail their sovereignty.

In 2008, proposals to extend NATO membership to Ukraine clearly lacked the necessary support, as both France and Germany opposed the idea at the time. Ukraine took the hint and in 2010 reaffirmed its neutral status as a means of keeping Putin at bay.

But the situation changed again in 2013, after Putin pressured Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to reject an Association Agreement with the European Union. Closer trade ties with Europe would have boosted Ukraine’s economy and curtailed corruption by requiring it to adapt EU legal norms; but Yanukovych, in exchange for a $15 billion bailout by Russia and lower gas prices, acquiesced to Putin’s demands and abandoned the agreement. In response, Ukrainians took to the streets in what would become the Euromaidan uprising, and Yanukovych soon fled for Russia in the dead of night.

Putin’s response made his intentions all too clear. He deployed Russian special forces—‘little green men’ whose uniforms bore no identifying insignias—in Crimea, a part of Ukraine since 1954, and then illegally annexed it. Left with no other choice, Ukraine responded by ditching neutrality, seeking NATO membership and moving forward with the EU agreement. Moreover, NATO—itself feeling threatened by Putin’s brazen land grab—stationed forces in its Eastern European member states for the first time.

These were perfectly understandable responses to Putin’s acts of aggression. Again, the West was not trying to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia; Putin was doing it to himself. By the early 2020s, with Ukraine moving even closer toward the West, he recognized the grim consequences of his blunders and decided to put an end to the issue. His goal in launching a full-scale invasion was either to transform Ukraine into a Belarus-like satrapy or eliminate it as a nation-state altogether.

It soon became obvious that Putin had miscalculated yet again. He believed that a quick special operation would be enough to topple Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration and install a Kremlin-friendly regime in Kyiv. Instead, his forces encountered a determined nation that they were not prepared to fight. Almost three years later, Russia controls only around 10 percent more of Ukraine’s territory than it had in 2014, when it grabbed 7 percent. It is a pathetic result, especially considering that the occupied areas have largely been destroyed, with probably only half of their pre-2014 population remaining.

Putin’s aim is still to take full control of Ukraine and recreate Imperial Russia. But this effort will fail. Although Bolshevik forces re-established control of Ukraine after the Russian civil war in the early 1920s, even Vladimir Lenin understood that Ukraine is and must remain a separate political entity. And while Putin has rejected Lenin’s belief as a grave error, it was Joseph Stalin who made Ukraine a separate member of the United Nations.

With Putin continuing his war of aggression, the casualties will keep mounting (probably to around ten thousand per week). But the only certain outcome of his misadventure will be the hatred that Ukrainians now bear toward Russia. This will have long-lasting consequences, and it already represents a major strategic defeat for Russia. Responsibility for the situation starts and ends with Putin. The West could never have achieved what Putin has: Ukraine’s total alienation from Russia.

From the bookshelf: ‘Who Will Defend Europe?’

Despite frequent US calls for NATO to lift defence spending, most of its European members kept pocketing a peace dividend in recent years by running down their armed forces and defence industries. They imagined that war would never return to Europe and that in any event they could rely on the US to defend them.

Both assumptions were illusory, as Keir Giles argues in a new book, Who Will Defend Europe? Giles is a senior fellow at Chatham House and director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre. He has been an active and prescient analyst of Russia, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, notably in his books Moscow Rules and Russia’s War on Everybody.

As Giles notes, many commentators argue that Russia can no longer be considered a major security threat. It has not been able to achieve its ambitious goal of conquering Ukraine despite its size advantage and has lost enormous numbers of troops and military equipment.

But this viewpoint is shortsighted, writes Giles. Russia has built back its land forces, offsetting losses. The rest of Russia’s military—its air force, navy and nuclear forces—is relatively unscathed. When hostilities come to a halt, Russia will be able to quickly rebuild its military for more adventurism. Indeed, according to off-the-record interviews with European defence and intelligence chiefs that Giles conducted, Russia will be preparing for its next attack on a European NATO member country in the coming few years.

The enormous challenge of countering Russia beyond the traditional battlefield was also highlighted by British MI5 Director General Ken McCallum in a recent speech, when he said: ‘While the Russian military grinds away on the battlefield, at horrendous human cost, we’re also seeing Putin’s henchmen seeking to strike elsewhere, in the misguided hope of weakening Western resolve.’ He said Russia ‘is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more.’

Writing before the 5 November presidential election, Giles says that, regardless of the results, the US will likely be less committed to defending NATO’s European members. Through the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, it is apparent that the US is more committed to defending Israel than Ukraine, with fewer restrictions being placed on Israel’s use of American military equipment. US military leaders in the Indo-Pacific are also competing with NATO for resources as they consider the possibility of a conflict with China in 2027, widely deemed to be a greater priority than Europe.

Ukraine is a shield holding back Russian aggression from Europe, writes Giles, but European reactions are quite diverse. Frontline states such as Poland and Finland are taking the Russian challenge seriously and ramping up defence expenditure. Germany has announced a major increase in defence spending, but it will take a long time for this to translate into improved capabilities. Moreover, while most European NATO countries are now aiming to achieve the organisation’s defence spending target of 2 percent of GDP, it seems that much higher contributions will be necessary.

Giles is rather despondent about the state of the military in Britain, his home country, where it seems to be in a shambles. While the new Labour government’s strategic defence review is welcome, conducting it postpones the timing of reform of the military by one year, and the government has announced that it will not be increasing defence spending.

Another area of concern is Giles’ perception that, because of their soft and comfortable lifestyle, Britons may not come together to defend its nation and values, as it did during World War II. While the same concern would apply to some other European countries, the need to defend your country and values is a relatively easy sell in Sweden, Finland and Poland.

Giles also laments the reluctance of some leaders to speak openly about the gravity of Europe’s security situation. Most European economic and political systems have not woken up to the threat, or if they have, they are not doing anything about it. European populations are mostly unaware of threats to their countries’ security.

Overall, Who Will Defend Europe? is a well-written book, offering detailed insights and perspectives on the gravity of Europe’s security situation, which will have spillover effects worldwide.

How and why Russia is conducting sabotage and hybrid-war offensive

Across Europe, we’re seeing more confirmed or suspected instances of Russian sabotage. It is part of a broader hybrid war campaign against NATO countries, aimed at eroding support for Ukraine and damaging Western cohesion.

In the US, Russia is refraining from sabotage, but it’s working hard on disinformation.

The head of MI5 warned in October that agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, had conducted arson attacks, sabotage and other dangerous actions ‘with increasing recklessness’. His MI6 counterpart said Russian intelligence services had gone ‘a bit feral’.

The chiefs of Germany’s three intelligence branches echoed these concerns, reporting a ‘quantitative and qualitative’ increase in acts of Russian-sponsored espionage and sabotage in their country. On 22 October, Poland announced it would close the Russian consulate in Poznan due to alleged sabotage attempts.

Russia has conducted arson attacks in Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia and Czechia. Other reported sabotage attempts include flying drones over Stockholm airport, jamming of Baltic countries’ civil aviation GPS systems and disruption of French railways on the first day of the Paris Olympics. Facilities linked to supplying Ukraine have also been targeted: a BAE Systems munitions facility in Wales, an air-defence company’s factory in Berlin and a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London.

Authorities have arrested suspects for plots to bomb or sabotage a military base in Bavaria and a French facility supporting Ukraine’s war efforts. Agencies disrupted a plot to assassinate the CEO of German arms maker Rheinmetall, a supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine. Latvian authorities tracked down saboteurs dispatched to several countries on paid missions. Norway’s domestic intelligence service warns of the threat of sabotage to train lines and to gas facilities supplying much of Europe.

This upsurge in sabotage activity is a rebound from initial setbacks that Russian intelligence suffered in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Its assessment of likely Ukrainian resistance and Western unity was lacking, affecting its ability to analyse and influence those factors. Some 750 Russians with diplomatic cover were expelled from Russian embassies and consulates across Europe, mostly spies.

Russia’s intelligence and security services rapidly regrouped. They have since managed to build new illegal networks and recruit criminals and other proxies through the dark web or social media platforms such as Telegram.

Sabotage operations are part of its larger hybrid war campaign. This is designed to cause fear and division in order to undermine support for Ukraine without going so far as provoking war. Russian hybrid warfare encompasses several tactics, most notably cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.

Another grey-zone tactic is weaponising immigration. Russian authorities direct migrants into neighbouring European countries without proper documentation, instructing them to claim asylum there. The aim is to destabilise those neighbours. European officials reported Russian plans to set up a 15,000-strong force comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants. Migration routes through Libya link to other places with Russian military or paramilitary presence, notably through Central African Republic and Sudan, as well as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Fostering irregular migration further supports right-wing European parties which oppose immigration and European integration and which Russia funds. These include AfD in Germany, National Rally in France and Reform UK, which all gained in recent elections and are mostly Russia-friendly and critical of support for Ukraine.

So far, Russia has refrained from sabotage in the US, although European officials have warned that uncovered plots to plant incendiary devices on planes in Europe could be test runs for similar plans in the US. Russian disinformation efforts in the US have stepped up since 2022 and expanded during the presidential election campaign. Donald Trump’s and MAGA Republicans’ reluctance to support Ukraine makes Trump the clearly preferred candidate of Russia.

In the aftermath of hurricanes Milton and Helene in the US, Russia-affiliated social media accounts pushed fake narratives claiming the Biden administration’s response had been incompetent, reflecting wider government failures and prioritisation of resources to Ukraine over domestic needs. The Justice Department has indicted two employees of Kremlin media propaganda arm RT for paying US$10 million to a media company in Tennessee to spread disinformation.

Anti-US campaigns are also active in developing countries. Some aim to discredit US-funded anti-malaria programs in Africa.

Western leaders have been reluctant to call for a more vigorous response to Russian sabotage, probably out of fear of escalation. Some media reports even suggest that fears of retaliatory sabotage actions, such as attacks on US bases, have fed into US reluctance to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles.

The West is running out of non-military options for response, since it is already imposing extensive economic and diplomatic sanctions against Moscow and has limited capacity or opportunity to retaliate in kind inside Russia. Still, a more strenuous response by Western governments is needed.

Former Finnish president Sauli Niinisto has suggested that the EU needs its own pan-European intelligence agency to help countries fend off threats, saboteurs and espionage. At the very least, the US and Europe should respond to Russian hybrid warfare by removing the shackles from Ukraine, allowing it to repel the Russian invaders from its territory.

From the bookshelf: ‘Engaging North Korea’

North Korea is again in the global spotlight. By providing first munitions and now troops to support Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has expanded the scope of the Ukraine conflict while driving its relations with the West to a new low. And, by aligning with Russia, sidelining long-time patron China and abandoning its goal of unification with South Korea, North Korea has escalated tensions in Northeast Asia.

The last time the hermit kingdom was this visible was in June 2018, when its leader, Kim Jong Un, met US president Donald Trump at a summit held in Singapore amid cautious optimism that North Korea might gradually open up to the West. But in a follow-up summit in Hanoi in 2019, the gaping differences between the two parties became clear and negotiations collapsed.

The Biden administration adopted a wait-and-see policy, paying little attention to North Korea. Most foreign missions in Pyongyang closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and have not reopened.

In 2022, however, Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine dealt the North Korea a fresh hand. With rapidly depleting military resources, Moscow turned to Pyongyang, which in 2023 began exporting artillery shells and weapons to Russia, in return receiving much-needed food, raw materials and weapons parts.

In January this year, Pyongyang relinquished its constitutional commitment to Korean unification and said it would consider the South to be its principal enemy. To underline the shift, in October North Korea blew up parts of two roads connecting it to the South. Munitions exports to Russia have accelerated, and now Pyongyang has sent troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

In Engaging North Korea, 12 international experts put their heads together to review experience in relations with North Korea and provide pointers on how to deal with it in the future. The contributors include leading Korea experts from Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the US and Vietnam, a director of humanitarian aid and a Swedish diplomatic envoy. The two last-mentioned have hands-on experience working inside North Korea.

The authors start from the widely divergent interests behind the six-party talks, which sought to address North Korea’s nuclear program and broke down in 2009. The United States, Japan and South Korea want denuclearization, North Korea wants to keep its nuclear capabilities and have economic sanctions lifted, while China and North Korea have a special relationship based on inter-party cooperation. Japan must also deal with the domestically sensitive issue of citizens abducted by North Korean agents. The sixth party in the talks was Russia.

Singaporean and Vietnamese viewpoints are also discussed in the book, as either country may be called on to facilitate future negotiations. Should the North Korea ever consider opening its economy, Vietnam might serve as a model. With the world focusing on geopolitics, the authors remind us of North Korea’s deep humanitarian crisis. Given the range of interlinked issues, the book highlights the need to deal with North Kora comprehensively rather than piecemeal.

A fascinating chapter reviews the special role played by Sweden in keeping the door to North Korea ajar, though sometimes only minimally. It was the first Western country to recognise North Korea, in 1973. In 1975 it set up an embassy that it has kept open, although since the Covid-19 outbreak staffed entirely with North Korean nationals.

In the early 1990s, after a change of government, Stockholm was about to shut its embassy when the US asked it to represent it as a diplomatic protecting power—a representative. Washington lacked official relations with Pyongyang and wanted Sweden to serve as a neutral go-between. Sweden kept the embassy open and now serves as the protecting power for Australia, Canada, Germany and the US. It also  represents several other countries in consular matters.

Engaging with North Korea is a daunting task but one that is essential for world peace. The authors liken it to the Sisyphean challenge of repeatedly pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again, but they consider the chances of success greater if countries work ‘collectively, patiently and purposefully’. They propose doing this through informal working groups rather than showy summits. However, North Korea’s recent policy shifts make even this unlikely, at least in the short term.

Its playbook consists of bluster, threats and unpredictability, which its leaders have used ruthlessly to gain strategic advantage. However, behind the enigmatic facade there is a method, usually opportunistic, to North Korea’s unpredictability.

Frustrated at being ignored by the Biden administration, North Korea predictably undertook missile launches in September and October in the run-up to the US presidential elections. We should remember that its warming relations with Russia are transactional and do not change the reality that China is North Korea’s closest neighbour and only major trading partner.

With North Korea sending soldiers to support Russia and with tensions on the Korean Peninsula at a new high, the search is on for fresh ways to deal with the hermit kingdom. Engaging North Korea is essential reading for diplomats and security specialists, especially those handling Northeast Asia and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Tag Archive for: Russia-Ukraine war

Vladimir Putin is taking the peace, with Peter Tesch

During a two hour phone call this week with US President Donald Trump, Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin did what everyone expected—he raised impossible demands, promised next to nothing, and generally made a mockery of Trump’s patience. 

Australia’s former Ambassador to Russia and Germany Peter Tesch speaks with David Wroe about the dynamic between Trump and Putin, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s perilous place in the middle, Ukraine’s courageous fight for global democracy, the future of European security, the shape of a new world in which major powers carve out spheres of influence, and Australia’s defence investment with the budget and election looming. Peter and David also discuss gaps in their reading habits.