The Russians Are Reversing The Trap Laid For Them

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

If you were trying to make sense of the Russia – NATO war in Ukraine by following the endless updates from official and unofficial sources provided via social media madness and despair would surely follow. Thus to make sense of the day to day, minute to minute updates you have to step back and analyse what the strategies used by each side actually are and how the events we see unfold before us each day fit into these strategies. To understand the series of apparently wild statements made by the titular head of the Wagner organisation (Yevgeny Prigozhin) recently you have to see them as part of the Russian strategy of reversing the trap that the NATO powers had attempted to lay for them and are reversing it. To begin with let us discuss the reality of Wagner and Prigozhin.

The Wagner organisation was created by Russian military intelligence (GRU) as a means for carrying out operations requiring mitary force that fell outside of the legal responsibilities of the military. The GRU is managed directly by the Russian General Staff with Gerasimov as the man in overall charge as chief of the Russian General Staff. Wagners funding most likely comes through the military but that will, of course, be highly classified. The job of Wagner is twofold firstly to go to countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic and carry out missions that the Russian government doesn’t want formally acknowledge it is engaging in. It is also run by experienced Russian military officers and specialises in urban, close quarters combat as shown by its assault on Artyomovsk which has seen brutal close combat for almost a year now.

Prigozhin was picked to be the nominal head of this organisation by the GRU and his job is to be build up the Wagner myth. This is why there are so many stories about him, his connection to Putin and his role in the Russian state. This is all mythology built up partly by the Russians themselves but also by the obsession with Wagner that NATO intelligence agencies have developed. Prigozhin is performing a role and that role at the moment is to play into the preconceived notions of the US and British intelligence agencies. By making all these wild statements Prigozhin is playing his part in convincing the Ukrainians to launch their offensive by creating the image that the Russian general staff are all useless, that the Russian army is on the point of collapse and that they are running low on ammunition. This is all a very old game and of course was effectively summarised by Sun Tzu as follows.

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

The Russians want whatever force the Ukrainians have built up to go on the attack in order that they can be drawn into the very strong Russian defences and wiped out. Only after this latest NATO built force is wiped out will Russia move to any large scale offensive. This has been the plan of the Russian General Staff since at least October of 2022 and was why General Surovikin was brought in to solidify the Russian defensive lines. The Russians have spent months reinforcing their lines, building huge defences and of course training the hundreds of thousands of men and volunteers who are being used to reinforce the lines in Western Russia and the Army Group that is deployed within Belarus. The withdrawal from Kherson was all part of this plan to create secure lines of defence then to encourage the Ukrainians and their NATO line managers to hurl their forces against them. This strategy has been developed partly because the Russians understand the NATO war plans and the assumptions they are built on far better than the US has understood the Russian one.

The Ukrainian war plan has been designed to play on what the US planners see as the real Russian weakness which was supposed to be the economy, dependent upon resource export and unable to function without access to European markets. The idea was that without access to these markets a crisis would then occur as the compradors in Russia would lead a revolt against the Putin led government. This failed because the Russians had spent 8 years preparing economically for what was to come and (thus far) the economy has at least remained stable. The US planners though have not adapted their assumptions to this new reality. They still think that if they just create enough of a sense of crisis then there will be a coup of some kind in Russia. That’s what actually dictates all of Ukrainian moves on the battlefield, they are trying to create at least the illusion of a crisis. This plan might seem ludicrous now but it is not without foundation. In fact it is a pretty sound analysis of the weaknesses of the Russian state pre-2014 or perhaps even pre-2008 but it fails to take into account changes to the Russian economy and state since at least 2014. The long term political project of Putin and his circle has been to stabilise the Russian state and reassert its authority. This has been done slowly over many years, though the pace of this increased after the sanctions warfare that began in 2014. It is a process that is imperfect, far from complete and still sticks by the deal that Putin made with the comprador bourgeoisie in the early 2000s that if they would not try to run the state or interfere then they would be free to enjoy their loot including the ability to export it to banks and real estate investments in Europe and the USA. Even now the ability of this layer of scum to move their loot around has been restricted more by Biden than it has by Putin.

The GRU understand the biases of the US and British intelligence men very well and are thus having their employee, Prigozhin, put on a show. The Russian plan is for at least a 30 month war which will seek to grind down Ukraines forces and part of how they do that is by using the faulty plans of the west against them.