Gp Capt Murli Menon (Retd)
Defence Analyst
Even as the war in Ukraine has completed nine months, Russian missile strikes have shut power supply to nearly 60 per cent of 3 million Ukrainian homes. Fifteen regions are without water supply and over 15,000 civilians are reported missing. For the first time in decades, all nuclear power stations of Ukraine have been disconnected from the national power grid, thus risking a nuclear and radioactive catastrophe. Hospitals are being evacuated in Kherson, even as Russia continues its ground offensive in eastern Donetsk region.
Forbes estimates that Russia has so far spent around $82 billion on the war — a quarter of its annual budget. Geopolitics has pushed the military aspects of the war to the background. On the NATO front, Hungary has decided to ratify the organisation’s membership for Finland and Sweden, leaving only Turkey to take a call on the contentious issue.
The war is in a logjam, without any armistice in sight. Europe is expecting Ukraine to negotiate peace, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is adamant on salvaging his nation’s pride. The biggest war on European soil since World War II meanders listlessly.
The attack on a Russian naval airbase, which marks a major escalation in hostilities, has resonance for the subcontinent. The terror strike on the Pathankot airbase by Jaish-e-Mohammad operatives on New Year’s Day in 2016 had driven home critical lessons regarding airfield security. A similar attack had taken place at the Pakistani naval airbase of Mehran in May 2011, when Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Al-Qaeda terrorists breached the perimeter fencing and destroyed a P3C Orion aircraft.
The latest airfield attack, but one in a hot-war scenario, has been reported in the Ukraine war. Video clips show Ukrainian military commandos undertaking a successful saboteur operation at Russian helicopter base Veretye, located some 800 km from the Ukrainian border, deep inside Russia’s Pskov Oblast. The attack is said to have destroyed two Kamov-52 ‘Hokum B’ Alligators and one MI-28 N. Two more choppers apparently suffered significant damage and yet another had a large quantity of trinitrotoluene (TNT) attached to it, which had not exploded for some reason. Besides showing the combat skills of the Ukrainian military, the poor target defence of the Russians is evident here. These commandos were possibly flown in across the borders with Latvia or Estonia, which would indicate NATO involvement.
The attack on the Russian naval airbase shows that the Ukrainian military is still being able to throw a punch at the Russians despite the ongoing heavy air attacks by Russia on Kiev and other Ukrainian towns, bridges, power installations and other targets. Obviously, the morale of the Ukrainians is still high, also highlighted by Zelenskyy, who shows up on television screens in battle fatigues. Thus, while the entire world is desperately awaiting a truce, the ground and air war in Ukraine continues in fits and starts. The Ukrainians are celebrating the liberation of the important port town of Kherson, which is close to Crimea.
This is apparently the first Ukrainian attack deep inside Russia, the earlier ones having been smaller saboteur operations mostly along the Russian borders or in Crimea. More than anything else, this commando raid would signal a significant Ukrainian success story in the ongoing war. Whether it would coax the Russians to the negotiating table or push them to aggravated actions such as shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remains to be seen.
Although the operation itself may have been comparatively small, the impact on Russia’s naval air power can be substantial. According to media reports, the Russian naval air arm’s 15th Army Aviation Brigade, which had 90 Ka-52 choppers at the start of the war, has lost around 23 of them during the war. The Ka-52 is one of Russia’s most advanced aerial platforms, with helmet-mounted gunsights, advanced navigation systems, ground support rocketry and bombing wherewithal.
By now, the course of the war, notwithstanding the paucity of authentic reportage and the continuation of the vicious information war from both sides, has thrown up several lessons for professional armed forces such as ours. The most important takeaway from the Ukraine conflict is the peculiar nature of an unplanned, prolonged, all-out war. Traditionally, our planners have counted on short-duration wars in the subcontinent. But what if a subcontinental or India-China confrontation leads to a prolonged conflict? The possibility exists, especially with some unpredictable big-power machinations that could ensue, thanks to the US-China tussle in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. Ukraine has NATO on its side to bolster its arms inventory. For India, it has traditionally been Russia that steps in to augment our armament stores for the exigencies of war. Until the Atmanirbharta push starts showing concrete results, we would need such reliable sources of arms supplies, especially by way of beefing up our war wastage reserve holdings in armaments and perhaps fuel as well as lubricants.
The security of airfields and road networks along active borders would call for a robust defence budget outlay for the foreseeable future. Intelligence is another key area that needs substantial funding, especially in the space domain, to have in place dedicated defence satellite capability and a stand-alone GPS capability — a must for a nation like India with an international strategic footprint. Besides, our strategic arms inventory would need modernisation to meet current challenges. The requirement thus would be to fathom the ramifications of a future war, compensating adequately for our country’s historical baggage by virtue of not having addressed the requirements of a national war machine, including integrating national security objectives. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s articulated wish for “a world without wars” is thus a tall order in our troubled neighbourhood.
