This in-depth series was originally entitled 'The Choices that Define History'.
We later decided to replace it with 'Domino' because the Pandemic, with all the consequences it has brought and will bring, would have been more than adequate to fill the chapters of many books.
Another equally important reason is the association with the 'Domino effect theory', according to which with the fall under the control of Communist forces of a nation key to the stability of a continent or sub-continent the others would quickly follow.
This was specifically postulated for Europe and the Indochinese peninsula.
By this we do not mean to suggest that China will succeed over the next few years in transforming these two territories into unshakeable Communist bastions.
It is in fact more likely that this will happen, as it is happening, piece by piece with the approval or quiescence of the local populations and the elites that lead the country.
The war in Ukraine will inevitably push the balance of the world chessboard in that direction.
The collapse of globalisation, the dysfunctionality of the EU combined with infighting for control of the institutions in Brussels will mean that the mountain of lies used to support the idea of a united Europe will eventually unleash the perfect storm for the Old Continent.
What players like China will have to do is not to methodically insert themselves into a political-economic fabric with byzantine rules under the control of European elites, but to wait for a wounded animal to die like vultures do.
Once the system of legal 'Enforcement' collapses (through lack of legality or economic collapse) individual nations will be forced to re-establish the fabric limply by trying to find a balance through alliances established before the collapse of institutions.
Where states will be unable to cope with new forms of aggression, China will most likely step in.
The following series of analyses will focus on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its geopolitical consequences by offering a comprehensive forecast in the latest publication.
To better understand its content, it may help to read the previous in-depth analysis.
The first is a brief description of the evolution of the conflict from the outbreak to the retreat from Kiev and northern Ukraine.
The second focuses briefly on the consequences that this war will have on the world chessboard in terms of economics, geopolitics and the balance of powers and then reconnects to Ukraine's prospects.
The third will return to the themes of the second by delving deeper and concluding the outlook with an eye on Russia.
Good reading.
We'll be honest. This is not an in-depth analysis that we wanted to write. However, History has decided to turn a situation manageable at the diplomatic level into a proverbial Slaughterhouse.
At 3 a.m. (adjusted to Moscow and Kiev's time it would be 6 a.m. and 5 a.m.) on 24 February 2022, the Russian armed forces launched what their own inter-force conversations described as a 'blitzkrieg', firing an approximate number of 160 supersonic and hypersonic missiles to hit strategic targets and, in particular, military aircraft and airports and transport and energy infrastructure.
Not even an hour later fourth-generation fighters armed with smart bombs to be used on ammunition depots, vehicles and airplanes, flew in from the borders to the east and north-eas. After them came in combat helicopters mainly from the early 1990s supported by Hinds (Russian designation Mil Mi-24) and Halos (Russian designation Mil Mi-26) to hit ground targets again, destroy still usable airstrips and land the first troops in more advanced positions.
Here the first problems became apparent.
The entire Russian strategy was based on the assumption of the feasability of a rapid advance into Ukrainian territory by conquering small nerve centres in the offensive and quickly capturing Kiev and the government, destroying part of the energy network and core infrastructure and placing the Ukrainian army in the position of feeling alienated from the Russian-speaking section of the population with limited support in the rest of the country.
A similar situation has actually emerged in the rest of the country, where the easiest front for the Russians has turned out to be near Crimea, a region with a high degree of Russian-speaking and Kremlin-friendly population.
What was probably expected in Moscow is, beyond what has already been mentioned, a rapid collapse of the front in the east as it has been heavily affected by eight years of war of friction on both sides, involving a local population very close to the border and tending to be Russian-speaking (this even when not of Russian ethnicity). The most influential factors should have been hostility towards the Ukrainian defence forces, perceived as somehow obstinate and distant from the needs of the people.
Exactly the opposite happened. Not only did the Donbass, still in Ukrainian hands, prove to be much more difficult to surround and suffocate (through a pincer manoeuvre that failed several times thanks to sabotage operations), but the population made passive resistance in various contexts by refusing to collaborate in any way with the invading army.
Central in this respect was almost certainly Putin's decision making.
By relying on the FSB (an anomalous behaviour in part because since the war in Georgia and Syria, the President of the Russian Federation has preferred to rely on the military, leaving an important part of the former KGB in the background), and by being unable to fall back on the much more effective SVR because of the latter's opposition to an invasion, he laid the foundations for the failure of the psychological warfare operations in the Orthodox territories. Here the equivalent of the CIA believed it could facilitate a rapid overthrow of local pro-Ukranian forces and failed (at least two FSB officers were arrested in connection with the invasion and a hunt for Western spies appears to have been launched after the release of information from inside the agency).
All these factors led to a bogging down already after a few days of rapid raids by the air force, launches of Russian missiles aimed at hitting infrastructure and deployment of airborne troops and vehicles facilitating pincer movement attempts in the south-east and north.
Precisely with this in mind, the cities of Mariupol and Karkhiv and their metropolitan fabric, which Moscow aimed to easily surround or capture by denying any possible resistance, proved to be two heavy thorns in the side by facilitating or carrying out sabotage operations and repeatedly breaking fragile supply lines.
This created a problem both for the sustainability of the front in the east and south-east but also for the arrival of lasting supplies for the columns aimed at Kiev.
The result of this mix of wrong predictions and corruption is a situation that is still largely unresolved today, also as a result of targeted attacks on fuel trucks and the destruction of Ukrainian connections to the Russian and Belarusian railway systems.
On the contrary, it would seem that the absence of food, ammunition, equipment and reliable means is very much present, although it remains difficult to quantify. In fact, these problems seem to affect even those few battalions from the west that were deployed.
In perspective, however, the situation could change within a few more weeks of conflict, but at the cost of seeing an increasingly entangled Russia with a public opinion reluctant to engage in a lengthy military campaign.
What was wanted and what, instead, the Kremlin wanted to avoid
At the outset of the conflict, many parallels were drawn between the early days of the Iraq war and the current one, perhaps in an attempt to draw a watershed characterising Russia's decisive return to full superpower status.
As we have already written, the military plan implemented by the Kremlin turned out to be inadequate in the space of a few days, showing major fragilities in the supply system and the Moscow reformist drive.
However, another component was also the 'contingency' of the means used in the field.
From this point of view, Russian propaganda is indicative.
From the outset it described the conflict as a 'liberation' war, claiming that the ultimate goal was to destroy infrastructure and military assets with the aim of 'denazifying' Ukraine (we believe 'subjugating and forcing towards neutrality' is more appropriate).
This was done mainly for the use and consumption of the Russian population, with the domestic media continuing to this day to describe a conflict limited, if not in the extent of territory at least in the number of means, men and resources.
Both considerations are at least a partial lie, but combined with the probable objective of containing the number of civilian casualties they explain the attempt to establish humanitarian corridors (mainly to Russia with the aim of repopulating part of the regions further east) and the refusal of extensive use of aviation and artillery (both of which have been central in almost all post-Soviet conflicts and in Syria in particular, leading to an almost medieval evolution of war strategies and tactics).
Contingency has not been total given the use of ballistic missiles, cluster bombs (also used by the Ukrainians) and thermobaric bombs on the civilian and noncivilian population, later combined with the use of mercenaries and non-regular troops (in some cases recruitment has failed) to conquer urban centres perceived as difficult to seize(as well as various errors of engagement by ground forces with videos of tanks repeatedly firing on cars with civilians inside).
We feel obliged to emphasise this even in the face of the horrific events in Bucha, an initial systematic behaviour to be blamed on fear of an insurrection, the risk of sabotage and orders from a local commander in retaliation or outburst (regarding the missile attack on the Kramatorsk station that left 30 dead, we fear it was an attempt by the Ukrainians to stop an initial exodus via humanitarian corridors from the Kiev-controlled Donbass to Russia).
All these elements paint a clearer picture of the kind of confrontation the Kremlin higher-ups were trying to fight.
Always bearing in mind the two elements initially mentioned - the failure of logistics and military procurement and that of intelligence, which was unable to cultivate adequate support for the offensive in the country - which most influenced the conflict at the start, creating chain phenomena and causing the offensive to be fractured into five different military campaigns and without a coordinated command centre (unlike the Ukrainian one, which proved capable of resisting attempts at jamming and interference in communications thanks also to US support), many of the other shortcomings are quickly explained.
The collapse and decimation of many battalions (particularly in the area of Kiev and Karkhiv, but also in that of Kershon and Odessa) as a result of a lack of adequate equipment (corruption) is the result of poor air support, limited both (as already mentioned) to avoid civilian deaths, and the absence of up-to-date means of communication (Russian troops tend to use short waves, radios and other outdated and or easily penetrated means). Furthermore, Western support for Ukrainian troops on the ground, the resilience of their Command and Control (C2) and the use of extensive guerrilla tactics and strategies(combined with knowledge of the territory) meant that much of the targeted Russian advance was bogged down.
The penultimate missing piece is the absence of widespread use of electronic warfare technology (where the Russians excel) and, here too, the reasons are a mix of factors heavily influenced by the two elements mentioned above.
Central to this is the risk of interference with the Russian communication network itself in the event of widespread use, which would not be advantageous due to the decentralised and guerrilla nature of the Ukrainians, which is a guarantee of autonomy for the enemy.
Additionally a more judicious use remains difficult due to the difficulties in coordinating after the fragmentation of the Russian offensive and the risk of a disintegration of the assaults due to the discontent of the ground troops who, as predicted by Ukrainians and Westerners, now tend to flee in the absence of an overwhelming majority on the ground.
The final question is Russia's ability and willingness to continue the offensive.
The former has been affected quite dramatically by the sanctions (we doubt these are sustainable for Europe or effective in the long run, however they do bring a not inconsiderable temporary deterrent effect), the latter is definitely present but with some important exceptions.
Many of the consequences of the Western sanctions regime were foreseen, including the blocking of transactions between the banking system and the Russian Central Bank, however the fallout of these on private companies and the ostracisation that accompanied them are very heavy, unexpected and generally difficult to predict with certainty. Focusing for now solely on the impact they have had and will have on the offensive, the result will (under unchanged conditions in the coming months) almost certainly be to slow down and then block vast areas of Russian industrial production, including weapons and military means of the penultimate, latest and next generation.
In this respect, the production of fighter jets, bombers, helicopters and other aviation means will be heavily affected, along with the ability to supply the most advanced missiles such as the hypersonic Iskander, Kinzhal and any other munitions with advanced technology elements that allow trajectory modification.
In time, Moscow will find a way around the sanctions but in the immediate term it will have to rely on stockpiles (probably already finished for many sectors at the publication of the article) and Chinese production (this, as we have already analysed several times, suffers from difficulties with miniaturisation, poor quality and corruption at the public level).
All this will have high but not absolute consequences on the Kremlin's ability to continue, or sustain, its offensive in Ukraine.
Given that we doubt the aim was to conquer the whole country in the immediate future, as it is impossible to manage and pacify with the number of troops and vehicles that the Russians can currently deploy, the current direction of the conflict leads us to believe that Moscow wishes to postpone a truce as long as possible in order to see how far it can go in the south/southeast of the country with the arrival of fresh troops by May.
Given the difficulties in supplying them, the question Russian military planners are asking themselves is just where to reposition troops and vehicles so as to ensure adequate superiority to push inland and maintain control.
In the medium term, however, the logic will inevitably have to change.
Like it or not, the Ukrainian resistance has been truly heroic and the mistakes and corruption of the invading army have been major factors that, together with NATO support, have undermined much of the military campaign.
These will do as much damage to the renewal of the Russian armed forces as to their reputation for many years to come and will compel the Kremlin to sit on a partial victory.