Updated: Russia-Ukraine War Flash Report - 03 FEB 2024 15:30 PDT - It's Time to Withdraw from Avdiivka and a Lack of US Support is Why

Update: Seconds after publishing, the U.S. House impeached Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas 214-213.

Russian forces have crossed the Industrial Prospect Road south of the Avdiivka Coke Plant. While they have not reached the intersection of the T-542 Highway, the main ground line of communication into Avdiivka is severed. The dirt road to Sieverne is still accessible, but due to somewhat improved weather, it is subject to near-continuous air strikes.

The Ukrainian 110th Brigade was rotated out four days ago in a combat-destroyed state. The unit has been fighting in Avdiivka since October and has not been sent to the rear for rest and reconstitution since February 24, 2022. The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade arrived four days ago and is operating in the area of the Avdiivka Coke Plant. While respecting operational security, the reports are positive. 

The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel General Alexander Syrskyi, said that Ukraine was moving to a purely defensive posture and would make withdrawals to preserve personnel. This would imply that a decision has been made about Avdiivka. We assessed on Sunday that Kyiv was setting conditions for the public to accept the withdrawal.

Ukrainian forces holding the Zenith Air Defense station on the southern edge of Avdiivka are at the most risk of encirclement. However, in our assessment, a larger encirclement and capture of Ukrainian forces is unlikely. Both combatants have shown strong capabilities to execute tactical withdrawals and retrograde operations under extremely difficult conditions. Ukraine in Severodonetsk and Russia in Kherson.

The reality is that Ukrainian forces are almost out of air defense missiles, artillery rounds, and rockets for HIMARS. They are even running low on 82 and 120-mm mortars. We haven't seen Bradley M2s with the 47th Brigade operating for over a week. We don't know if this is due to a lack of ammunition or to preserve the irreplaceable infantry fighting vehicles. The artillery shortage has become so acute that Ukraine has started using ATGMs to target Russian light infantry groupings moving in the open. 

In our assessment, the time has come to withdraw, and it would be foolish, given the supply and support situation, to remain in Avdiivka. The situation would have been very different had the United States not terminated additional aid on September 30 and if the anti-corruption work within the TCCs had been executed better. That was proven by Russia's catastrophic losses in October and November and small gains.

Russia wants to lure Ukrainian forces into an urban warfare fight, which will shift the attritional math from 1:10 to 1:13 to as low as 1:3. Forcing Russian troops to try and advance across the mined and bomb-blasted beet fields west of Avdiivka will maintain the current attritional math.

Wait, what about the Senate passing the aid package?

Remember, U.S. readers, 57% of our subscribers are from outside the United States, and the partisan politics of Washington are directly linked to Ukrainian aid. The truth matters.

Overnight, the U.S. Senate approved a nearly $96 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian aid for Palestinians, Ukrainians, and several other refugee groups. It passed 70 to 29, despite furious opposition led by former President Donald Trump, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), J.D. Vance (R-OH), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has refused to advance the bill in the House and repeated this to U.S. journalist Jake Sherman about 90 minutes ago.

Can he do that?

Yes. There is an unofficial rule in the House called the Hastert Rule. The Speaker does not have to bring forward any bill for a vote if it cannot pass without the support of the majority party. With the majority down to 2 seats, the Hastert Rule has crippled Congress.

If the bill reaches the floor, Speaker Johnson will almost certainly face a motion to vacate from within his own party. Reportedly, Democrats have offered to save him from a vote if he advances the bill, but his actions indicate he's refused the offer.

Is there any option? 

Yes. it is called a discharge petition. The process of getting a discharge petition is meant to deal with this exact situation. The House wants to pass a bill, and the bill has the votes to pass, but the Speaker of the House refuses to put it to a vote. It has rarely worked and is a bit of a "nuclear option" to push Congressional legislation through.

Supporters of the Senate bill are required to get at least 218 signatures on the petition backing the bill. That seems possible. More on that in a minute.

While this forces the House Speaker to put the bill up for a vote, the Speaker still sets the schedule and can delay its passage. The Speaker also decides who can speak for or against the bill before the vote in an attempt to sway support against it. The Speaker can elect to allow amendments to the bill, put it on the floor for debate, and use other delaying tactics.

Johnson faced heavy criticism for his Monday claim that he won't advance the bill because U.S. border and immigration reform must come first. As we reported yesterday, Johnson tried to advance a standalone Israel aid bill and refused to put the Senate immigration and supplemental aid bill on the House floor for debate. Even members of his own party called him out for this position.

He changed his messaging this morning, claiming that more pressing business, such as passing a 2024 budget for the U.S. government, is taking priority. That is also a false claim (not political - the truth matters). The Senate was going to go on a two-week break through February 25 starting last Friday. The upper chamber of Congress only stayed in Washington to pass the supplemental aid bill. There aren't any meaningful discussions happening between legislatures for a 2024 budget in either chamber. There is almost no chance the Senate would pass a budget between February 26 and 29 with only four days to review it, debate it, and decide they don't want to amend it. As I write this, the pressing business in the House is not the budget but an impeachment vote for Department of Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas. The second attempt of the month.

Does the supplemental aid bill have enough support in Congress? House Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who was the Chairman of the far-right Christian Nationalist House Freedom Caucus, said that if the bill were put to a vote in the House, it would pass. Biggs was one of the architects of the 2023 Republican revolt that ousted former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. By admitting this, everything comes down to Speaker Johnson.

That's why we believe that there are more than enough signatures available for a discharge petition. It will likely need more than 5 Republicans to cross over, as some or all members of the far-left Squad will likely not support the Senate bill due to the included Israeli military aid. At least one Senate no vote, Bernie Sanders (I-VT), was made for this reason.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has swung back and forth with his support, firmly backed the Senate bill overnight and challenged Speaker Johnson to prove that the "will of the people" is not to continue aid. McConnell stated that putting the bill up for a vote would prove what Americans really think.

If you're among the 57% of our subscribers who are not from the United States, a majority of Americans support continued military aid to Ukraine.

Will the bill ever move to a vote? It remains unlikely.

I saw your tweet about Poland. Was that snark, or do you really think that?

it straddles the line of assessment, hot take, and opinion. Call it a lot of circumstantial evidence. The situation with Ukrainian grain in Poland is more complicated than it appears.

Polish farmers, backed by the pro-Russian Confederate Party, announced that they would block all ports of entry into Poland - land, sea, and air - as well as critical transit hubs starting on February 20. It's unclear how the farmers will determine what's meant for Ukraine and what's meant for anyone else. 

There are growing accusations that former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and elements within the Law and Justice Party weren't being fully honest about the shipments of Ukrainian grain "through" Poland, and a lot more than the published amounts might have ended up in the Polish marketplace. The accusations go further, with suggestions that people connected to Morawiecki may have benefited from this.

That makes it a bit more complicated because, if true, the Polish farmers have a legitimate gripe. Further, Poland isn't the only country seeing widescale protests from farmers over E.U. regulations and practices. But just as "small" farmers are struggling in the United States, government regulations, taxes, and business structure are only part of the problem. Large corporations are inhaling the global food production and supply chain, and it is crushing family farms. Sidebar: allowing Russia to gain 30% control of the world wheat market is a very bad idea that will only make this worse.

Despite this, I can't let go of the fact that the Confederate Party of Poland is at the minimum supporting and helping organize these protests, and the group is openly pro-Russian. Moscow sitll has significant soft power influence in Poland.

The analysts nor I have any direct insight on if equipment and munitions meant for Ukraine from the U.S., when and if a support bill passes, conveniently already found its way to Poland under the banner of, ahem, NATO support and normal rotation. We do see the activity of commercial shipping and the flight paths of C-17 and C-5 cargo planes. Those haven't changed much, and some of the changes are related to the Israel-Hamas War. 

If even the most ardent anti-Ukraine Republicans in the House are saying aloud that if the bill is put on the floor, it will pass, closing down all ports of entry into Poland starting February 20 is an interesting coincidence. A soft power "Plan C" to delay renewed aid? In my opinion, no need to make a tinfoil hat to connect those dots.

Did Trump and his advisors double down on his NATO claims?

Yes. He repeated on Tuesday morning that NATO Alliance members who didn't pay their required 2% would not be supported if they were attacked. One of his lead advisors said the same and implied that the U.S. might move to remove members who aren't meeting their commitment. There are no provisions in the NATO Alliance Charter to do that. Former National Security Advisor for Donald Trump, John Bolton, said that Trump fully intends to withdraw the United States from the NATO Alliance if elected.

Are some European leaders talking about expanding, restarting, or starting nuclear weapons programs?

Yes. It's been a long time since we assessed the world was climbing the ladder of the Mutual Assured Destruction Instability Paradox. This is a separate issue, and we remain on rung two of that ten-step ladder. You don't need to start building a backyard bunker.

We warned in 2022 that if Russia is allowed to win its war of aggression against Ukraine, it will spark a nuclear arms race. Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in 1994, and the Budapest Memorandum convinced the country to give up its entire nuclear arsenal, ICBMs, strategic bombers, and nuclear-capable cruise missiles in exchange for security guarantees. Those promises were never fulfilled.

Among the weapons given up were hundreds of Kh-22 antiship cruise missiles, which Russia has no capability to shoot down, and over a thousand Kh-55 subsonic cruise missiles. If Ukraine still had the Kh-22 missiles, they could have wreaked absolute havoc on Russia and key targets in occupied Ukraine using conventional warheads. The S-400 struggles to shoot down subsonic Storm Shadow missiles and does not have a kinetic energy interceptor. 

The failure to honor the Budapest Memorandum by the Obama Administration in 2014 and the Biden Administration in 2022 and the dance the world does around North Korea have sent a clear message. If you are a nuclear power, or you're backed by a nuclear power, you're immune from attacks by the world's largest militaries. If you give up your nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and its allies - good luck. 

Some European leaders not only believe that the United States can no longer be counted on in a hypothetical war against Russia but also believe they are no longer under its nuclear umbrella. The United Kingdom and France are already nuclear powers with intercontinental capabilities. Several European nations ended their nuclear weapons programs in the 1960s and 1970s after assurances from the United States that in the event of a Soviet first strike, the U.S. would provide a proportional response under the NATO charter.

Additionally, several European nations have significant stockpiles of enriched Uranium and ready access to the technology and engineers required to develop their own programs. There is more than one country that could have functional weapons within the next three years.

Yes, Moscow will scream in protest, but it was Moscow that withdrew from the treaties that have helped hold back a new era of nuclear proliferation. The seal is broken, and you're not going to put the lid back on Pandora's box.

For a noisy minority backed by social media bots and oppositional marketing firms that truly believe that ending military aid to Ukraine will make the world a safer place, they're not looking at the larger geopolitical picture. The world has walked to the very edge of a new nuclear arms race on potentially three continents.

Why are European leaders suddenly worried about a future Russian attack?

In 2011, President Putin wrote a mini-manifesto outlining his historical beliefs, embracing that the Soviet Union was "stabbed in the back" by the West and its corrupt leaders, and the borders of the Russian Imperial Empire must be restored. He also wrote he wants to be remembered as a Tzar - the new Peter the Great. His legacy would be restoring the borders of not just the Soviet Union but of Russian Tzar Nicholas II.

That includes all of the Baltics, Belarus, most of Finland, parts of Sweden, most of Poland, eastern Germany, Moldova, parts of Romania, parts of Slovakia, and parts of Hungary.

If Ukraine is captured, Russia will have 25 million people, after those who can flee (which is estimated to be 15 million people), to subjugate through violence and add to their armed forces. Seems impossible? I'm sure Chechens thought that 20 years ago, too.

Putin has spent decades building the image of a strong and powerful man, and during the Tucker Carlson interview showed a flash of the former KGB agent. At his core, Putin is still a frightened mid-level KGB officer in 1989 Dresden facing the minutes and hours after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While that creates a pathetic picture, it is yet another thing that he has in common with Adolf Hitler, who was a wounded corporal of the German army in a hospital, coughing up bits of his lungs as World War I came to an end. He spent the next 14 years fuming about being stabbed in the back before taking absolute power in 1933.