Eurasia note #75 - NATO Plan For Ukraine’s Spring Offensive Leaked

Equipment, troop numbers listed, and suggested direction of attack

UK military concedes that Bakhmut is increasingly under Russian control.
Leaked documents suggest NATO in rush to train AFU for counterstrike.
French-EU trip to Beijing shows no success in pushing China’s hand.

(About 1,500 words or eight minutes of your company. )

Safer to leak this military map from 1866 (Wikimedia Commons).

Tbilisi, Apr 7, 2023

In a rare breach — said to be the first time U.S. military information has been leaked relating to the Ukraine conflict — documents have revealed the training of troops, their materiel requirements and readiness.

Maps and printed diagrams are available on Twitter. One titled “SECRET/REL TO FIN, UKR, FVEY, NATO” dated 28 Feb 2023 suggests they are five or so weeks old and distributed among the Five Eyes countries, NATO members, Ukraine’s military command and Finland, who had not at that stage joined. It became a NATO member on Apr 4.

The Pentagon is reported to be investigating the leak. Ukrainian officials told Reuters the information was largely fictitious and circulated by Russian propagandists, but also that the office of president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was taking measures to improve security.

Other accounts say the images have been manipulated to downplay Russian casualties. Commentators have noted that Western outlets largely ignored the contents of the leak, which suggests it is genuine and not an attempt at misdirection by either side.

More on the contents below.

Diplomatic latest

Pope Francis has called for a two-week truce while Catholics and Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on Apr 9 and 16, respectively. The Pope organised the call with the leader of the World Union of Old Believers, Leonid Sevastyanov, who delivered the plea for peace.

French president Emmanuel Macron, and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen visited China but had no noticable success in their efforts to force its hand over Ukraine.

China and the EU should establish “correct” mutual understanding and avoid misjudgment, Xi told them.

This is interesting. For what is correct understanding? One interpretation is that they should better understand China.

Likewise on Ukraine, the Chinese leader had indicated that he was ready to call Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his own time... underlining that the EU/NATO is in zero position to force China’s hand.

In any case Ukraine has ruled out negotiations unless Russia leaves all its former territory including Crimea, according to President Volodymr Zelenskiy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.

Von der Leyen tried to warn Xi that weapons sales to Russia would “significantly harm” relations with the EU. That threat is unlikely to fly given how the U.S. and EU have damaged the world economy with their backfiring sanctions.

So what exactly does the French-EU outing to Beijing deliver? Whatever they seek, they’re not giving up. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, will visit China from 13 to 15 April, an EU foreign affairs spokesperson has confirmed.

China was always independent but there is, metaphorically, a longer delay on the long-distance telephone line. In a statement to journalists Xi called for restraint and reason in Ukraine, and pointedly for “a European architecture that is balanced and lasting.”

Having watched the U.S. isolate itself from the rest of the world, while the de-dollarization club gains new members every day, the Chinese leader must know that ranked alongside his country is a growing number of nations — at the very least non-aligned and increasingly confident in their freedom to make their own alliances.

And the reason for this is that the U.S. has voluntarily surrendered its principal weapon by making the threat to deny use of the U.S. dollar actual rather than latent.

Negotiation works between equals only when each party has something to offer, or to deny, the other. That is increasingly not the case.

Dollar woes

In the latest challenge to the reserve currency, Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim revived a proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund, to secure the region’s independence from the U.S. currency. He first proposed it after the financial crisis of the 1990s described in Dr Richard Werner’s Princes Of The Yen (2003). The PM said China was ready to discuss the matter.

Masahiro Matsumura, professor at Momoyama Gakuin University, told TASS that U.S. financial hegemony “is clearly at a crossroad” and that Europe and Japan “are silently observing.”

France sold liquefied natural gas (LNG) to China for yuan last month. TotalEnergies traded 65,000 tons of LNG imported from the United Arab Emirates.

Military latest

Russian forces continue to secure Bakhmut, reportedly using a pincer movement to enclose Ukrainian troops in the west of the city who show no sign of retreat. The same tactic is repeated in Avdiivka, which is closer to Donetsk. This places Ukrainian supply lines from the west in danger.

The UK Ministry of Defence said Russian forces had “highly likely advanced into the [Bakhmut] town centre, and has seized the west bank of the Bakhmutka River. Ukraine’s key supply route to the west of the town is likely severely threatened.”

Across much of the rest of the line of contact both sides exchange artillery but with little advance.

The scale of fighting is likely to accelerate when the mud, caused by melting snow, has finally dried.

The leaked documents appear to suggest that NATO and the U.S are racing to prepare Ukraine’s spring offensive.