The Big Five - 2 March edition

My regular update on global conflict and confrontation. This week: rumble in the White House, restraining cyber operations against Russia, Russia's offensive slows and news from the Pacific.

Image: @GeneralStaffUA

This war is a test of our resilience and courage, revealing both our strength and the loyalty of our true allies. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, 2 March 2024

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five. This week, an examination of the fallout from the Oval Office ambush on 28 February as well as updates on the war in Ukraine and the confrontation with China in the Pacific. As always, I conclude with my top five war and national security reads from the week.

Ukraine

This week we commemorated three years since the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. I had the priviledge of attending and speaking at Ukraine rallies in Brisbane and Sydney to express my support for Ukraine and my admiration for the Ukrainian soldiers and citizens that have been steadfast defenders of their homeland, and of Europe, over that time.

It was a week where after some initial bad signs from the Trump administration about support for Ukraine, and the extortionate minerals deal, things suddenly looked up when Trump denied calling Zelenskyy a dictator in his 27 February meeting with UK Prime Minister Starmer. The meeting was also notable for the invitation issued to Trump for a second state visit to Britain and Starmer hitting back at the Vice President’s criticism of free speech in Europe.

So, there were reasonable expectations that the Zelenskyy visit to the White House on 28 February 2025 would be a productive meeting, and that the U.S. and Ukraine would seal an agreement on minerals extration in Ukraine that would give America a greater interest in assisting in the defence of Ukraine. And, for the first 30 minutes of the televised interaction between Zelenskyy and Trump, everything appeared to be going OK. And then, Vance happened and everything fell apart.

You can watch the entire 40 minutes (plus) meeting here at this link.

It was a remarkable and very disturbing interchange, and an extraordinarily ungracious performance from the American president in his own home hosting a foreign guest. And Trump, as usual, spouted multiple falsehoods about the amount of U.S. support. There were a couple of quite remarkable Trump statements that are worth highlighting because they provide insights into Trump’s thinking about his relationships with Zelenskyy and Putin.

First, Trump claimed that, with regards to Zelenskyy, “I made you a tough guy”. This is extraordinary. Yes, America has provided a huge amount of aid to Ukraine, but Trump himself hasn’t. And for Trump, an individual who has never done anything harder than come up with a reason to dodge the draft, to claim he made Zelenskyy a tough guy is just incredulous. Zelenskyy has faced down the might of the entire Russian military as well as many, many assassination attempts by Russian intelligence services, while uniting and leading his country with far higher popularity ratings than Trump. It is Zelenskyy that could teach Trump a thing or two about courage and not the other way around.

Second, Trump claimed that Putin and he had gone through hell together. As Trump stated, “Let me tell you: Putin went through a hell of a lot with me…He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia.” If we didn’t already know this, Trump’s empathy for Putin is resulting in a gross distortion and under-estimation of the Trump (and his administration’s) view of the Russian threat. Trump is also over-estimating the trustworthiness of Putin, a point which Zelenskyy has tried to point out to Trump multiple times.

Rumble in the White House fallout. There have been rumours that American aid to Ukraine may be suspended, and Trump has stated that he is not interested in speaking with Zelenskyy again until he concedes the need for a ceasefire. Given the statements by Rubio and Walz after the meeting about ungrateful Ukrainians, one wonders how this mindset will influence the American participation in the next round of peace talks with Russia which are coming up this week.

This constant need for people to thank them and speak well of them speaks to the lack of confidence and the intellectual and moral shortfalls in the Trump White House. Since when do superpowers need such a constant flow of warm fuzzies?

Shortly after the disastrous White House meeting concluded, I published an article with the Lowy Institute that examined the most immediate impacts of the meeting. Key points from that article worth noting are as follows:

• There is a deep-seated hostility from Trump and Vance towards Zelenskyy that defies short-term fixes. It is hard to see how this can be resolved.

• The Ukraine-America relationship is now in freefall. Ukraine does not have a deal with the Americans. The U.S. president’s focus on ‘peace’ over ‘advantage’ means that he is focused on peace at any price. Ukraine is not. It cannot and should not accept an unjust peace that will subject them to the predations of Russia.

• While America has been a vital aid provider for Ukraine in the past three years, that aid appears to potentially be at threat. The Europeans need to act fast to ensure that any drop off in American aid can be at least partially backfilled.

• The big winner in the Oval Office on Friday was Putin. His disinformation campaign has cleared influenced the Trump administration, and he will continue his onslaught in Ukraine to solidify the notion that only Russia can win this war.

• While it might earn the ire of the Trump administration, statements of support for Ukraine are now more important than ever. This is an important test of courage for many western leaders. I am happy to say that many passed this test quickly.

There have been many, many assessments of the meeting since yesterday. Lawrence Freedman has published a fine essay on the topic where he notes that:

What happens next depends on whether it suits Trump to restore relations with Zelensky, or whether he has been cast out never to return. If Trump really craves a deal and an end to the bloodshed then Zelensky will be back. Much depends on the degree of dramatic tension that best suits his purposes.

And as Bret Stephens described it in a New York Times opinion piece:

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation’s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.

But, now that most of us have had an opportunity to sleep on the events of 28 February, what comes next? Well, first, there is a meeting in London.

London Summit. British PM Starmer has set up a summit in London to discuss Ukraine and European security on 2 March. Those invited to the summit included the leaders of France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Turkey. A second tranche of attendees was added after Starmer met with Trump on 27 February, which includes the leaders of Norway, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Czechia, Spain, Finland, and Romania. The heads of NATO and the EU are also expected to be in attendance.

A statement by the Office of the Prime Minister notes that the aim of the summit is to “drive forward European action on Ukraine – signaling our collective unwavering support to securing a just and enduring peace, and a lasting deal, that ensures Ukraine's future sovereignty and security.”

One hopes that this will not be another European talkfest and that real action will emerge. Hopefully, that action involves speed and lots more resources for defence production, the expansion of defence forces to deter Russian aggression elsewhere and a more robust response to Russian misinformation, subversion and sabotage across Europe. History dictates that we should keep our expectations low, but Europe for once might defy our expectations.

Like the famous phrase added to a message from Admiral Nimitz to Halsey during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, the world wonders!

Cyber Command Restrained. There are reports that the U.S. Secretary of Defense has directed that planning for cyber operations against Russia be halted. Apparently the direction from Hegseth does not apply to the operations of the National Security Agency, or other signals intelligence activity that is targeting Russia.

As Wired Magazine has chronicled in a recent article, this is just the latest in a series of actions by the U.S. administration to turn away from any form of cyber confrontation with Russia:

US State Department deputy assistant secretary for international cybersecurity Liesyl Franz said during a speech in a United Nations working group last week that the US is concerned about digital attacks from China and Iran, but did not mention Russia. A recent memo distributed at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency laid out priorities for the agency, focusing on China and defense of US systems but omitted any reference to Russia. And on Friday, the cybersecurity news outlet The Record reported that, last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered US Cyber Command to stop all cyber operational planning against Russia, including offensive digital campaigns.

I am sure this will all end well!

Battlefield Updates. In the month of February, Russia seized just under 200 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory. This is significantly less than what they have achieved in the preceding months, as shown in the graph below from War Mapper. Indeed, this has been the least successful month for the Russians since July 2024.

Source: @War_Mapper

There are multiple possible explanations for this:

• The Ukrainians, despite their manpower shortages, continue to learn and adapt to Russian tactics on the ground. Drones have been a major part of this, but drones are just part of an integrated combined arms approach to defending ground, which also includes infantry, mines, indirect fires, air defences, EW, counter-attacks and deep strikes on Russian logistics and command nodes.

• The weather was slightly warmer this year in some areas, and the ground did not freeze uniformly. This made cross country mobility more difficult for those conducting offensive operations. As the Kyiv Independent reports: “The Central Geophysical Observatory declared 2024 “the warmest year on record” in Kyiv, with the December average at zero degrees Celsius.” Weather is always a factor in military operations, and it appears it may have had an impact on Russian operations. And, of course, if there are fewer winter storms, there is more time for drones to get into the sky and hunt Russians.

• While there have been huge losses of Russian equipment in the past three years, personnel losses have racked up significantly in the past few months. The Russians still have an asymmetry over Ukraine in this regard, but as the graph from the IISS below shows, the huge losses in Russian personnel in the second half of 2024 has seen an overall decline in the size of the Russian force deployed in Ukraine. This will inevitably force tougher choices on Russian commanders about the tempo of offensive operations.

  

  Source: IISS

• Finally, it is possible that the Russian eastern offensive, begun nearly 15 months ago in the wake of the failed Ukrainian 2023 offensive, may be showing signs that it is culminating. I am not ready to make a call on this just yet however. The Russians clearly retain significant offensive potential. So, while they may not culminate, the tempo of their offensive operations for next few months may continue to decline.

On the frontline, Ukrainian soldiers continue to fight and hold their positions as much as possible. That said, Russia has made minor gains on the ground in the past week. The events in the White House on 28 February indicate that there will be no quick resolution to the war, and thus, fighting on the ground and in the air will continue. Indeed, as I highlighted in my piece yesterday, it is very likely that Russia and Ukraine will attempt to step up attacks to seize the narrative on progress in the war.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have conducted multiple ground attacks in the past week in Kursk in the past. The Russians have managed to make small, but operationally insignificant, gains in territory over the past week and the Ukrainians have also conducted counter attacks which have yielded small amounts of ground.

Source: ISW

As the above maps from the Institute for the Study of War show, Ukraine is steadily losing ground in Kursk. It will need to arrest these losses, particularly in the southern elements of the salient, to ensure that Russia is not able to threaten an envelopment of Ukrainian forces there. Should Russia achieve such a situation, it will place the security of the entire Ukrainian salient in Kursk at risk, and deprive Ukraine of a one element of its war termination negotiation strategy.

Russian operations to the west of the Ukrainian salient, north of Sumy, are clearly designed to place Ukrainian forces in a dilemma and force them to redeploy forces (be they local reserves designed to respond to Russian attacks in Kursk or from elsewhere) to defend Sumy.

Russia this week has made small advances on the following axes of advance:

• Kharkiv.

• Lyman.

• Toretsk.

• Kupyansk.

• Pokrovsk.

• Siversk.

Ukraine has conducted counter attacks in several regions during the week and made small gains - or regained lost ground - in the following areas:

• Kupyansk.

• Toretsk.

• Pokrovsk.

• Novopavlivka.

• Orikhiv

Source: ISW

Russian operations to envelop Pokrovsk continue, however as the two images from 1 February and 28 February show, the rate of advance by Russian forces has slowed. Further north however, the Russians appear to be making a major push over the Oskil River, and their operations in this area bear closer scrutiny.

Ukrainian long range strike activities during the week included the following:

• 24 February: A strike on the Ryazan Oil Refinery in Ryazan Oblast, causing a fire in the area of the primary oil processing unit. A fuel depot in the Tula Oblast of Russia was also struck.

• 26 February: Ukraine hit targets in Krasnodar Krai, including the Tuapse seaport. Strikes were executed against targets in Dzhankoy, Kerch, and Sevastopol.

Russia has continued its drone and missile attacks against targets in Ukraine, including multiple strikes against civilian targets.

Military Manpower Issues. This week, Ukrainian intelligence chief General Budanov discussed Russia’s recruiting targets for the next year. He stated that the targets would be 100,000 lower than last year. This could indicate a few different things:

• First, it could mean that Putin expects to wrap up his special military operation in the coming year and that he can begin a small-scale winding down of the war effort as a result.

• Next, it could mean that Russia can’t sustain its current levels of recruiting, and is therefore lowering its targets so that it does not risk a narrative of recruiting shortfalls.

• It could also mean that Russia could be considering another mobilisation, but I think this is a very low probability.

Stefan Korshak has good coverage of this issue in his latest substack post, and I recommend reading it.

The MilitaryLand website has posted an update on the formation of corps in the Ukrainian ground forces in the past week. In this article, the appointment of corps commanders is examined. You can read the post at this link.

Finally, the North Koreans have reportedly deployed more troops to Kursk. South Korean news has reported that North Korea deployed between one and three thousand more troops to Kursk in January and February 2025. Ukraine’s head of intelligence, Lieutenant General Budanov has stated that North Korean forces are gaining useful experience in modern warfare, particularly in drone warfare, and enhancing their weapons systems while fighting in Kursk.

He noted that North Korean Kn-23 ballistic missiles been modernised by the Russians to improve their accuracy. Not only is North Korean learning and adaptation a problem in the Ukraine War, it will be a challenge for South Korean forces on the Korean penninsula.

The Pacific

Image: US DoD

The lead news from the Pacific this week is the snap Chinese exercise around Taiwan in the past 48 hours. While this might be entirely coincidental with the timing of Friday’s oval office blow up, overall the Chinese have been stepping up the aggression throughout the Pacific in a test of America’s commitment to the region and its allies and security partners. This was inevitable given the comments of Trump before his election about allies in Europe and Asia needing to pay more for the U.S. alliance system. The remarks by U.S. administration officials at and around the Munich Security Conference will certainly have provoked the Chinese into action.

Increasingly, these Chinese naval operations are being executed with no warning, which is telegraphing that eventually, the Chinese exercises might shift instantly from exercise to real operations against Taiwan. It indicates a degree of readiness in Chinese forces, and that the joint theatre commands are testing an array of deployment scenarios to rehearse future operations. These might include blockades of many different variants of an invasion plans.

Of course, China is also signalling strength to the new American administration in the hope that Trump will be scared off from any military confrontation with China as he was with Russia.

The latest surge of Chinese air and maritime power also demonstrates a degree of sophistocation because it is not easy to coordinate multiple naval deployments across such a large portion of the earth’s oceans. The Chinese are currently undertaking naval operations around Taiwan, in Australia’s southern waters and a few locations in between.

Image: Ian Ellis Jones

This adds to a wide array of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan in recent weeks. Last week, the Chinese Ministry of Defence spokesman stated in a press briefing that:

We will come and get you, sooner or later…We make no promise to renounce the use of force, which is targeted at the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces and external interference…We warn the U.S. side: playing sneaky tricks on Taiwan would only backfire.

China has also continued its operations against international underwater cables in the vicinity of China. During the week, a Chinese freighter was caught cutting a Taiwanese undersea cable. The map below from the Taiwan Security Monitor shows the number of incidents against these cables in recent years.

Source: Taiwan Security Monitor

Of course, I couldn’t finish this update without further reporting on the Chinese PLA-Navy deployment into waters off Australia and New Zealand. This has caused a degree of shock in Canberra, partly because of the brazenness of the Chinese operation and partly because of the breakdown in communications between the Australian Defence Force and the government which was revealed in Senate Estimates hearings in the past week.

The strategic design of the Chinese in conducting this activity clearly has multiple objectives, as I described in a recent article for the Sydney Morning Herald. In brief, these objectives are as follows:

• The Chinese have done this is to normalise Chinese military activity in our region. Their ambassador stated as much during the week, noting that Australia should expect to see such task forces in our waters regularly.

• The Chinese also hope to make the Australian Defence Force reassess its force posture. The Chinese want to force Australia to keep its ships closer to home for political as well as military reasons, including force tensions with allies over whether Australia can help with contingencies related to Japan and Taiwan.

• China will be measuring the political response by the Australian government. So far, the response could, at best, be described as sloppy and not great.

• More importantly, China will be assessing US responses. Will the US say something about this deliberately aggressive act against a treaty ally? This is perhaps the primary driver of the PLA aggression.

Some important questions however remained unanswered about the Chinese deployment. These include:

• Is China in a position to sustain such operations so far away from China in a wartime scenario or just able to do it in peace time?

• Is China showing its cards about what it might do in a Taiwan contingency to distract U.S. allies and horizontally escalate the conflict?

• Given Australia’s lack of fuel reserves and reliance on imports for many other vital goods, shouldn’t Australia now be building up larger reserves of these items to reduce China’s leverage?

• How might America respond to a Chinese threat to the Australia-U.S. line of communications given Chinese power projection capability and Australia’s geographic importance to any contingency for Taiwan?

• Will the Chinese claim that ancient Chinese sailors actually completed the same journey before Matthew Flinders did in 1803 and add a few more dots to the nine dot line? (OK, I am joking here, but the Chinese have form in making bullshit, unsubstantiated claims about other people’s territory. See Flinders chart of Australia below).

Image: Nation Museum of Australia

As I write this, the Chinese are continuing with their circumnavigation of Australia (although in the opposite direction of Matthew Flinders). While some might see this as a Chinese masterstroke, my sense is that it is another misstep by the Chinese. They fundamentally don’t understand how they have now placed increased defence spending back on the agenda for the coming Australian federal election (due in April or May this year). The short-term sugar hit their naval commanders might have recieved in sailing around Australia and conducting random live fire practices to disrupt civil air traffic might actually come back and bite them.

*****

It has been another hectic week in publishing for me. My first article for the week was an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald which explored the three year mark of the Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine. The focus of the article was courage. You can read the full piece here.

Next was an article here where I also explored three years of the large-scale war in Ukraine. Later in the week I published another piece here that examined how Russia has achieved a political breakthrough in the past month which has placed it in a favourable position for peace negotiations. That article can be read here.

In the wake of the Trump-Zelenskyy rumble in the Oval Office, I published an initial assessment on the impacts of the meeting at the Lowy Institute. You can read that article at this link.

Finally, I did an interview with Times Radio on the current status of the war in the Ukraine and its likely trajectory from here. You can watch it here.

*****

So, to this week’s recommended readings.

This week, I have included two articles that explore the trajectory of negotiations over the end of the war in Ukraine, including a terrific essay from Sir Lawrence Freedman. I also have a good article looking at the execution of a concept of forward denial in the Pacific. Finally, there is a good piece on the state of the British Army and the new USMC Commandant’s Reading List.

As always, if you only have time to read one of my recommendations, the first one is my read of the week.

Happy reading!

1. Two Steps Backward

In this article, Lawrence Freedman examines the after shocks of the 28 February meeting in the White House between Trump and Zelenskyy, as he notes in his piece, “what happens next depends on whether it suits Trump to restore relations with Zelensky, or whether he has been cast out never to return. If Trump really craves a deal and an end to the bloodshed then Zelensky will be back. Much depends on the degree of dramatic tension that best suits his purposes.” You can read the full article at this link.

2. The State of the British Army

With discussions quietly occuring about the potential for some kind of peacekeeping force in Ukraine (if a ceasefire can be achieved), it is worth looking at one of the critical armies that is likely to play a role: the British Army. This article, from the excellent Wavell Room site, examines the capability, size and readiness of the army and proposes that “the Army has fallen below critical mass, with the majority of its equipment very aged and with limited ammunition stocks.” You can read the piece here.

3. Forward Denial Defence

This article explores how a forward denial concept might be executed against Chinese military forces in the Pacific. A prize winning essay in the Proceedings journal’s annual, the author proposes that a crucial element of deterring Chinese aggression is “denying to the PLAN the critical capabilities of its militia in the near seas through nonlethal coalition naval operations below and above the threshold of violence.” You can read the full article at this link.

4. How Not to End the War in Ukraine

As U.S.-Russia talks over ending the war in Ukraine get under way, this article in Foreign Affairs explores how the negotiations should be informed by past mistakes. As the authors propose that “the Minsk process’s bitter lessons remain more relevant than ever. Unfortunately, the new U.S.-led negotiations appear to replicate specific weaknesses from the Minsk process, such as excluding major parties to the conflict and rushing toward an undefined cease-fire with little enforcement and security guarantees.” The full article is available here.

5. 2025 Commandant of the Marine Corps Reading List

I always love seeing the latest recommendations on these lists. Not only are they useful indications of what our most senior military leaders are thinking about, they are generally excellent collections of a wide range of different books providing insights into nearly every dimension of war and the profession of arms. This is the latest list by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and full disclosure, two of my books are on it. You can read the full list at this link.