got_quiet

Posted by Phillips P. OBrien

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-164-ukraine-is-winning

Hello All,

This was one of those technological milestone weeks in the war at the sea, and that alone deserves the lead story. However there was alot happening around the world in relation to the war. The most important was the European decision, which is being hotly debated, not to fund Ukraine with the use of Russian assets but through guaranteed loans. That debate has divided people of good will and deserves comment. The other thing was that the Trump administration (quietly) actually rolled back some important sanctions on trade with Russia. People might be missing the bigger story here as they fall for the Trump con on sanctions.

Before I get into the update I would like to announce a special Substack Live tomorrow (Monday December 22) which will be held at 4pm CET and 10am EST. I will be talking with General Volodymyr Havrylov (retd). Volodomyr was a Ukrainian Air Force general and also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 2022-2023. He was thus a pivotal figure in this early phase of the war and since then has worked tirelessly supporting the Ukrainian war effort from a range of positions. We will survey the war from the full-scale invasion and then go into detail about where the war is today. Volodymyr has an understanding that I believe you should all hear, about Ukrainian strategy, how the land and air wars are developing, why all the harping on Ukrainian manpower is so odd, and how Ukraine still can win the war. Hope to see you there.

This talk comes appropriately right after Professor Timothy Snyder and I, on Friday, did a broad lens overview Substack Live on the period from 2022 to today. Our talk looked at US policy towards Ukraine, Ukraine’s power of resistance and the enduring and distressing power of the pro-Russian narrative. If you want to see/hear those, you can access them here. Note, because of some technical difficulties, the session ended up being recorded in two parts.

And now, time for the update.

Ukraine Is Winning The War At Sea

While the Russian Army lost another few thousands soldiers taking empty fields, you might have missed one of the most important stories of the last week. This was that the Ukrainians on December 15 attacked and seriously damaged a Russian improved Kilo class diesel submarine in the Black Sea Port of Novorossiysk.

That the submarine was in Novorossiysk itself tells a story about the naval war. The Russian navy in the Black Sea began the war mostly based in the Crimean port of Sevastapol—a superb facility to project power into the Black Sea and to shut down naval traffic in and out of the vital Ukrainian port of Odesa. However, Ukraine made Sevastopol untenable as a large naval base and by July 2024 and the Russians had withdrawn almost all shipping from it—running away to the more isolated facility in Novorossiysk.

That was a key development in opening up Odesa more freely as a port to export Ukrainian grain. Here is a good map from The Economist in 2023 showing the location of Odesa, Sevastopol and Novorossiysk, emphasizing why it was so helpful to drive the Russian Navy into the latter.

Now, Novorossiysk is the last place in the Black Sea that Russian warships can have some safety in port, and you would think a Kilo-Class submarine would have been given the most protection that any Russian vessel could be afforded. Kilo-class submarines of the type Ukraine attacked and seems to have seriously damaged last week, are capable of launching Kalibr missiles to attack targets on land and sea. So this submarine, for instance, would have been playing a role bombarding Ukrainian cities and could easily have been used to try and sink shipping. It mattered.

And yet, the Ukrainians were able to get an unmanned, Sea Baby naval drone through all the defenses of Novorossiysk, into a pretty small port area, and explode the device close enough to the submarine to do real damage. Here is a NBC news story with video, which has Ukrainian released footage of the attack. You get an idea of the narrow waters that had to be navigated by the Ukrainians. So either Russian defenses were shocking or the Ukrainians had to have found a way to maneuver around them to reach one of the highest priority targets in the Black Sea fleet (or there was a combination of the two).

Regardless, the damage done to the Kilo seems serious. UK intelligence estimates state that the submarine is no longer seaworthy and will be kept out of operations for a while.

It is another sign that the Black Sea Fleet is on a terminal, downward spiral. The Russians can no longer protect their most valuable assets in their most secure port, against a naval force that has no manned vessels.

Further afield, there was an operation that demonstrated that the Ukrainian attack on Russian shadow fleet oil tankers of a few weeks ago was no one-off demonstration. This was the piece that I wrote about those attacks at the time.

Btw, I should soon have a new piece out in The Atlantic about the meaning of such attacks for a future war at sea. Stay tuned.

On December 19, the Ukrainians announced that they had attacked the tanker Qendil in the Mediterranean and rendered the vessel inoperable. They even released footage of the attack which supports the claim. This Deutsche Welle report has the footage right near the start of this report.

Assuming it is legitimate, a civilian tanker hit like that would indeed have a very high chance of serious damage.

The attack was important for a number reasons. First it shows that Ukraine plans to keep up its campaign against the tankers regardless of international pressure. The first attacks were not warnings, they were the start of the campaign. Also, the attacks occurred in the Mediterranean about 2000 kilometres (more than 1200 miles), from Ukrainian ports. The distance is important as the Ukrainians clearly have the ability to deploy these drones a long way from home using remote launching vessels or something similar. Here is a BBC map of the course of the Qendil. We can assume that where it turned around was where the attack took place—about halfway between Greece and Libya.

Of course this is not all. This attacl shows that the Ukrainians are willing to make these attacks in vital waterways like the Mediterranean. They are clearly tracking these vessels and getting them while they are empty, most likely on their way back to Russia to try and fill up. It might be that the Qendil was actually heading to the Baltic to fill up just outside of St Petersburg—it certainly did not seem to be heading to the Black Sea if you look at its course.

Having the range and capability to attack these tankers in more distant waters is a huge advantage for Ukraine. It means that defending them is almost impossible for the Russians (its unlikely the Russians can operate World War II-like convoys) and it gives the Ukrainians the ability not to terrify some of their European partners. Even staunchly pro-Ukraine Estonia is a little worried about attacks on tankers in the the Baltic Sea, for instance.

When you add these attacks to the growing effectiveness of European sanctions on world wide Russian oil sales (the European sanctions seem to be causing more worry than the weak ones that the Trump administration announced) Ukraine has a new weapon beyond the attacks on Russian refineries to significantly hit Russian oil revenues. Russia’s Achilles heel remains its economy, which is far from being that of a great power and which has blown through its reserves and is living close to hand to mouth. The war at sea matters for this precise reason. Russia makes its money shipping oil (except for the pipeline to China). If Russia loses the ability to do that through a combined air-sea attack by Ukraine, Russia will struggle to continue the war.

Note we are still a long way from being there—but at least the Ukrainians are laying out a road map. They are winning the war at sea.

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Europe: Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

The European Union took a notable decision this week on how to continue to support the Ukrainian war effort. The specific choice they made has strongly divided people of good will (and to be honest, I go back and forth in my personal view of what was done).

On the surface, the decision seemed a real retreat by pro-Ukraine forces and a success by those who want to do the strategic bidding of Trump/Putin. Trump/Putin (note that they have an identical position on this) want to protect the Russian assets seized by European states so that they can later be returned to Russia—with a section creamed off for corrupt payoffs to the USA one imagines. At the start of the week Ukraine’s supporters in Europe were talking about defying Trump/Putin and seizing these assets to fund. These funds are considerable (estimated at over 200 billion Euros), though they are concentrated in Belgium of all places.

Had the European Union had the courage to do this, it would have been a major signal of their commitment to Ukraine. Once they seize and spent Russian assets, there would be no going back. It also would fund the Ukrainian war effort for about two years—which would indicate to Trump/Putin that Ukraine will not be going broke and forced to take a very bad deal because of financial pressure.

And Ukraine had some strong support for such a move. It was not just the normal allies, Germany for instance was making positive noises. Here is a map of where the different states seemed to stand.

Now, Putin went bananas when this seemed likely, threatening terrible retaliation if Europe acted. Note: the louder he threatens, the more scared he is and the fewer options he has. And the Trump administration, working well with the Russians, also put “huge and unprecedented” pressure on Europeans not to seize the assets.

Trump/Putin also had a very useful stalking horse in the Belgian Prime Minister, Bert De Wever. While the usual suspects like Viktor Orban were always going to complain, Belgium mattered more (follow the money). De Wever complained that he was being violently threatened by the Russians and also stated that it would undermine European credibility (ho-ho) if the assets were seized.

In the end the European Union did blink on the main question of seizing Russian assets. Instead of using the Russian funds, they raised a loan of 90 billion euros to fund Ukraine for at least 2026. Note: this is sometimes called a two year deal, but 90 billion euros will not be sufficient for two years of Ukrainian war effort—so I see it as a one year deal.

At that point, the debate started raging. The pessimists said this deal showed how Europe was still operating under a US/Russia threat matrix; how the politics of the continent had been so twisted that European states still cannot take basic steps that are in their own interest. The decision also could be said to provide an incentive for Trump/Putin to keep up the pressure to keep protecting those assets for future Russian/US use.

Furthermore from an overall perspective it highlights the divisions in Europe. Support for Ukraine (and willingness to stand up to Russia) is far from universal and its not just the usual suspects. Many European states took rather opaque positions on the idea of seizing Russian assets. The French, for instance, far from being the leaders in Europe seemed to be hedging. And Italy, though Meloni has been making pro-Ukraine noises, seems to have sided with the populists.

The optimists stressed the fact that Europe has come up with a way to fund Ukraine and still has the assets in reserve. The 90billion to them is a serious amount, and even in the face of opposition from a large number of states the European Union found a way to provide such tangible support.

For the optimists this might be said to be another marker on the road to Europe taking over from the USA. It was not ideal, but the fudge went in the right direction and anyone who knows the EU knows that most decisions are fudged.

I am still torn btw. I wanted more and I remain very worried that Europe still seems unable to stand up for itself under pressure from Putin and Trump. That will need to happen before long but clearly we are not there yet. If it never happens, btw, Ukraine will end up receiving unbearable pressure to take a terrible deal. Otoh, there is now money for Ukraine to fight for another year—and that really does matter.

What’s your view?

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Is The Trump Administration Quietly Unwinding Sanctions On Russia?

This update is already getting long, so one final short piece that will lead to something longer soon. As I’ve always believed that Trump is determined to help Putin and his anti-Russian stances are for show, to “con” people into not admitting the truth. As part of that, I always thought the that the US government under his watch would actually find ways to help the Russian war effort, This week the administration actually broke cover. In a story that did not receive nearly the amount of coverage it deserved, the Trump administration removed a range of sanctions on companies doing important trade with Russia. Here was how a story on the move started.

The United States has removed sanctions from several foreign companies previously accused of supplying equipment to Russia, including items linked to its defense and military-industrial sectors.

The changes were published on the US Treasury Department’s website on December 18, without any explanation for the move.

This kind of move jibes well with what we are seeing with US trade. Though Trump has initiated a trade war with much of the world, under his rule, US exports to some central Asian states and Turkey are up markedly—suspiciously so. Here are the figures for Uzbekistan.

Between Feb and Sept 2024, the US exported knowingly $223.6 millions of dollars of goods to Uzbekistan. The equivalent figure under Trump for 2025 was $319.9 million. This is almost a 50% percent leap in a very short period of time.

Something close to identical percentage wise has happened with US exports to Kyrgyzstan.

Likewise, US trade with Turkey (where some of the companies which saw their sanctions relaxed this week are based) also was up noticeably since Trump became President. In the case of Turkey, US exports under Trump were up by almost 25% between Feb-Sept 2025 when compared to the same period in 2024.

And all of this during a trade war?

Now, because of the US government shutdown, the figures have not been released since September. But already we have indications that under Trump, US trade that can help Russia has been up significantly. Instead of obsessing on the deliberately weak sanctions placed on Russian oil, we should consider the fact that Trump is actually helping undermine US sanctions on Russia. The step this week therefore might only confirm the reality that the US is helping Russia far more than people want to admit.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-164-ukraine-is-winning