Should Ukraine attack Russia?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I heard a former US general (at least I think he was, I have listened to so many commentators lately) today make the case that Ukraine and/or NATO needed to take action to distract Russia from Ukraine. Some good ideas he mentioned are the common ones, diplomatic efforts, more sanctions, adding more troops to the Eastern NATO countries, etc. But then he mentioned something to the effect of, “Kaliningrad is right there between two NATO countries, it sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

If Ukraine were to take offensive action in Kaliningrad, or elsewhere inside Russia, say through a commando style attack, bombing, etc., would that help Ukraine’s position?

2

No. It’s a bad idea and simply, unfeasible. There is no way Ukrainian forces could mount an attack on Kaliningrad. They would have to go through Belarus and either Poland or Lithuania to get there. That’s…not happening. Ukraine’s military isn’t up for that. Hell, I doubt they could actually support operations through friendly territory that far away, let alone through a hostile Belarus and then fight and take Kaliningrad. And neither Poland nor Lithuania are going to let them march through their territory to attack a Russian territory.

The same goes for operations outside of Ukraine and into Russian territory. Now, what they COULD do is, maybe, hit targets in Russia with air or missile strikes, but they probably don’t want to do that so as not to further escalate things. Though they couldn’t get much worse at this point, it might be something they could consider. Hit supplies dump or railheads in Russia could cause issues, especially if/when Russia needs to start deploying more forces.

If you are talking about NATO attacking Kaliningrad, that is equally not happening. That could lead to WWIII. We don’t want to strike into Ukraine directly, so why would we want to invade Russian territory or strike it? IF we were going to start active operations, they would be in Ukraine, at least until the Russians widened the conflict. NATO’s operations, if they were going to do them, would be pretty narrowly focused on just Ukraine…again, so as not to spark WWIII (which would probably happen anyway, which is why we arent’ doing that).

3

In the first days of the war, Ukraine did in fact manage to attack a Russian base on Russian territory.

4

I did not get the sense that he was advocating NATO attack Kaliningrad. I got the sense he was talking about Ukraine doing something, anything to hit inside Russia. The only thing I could think of was a “terrorist” type attack with 10 guys with small arms. It would accomplish very little militarily, granted. But something, anything, to cause pain to Russia.

5

It would be incredibly foolish for Ukraine to do some sort of terrorist attack, whether that be in Kaliningrad or anywhere else in Russia. They do have special forces, so I guess a commando-style raid into Russia to hit a military target, assuming they could even mount such an operation, sure. But I don’t think they could do that. As Chad_Sudan posted, they did hit some targets in the initial phase, but at this point they simply don’t have the assets to do more than hold off the Russians and keep hitting their spearheads.

The reason a terrorist attack would be bad is that it would reframe the narrative in a poor light. Currently, at least IMHO and my own take and read are that most people in the west support Ukraine, Ukrainians, and Zelenskyy and oppose Putin and Russia and Russia’s unprovoked invasion. A terrorist-style attack, however, might change some people’s minds, or make Russia more sympathetic. That’s something that would undercut everything Ukraine has been trying to do since this thing started.

6

This was what surprised me about the commentator’s statement. It sounded like a bad idea, with a potential to become a VERY bad idea.

7

I think that, if they could pull it off, attacks on key sites in Russia’s rail network (such as junctions or bridges) would be very advantageous for Ukraine. But the Ukrainian military can doubtless see that as clearly as I can. If they’re not doing that, it’s probably because they don’t have the capability.

8

Under certain scenarios, I might see Ukraine going to grab some of Western Russia (e.g. Kursk). But I think that to get there, they would need to lose territory (e.g., a land corridor between Russia and Crimea), to have not accepted that loss, and for that territory to be too strongly defended for them to be able to take it back.

I’m not sure how dedicated they are to getting Crimea itself back. If the Crimeans truly preferred to be part of Russia then letting them ban themselves to living in New North Korea might seem like an acceptable loss. But, ignoring that question, if we say that Ukraine succeeds at fighting off the threats against the capital and the Northeast, I would expect their primary focus to turn towards kicking Russia out of the Southeast. I don’t think they’re going to accept having that corridor in there.

If the corridor has been given a big tall wall, some mines, and big guns then it might be that Zelensky will realize that he’s not going to be able to take it back. That’s where he might note that Russia has a large, open border, and their local army was mostly just destroyed and the remaining bits are tied down, defending the corridor, and he’s still getting lots of supplies from the West to help him get his country back.

I would expect that Ukraine will leave Belarus alone, if Belarus never ends up attacking them.

Other possibilities:

  1. Kaliningrad decides that they’d rather not become a part of New North Korea, secedes, and asks Ukraine (or Lithuania) to annex them.
  2. Finland and/or the Baltic states converse with Zelensky on the side and prepare to announce the findings of their historical research, demonstrating that their nations just so happened to be larger on the East than we all knew.
  3. China decides to play some hardball with Russia on oil prices, starts ramping up the historical discussion on Outer Manchuria and how it was stolen by the West, and starts moving some troops up to the Russian border.
9

Personal guesstimates on the likelihood of any of those occuring:

  1. Ukraine dives into Western Russia - 25%
  2. Kaliningrad secedes - 3%
  3. Baltic revenge - 5-10%
  4. Outer Manchuria - 10%

So, I’m not predicting these to be truly likely by any means but they are things that Putin does now need to worry about, at least a little bit.

10

I forgot:

  1. Turkey goes in to save the Crimean Tatars and ends up owning Crimea (at least for a bit) - 10%
  2. Japan declares that it’s larger than everyone seemed to think for the last few decades. - 100%
11

Why would Lithuania want that? They are the Baltic state with the lowest number of ethnic Russians. Why would they want to have a large increase in ethnic Russian population, when that is a traditional flashpoint with Russia, saying it has to protect all Russians outside its borders.

12

Also, why would Russians, who have been brought up all their lives to consider that the West/NATO and ultimately the US, are the bad guys, suddenly shift all that political beliefs and want to defect to the other side?

13

We currently live in a world where Russia is trying to incorporate a region full of ethnic Ukrainians into their nation, which is a clear flashpoint for Ukrainians. So first we should both accept that logic doesn’t always win the day.

I know very little about Lithuania but I understand that the Baltic states are all pretty strongly anti-Russia so annoying Putin was the principal motive that I was considering. From a more practical standpoint, though, it would double their coastline, give them an international airport, and a new major shipping center. As it is, all imports and exports going through Kaliningrad on behalf of Russia are passing through Lithuania. I suspect that means that there’s a fairly decent amount of intercommunication between the Oblast and Lithuania - so fairly close relations - and I doubt that Lithuania would mind if all that trade went to them instead of through them.

In my experience, Russians have not been brought up under that belief. Maybe the older ones think in those terms but most of the country is populated with people who use(d) Instagram and McDonald’s just as happily as any American, and dream of visiting New York and Miami.

14

Putin’s entire internal propaganda angle is that they’re protecting the Russian homeland from Ukrainian Nazis — yet the fighting takes place on Ukrainian soil. The longer this continues, the harder it will be to sustain the “defensive operation” story.

An attack inside Russia, by provably Ukrainian forces (or allies), would be a gold mine for the propaganda ministers. They would dispatch hundreds of videographers to record every last bullet hole and blade of scorched grass, and it would be aired wall-to-wall on Russian TV (which includes Fox).

This is currently nothing but aggression by Russia against its unthreatening neighbor. Anything that changes this — even a completely justified defense-via-offense strike against a Russian rail yard or similar logistical hub — would be enormously ill-advised in the larger picture.

15

More concretely to the OP’s question:

As I understand it, Russia is principally using the railway as its backbone for moving materials into Ukraine, for the war effort.

I would note that it’s quite easy to form strong, transparent materials into pretty much any shape that you could ever want and trains aren’t really designed for speed bumps. You would need to do some engineering but I suspect that you could find a material, shape and placement strategy for this.

A single individual with a large backpack and some superglue could, potentially, take out Russian logistics for a couple of days, just by taking a trip over the border and getting a train to derail as near to the border as possible. Note, you need to be certain that civilian transport is not targeted. But you can send a map outlining target areas for potential compromise - where civilians are not guaranteed to be able to travel by train safely - and you’ll make it a lot more difficult to get workers to move around since they’ll all want to fly.

If you continue on, further, into Russia probably the easiest target to take out with a small group of sappers would be raised power cables.

Use of Molotov cocktails for arson, inside Russia, would make anyone purchasing bottles of liquor look suspicious - which will cause a lot of difficulty among police and the general public. According to some googling, about 90% of bridges in Russia are of wood construction, so that would probably be a prime target.

Realistically, you can cause issues as simply as stopping a car in the middle of a major street and slashing all the tires. Do that often enough and it’s going to be a major headache. There are only so many tow trucks in the nation.

In general, Russia is very large and has to transport things long distances. Even if you can confine the targeting area to specific lines on a map, those are very long lines and guarding them would eat manpower.

A few groups of 2-4 guys, roaming around through Russia, could cause quite a bit of slowdown to Russian logistics. From a strategic standpoint, there’s a lot of bang for the buck. The one downside would be that Russia can do the same back - except Ukraine is already blowing out its own bridges because their focus is defense not offense; they can get all the free replacement wiring and transformers that they could ever want from the West; and ditto on quick-deploy bridges. Russia has to make their own when stuff gets broken. Ukraine has the whole world cranking stuff out of factories for them.

I might also note that a lot of these are the sort of activities that you might even be able to convince some of the locals to join in on. A non-zero percentage of the Russian public are on Ukraine’s side and mucking up the system is fairly benign.