Operation Spiderweb, the June 1 attack on Russia’s nuclear force in which Moscow detects NATO’s footprint —MI6, in particular—was an inflection point in the Ukraine conflict that could disrupt peace talks, compel President Donald Trump to disengage from President Vladimir Putin and derail US-Russia normalisation, but in the 11 days that followed, nothing of the sort happened.
Diplomacy will continue; Trump remains engaged with Putin, and he shows no enthusiasm for ‘Biden’s war.’ A face-toface meeting at the Oval Office on June 5 between Trump and visiting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz could only paper over their differences. Merz later said he told Trump privately that “he is the key person in the world who can really do that [bringing peace]—by putting pressure on Russia”. However, Trump was unmoved.
New facts on the ground will keep shaping diplomacy, a phenomenon endemic to major wars (e.g., Korea or Vietnam). Last weekend, a Russian tank division entered Dnipropetrovsk province in the direction of the Dnieper River for the first time in the war, while a northern thrust is rapidly advancing toward the strategic city of Sumy, which is now only 25 km from the frontline—and 200 km from Kiev.
Ukraine and its Western supporters, sensing the imbalance vis-à-vis Russian weaponry and firepower, vulnerability to large-scale Russian missile attacks, and acute shortage of trained fighters, face the spectre of a World War I implosion sooner or later. This grim scenario breeds desperate acts of asymmetrical war. In the estimation of The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who is wired into the US security establishment, “Ukraine will depend more than ever on its intelligence services… covert operations could expand into a ‘dirty war’ beyond the front, with more targeted killings, sabotage, and strikes … Operation Spiderweb was a bold Ukrainian attempt to reset the table … Other sophisticated operations are in the works, intelligence sources tell me.”
What did Operation Spiderweb achieve? In military terms, nothing. Russians assert that no strategic bomber was destroyed and the damaged aircraft number only half a dozen. The global strategic balance has not tilted against Russia. Indeed, there is shock and awe in the strategic community, including in the US, that the START treaty, which was negotiated painstakingly by the US and Russia, has been violated with the attack on the nuclear triad and the mutual understanding that the nuclear bombers of the two great powers shall be parked at all times in open space visible to satellites has been upset.
Beyond a doubt, without Western intelligence’s real-time satellite data and expertise, Ukraine simply couldn’t have undertaken such a sophisticated operation with mathematical precision across Russia’s vast expanse spanning 11 time zones.
These are times fraught with peril. The US has withdrawn from Cold War-era arms control treaties, especially the pivotal Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces in 1987, and fresh negotiations are impossible without a settlement in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Europe’s rearmament is an emergent reality, and Russia’s border with NATO has just doubled in size after the Biden administration cajoled Finland to join the alliance. New NATO sub-groupings, such as the Nordic-Baltic axis, are surfacing in Russia’s northern Arctic tier, characterised by a high degree of military capacity and deeply hostile attitudes toward Moscow.
Suffice it to say, nuclear decapitation scenarios and hair-trigger warning times are returning, as the US is scheduled to deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Germany next year, and the political pressure to pair them with nuclear warheads will be enormous. Germany’s new right-wing leadership is toying with the idea of their own nuclear weapons! Merz is on record that he would like talks with France and Britain about sharing their nuclear weapons.
It is against such a complex backdrop of European / Eurasian security that Putin’s full-spectrum response to Operation Spiderweb will unfold. Russia has high stakes in the wheel of diplomacy turning. He is not under pressure, as Moscow concluded that the MI6 operation on June 1 neither dented Russia’s nuclear deterrent capability nor impacted the military balance in the war. Russia has previously also repaired strategic bombers. But Putin is furious about such a febrile attempt by Western intelligence to undermine the peace talks.
There is no reason to doubt top Russian pundit Fyodor Lukyanov’s prognosis in government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “A response from Russia to Sunday’s… attacks is inevitable. It will likely be proportional to the scale of Ukraine’s strikes. Importantly, this response will not be aimed solely at Kiev. It will be a message to all involved parties–including the United States and Western Europe. Russia’s reply must reflect the multifaceted nature of the conflict and its many audiences.”
In the final analysis, Putin’s stance is vindicated, namely, no ceasefire is possible without a basic agreement on the terms of a future settlement, and meanwhile, military force to create new facts on the ground remains the key negotiating tool. The talks so far have proceeded on Russia’s terms, viz., no ultimatums, no artificial deadlines, and a carefully staged approach to dialogue. The process, therefore, should continue, especially as Trump, who also wants talks, is a vital player and will inevitably remain so, as real conversations to shape a European security architecture are yet to begin. The “root causes of the conflict” must be tackled, too, and changing conditions on the ground in an attritional war almost always soften even the most rigid positions.
Trump has quietly signalled his intention to remain engaged with Putin by inviting him to mediate with Iran on the nuclear issue, which is a foreign policy priority. Putin agreed and is travelling to Tehran in the coming weeks.
There are other signals, too. Trump is reportedly counselling lawmakers to go slow on a bill by Senator Lindsey Graham calling for “bone-breaking” sanctions on Russia. Trump will most likely water down the G-7 statement after the summit in Canada on June 15-17. The NATO Summit (June 24-25) in The Hague is trimming its Ukraine-related part of the agenda. Europeans are furious. French President Emmanuel Macron vents his anger by visiting Greenland on June 15, en route to the G-7 Summit, in a show of support for the territory coveted by Trump.
(Views are personal)
M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.