Good morning. On Monday, Russian troops began to advance into Sievierodonetsk, the largest city in Donbas still held in Ukrainian hands. The city is important to the control of Luhansk, one of two provinces in Donbas. If it falls, that success – achieved at the cost of the city’s ruination and 1,500 civilian lives – will be viewed as grim vindication for Vladimir Putin’s decision to consolidate Russian forces in the region and bombard targets with artillery fire.
There’s something else about the battle for Sievierodonetsk, though: while Russian tanks are moving into the centre of the city, they were not able to encircle it first. Cutting a city off from its supply lines to soften it up is brutally effective, as the siege of Mariupol indicated. So why hasn’t that happened here?
For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, about a compelling explanation that could have much bigger consequences: Russia may be running out of tanks. That’s after the headlines.
Five big stories
Energy | The European Union agreed to an embargo on most Russian oil imports after late-night talks in Brussels. The sanctions, hailed as a “remarkable achievement”, will immediately impact 75% of Russian oil imports, rising to 90% by the end of the year.
Partygate | Momentum is building for a leadership challenge to Boris Johnson as soon as next week. As three more MPs called on Johnson to go, rebels expressed anger at what they said was a lurch to the right after Partygate.
Champions league final | Uefa commissioned an independent report into chaotic scenes outside the Stade de France on Saturday where some Liverpool fans were teargassed. France’s interior minister admitted access to the ground had been “disorganised” but blamed counterfeit tickets sold to English fans.
Justice | Police and prosecutors have been told to stop the mass collection of personal information from rape victims by the UK’s data watchdog. The information commissioner said police are going on unjustified “fishing expeditions” into complainants’ personal information.
Music | Glastonbury festival announced its full lineup for this summer, with acts including Sam Fender, Megan Thee Stallion and Foals among those added to the bill. Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar had already been announced.
In depth: The chink in Russia’s armour
Few assets of conventional warfare are more intimidating than the tank, and when Russia attacked Ukraine, its invasion force of around 1,500 (out of a total of about 2,800) was often judged to be among the most formidable in the world. Phillips O’Brien was never especially convinced by that analysis, and given the accuracy of his earlier assessments of Russian might – in January, he wrote that Russia “lacks the ability to mount sustained military operations and deploy a wide range of military forces at the same time” – it’s worth paying attention to his view of the current situation.
So, what should we expect next in Ukraine? O’Brien believes that Russian advances have largely stalled because the country’s forces are running very short of tanks, and other armoured vehicles. It’s a view he laid out in a Twitter thread on Sunday, and which built on a piece for the Atlantic last week, based on evidence from the eastern Donbas region. I asked him how he reached that conclusion, and what it might mean.
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What are tanks supposed to do?
Tanks are powerful, well-armoured, and move fast in open country. “They’re usually used to seize the land between cities quickly and surround an enemy,” O’Brien told me. “In Russian doctrine, you have these battalion tactical groups which are supposed to have maybe 10 tanks alongside 30 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) carrying the infantry.”
The theory – dating back to the second world war – is that tanks allow you to punch a hole in the enemy lines and cut forces or a strategic target like a city off from supplies, softening them up before a final assault. All of that relies on effective air support to neuter the threat that enemy jets and drones pose to the progress of the armour on the ground.
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What’s happened in reality?
Nothing which Vladimir Putin will be pleased to hear about. “When I look at Donbas, I don’t see the kind of breakthroughs which you would want to see in modern armoured warfare,” O’Brien said. “You want to get through the line and then exploit the situation by quickly encircling the enemy. What we’re seeing is that the Russians may make a hole in the line, but then they are stopped.”
He points to the failure to encircle Sieverodonetsk, and declining numbers in Ukrainian claims of Russian tanks being destroyed. That could mean a change in Russian deployment or in Ukraine’s ability to attack them. But since at the same time the Russian machine has failed to break through after its artillery has softened the Ukrainian forces up, it is more likely to indicate that there are simply fewer tanks in the fight in the first place.
While exact measures of the scale of the damage to Russian armour are hard to come by, Ukraine has claimed more than 1,300 Russian tanks have been destroyed. The lowest independent assessments are more than 700 destroyed or captured. The Pentagon, which does not appear to have made unrealistically high estimates so far, puts it at about 1,000 – a number which O’Brien thinks is “probably a safe bet”.
“Those are vast losses,” O’Brien said. In its usually reliable defence intelligence update on Friday, the UK Ministry of Defence said that Russia was now moving 50-year-old T-62 tanks out of storage for deployment. “These tanks are antiquated,” O’Brien said. “The Russians don’t have nearly the frontline armoured capability that they had.”
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Why has that happened?
The military doctrine that sees tanks as all-powerful is pretty out of date, as you might expect given its second world war foundations. There are many examples of videos that appear to show Russian tanks being destroyed by handheld missiles, some of which – like the British-manufactured Next-generation Light Anti-armour Weapon (NLAW) (pictured below held by a Ukrainian soldier shortly after destroying an armoured personnel carrier) – are designed to strike on top of the tank, where its armour is weakest.
Most importantly, Russia has failed to secure the air superiority which is a prerequisite of effective tank warfare – instead finding that Ukrainian planes and drones continue to be able to stop Russian tanks in their tracks. “They’re far more vulnerable than they need to be,” said O’Brien. “They’re not flying air patrols, or close air support. So they’re running into considerable defensive firepower.”
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How did Russia get itself into this position?
Because it overestimated its prospects of air superiority, and underestimated the capacity of simple, cheap anti-tank systems to stop it in its tracks. If, as O’Brien has written, “we are witnessing in Ukraine the final war of 20th-century militaries”, we might be shocked that the Kremlin entered such a fight without a clear-eyed assessment of the likely risks – but “dictators on the whole have systems that tell them what they want to hear, and Putin has clearly done that”.
As for the failure of analysts worldwide to spot the same flaw: “A lot of people fell for what we could call ‘the American trap’: because the US military was able to do something, people looked at other militaries, and just view it as a scaled-down version of the US. And that is not the case here. The Russian military is an entirely more deficient beast. The US can overwhelm an enemy with complex air systems and defeat their air defences, it still has the capacity to do these ‘break out’ operations. Russia just can’t.”
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What does it mean for the future of this war – and wars around the world?
It’s obviously favourable to Ukraine if the tanks are failing, but as Russia’s grim progress in Sieverodonetsk indicates, it doesn’t signal an end to the fight. “If they’re bringing out obsolete equipment they probably can’t keep going with their current approach for that much longer,” said O’Brien.
“The problem the Ukrainians then have is: can they drive the Russians back? I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a summer of ranged warfare, mostly – more attritional combat with both sides trying to destroy the other’s resources.” That’s why, as the Guardian’s defence and security editor Dan Sabbagh wrote yesterday, Ukraine has been pleading with its western allies for longer-range rocket systems.
There is, meanwhile, a wider positive for those who fear Russia’s invasion signals a new era of military expansion around the world. “The one hopeful thing to come out of this is that this conflict demonstrates that going to war is really hard,” O’Brien said. “And it may be that militaries around the world look at it and realise that war is fraught with enormous new risks because of the power of cheaper forces. So maybe people will be less likely to take that risk in the future.”
What else we’ve been reading
Guessing how many Tory MPs have submitted no-confidence letters in the prime minister is essentially a game of pin the tail on the donkey, but Katy Balls’ well-informed piece helps you peek from behind the blindfold a little. She paints a picture of a party that is “disunited and fast running out of goodwill”. Archie
There’s been much speculation over Emma Raducanu’s difficult sophomore year – this piece offers some hints as to why that might be. Brittany Collens’ tale of life on the professional tennis tour, away from home for most of the year, hopping from hotel to hotel, is a fascinating insight into the gruelling toll elite sport takes on athletes. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
The latest instalment of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s excellent Republic of Parenthood column focuses on birth trauma, and the importance of talking through the experience before, and after, it happens. Archie
Not a reading pick, but the US podcast Normal Gossip is absolutely worth your time. Offering anonymised normie tattle from, and about, non-celebrities, it proves that stories don’t need to feature a starry name to be hilarious and jaw-dropping. Its second series has just kicked off. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters
If you’ve watched the utterly compulsive US documentary series Couples Therapy, you will inhale this New Yorker piece about the show’s star, therapist Dr Orna Guralnik. If you haven’t, book out your free evenings for the rest of the week and expect to get through all of it on iPlayer (in the UK). Archie
Sport
Football | Todd Boehly promised to build on Chelsea’s “remarkable history of success” after the American’s consortium completed its £4.25bn takeover of the club on Monday. The deal was signed off a day before Chelsea’s operating licence was due to expire.
Tennis | The 19-year-old Holger Rune caused the biggest upset of the men’s draw in the French Open so far, outplaying Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 to reach a grand slam quarter-final for the first time in his career
Rugby union | Scottish referee Hollie Davidson will make history when she leads an all-female team of match officials for next month’s Portugal v Italy men’s international. It will be the first time an all-female team have taken charge of a men’s Test match.
The front pages
The Guardian’s print splash today is “PM’s sudden lurch to right fuels anger of Tory rebels” while the i has “Tory threat to Johnson growing by the day”. The Telegraph says “Police leave 999 callers hanging” saying targets for picking up the phones are being missed. The lead story in the Financial Times is “Qualcomm seeks Arm investment alongside rivals to spur neutrality”. The Daily Mail begs “Save us from the £100 tank of fuel, Rishi” as “Forecourt prices hit record high”. Elsewhere, travel chaos occupies the front pages. “Tears and fury as travel ‘carnage’ worsens” says the Express while the Mirror bemoans a “Summer of chaos”. In the Times it’s “Getaways at risk as chaos blamed on airline cuts”. The Metro has “Wish we weren’t here” as it reports on “half-term holiday chaos”.
Today in Focus
Breaking the silence on Brunel: abuse in the modelling industry
Six former models have alleged sexual abuse against the fashion agent Jean-Luc Brunel. Lucy Osborne investigates how the fashion industry failed victims of abuse
Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
The tiny Pacific island state of Niue has announced plans to protect 100% of its ocean – an area around the size of Vietnam – against illegal fishing and the effects of the climate emergency.
Having originally committed to safeguarding 40% of its waters in 2020, the island will now take measures to defend all 317,500 sq km (122,000 sq miles) of it, following the lead of the neighbouring Cook Islands.
The new policy has seen the creation of a marine park, including an area for scientific studies and a conservation zone. “The ocean is everything to us. It’s what defines us,” said Dalton Tagelagi, premier of the island.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
