Fighting chance: Ukraine prepares for counter-offensive

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Ore Ogunbi. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. If you're not from China, you may never have heard of Wenzhou. However, the city's indigence have a long history of taking their entrepreneurial spirit and resettling across the world. We tell the story of their remarkable impact on Europe's cities and a look at the 50 year old pre apocalyptic film that painted an uncomfortably recognisable picture of our world today. But first, This week, Russia's President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to troops in Ukraine. In images released by the Kremlin, he's seen meeting and greeting commanders in the occupied regions of Kherson and Luhansk. It was his second visit in as many months, and he wasn't the only one dropping in on the troops. Just a few hundred miles away, Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky also paid a visit to the front line in the small eastern city in the Donetsk province. He was shown briefing commanders and handing out awards to soldiers. The visit comes at a time when all eyes are on Ukrainian forces. After withstanding a gruelling winter assault in the Donbas region, many think they're ready to mount a counteroffensive of their own. But how that might unfold is less than clear.

Ukraine is planning a big counteroffensive. We don't know where, we don't know when, we don't know what it will look like, but we know it's coming.

Shashank Joshi is the Economist's defense editor.

There's a really palpable sense that this could be the decisive moment in the conflict. This could be Ukraine's chance at getting back lots of its territory and breaking the back of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Okay, so talk us through it. You said you don't know exactly where, but where are we likely to see this counteroffensive?

Well, we've heard Ukraine's security chiefs say that only five officials have knowledge of the offensive. It's very tightly held, but there's a general sense that the most strategic territory in Ukraine is the south, that is Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces. The reason for that is twofold. One reason is that that is the territory that covers Russia's so called land bridge to Crimea, a strip of territory that connects Russ Russian soil to the Crimean peninsula that it illegally occupied and annexed in 2014. And the other reason is that Ukraine wants to secure its access to the sea. And so a sort of southward thrust down in Zaporizhzhia towards the city of Melitopol would sever that Russian land bridge between the occupied regions of Donbas and Crimea. And it would also perhaps capture pockets of Russian forces in the south. Obviously that's the most important bit of land, but Russia knows it's the most important bit of land and has been fortifying it accordingly. So for example, you have seen the Russians build three layers of defensive lines, things like trenches, anti tank traps, ditches, along about 120 kilometres of the front because they know that's the most obvious place for a Ukrainian offensive.

Okay, so on one side you've got Russia preparing for a big push. But what does Ukraine's offensive force look like?

We don't have it in exact sense, but we do have the benefit of a number of leaked American documents that date to about the end of February and early March. They describe an offensive force of around a dozen brigades. A brigade is, let's say somewhere between three and 5,000 men. And of those dozen brigades, about nine are armed and supplied by Western Allies. And those ones will have more than 200 tanks, including the German Leopard, which was a subject of great debate a few months ago, about 800 other armoured vehicles and 150 pieces of field artillery in total. So that's quite a lot. But there are some weaknesses. There are a lot of vehicles that are either very lightly armoured. The amount of artillery is relatively modest. And if you think about the sheer size of this front, you know, I talked about 120 kilometres of defences. The whole front is getting on 900 plus kilometres. I think then a dozen brigades is not an awful lot given the number of Russian forces on the other side and given how dug in and defended they are at this point.

So you've painted a picture of what their force looks like. But how might Ukraine deploy these forces in a counteroffensive?

One of the principles for any army going on the attack is you have to concentrate your forces, you have to get them together and punch through the defences to apply the most pressure you can. The problem is that when you concentrate your forces, when you put all your tanks and your armed vehicles in one place, they become much easier to detect, and that means the Russians can attack them. It also means that they can predict where the offensive is going to come and they can reinforce the lines at that point, which may make an offensive even more difficult. So if Ukraine wants to be able to break through Russian lines, then it's going to have to be very creative about this. We. What we could therefore see, rather than a kind of big Normandy style D Day landing everything in one place, is that we see a number of smaller mini offensives, which is trying to lull the Russians into a sense of complacency, to make them think that the offensive is coming perhaps in the east, somewhere else. And they may strike in the true location a little bit later on, but that's still going to be very difficult.

It sounds like this is going to require quite some coordination. Do you think that Ukraine's army is prepared for this? Do you think they're prepared to deal with all these logistical obstacles?

It's such an important question that I think we don't have a surefire answer to. To date, Ukraine's army has largely conducted its offensive operations at lower levels, things like individual brigades, most of it at the level of companies, which are much smaller formations. And although it has used artillery, infantry, armour, all of these capabilities, it hasn't necessarily done them in a way that we would call combined arms manoeuvre. That is, not just firing off your artillery pieces and then an hour later sending your infantry through, but doing it in a completely synchronized way, so that armour, infantry, artillery, electronic warfare, cyber forces, air forces are all working seamlessly together. That's a really difficult thing, and Ukraine does not have much experience of that. Now, I should say that Western officials who have been training Ukraine's forces in Germany and other places, have been working on this. They've been working on Ukrainian command and control. But nonetheless, that first moment when this Ukrainian force comes into the crunch with Russian defences, I think everyone is going to be holding their breath because nobody knows exactly how that's going to go down.

And in light of all this, what's the perception of how this might pan out?

Well, it's important to set expectations. And last year in Kharkiv province, we saw the Ukrainians break through and send the Russian army reeling, running back, retreating, and it was chaos. They couldn't really exploit that very far because they ran out of momentum, but they did break through. I think the challenge is now we face much better defended Russian lines. On the one hand, we see a Russian army that has exhausted itself in the last several months of these completely pointless attritional offensives in eastern Ukraine. And we also see a Ukrainian army that is much better equipped, that is much better trained than it was last year, and that has high morale because it's liberating its own territory. It is freeing Ukrainian soil. But I think if you talk to Western officials, and indeed, if you look at some of the leaked American assessments that have come out in the leaked Pentagon documents in the last couple of weeks, you see that the baseline scenario is still that people expect Ukraine to make only modest gains.

And Shashank, are we certain that there will be a counteroffensive?

I think so. The Ukrainians can't wait indefinitely because the Russians are currently in a very weak spot. They have been exhausting themselves. They've been running low on ammunition, and so you don't want to give them time to replenish those forces. On the other hand, there are some kind of geographic constraints. The ground in Ukraine is very muddy right now. We saw how that made life very difficult for Russian invading forces last spring. That could be difficult for Ukrainian offensive forces now if they were to go. So they might also want to wait a little while to get some final bits of kit from the west to finish off some of the training. But I think the bigger issue is not whether there will or won't be an offensive. The worry among some people is that this could be the high watermark of Western aid. You have America's elections next year in which officials more skeptical of Ukraine and aid to Ukraine may gain power, and you'll have shortages of equipment in the West. We've given away lots of our stuff. So I think one of the biggest questions is what happens in the aftermath of an offensive?

Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Shashank, thank you for joining us.

Thank you very much for having me.

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The city of Huangzhou is on China's coast. It's a very large city, more than 9 million people, including inhabitants of its outlying towns and villages.

James Miles writes about China for the Economist.

It is surrounded by hills that have cut it off from the rest of Zhejiang province where it's located. And, you know, that's been part of its historical identity, being separate. It wasn't until the 1990s that it got its first real link with the rest of the country. Above all, Wenzhou is known across China for what is sometimes referred to as the Wenzhou Spirit, Wenzhou Jingshan, which is basically about entrepreneurship, doing business.

Tell us more about that. Tell us about the Wenzhou spirit.

Every Chinese city likes to describe itself as special and good at doing this or that, but I think it is actually strikingly true of Wenzhou. Across China, people will talk about the Wenzhou neighbor market. For example, Wenzhou knees are famous for becoming wealthy by flipping property. And even back during the Mao Zedong era, when the economy of China was tightly controlled, the Wonjonese had a reputation as people who, you know, got around those ideological barriers to business. And this image has persisted to this day. That's from a show I found online called who Wants to Open a Shop? It was broadcast by a provincial TV network in 2019, and it's about becoming a small business owner. Here we see Justin, a suave looking young man, vying for the attention of the crowd. And instead of telling them about his experience as an entrepreneur, he tells them simply, I'm from Wonjou. What makes that special? Well, he has some couplets written down. Bai Shou Qijia. We start from nothing and struggle hard. We have incredible entrepreneurial spirit.

And where's that spirit taking the Wenzhou Knight?

Well, it's taken them not only across China, but across the world. And it's particularly striking in Europe. They've become a huge part of the European economy.

In 1999, my parents had restaurants.

I paid a visit to Paris where I met Wang Rui, who's typical of this kind of migration. We met there in a cafe.

The customers were Chinese people.

And he told me about how his parents had started their life in France back in 1995 as illegal migrants. And like many Wanjonese at the time, they started at the very bottom of society.

They work as illegal migrants. They work, for example, my mother, she does manufacturing the cloth at home.

But after a few years, a left wing government in France provided an amnesty which enabled the Wangs to get papers. And at the age of 18, Wang Rui became a French citizen and then made something of himself avoiding the traditional ro to entrepreneurial success in clothing and catering sectors.

Now I'm 25, I do my own business and I analyze what I sold.

He's a canny entrepreneur. So what do you think is the next trendy business? Oh, this is a secret.

James. What kinds of industries are Wenjanese most commonly involved in in Paris?

In 2015, Wanzhouanese tycoon called Xue Sheng Wang opened Europe's biggest textile trading center in a Parisian suburb. You can see the Wanzhoney's presence in Paris in its catering industry. In the past few years, Wanzhouanese run Japanese restaurants have proliferated in the city. And in fact, they now outnumber those with Japanese owners by 10 to 1. According to a PhD student at Sorbonne University who I met there, who focuses on Chinese involvement in the Parisian catering industry. They're even now starting to take over a lot of the famous Cafe Tabac shops in the city. These are part of the fabric of Parisian life where people hang out, drink coffee and buy tobacco. And the success of one genese this variety of business in France is something that's not lost on people back home. In 2007, there was a major television series in China called One Jonese in Paris. It tells the story of several generations of Wenzhou people working hard to realize their dreams in the city. Just like Wang Rui and his family.

And are there Wenzhou knees in other cities?

Well, actually, their biggest presence is in Italy. And I visited Prato in Tuscany, where the Wanzonese have a huge presence. Very striking indeed. This is a traditional medieval Italian town, but on the edge of it huge industrial area which is predominantly wonjonese. In 1989, there were just 38 ethnic Chinese people living in Prato. Now there are about 35,000 and thousands more in the nearby regional capital Florence. They control the three knives in the city. And those three knives refer to the instruments that are commonly used in making textiles in the leather making industry and also in catering.

And how is this flow of people out of Wenzhou viewed at home? Is it a worry that some of their best entrepreneurs have left or is it a source of pride?

The flow of people out of Wenzhou, I think, is very much a matter of pride. Their global presence, their success in business in a number of cities in Europe is something that many people in Wenzhou back in China feel is now part of the city's identity. Even in the names of buildings, restaurants, cafes. In Wonzhou, you'll often find European names. They relish that connection. And it's also for good economic reason. These global connections, but particularly in Europe, enable Wonjou to readily tap into markets abroad to get investment from this diaspora. It's something the local government very much encourages. And indeed they've set up a global Wonjonese association precisely in order to promote such connections.

All right, James, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

We know Charlton Hairston as a great movie star and a great actor.

Nicholas Barber writes about culture for the Economist.

But if we know him as far as his politics is concerned, concerned, we probably think of him as pretty right wing. In his later years, he was a staunch Reaganite. He was the president of the National Rifle Association.

I have only five words for you from my Cold, Dead hands.

But earlier on in his career, he was actually quite left wing. He was a Democrat. He marched for the civil rights movement. And in the 60s and 70s, he starred in three dystopian science fiction thrillers, which you could pretty much class as left wing. They're all about the damage that we humans can do to the environment and how catastrophic it can be. The first of these, the most famous of all from 1968, is Planet of the Apes.

Discover Planet of the Apes.

Then a couple of years later, he makes the Omega man, which is adapted from the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend.

There is no phone ringing, dammit.

And in that one, once again, civilization has been wiped out, this time by biological warfare. And then a couple of years after that was Soylent Green. What is the secret of Silent? Silent green came out 50 years ago.

Today, New York City.

The interesting thing about it is that it's set in 2022. So not only is it 50 years old, it's set last year, so you can't really watch it now without comparing it to reality. And in this one, civilization hasn't quite been wiped out, which is a change from the last two, but it is on its last legs. Charlton Heston stars in Silent Green as Detective Thorne. He's a police detective, and a murder investigation takes him to a spacious apartment where a plutocrat lives and has been murdered. And it's got all these luxuries in it that Thorin has never really experienced. It's got hot and cold running water, it's got air conditioning, it's got fresh apples and even a bit of beef. He also discovered that there's something wrong with this substance called Soylent Green, hence the title. Basically, fresh food has almost run out. And people are eating these rather tasteless wafers that are produced by the massive Soylent Corporation. Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow. And the latest one, which is meant to be more nutritious than anything else, is Soylent Green, which is supposedly made from plankton. What he discovers is that Soylent Green is actually made from. From dead bodies.

You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher, you gotta tell em. Silent green is people.

It's quite a bold film. And one of the most bold things about it is that it's showing us a world where the populace is having a really rough time and yet there's no sense that that's gonna change at all. The frightening thing about it is that there hasn't been an apocalypse. So many science fiction films are about life after the apocalypse, but life has carried on. There hasn't been a nuclear war, but there has been climate change. There's been all sorts of pollution, deforestation, animals have died out, the countryside's gone, the oceans are dying and the cities are overpopulated. So watching it now, it is quite spooky to think, actually, you know, it's not too scary when you see a film about gorillas taking over the world. But when you're watching a film now and it's about New York City and it's overcrowded, there's this great divide between the rich and the poor, and it's just permanently hot and stiflingly sweaty all year round. Set in 2022, when of course, we had quite the heat wave. And this film is all set during the heat wave as a vision of the future. It's actually much more recognizable than a lot of films. Partly that's because it didn't try to be very futuristic. The filmmakers, they were setting it 50 years in the future, but they didn't put in any robots, they didn't put any laser guns or aliens or anything like that. They basically kept the world of the film that we see looking pretty much like the world where they were making it. And that's of course, why it feels so recognizable. But they just twisted it here and there and those twists in a lot of cases were dead on. It's quite strange how accurate some of its predictions were.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show by dropping us a line@podcastseconomist.com and if you're not a subscriber to the Economist, what are you waiting for? Dive in. Get a free 30 day digital subscription by going to economist.com intelligenceoffer the link is in the show notes. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

Sam.