16

WORLD NEWS

British blogger’s

jail nightmare

reveals the

grim reality

of Egypt’s

police state

After almost a hundred days of war the
Russian offensive in Ukraine is finally
beginning to look more coherent, if not
yet strategically wise or sustainable. Rus-
sian forces have secured a land bridge
between the Donbas region and Crimea
which will be hard for the Ukrainians to
liberate — though equally hard for the
Russians to pacify. And after humiliating
defeats around Kyiv and outside the
northern cities, the Kremlin has openly
committed itself to conquering the whole
of the Donbas region — the Luhansk and
Donetsk oblasts — where it claims, in the
face of all evidence to the contrary, that
ethnic Russian Ukrainians have to be pro-
tected from the Nazis in Kyiv.
Ukrainian armed forces have con-
ducted a remarkably successful dynamic
defence over this time, not holding static
lines but hitting Russian forces at their
points of greatest vulnerability and coun-

ter-attacking them when and where it

really mattered, like Hostomel airport

near Kyiv, outside the city of Mykolaiv

(the gateway to Odesa), or across Russian

communication lines north of Kharkiv.

PUTIN’S STEAMROLLER TACTICS

Photographically confirmed equipment

losses for both sides understate the real

extent of their losses but nevertheless tell

a dramatic tale. Russian equipment

losses now top more than 4,000 items of

significant kit, including over 700 tanks

and 400 armoured fighting vehicles.

Ukraine’s corresponding, confirmed,

losses are currently less than 1,100 items,

involving fewer than 180 tanks and some

82 armoured fighting vehicles.

Russian personnel losses to date are

minimally estimated as 15,000 dead —

and by some counts much higher and

between 45,000 and 60,000 wounded.

That is well over a third of the original

force Russia committed.

Ukrainian personnel losses have been

stacking up more quickly in recent

weeks, and are now generally believed to

be around 60 per cent of Russian levels —

though in Ukraine’s case are anyway

more sustainable (of which more later).

By every measure available, it is clear that

Ukraine has so far been winning its battle

for survival against an aggressive neigh-

bour ten times its size.

But in the past week Kyiv’s tone of tri-

umphal defiance has darkened as it seeks

to manage expectations. Its forces now

face Russia’s steamroller tactics in the

Donbas. After a slow Russian build-up,

the struggle is finally putting maximum

pressure on Ukrainian forces in a cam-

paign where their dynamic defence is

shifting to something more crude, con-

ventional and brutal.

Now under the sole command of Gen-

eral Aleksandr Dvornikov, the Russians

have learnt, at least, to concentrate their

underperforming forces in much smaller

geographical areas to create overwhelm-

ing firepower and armoured troop for-

mations in limited “bite and hold” opera-

tions across Luhansk — the smaller of the

two Donbas oblasts.

Having surrounded the town of Sever-

odonetsk on three sides some weeks ago,

Russian forces now seem to be very close

to closing the encirclement on the fourth

side, where the Ukrainians have been try-

ing to hold open a supply line barely ten

miles wide as the trap closes around

them.

Russian forces also seem finally near to

crossing the Siverskyi Donets river in

force to link up with their comrades slog-

ging slowly north from Popasna and

south from Lyman.

They are presumably trying to create a

bigger potential encirclement of about

four Ukrainian brigades — some 20,

men and equipment — sitting just west of

the Siverskyi Donets river. If these Rus-

sian forces join up behind the Ukrainian

brigades they can trap them against the

river, catching them between themselves

and, they would hope, advancing Rus-

sian forces coming westwards from Sev-

erodonetsk.

A CRITICAL MOMENT

Ukrainian commanders are facing the

sort of choice that all commanders dread

— to continue fighting in Severodonetsk,

which also means holding open the

pocket developing around their four bri-

gades west of the Siverskyi Donets — and

risk losing them all — or else giving up this

last fingerhold in Luhansk and withdraw-

ing westward to their defensive lines on

the high ground east of Kramatorsk and

Slovyansk.

There is something to be said for this in

strategic terms, occupying high ground

in front of the two cities that still hold the

key to dominating the rest of Donbas.

Russia might conquer Luhansk. But it will

not “conquer the Donbas” until it occu-

pies the bigger oblast of Donetsk as well.

Severodonetsk may be the Ukrainians’

last city in Luhansk, but Kramatorsk and

Slovyansk are more strategically impor-

tant.

It’s a grim choice, but it might work in

Ukraine’s favour if Russian forces punch

themselves out in Luhansk and then are

fought to a standstill in front of Krama-

torsk and Slovyansk — well short of the

Kremlin’s reformulated and explicitly

stated Donbas objectives.

President Putin needs a quick military

result in Ukraine, and he will be as aware

as anyone that both troop numbers and

weapons will start to count against Rus-

sian forces if the war drags on.

With a western-style army and a cadre

of battle-hardened reservists, the Ukrain-

ians will soon have about 400,000 troops

to put into the field, backed by another

600,000 training and integrating with

the Territorial Defence Force that Kyiv

says, believably, could reach a million

under arms.

With President Biden’s latest aid

pledge to put $40 billion (£32 billion) into

Ukraine’s war effort — ten times the

amount of US aid so far — there is every

expectation that western weapons stocks

days of war in

Ukraine — and

it’s still not clear

who will win

Despite brave resistance, Russia’s onslaught in Donbas has led to a darker mood in the embattled country ahead of Friday’s milestone

100

MICHAEL

CLARKE

Should Ukraine cede territory to

Russia for peace?

Have your say at sundaytimes.co.uk/poll

WORLD NEWS

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Arab nation under control,

claiming to clamp down on

terrorism and sharing vital

intelligence with the west.

Each year, tens of

thousands of British tourists

visit the beaches of Sharm el-

Sheikh, or explore the Valley

of the Kings. Tens of millions

of pounds flow into Egyptian

coffers from the UK in aid,

and from the British defence

industry, which sells weapons

to an army that has been

accused of widespread

human rights abuses.

“The Sisi period has been

the worst, probably, in

Egyptian history,” said

Timothy Kaldas, a policy

fellow at the Tahrir Institute

for Middle East Policy. “But

when countries are serving

the interests of the UK, they

are, generally speaking, not

subjected to the same level of

criticism and scrutiny,

despite the fact that they

maybe could be committing

imprisonment. As a result,

prisons are dangerously

overcrowded and the

conditions, rights groups say,

increasingly brutal.

“The lessons they’ve learnt

from [the revolution] is that

Mubarak wasn’t firm

enough,” said Sanaa Seif, 28,

Abdel Fattah’s sister.

Now, despite being

propped up with billions of

dollars in loans from

international financial

institutions and nearby

countries, the regime’s

control is being threatened by

a faltering economy and debt

crisis. The price of bread —

heavily subsidised for poor

Egyptians — has rocketed,

leading to murmurs of unrest.

In response, the state is

cracking down still harder.

To many Egyptians, Sisi is a

tyrant. Yet to the British

government, he is a valued

ally and trade partner,

keeping the most populous

joke that soon there will be no

one left to arrest.

Guards stand outside

cinemas, stopping people

from speaking to each other

about the film they’ve seen —

should they be conspiring.

Military representatives turn

up in film studios to vet

scripts. Anyone who

whispers dissent on social

media risks immediate

Mubarak’s former military

chief.

Sisi took power after

leading a 2013 coup that

overthrew the democratically

elected President Mohamed

Morsi. Since then, the

sprawling military, security

and intelligence

infrastructure that he

presides over has detained so

many people that Egyptians

blatantly related to his

political views.

He is also a British citizen.

His beating, his family knew,

was a warning to others, and

a message: no one is safe.

“It was very indicative of a

new level of violence, not just

with us but also a statement:

if they can do this to high-

profile activists, then imagine

what they are doing to

others,” his sister Mona Seif,

36, told me last week in

London, where she and her

younger sister Sanaa are

campaigning for their brother

to be released.

Eleven years after the

revolution that overthrew

Hosni Mubarak — who had

ruled with an iron fist for

three decades — the country

is in the grip of repression

and totalitarianism so

extreme that it permeates

almost every facet of society.

It is orchestrated by

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,

On his first day in an Egyptian

maximum security prison, the

guards held a “welcome

party” for Alaa Abdel Fattah.

They blindfolded him,

stripped him to his underwear

and beat him ruthlessly over

his back and neck.

As they punched and

kicked him, a state security

officer told him: “This place

was built for the likes of you.

You’ll never leave.”

Torture, beatings and

horrifying conditions are

commonplace in Egyptian

prisons, which human rights

groups say rank among the

most brutal in the world. Yet

Abdel Fattah, 40, is one of the

country’s best-known pro-

democracy activists. Last

year he was jailed for five

years on charges of spreading

“false news” — charges his

supporters say are a sham,

Louise Callaghan

Middle East Correspondent

Alaa Abdel Fattah

was jailed for five

years last year

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