Juan Rodríguez Garat is a retired admiral. During his 47-year military career, of which he spent 24 years on board, he commanded three surface ships and various Spanish, NATO, and EU collective naval units. Between 2016 and 2018, he was admiral of the Fleet and, upon his transfer to reserve status, director of the Naval Museum and the Institute of Naval History and Culture. Garat is a communications specialist and UK staff diploma holder and holds a master’s degree in Defence Studies from the University of London. He holds the Grand Cross of Naval Merit, the Royal Military Order of San Hermenegildo, and the Guardia Civil, as well as 11 other national and foreign military decorations. In September he published his first book, Tambores de guerra. Contra el desarme moral y militar de España (Drums of war. Against the moral and military disarmament of Spain), in which he analyses the world geopolitical panorama and calls attention to Spanish society, which seems to be asleep in the face of the volatile international situation.
You often take part in debates and publish articles about what is happening in Ukraine. Interestingly, most of the retired military officers who do the same defend the virtual invincibility of the Russian army, or that everything in the war is going ‘according to plan.’
Putin used to say that every day, until he stopped saying it. It should be borne in mind that there are many incompetents in the armed forces, as there are everywhere, but apart from that we have lived through a time, in the last years of the Warsaw Pact, when U.S. intelligence reports on Soviet material were published that were greatly exaggerated and created for political reasons to justify defence spending, the development of new weapons, and so on. For informed people, however, the myth ended after the fall of the Warsaw Pact and when the real state of Soviet units became apparent. For example, the Mig-25 that landed in Japan, or the alleged Russian AEGIS (naval combat system), which was very similar to systems that we in Spain had already scrapped 20 years earlier. Many military personnel followed this development, but not all, and some preferred to continue believing what they had been told in their youth.
But this view is very much present in the media.
In reality, it is a minority view that is given play because it generates news. I remember being asked on a programme whether there would be a nuclear or chemical war, and when I said no, the journalist said to me: “So what am I telling my listeners?” These voices, like that of the famous Colonel Baños, who makes a good living selling books about the end of the world, offer an entertainment product that has a large audience. These peddlers of doom and ‘Rusoplanism’ know very well that it is not true, but it is entertaining and profitable.
Returning to the myths, one of the most frequently repeated is that of the superiority of the new Russian weapons over those of the West, but the facts of this war tell us otherwise.
It is obvious. Russia missed the boat on the so-called RMA (Revolution of Military Affairs) because the IT boom caught up with the Kremlin after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and was ruined by the Star Wars competition with Reagan and the defeat in Afghanistan. Russia divided its defence budget by ten and kept it that way for 15 years, resulting in a clear technological backwardness, and not only in weapons systems. No one who praises Russian weapons today would buy a Russian computer, television, or mobile phone. We all know that Aeroflot flew Airbuses and Boeings until the invasion began. There is also evidence of the performance of Soviet and then Russian equipment in the Middle East conflicts. I remember my astonishment, when I was a naval lieutenant, that Russian anti-aircraft missiles in the Bekaa Valley were destroyed by Israeli aircraft without a single casualty. And this has happened again with the S-300 and the Israeli missiles. This difference is all the more noticeable the more electronics there are in the device, and Russian weaponry is far inferior to that of the West and even to the material produced by Ukrainian industry, which, despite the war, has been able to produce drones that are superior to the Russian ones.
What is also striking is the disregard for the lives of even their own soldiers. There are many cases, broadcast on Russian channels, of newly enlisted soldiers who are killed at the front within two weeks, having received practically no training.
I have had the opportunity to work with them and to visit Russian and Warsaw Pact warships that had cockroaches instead of computers. During Operation Atalanta [the military operation against piracy off the Horn of Africa launched in December 2008], the Russians were known for not picking up the castaways when they sank a pirate ship, and EU ships have sometimes had to pick up castaways from Russian ships because they simply do not value life, whether their own or other people’s. We see it in Ukraine. What’s more, in this war Russia is recruiting from among the lowest ranks of its society, from criminals to people from the poorest parts of the country, and they don’t care whether they live or die. Few Muscovites have fallen at the front, let alone the sons of the elite. In the long run, this should hurt the Russian campaign; it all depends on what the Ukrainian people can take.
After allowing the use of Western missiles on Russian territory, a new campaign of nuclear threats from Russia has begun. Stalin said that the nuclear weapon was a weapon that could not be used. Does Putin think otherwise?
No, in fact Putin has said the same thing on several occasions, even if he says the opposite the next day. Putin knows that a nuclear war cannot be won, and Xi Jinping and Modi, who are his financial backers, have told him so publicly. What Putin wants, and this is true of all wars, is to celebrate a triumph on the streets of Moscow, as the ancient Romans did, and a nuclear war would deprive him of that. Putin is not suicidal, so nuclear war is out of the question. The same goes for the use of a tactical nuclear weapon on the front line: he would have to use it in the Donbass, i.e., on Russian territory from his point of view, and this would turn the entire international community, including his allies, against him. All this is nothing more than periodic threats that do not convince Western governments because they are gradually crossing all the red lines, but Putin hopes that by intimidating society, the people of the West themselves will put pressure on their governments to let him bomb Ukraine at will. I don’t think that will happen, but of course Putin won’t stop trying.
Russia’s response to the first attacks on Russian territory was to use the ‘Oreshnik’ missile against the city of Dnipro. Isn’t the use of this missile like shooting flies with a cannon, and does it really make a difference in the war?
This missile is of medium range, but Russia has been using ballistic missiles such as the Iskander, which can carry nuclear warheads, since the first day of the war. Also the Kinzhal, which was presented as a hypersonic missile capable of destroying the Patriots, but this did not happen and the Kinzhal was shot down like the others. Ballistic missiles work like cannonballs, and a missile like the Oreshnik, which Putin presents as new (but it is certainly an evolution of an earlier model), reaches its target much faster. Designed to carry nuclear weapons, they are not very accurate and, although Ukraine does not have the weapons to stop them, their damage will not be greater than that already caused by the Iskander. In reality, this missile is not loaded with explosives, it is loaded with fear. After Putin said he would go to war against NATO, he had to do something. It is certainly not cost effective and will do no more damage than a much cheaper missile; it is a propaganda weapon designed to threaten and frighten the uninformed citizens of the West.
Despite these threats, the sons of the Russian elite continue to live in luxury in Western capitals.
Yes, and all those Kremlin propagandists in the West who keep talking about the apocalypse live in capitals that would be razed to the ground in a nuclear war. I mean, even they don’t believe it, but on the other hand, we’ve been hearing these threats for more than two and a half years now and they’ve lost all credibility. Unfortunately, many people prefer to hear lies that they like rather than the truth and want to be told that it is our fault and not the fault of those who want to kill us. It seems that the truth should not spoil a good story, but care must be taken to ensure that society is well informed.
Doesn’t this propaganda bombardment mean that, despite the evidence, many people don’t even think that there is a hybrid war against the West?
Yes; there are already many known cases of Russian interference. In Spain, we know about Puigdemont’s talks with the Kremlin during the Catalan process, and we also know that Russia will support any move that weakens Spain. This is nothing new. Other countries do it, and if the United States can weaken Russia internally it will do it; but it has gone further as a result of the war and we have hacks, sabotage, or migration crises provoked by Russia in Finland or Belarus in Poland. When it comes to disinformation, there are too many Spaniards and Westerners who believe that this is a hoax, and the opposite is true.
You mentioned earlier that the West is crossing all the red lines, but it always seems to be late, as the Ukrainians have complained many times. What do you think is the reason for this?
My impression, after almost three years of war, is that the West is ready to give Ukraine everything it needs to resist, but not to win the war, because it is more afraid of Putin’s defeat than of the continuation of the war. Not because of nuclear threats, but because Russia will end up like the Soviet Union and its nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of small states. The West’s dream of an end to this war is a Russia that gradually withdraws from Ukraine, as Nixon did in Vietnam, but it fears Putin’s unchecked fall.
In the face of this prudence, Russia continues to raise the stakes. North Korea’s entry into the war, which is not raising as many alarms as it should, is a huge threat to global stability.
Yes, it is true. Russia has gone over to the dark side of humanity and Putin has moved closer to Kim Jong-un, even though he signed the latest round of sanctions against North Korea, which cares more about buying weapons than feeding its people. Kim Jong-un has not changed his stance one iota, but Putin has befriended him and gone over to the dark side. The same is true of Iran, another country from which he receives arms, although Putin will not admit it. He has also recognised the Taliban government and is slowly turning Russia into a pariah state, with the difference that it has gas and oil to sell to the whole world, 6,000 nuclear weapons, and a veto in the UN Security Council.
The military aspect is less relevant: with more than 1,000 casualties a day, sending 10,000 North Koreans is ten days’ harvest of war. It is a huge number that may be too much for the Russian people to bear in the long run. Nevertheless, the relationship with North Korea is humiliating for Russia, as is the relationship with China, to which Russia has subordinated itself. Putin recently boasted that his grandchildren had learnt to speak Chinese, and I wonder if it was not the other way round with his predecessors.
