‘Indo-Pacific Begins in Ukraine’ – US Think Tank Head Says Trans-Siberian Strike Rewrites Global Strategy

WASHINGTON, DC – For years, Ukraine has quietly worked to drag Russia’s invasion far beyond the front lines. Last week, Kyiv’s intelligence network landed its most dramatic blow yet, striking 6,000 kilometers from the Donbas to hit the Trans-Siberian Railway. The result: The critical rail link moving North Korean arms to the front is now frozen, crippling Moscow’s vital east-to-west supply chain. Kyiv confirmed responsibility through HUR, its military intelligence agency, which said the strike in Russia’s Khabarovsk region blocked the rail lifeline Moscow uses to move munitions supplied by Pyongyang – including the ballistic missiles, rockets and the more than 20,000 containers of ammunition that North Korea has poured into Russia’s campaign. For Glen Howard, president of the Saratoga Foundation and one of Washington’s longest-watching Russia strategists, the attack is not simply another daring Ukrainian sabotage operation. It is a geopolitical wake-up call. “The recent attack more than anything symbolizes the connectivity between the Pacific and the Ukraine war,” Howard told Kyiv Post, arguing that the strike decisively disproves the idea – popular among US “restrainers” – that Europe and the Indo-Pacific are separate strategic theaters. “10,000 North Korean soldiers appearing in Kursk and fighting against Ukraine is a manifestation of this connectivity,” he said. “For North Korea the Ukraine war is its own battle lab.” The Indo-Pacific, Howard insists, now begins in Ukraine. Moscow’s East Asian supply chain, cut at the source By hitting the Trans-Siberian – the highest-capacity rail line linking Russia’s Pacific frontier to its European heartland – Kyiv expanded a sabotage campaign that began in 2023 with its audacious demolition of the Severomuysky tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). Howard chronicled that earlier strike in his 2023 analysis “Into Siberia,” noting that the BAM attack temporarily reduced Russia to a single functioning rail line to Vladivostok, pinching its trade with China and its east-to-west military logistics. Ukraine didn’t stop there. The next day, SBU operatives hit the Devil’s Bridge bypass – the only alternative to the destroyed tunnel – trapping trains and exposing the fragility of Russia’s Far Eastern infrastructure. It was, in Howard’s telling, a masterclass in strategic sequencing. This newest strike, he argues, shows Kyiv understands that Russia’s “Siberian flank is highly vulnerable” – and that Moscow still has not learned how to defend it. “It is not an operational shift but a specific Russian vulnerability that Ukraine and HUR have shown it can selectively use at the right time to wreak havoc,” Howard said. What makes this possible, he stressed, is the dormant-no-longer Ukrainian presence in the region – the so-called Green Wedge, populated by descendants of 19th-century Ukrainian settlers. Green Wedge reawakens Howard says the sabotage campaign demonstrates that the Green Wedge – long dismissed in Moscow as an ethnographic footnote – has strategic bite. “It also symbolizes the importance of the Green Wedge in Siberia and that it is real, no longer dormant, but able to surface at any time,” he said. Ukraine’s military intelligence “has utilized the Ukrainian diaspora presence in Siberia to build a viable espionage and sabotage network.” That human network matters. Ukrainian drones can strike Russian air bases. But blowing up rail lines in the Pacific wilderness is the kind of operation that requires planning, local access, and teams on the ground. “It takes very careful planning to conduct these attacks,” Howard said, emphasizing, “It also appears to indicate the Russians have not learned how to protect the rail lines effectively.” He adds that Ukraine was likely tipped off about the movement of North Korean arms by NATO allies, possibly the US, enabling HUR to position saboteurs in time. “This attack is right out of an Alistair MacLean novel… a Ukrainian version of Where Eagles Dare,” he said. Eurasian World War in slow motion For Howard, the strike also exposes a deeper truth: Russia’s “pivot to Asia,” loudly marketed as a civilizational shift, is driven by logistical desperation. Moscow needs North Korean manpower and ammunition – “cannon fodder,” as he puts it – because its war economy cannot meet battlefield demand. But that pivot comes with a geopolitical boomerang. “Moscow relying and pivoting to North Korea is doing so at the risk of damaging its relations with Beijing,” Howard said. Putin turned to Kim Jong Un precisely because China would not provide the level of military aid Moscow expected. “So he said to hell with it… It is a very Asiatic form of Russian decision-making,” he added. Beijing, he notes, has signaled discomfort. Kim Jong Un’s recent trip to China “was quite cool.” North Koreans are fighting in Kursk, not Chinese troops. DPRK munitions – not Chinese – are flowing to Russia’s front lines. The irony is sharp: China and Russia boast a partnership “without limits,” but those limits are now testing the reliability of Russia’s role as Beijing’s overland gateway to Europe. With both the BAM and Trans-Siberian proven vulnerable, Beijing is forced to reassess whether Russia can guarantee the physical security of its own Belt and Road corridor. Next front in Siberia The Trans-Siberian attack is not war-ending. But in Howard’s view, it is war-shaping. It strikes at the timing of Russia’s dependence on North Korean shells – which he says are already running low – just as Moscow tries to sustain offensive pressure on the Pokrovsk front. And it is unlikely to be the end. “Ukraine has already shown it has the capability to disrupt Russian logistical infrastructure in the Far East,” he said, noting earlier strikes on oil refineries and munitions plants deep in the Urals. “These are the twin pillars of Russian military logistical transport in the Far East… an amazing feat.” Asked what comes next, he offers a hint: not a specific target list, but a pattern. Ukraine will continue going after the infrastructure that Russia cannot easily replace — ports, refineries, pipelines, strategic factories — “deep in the heart of Siberia.” And he adds, with the enthusiasm of a Cold War thriller writer: “I just hope Budanov sells me the film rights.” War that starts in Donetsk, ends in the Pacific Ukraine’s strike on the Trans-Siberian is more than a tactical disruption. It forces Washington, Brussels and Asian capitals to confront the emerging strategic reality of the conflict: The Ukraine war is no longer a regional war. It is a Eurasian war. Its front lines run from Avdiivka to Vladivostok. And as long as North Korean shells detonate in Ukrainian cities – and Ukrainian saboteurs detonate trains in Siberia – the dividing line between Europe and the Indo-Pacific is not the Urals, nor the South China Sea. As Glen Howard argues, maps must be redrawn. The Indo-Pacific now begins in Ukraine.