The Actual Cause And Consequence Of Putin's War

The photo above was taken by Howard Lewsey, who is a UK-based railroad enthusiast, in Chitila, Romania. Posted on Facebook, it depicts a train of Ukrainian grain cars on their way to a Romanian port for export in order to bypass the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports. It reflects several important factors in the Russo-Ukraine War that I've mentioned here in passing.

Even President Biden mentioned one of these factors in his speech to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia this week:

Folks, look, what Putin’s war has done is not only tried to wipe out the culture of the Ukrainians, decimate people, and commit innumerable war crimes, but is also — he’s also prevented the grain — thousands of tons of grain that are locked up in those silos, ready to be exported, but they can’t get out through the Black Sea because they’ll get blown out of the water. So we’re working on a plan to get it out through other countries by rail.

But guess what? Ukraine has a system like Russia has — a rail gauge that is different than the gauge of the rest of the tracks in Europe. So we’re going to build silos — temporary silos — in the borders of Ukraine, including in Poland, so we can transfer it from those cars into those silos, into cars in Europe, and get it out to the ocean, and get it across the world. (Applause.) But it’s taking time.

Well, silos are one solution, they're inefficient, and they're temporary. Biden mentions it as something he's doing to lower food prices, which I don't think will happen, because the whole issue is actually at the basis of the Ukraine war, not specifically the price of grain. But the issue in fact does go to the Russian railroad gauge, and the photo above reflects it as well.

The photo shows a Romanian locomotive running on track of the European standard gauge, which is 1435 mm between the rails. The green Ukrainian grain hoppers in the train behind it normally operate in Ukraine on the Russian gauge, 1520 mm between the rails. This is a big enough difference that cars using the Russian gauge can't operate on European track. This wasn't a problem as long as they were operating only from points in Ukraine to Ukrainian Black Sea ports like Odesa.

But as Biden says, in order to get the grain to European ports, something has to be done to overcome the difference in gauge. What's being done at the Romanian border is to use cranes to lift the Ukrainian cars off the Russian-gauge wheel assemblies and place them on European-gauge wheel assemblies. This is actually slightly more efficient than using silos to transload the grain from Ukrainian grain cars into entirely different Polish grain cars, but it's still expensive and time-consuming.

Another feature of the photo is the flat car between the Romanian locomotive and the train of green Ukrainian grain cars. Not only are the track and wheels incompatible between Europe and Ukraine, but the couplers that hold trains together are also incompatible. The flat car shown has a European coupler to connect it to the Romanian locomotive, with a Russian style coupler on the other end to connect it to the Ukrainian grain cars. This is another inefficiency, and discussion on that Facebook post indicates there's a shortage of that type of car.

Both the Romanians and the Ukrainians are working to eliminate the problem by extending European gauge track into Ukraine, which will be the inevitable solution going forward. This will have the equivalent result to the post-Reconstruction measure following the US Civil War of converting the Confederate railroad gauge, coincidentally the same as the Russian gauge, to the Union gauge, coincidentally the European gauge. This created a single US rail network that extended the Industrial Revolution into the South. The effect here will be further to integrate Ukraine into the European industrial economy, probably more significant than simply adding Ukraine to the EU.

The problem for Putin is that this isn't happening just in Ukraine. According to Wikipedia,

Rail Baltica (also known as Rail Baltic in Estonia) is an ongoing greenfield railway infrastructure project to link Finland (via ferry or an undersea tunnel), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania with Poland and through this with the European standard gauge rail line network. Its purpose is to provide passenger and freight service between participating countries and improve rail connections between Central and Northern Europe, specifically the area in the Southeast of the Baltic sea. Furthermore, it is intended to be a catalyst for building the economic corridor in Northeastern Europe. The project envisages a continuous rail link from Tallinn (Estonia) to Warsaw (Poland). It consists of links via Riga (Latvia), Kaunas and Vilnius (Lithuania) whose total length in the Baltic States is 870 km, with 213 km in Estonia, 265 km in Latvia, and 392 km in Lithuania. Rail Baltica is one of the priority projects of the European Union: Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).

The rail networks in the Baltic countries after World War II and the Soviet seizure of those countries had used the Russian gauge and were primarily used as export outlets from Russia to the Baltic ports. This will transform the Baltic rail network to a north-south alignment of European gauge that will integrate the Baltic economies with the European industrial economy. A subsequent stage will be either rail ferries to Finland or an undersea rail tunnel that will bring the European standard gauge into Finland, which has always used the Russian gauge due to its status as a Russian economic satellite.

This development predates Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and the Wikipedia entry says it's "one of the priority projects of the European Union". It's pretty clear that such an investment would be unthinkable without the Baltics being part of NATO. I would imagine that Finland, envisioning the benefits of a direct European rail connection via the Baltic rail project, would have been mooting NATO membership well before Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The investment in something like an undersea rail tunnel and the resulting economic benefit would be too great without an equivalent investment in defense, something Putin must also recognize.

But note the map I posted yesterday of a Baltic economic region envisioned for 2050. This is clearly intended as a consequence of, among other things, the Baltic rail integration into the European network. But note how ambitious that map is -- not only does it include Finland, it includes Belarus and even St Petersburg. And of course, Ukraine lies just to the south of Poland and Belarus. The EU is pretty clearly intending to extend its economic influence into Russian territory, and this will involve cultural change, including effective representative government and likely severely reduced political dependence on Moscow.

Faced with the EU's intent, I think Putin saw invasion of Ukraine as something of a last-ditch measure to forestall it. The problem is that the invasion, already a failure from that perspective, is simply going to hasten the conversion of Ukraine's rail gauge to the European standard and its integration into the European economy. As I've been noting here, Poland and the Baltics have already been making separate agreements with Ukraine for both defense and economic cooperation; they already have Ukraine in mind as part of the Baltic-centered community.

And this will leave Belarus between Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics. I don't think Putin or his successors can hold onto it for long.