Don’t Look Now But Ukraine is Winning
Photo by Militaryunit.a2943, CC BY-SA 4.0
There has been a subtle but important shift in Ukraine. It’s not necessarily a recent shift, but it has become apparent that the tide of the war has turned.
Last spring, Russia celebrated the capture of Bakhmut, a strategically meaningless city, but that seems to have been the last time that Russia made offensive gains. The costly battle which may well have been a sacrifice ploy by Ukraine to bleed the Russian army of manpower, is reminiscent of Pyrrhus’s statement, “Another such victory, and we are undone.”
Since Bakhmut, Russia has shifted to the defensive. Moreover, Russia has lost one of its most effective commanders, Yevgeny Progozhin, first to an abortive revolt and the, more permanently in the aviation equivalent of falling out of a 40,000-foot window.
Russia has also shifted to a strategy of terror bombing of Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones. The problem with this strategy is that it has not worked historically. Bombing civilians has been a strategy in many wars by now and it usually fails.
The strategy has roots in German zeppelin raids during World War I but came came into its own during World War II when the Germans again mounted their “Blitz” campaign against England. Since then, the Allies have bombed German and Japanese civilians, the US bombed the Vietnamese, and the Coalition bombed Iraq among other examples. The common thread is that these bombing campaigns all failed to end their wars, often unifying opposition instead. The Blitz even inspired the famous “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster.
There are a few examples of airpower being used against civilians to win military victories. The best two that come to mind are German attacks on refugees columns in the early, Blitzkrieg days of WWII, which helped to clog roads that could have been used by defending armies, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interestingly, the Japanese military even attempted a coup to stop the surrender after the bombing of Nagasaki. Authoritarian regimes don’t act to protect the lives of their citizens.
Recent stories show that Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of both men and equipment. Putin is courting North Korea as an arms supplier and has been recruiting soldiers in Cuba, a practice that the Cuban government is putting a stop to.
On the other hand, Ukraine is growing militarily stronger with more deliveries of Western weapons and its own technological advances in automated warfare. Despite the lack of air supremacy, Ukraine has pierced Russian defensive lines in the south and made gains around Bakhmut in the north.
Ukraine has also carried the war home to Mother Russia. A long string of unexplained fires and explosions have dogged Russian bases and military industries. Drones have targeted military installations deep inside Russia and commando raids have hit closer behind Russian lines.
Clever strategies and high technology have allowed Ukraine to overcome its relative lack of manpower when compared to Russia. High tech weapons have saved countless Ukrainian lives, not to mention Ukrainian freedom.
Ukraine is winning the war of public opinion as well. I have a Ukrainian flag on my Twitter bio (I’m not going to call it “X”), and I can’t tell you the number of times that has been used as an ad hominem attack against me.
But I had the last laugh when the majority of Republican candidates at their first primary debate came out strongly in favor of aid to Ukraine, both as a good thing in itself as well as being a deterrent to China. Only Vivek Ramaswamy openly opposed Ukraine aid, although Ron DeSantis waffled on the issue. Presumptive nominee Donald Trump is also weak on Ukraine, having called for tying aid to probes of Joe Biden, but a large segment (although not a majority) of Republicans are supportive of aid to Ukraine.
My belief is that MAGA is driving down Republican support for Ukraine for several reasons. One of the most obvious is the misinformation being pushed about Zelensky and the Ukrainian government, some of which is anti-Semitic and most of which is Putinist propaganda. I think that a lot of this stems from a simple desire to be against whatever Joe Biden is for, but I also think it goes back to Zelensky and Ukraine’s role in Trump’s first impeachment, which MAGA has never forgotten or forgiven.
The good news is that Ukraine is winning, albeit slowly. One of the major outcomes of the 2024 election will be whether we and the West keep up the logistical support that will allow them to keep winning. Even with the possibility of a MAGA president, many congressional Republicans can be counted on to keep the aid flowing.
Ukraine won’t win and end the war tomorrow, but they might well do so next year or the one after. The war of attrition characterized by fortifications and minefields has made it difficult and slow to make gains, but what we’ve learned from other wars is that when those lines are pierced, collapse can often come quickly, especially when the enemy has little in the way of reserves. That may be the case for Russian where the conscription age keeps increasing and the morale of soldiers, who are often poorly trained and equipped, has plummeted as they are used for cannon fodder.
The war isn’t over yet, but winning takes time. That’s especially true if protecting the lives of your soldiers is a priority.
Russia started with a lot of military stuff but they’re now running out.
Ukraine started with not a lot but the US and everyone else has opened their faucets.
Russia is losing slowly right now, but all of the trends are against it and it’s only going to get worse.
We probably will see Russia lose quickly at some point.
‘The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
– Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5Report
How does one go bankrupt? Slowly, then all at once. The same, I suspect, will apply to Russia’s military rollback.Report
Is it?
Also, what’s the victory condition? Removal of all Russian Troops (all ethnic Russians?) from1994 territorial borders? Reversion to 2014 borders? Compromise on Luhansk or Donetsk but not Crimea or vice versa?
What is Ukraine’s manpower situation? Neutral reports I’m seeing are less sanguine on long-term offensive capabilities. There’s still hope of an ‘interdiction’ position in the south that makes Crimea difficult to hold, but even if we’re not expecting a breakthrough they might not be able to push that far by winter’s onset.
What is China’s modernization project for Russia looking like? Stalemate seems an acceptable outcome to China… not sure what ‘winning’ does to their calculations.
Nothing I’m seeing from sober military appraisals suggests that Ukraine is ‘winning’. Ukraine is fighting, the US policy of support is helping; fighting can lead to victory, it can also lead to defeat. Perhaps there will be a breakthrough in the south, perhaps Russia will counter in the North. Possibly the proxy war expands on either side if conditions favoring ‘victory’ for either begin to loom.Report
To me winning is probably getting the roads going west from Melitopol under fire control and strangling. Then start negotiating from a position of strength with the Russians on the wrong side as your hostages. Every day things get a little worse for them helps, and they can always retreat through Crimea, in which case the negotiations have to account for new facts on the ground. Maybe Ukraine gets lucky and the Russian army totally collapses in the interim, maybe they don’t but at least they’ve saved the bulk of their country, held onto their sea lanes, and I imagine have arranged to be sufficiently armed to deter another invasion in the foreseeable future. Not a Hollywood ending but plausible and not bad at all given expectations at the start of the conflict.Report
Sure; I’d buy that. I could see that potentially bringing a negotiated ceasefire. Absent a total collapse of the Army, I wouldn’t see much more than that.
Hard for me to see Russia negotiating Sevastopol/Kerch/Theodosia away… just don’t see it. Status quo ante? Sure. Mariupol? The price Ukraine pays for Russia to ‘save face’?
Just want to make sure that we’re all clearly calling that ‘victory’ as we evaluate operations and goals.Report
I feel like we look at the Winter War overall as a victory for Finland even though it ceded significant territory. That seems like a reasonable parallel.Report
To end a war, both sides need to feel that concluding the conflict is preferable to pushing forward. That presents, in the Ukrainian context, a very high bar for the war’s conclusion:
-The Ukrainians are profoundly motivated to prosecute the war. They wish to liberate the rest of their territory, they generally feel they have “right” on their side and their military strength is increasing as time marches on and aid from the west continues to flow in. Moreover, they are, slowly, retaking territory from the Russians. They are not motivated to stop at this point.
-The Russians are not at all motivated to prosecute the war but, in the Russian context, the decision making lies in Putin’s hands and Putin is profoundly motivated to continue it because ending it in a manner that appears as a loss to his countrymen could very well end his grasp on power. Putin is neither young nor healthy so the fallout of this conflict will, most likely, be the defining element of his legacy. Russia has obliterated its conventional military strength and long-term economic prospects on the farmlands of Ukraine. Putin clearly doesn’t think that the terrain and peoples he’s seized merits what his country has paid for it (he’d be right) and he knows that the accounting will occur once the war ends. So, he puts off the end of the war and hopes he can pour enough blood into the conflict to prologue it beyond the wests patience to support the Ukrainians which, he tells himself, is the only reason the Ukrainians haven’t capitulated to him outright.
The war continues because neither side is willing to let it end. The Ukrainians because they cannot countenance letting it end like this and because they believe they can win- Putin because he likely cannot survive letting it end like this and because enduring is his only remaining play. We, in the West, could end it, only in theory, by ending all support for Ukraine but Russia is so mauled now that, even if we cut the Ukrainians off, the likely outcome would be an incredibly grinding, brutal conflict that’d make the current one look like child’s play.Report
Winning, for the victims of invasion, means not losing.Report
That is the big question. UKR can prevail in a very likely long slow grueling war. Even with a breakthrough Russia in UKR won’t completely collapse. They will hold onto Crimea as long as they can. So it’s some sort of stalemate most likely. But UKR getting as much of their land and people under their own flag will be what victory looks like.Report
Without that bridge and the “land bridge” it’s hard to see how Russia keeps Crimea. It’s well defended but it lacks food and other supplies.Report
If UKR breaks through and reaches the Sea of Azov then Crimea rapidly becomes indefensible. The Kerch bridge would be in range for bombardment and would quickly be made unusuable. Russia would have to ferry in supplies by sea and, long term, Crimeas water supplies were cut off when the Russians blew the damn on the reservoir that supplies it.Report
I suppose it depends on what one means when one says “winning”. Was Russia “Winning” when it invaded Ukraine and was securing territory and communities while the Ukrainians fought a rearguard action? If they were winning at that time then, by that same definition, Ukraine is “winning” now as it is re-securing territory and it is the Russians who are fighting and falling back.Report
That’s why I challenge the term ‘winning’ at all… there are objectives and settlements and costs to settling on both sides. The fact that Russia has it’s own internal factions demanding a ‘win’ is indeed part of the dynamic. As you say so above.
I’m not sure either side will ‘win’. Maybe? But I’m not seeing it as clear. The ‘danger’ is that we attach significance to ‘winning’ that is greater than the cost we’re willing to bear; instead we should have a hierarchy of outcomes with more preferable at the top and less preferable at the bottom and seek to maximize the outcome — which may not look like ‘winning’ the war.
The irony, so far, is that Biden is doing a pretty good job of executing what would be a realist off-shore balancing strategy for which I give him credit. At some point, hopefully with maximal leverage, Ukraine/Russia will likely negotiate a truce that Biden will back. There’s an excellent chance that it won’t look like winning, but it would be a very good outcome for the US. (And a very bad outcome, all things considered, for Ukraine).
Or Putin falls out a window, Bernie leaps out of a sealed train car and Russia gets M4A and withdraws from Ukraine. Or something like that. Hard to predict exactly.Report
I don’t have your pessimism. In the course of a few months the Ukrainians have inverted the imbalance of artillery strength in their favor whereas the Russians have destroyed Ukrainian equipment that the US has been able to instantly replace without even looking up. All this while the Ukrainians have slowly ground their way through the Russians massive minefields. If this is what they have to show for 3 months pounding against the Russians toughest defensive line where will things go in another 3 months? Likewise, where is Russia going to get replacement gear? Word is they’re trying to buy ammo from the North Koreans (!) but unless China decides to get significantly more involved the Russians future fortunes don’t look good. A leader with longer horizons than Putin would be trying to negotiate a deal already but, then again, a leader with longer horizons wouldn’t have probably started this fiasco to begin with.
I’m pretty confident that the moment the Ukrainians decide they’ve had enough and offer a deal Biden will support it. At the moment, though, the Ukrainians don’t have any reason to offer a deal and I see no plausible argument in favor of Biden using our leverage to force them to do so.Report
I fall somewhere in between. On the one hand I think that Russia cannot win the war if it keeps fighting the way it is. Given enough time (measured in years but under a decade) and supplies from the West Ukraine may well eventually fight them to 2014 lines or further. At the same time the longer it goes the more likely something happens that fundamentally changes things, and there’s no way to know who it will favor.Report
You could be right. I think we’ll have a pretty good idea how things will look longer term by the end of the current season in another month or so.Report
Based on what has come out about Biden being a dissenter as VP against the surge in Afghanistan I have to think his instincts lean realist, or at least not idealist about what is possible and the limitations on America’s interests in these situations. What are those instincts against the press and the Blob and the parts of the military that are enjoying this? Hard to say. But I would bet Biden has it in him to disappoint them, and the Ukrainkans too for that matter if he thinks it is better for him to do so.Report
Yeah, I think his instincts are to minimize direct US involvement — probably more from a Vietnam hang-over and popularity concerns — but that’s good enough for me.
Yeah, not sure what happens if the offensive stalls and/or an enduring stalemate lands — there will be very strong calls for escalation; I’m not sure he’ll be able to stop that… as of now I think he’s mostly diverting into better directions; less sanguine he’s got the juice (or will) to actually say no.Report
The whole Ukraine thing strikes me as a Vietnam hang-over. “Remember Vietnam, Putin? We sure as hell do!”
I’ll grant that Russia probably has a lot more reason to want to hold onto Ukraine than… why did we want to hold on to South Vietnam, again? It doesn’t seem to make sense. I’m sure it made sense at the time.
And so there are a lot of people who are… oh… maybe a decade older than me who see this as a great “best served cold” situation.
We don’t even have to “win”. What does “winning” look like, anyway? We can just create another Vietnam. Maybe Russian war movies will be really good in a decade.Report