Springtime For Putin: Another Season, Another Offensive
NATO/US doctrine makes the mistake of assuming that lasting control of the skies is possible in the Network Age. Moscow embraces an alternative delusion: that steel and firepower alone can suffice.
It’s been a tough week for Ukraine, with the orcs grinding forward on the Robotyne, Avdiivka, and Chasiv Yar fronts and demolishing another major power facility, this one in Kyiv. Talk of Ukraine running out of Patriot interceptors is spreading, though it appears that a combination of tactics and new missiles allowed Moscow to overwhelm or bypass Kyiv’s defenses.
A bomber always gets through sooner or later. That’s part of why Ukraine’s central government has emphasized decentralization. This approach has benefits, but also costs.
On the balance, though, decentralizing and democratizing most aspects of politics, including warfare, is the surest way to survive and thrive in the Network Age. It also happens to be the adaptation that rigid regimes like Moscow find it nearly impossible to make on the necessary scale thanks to their internal structure.
The best solution to ruscist air power is also the simplest: send Ukraine more Patriot systems (and missiles for them, since you’ve got to be precise with politicians). SAMP/T with Aster-30 missiles is a solid equivalent, but there are too few in circulation. A recent Kyiv Post analysis revealed that there are literally hundreds of Patriot launchers and thousands of missiles sitting in warehouses around the globe, amounting to around 100 systems in total.
Ukraine has just three or four, with another one supposedly being rushed from Germany right now and talks ongoing for a couple more. Yet after enduring more than two years of Putin’s all-out assault, this is absolutely pathetic.
The USA has made sure that compliant Middle East dictatorships like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and even tiny little Qatar (admittedly the least authoritarian of the three) have around a dozen systems and a thousand missiles apiece. Each also hosts an American military presence that includes US-owned systems. The US usually keeps several Aegis warships able to shoot down all kinds of projectiles, including ballistic missiles, and several squadrons of multirole fighters in the region. In effect, these Gulf regimes are double-covered: they’ve got their own systems to play with as well as an additional shield provided by US taxpayers.
Iran’s drone and missile assault on Israel over the weekend, retaliation for Israel bombing a consulate in order to kill a couple Iranian generals, put the rank hypocrisy of US policy with respect to Israel and Ukraine on full public display. Setting aside the endless tit-for-tat cycle that gives leaders in Tehran and Tel Aviv an excuse to pretend that they’re the only thing standing between their own general population and oblivion, to watch US and UK jets and ships rush to defend Israel while Ukraine is left to suffer is absolutely galling. I can only imagine how it looks in Kharkiv.
Israel has one of the most robust air defense networks on the planet - it doesn’t need anyone’s help defending itself from a stage managed retaliatory strike like the one Iran launched. Especially not a bombardment telegraphed for about a week in advance and carefully sized to minimize the chances of serious casualties while making sure at least one missile landed on the grounds of an airbase in the Negev desert and several weapons passed by US bases in Iraq.
American citizens like my cousin and his family, who were living in Kyiv until just prior to Putin’s invasion, receive less guarantee of protection from the US federal government than Israeli military personnel engaged in active military operations against Iranian personnel. Part of why Putin holds Americans as effective hostages in russian prisons on trumped up claims of drug smuggling or espionage is to show just how disposable the lives of ordinary people are in the eyes of our leaders.
I’m not arguing that NATO should start bombing russian forces in Ukraine, as justified as that would absolutely be. But it’s fair game to shoot down an uncrewed projectile on a one way flight that puts civilians at risk anywhere. Just as Iran doesn’t get a free pass to use Iraqi or Jordanian airspace to carry out operations against Israel, neither does Moscow get to send ordnance all the way across Ukraine to strike near - and sometimes over - the border with Poland or Romania. Not without a response that adds a layer of protection for friendly civilians.
It is long past time for a coalition of sane democracies to declare Ukraine west of the Dnipro some form of air defense zone and establish routine air patrols directly coordinated with Ukrainian forces. This would free up Ukraine’s precious aircraft and air defenses to cover the areas at greatest risk of attack by crewed jets.
Moscow’s use of glide bombs is only going to expand. It is already fielding even larger ones weighing 3,000kg; these carry a thermobaric warhead capable of leveling a village, neighborhood, or high-rise structure. Ukraine wouldn’t need the twenty-five long-range air defense systems required to fully protect its people if NATO simply moved in to guard the airspace of western Ukraine. That would allow pilot training to take place on Ukrainian soil, and also secure a space for NATO ground troops to train their counterparts up to the brigade level.
It beggars belief that two years in, Ukraine’s partners have failed to ensure that the country has a solid pipeline of pilots trained in English to fly its new F-16s. Systematic advanced training of general officers and the non-commissioned officers who are the heart of any modern defense force is still sorely lacking. Old Aegis warships the US wants to retire could have been prepared for transfer and crews trained to operate them, their ability to protect Ukraine’s shipping lane from attack augmented by the arrival of F-16s and Ukraine’s naval drones.
Vast resources go untapped while Ukrainian soldiers and civilians pay the price. It’s a stark reminder of the subtext behind all claims by defense officials that democracies must unite to contain China. Beijing has nukes too, remember. And the rules of the road now being paved say that nukes make you untouchable.
In scientific terms, an accountability deficit has formed across most of the democratic world where leaders who fail are not adequately punished if they develop a cult following. For true believers, facts must always conform to their narrow worldview. Anybody in a group who questions the sacred priests who claim to know what’s good for the majority faces exile.
No global issue of any importance, not environmental degradation or war or securing basic rights for everyone regardless of their identity, can be successfully accomplished so long as the quality of governance remains this pathetic. At some points, celebrities and rich people have to stop signing letters and commit to formal institutions with dedicated funding streams that operate independently of any one government. We’re at the point where the simple fact of the matter is that governments across the democratic world have effectively failed and will continue to do so until fixed.
Where to get resources this requires? Good question. Sovereign wealth funds are a potential target whose managers could see the sense in greater international stability. A trillion dollars sitting in an account that grows at an average real rate of 6% generates $60 billion annually without degrading the principle. That’s equivalent to the what the US Congress has been unable to pass for Ukraine for nearly six months. The value of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund alone stood at over $1.6 trillion as of 2023.
The world badly needs an impartial defense force, because if the last few years are anything to go by we’ve entered a period of effective anarchy in geopolitics to rival the 1930s. Nobody knows for sure who has how much power anymore, and that uncertainty will spawn more wars until a new global equilibrium is found. Hopefully a better one that can also persist longer than two or three generations.
I am aware that this sounds like pure blue sky thinking. But I’ve studied and published in the world of policy and governance. I ain’t a complete loon, just a guy who comes off a little weird because I spent more time around horses than polite society, growing up as I did in rural northern California.
The architecture of the world system as it stands produces the outcomes it does for a reason. Lack of effective and accountable governance is the reason why things are getting worse, not better, for so many people.
The bulk of this week’s evaluation will be split into three sections, as usual. The first will take a look at the key events of the past week. After that I’ll briefly dive into the fascinating future of close air support that drones are making possible. Finishing it off will be another strategic level assessment you won’t find in the partisan American media space.
Weekly Overview
Over the past couple weeks Moscow has shifted tactics slightly, launching overwhelming strikes against individual high value economic targets, namely thermal power plants in Kharkiv and Kyiv. In prior weeks a major dam was struck near Dnipro. The main purpose of these attacks appear to be revenge for Ukrainian strikes on ruscist oil refineries. They also give the appearance of a concerted campaign, along with rumors of a ground attack on Kharkiv city, to make Ukrainians afraid of Moscow opening a new front.
Another useful secondary objective is further exhausting Ukraine’s clearly diminished supply of interceptors like Patriot. In hitting Kyiv the orcs apparently mixed in some newer cruise missiles that fly at super low altitude with Kinzhals blazing in at high speed. Ukraine has shot down Kinzhals over Kyiv before, but the PAC-3 interceptor which is used to knock down ballistic missiles only has a range of around 45km. Kyiv’s thermal plant is on the outskirts of the city, and it is probable that at least two Patriot interceptors are fired to knock down a fast-moving Kinzhal. Could be that distance to the target and limited ammunition supplies made Ukraine’s air defenders calculate the cost not worth the benefit.
The timing of Moscow’s shift to annihilate specific power plants is notable for coming after the heating season. Most analysts anticipated a sustained effort to knock out Ukraine’s power grid over winter, but the relatively muted campaign appears to have taken to heart the losing bet Moscow made under Surovikin’s Syria-influenced advice. There rebels in Syria weren’t bombed into submission more than they were exhausted through months of siege and forced to escape or negotiate a deal. Bombing hospitals and the like, ruscist tactics in Syria that Israel has adopted in Gaza, doesn’t end resistance.
Absent a whole lot more air defense batteries and missiles for them making it to Ukraine soon, Moscow will be able to repeat these strikes every couple of weeks. Despite sanctions, Moscow is assembling several dozen cruise and ballistic missiles each month. US and European components continue to make their way into russia through intermediaries - like NATO member Turkey, whose request to be referred to as Türkiye I’ll respect after Ankara admits to the reality of the Armenian genocide.
Moscow likes to send one or two dozen Shahed drones buzzing around Ukraine every night to keep air defenses taxed and scout locations. Then it combines one of these raids with a flurry of ballistic and cruise missiles fired from multiple directions.
In the wake of Iran’s mass bombardment of Israel with several hundred drones and missiles, many analysts have referred to this as a method Iran learned from russia, but the reverse is true. Iran demonstrated these methods in the attack on the Saudi Aramco facility in 2019 and the response in early 2020 to the USA killing general Soleimani of the IRGC. Give credit where credit is due, folks: the Iranians are the innovators here, not the russians, who are still notably incapable of using their strike capabilities to demolish Ukrainian reserves positioned well behind the front lines. If Iran weren’t under the thumb of those ridiculous mullahs, it would be a true force to reckon with.
Anyway, this is a decent deep strike system, but beatable if Ukraine gets another dozen Patriot batteries in the next few months. Supposedly three or four Patriot and SAMP/T systems could be sent in a matter of weeks, so hopefully someone pulls the necessary levers and gets that done. Then sends another tranche of equal size, and one more after that, all by July.
More Patriot systems are key to mitigating the threat posed by glide bombs. Soon these will have a 90km range, meaning that entire Patriot systems will have to operate as close as 40km to the contact zone to have a reasonable chance of scoring kills on orc bombers. That’s beyond normal artillery and most Soviet-style rocket artillery, but Lancets will be a serious problem requiring short-range air defense protection by Gepard flak tracks and soldiers in trucks with machine guns and shoulder-fired SAMs.
Moscow is getting into a rhythm of applying constant pressure on Ukrainian lines wherever someone looking at a map in the Kremlin has decided to advance a few kilometers this week. An Estonian general recently called the approach “amoeba tactics” and that’s apt. The net effect is Moscow essentially forcing its front line soldiers to crawl through a sand pit full of broken glass. Operations never move fast enough anywhere to break through, instead relying on pure attrition over time to crush Ukraine’s will to fight. All very First World War of Putin, which didn’t go well for the Tsar then and isn’t likely to today.
Ukraine’s spring has been mild so far, with mud appearing in some footage from the front but far less than last year. Lot of dust is rising from vehicles traversing dirt fields. Moscow is sending its orcs forward wherever the ground is suitable for major mechanized assaults, a tactic it has returned to in a clear bid to push as far as possible before Ukraine receives fresh ammo supplies. Here’s what I think Putin is after:
The Urozhaine, Krasnohorivka Krynky, Lyman, and Siversk sectors have all been active this week, though Moscow’s efforts so far have felt like probes intended to distract the leadership in Kyiv. Urozhaine is the final town in the Velyka Novosilka area that Ukraine liberated last summer, and having been quiet for a long while it looks like Moscow decided to try and take the defenders by surprise, without too much effect.
Similarly, the orcs have launched several attacks near Vesele on the edge of the Siversk bulge north of occupied Bakhmut. Further north they’ve never really stopped trying to break into Bilohorivka, but the mining complex there is on high ground and an effective fortress, so getting around behind it is likely required for the orcs to march on Siversk itself.
In Terny an interesting incident was largely caught on drone video where an orc armor rush protected by one tank mounting a jammer the size of a small fridge made progress - until Ukraine brought up some hunter-killers with Javelin anti-tank missiles. You can’t jam an optical lock without a whole lot of smoke that reflects the correct wavelengths, and once the jamming tank was disabled drones came for the rest.
Then comes the truly legendary part: a couple daring Ukrainians then made their way to the damaged and abandoned tank, repaired it, then drove the vehicle and its fancy new tech back to friendly lines.
Game, set, match, orcs. Thanks for conducting an experiment then turning the data over to the other side!
Much heavier fighting was noted on three fronts, each of which appears to constitute the target of a major spring push using the last of Moscow’s immediately available operational reserves. Robotyne, south of Orihiv, could soon fall if Moscow pushes hard enough, while west of Avdiivka the orcs appear determined to push across the Durna river no matter how ill-advised the attempt looks to me. In Chasiv Yar the enemy has reached the edge of town after a push that managed to avoid the minefields that ought to line every viable route to the town.
In Robotyne the situation is pretty self-explanatory. What’s left of the town sits on a slight rise, maybe 10m above the level of the orc-held town of Novoprokopivka about 2.5km to the south. It’s not much, but enough that a hunter-killer team with Javelin or Stugna ATGMs can fire over the nearest tree line at incoming orc armor. Moscow wants it for this and to negate Ukraine’s hard-won win here last summer.
Chasiv Yar and Avdiivka, on the other hand, to my eye appear to be part of the same broader effort, a spring offensive intended to set Moscow up for a much larger campaign come summer. While many been describing Pokrovsk as the intended target and it could be, I anticipate a more focused effort to surround the Toretsk fortress area and reach the outskirts of Kostiantynivka from the south. This coupled to success crashing the Siversk bulge and crawling to the Siverski Donets at Lyman could bring the rest of urban Donbas in range of a future lunge launched by the 300,000 or so personnel Ukraine claims that Moscow plans to call up by summer.
The orcs have focused their efforts along the Chasiv Yar front on a straight-up push to the castle gates, so to speak. Last week’s brief on this front mentioned that ruscist forces managed to lunge forward several kilometers, apparently because the 67th Mechanized Brigade failed to properly mine a major route to the Kanal district, a group of high rise structures just across the canal that forms Ukraine’s main defensive line in this sector. Reportedly the brigade’s command has been fired, the unit apparently having abused the high degree of autonomy Zaluzhnyi tolerated.
Autonomy of local forces is important - but so are common standards. You can only put mission command style decentralized operations to full effect if a bond of trust exists between higher and lower levels of responsibility. The 67th was one of the few Ukrainian units that has long included members of rather extreme nationalists who appear to have treated mobilized soldiers differently than members of their clique. a sub-unit known as Da Vinci’s Wolves, named after a beloved commander, not too long ago abandoned the 67th for the 59th Motorized Brigade citing serious issues.
Whatever happened, Moscow followed up its initial success with two more advances along roads flanking the one that supplies the central orc thrust through Khromove. On the southern flank, DeepState Map shows that the orcs are in control of territory less than a kilometer from the canal, taking cover in a forested area. The push from Bohdanivka, on the northern flank of the sector, isn’t as close to the canal line but remains a worrying thrust because it is approaching a stretch that passes underground in a densely wooded area. This presents a danger of infiltration, especially as the spring leaf out proceeds.
Chasiv Yar sits on a commanding height some 50m taller than Bakhmut to the west. The orcs are trying to fight their way up the slope and across the canal, hoping that getting into the cover here will let them build up combat power for an attempt to repeat the tactics that finally gave them control of Avdiivka: surround where possible, then force close quarters fights in the urban spaces Ukrainian troops aren’t keen on giving up without a fight. And in the case of Chasiv Yar, they really can’t. It’s one of the few locations along the front Ukraine can’t fall back from to an equivalent defensive position.
The timing of the ongoing ruscist operations in Avdiivka is notable. Moscow appears to be determined to clear Ukrainian positions between the Vovcha river and its large reservoirs. This requires crossing the narrower Durna, which is covered by a line of Ukrainian positions on high ground just to the west.
Moscow is making progress on the ground but at heavy cost. And its forces keep trying to hold areas where Ukraine will have a relatively easy time shooting at them from high ground on two or three sides. In effect, Moscow appears to be pushing its troops into an obvious trap. This begs the question of why.
My assessment is that this, like the push on Chasiv Yar, is a preliminary offensive ahead of a bigger one launched by the 120,000 or so reserves Moscow is allegedly training up in Siberia. Twice as large as the force that went after Avdiivka, it should be sufficient to let Moscow attempt the encirclement of the Toretsk area and potentially seize Kostiantynivka this summer. Ukraine has built defensive positions flanking the highway leading north from Avdiivka and it’s close to Toretsk and Niu-York, creating a nice funnel on a ridge. Moscow may aim to push north behind this line.
And if Moscow in fact does want to march on Pokrovsk it will have to accomplish something like this anyway. A major rail line passing through the town of Ocheretyne, northwest of where the Durna begins, will be needed to supply heavy forces as they advance. It’s course also tracks higher ground Moscow will have to secure to push west in force. Moscow could reach Pokrovsk from a more southerly route of advance, but it would have to move across the Vovcha between two major reservoirs after taking Krasnohorivka.
Ukraine is trying to bog the enemy down in the marshes along the Durna for as long as it can. Moscow tried going around the headwaters north of Berdychi this weekend, but made little progress. Whether the orcs can combine glide bomb attacks and ground attacks to seize this sector is unknown. More air defenses can only help.
Tactical-Operational Matters: The Future Of Close Air Support
Even as it embraces the current generation of first-person drones to democratize close air support, the next is already on the horizon. The past year of fighting should have served as a wake up call to air branches around the world, particularly those reliant on US doctrine.
F-16s will make a critical difference in Ukraine’s fight to liberate its sovereign territory. They will force ruscist aircraft to be much more careful within about a hundred kilometers of the front and be able to deliver accurate strikes on targets well behind enemy lines, especially air defense systems and possibly large electronic warfare emitters as well.
But the cost of air defense missiles compared to the price of ten mid-priced drones is similar to the ratio that has afflicted the contest between crewed multirole jets and SAMs. The next generation of strike drones will be more expensive than today’s Mavic with a rocket propelled grenade taped to the bottom. But they’ll also become more survivable and responsive to the needs of ground troops once they come equipped with their own ordnance that can fire at a target from several kilometers away.
Here the history of science and technology is again a useful guide. The first direct ground support operations performed by aircraft were flights at low speed and altitude over enemy trenches to physically drop hand grenades. The risks of this approach soon became obvious, but it didn’t take long for engineers to develop release mechanisms allowing bombs to be slung under the wings or fuselage.
Need for accurate bomb sights drove intensive research for decades, culminating in modern digital projections that show a pilot where a dumb bomb will fall given the parent aircraft’s present speed and altitude. Laser guidance revolutionized the difficult and dangerous job of lining up for a bombing run. Slap some fins on one, attach a laser receiver, and with some simple programming the weapon can automatically steer itself towards a splotch of laser light painted by a target designator.
It takes coordination and practice, but for decades personnel on the ground have had the ability to quietly select a target from a safe position and wait for a bomb released by an aircraft tens of kilometers away to obliterate it. Limits to how many aircraft and bombs can ever be available in any particular area are the main reason why this isn’t the only way anyone delivers prompt fires on demand.
Drones help solve that problem, and what’s more, they don’t have to be big enough to lug large bombs to have a major impact. To disable or even destroy most battlefield targets, as one first person view drone feed after another proves, all you need is a single rocket warhead connecting with the right spot. The Zuni, which was used by the US for decades, weighs under 40kg and can fly eight kilometers. Hydra 70 rockets are only around 15kg and can travel at least five.
A drone large enough to carry half a dozen Hydra 70s should be able to fire them from far enough back that only expensive air defense missiles can knock them down. But with a payload of only 100kg, they don’t have to be sophisticated or even boast a very long range. A constant stream can be sent to the front from drone bases a hundred kilometers behind the front, allowing a team under threat to call for fire, get a confirmation that rockets are inbound and their time of arrival in the target zone, then paint targets ten or so seconds before impact to minimize the defenders’ reaction time if they happen to be equipped with laser warning receivers.
Early on in the conflict Ukrainian hunter-killer teams using Stugna ATGMs showed that all you have to do is point the laser near the target until a few seconds before impact then place the beam on the spot you actually want incoming fire to hit. That leaves too little time for most defensive systems to react while giving the projectile enough information about where to go that it can shift trajectory to score a hit.
From the perspective of a soldier on the front line, the most important thing aside from good cover is the ability to negate whatever the enemy sends their way. On the modern battlefield, there are spotters and shooters, and it isn’t always best to have the same person or platform perform both jobs. Where a soldier using a kinetic weapon reveals their presence as soon as they open fire, one wielding a targeting laser can better maintain ambiguity about their location. Even an enemy equipped with a laser warning system only receives a brief warning before one or more rockets strikes.
I don’t think it’s too difficult to envision a perpetual cycle where drone maintainers on rough airstrips well behind the front lines dispatch a constant stream of close air support drones armed with laser guided rockets to patrol just behind the contact zone. When a drone arrives on station a local operator, position masked by a signal repeater, takes control and keeps it out of harm’s way until its services are required. After its ordnance is expended the drone returns to a landing strip to take on fuel and another combat load or be pulled out of circulation for repair.
As soon as a soldier on the ground locates a target, they make the call for fire, talking directly to the drone operator via radio link or even a secure text. The two coordinate on timing the use of the laser; if done right the effect will be like pointing a magic wand and watching something go boom. Better yet, multiple drones can be vectored to an area where the enemy appears in large numbers to scale up support as required, allowing a small number of personnel to direct multiple precision attacks from cover.
Rockets are probably an ideal solution to the inevitable issue of improved anti-drone defenses, as they’ll be more robust to whatever hard (shoots the incoming projectile) or soft (deflects it with electronic warfare) defenses Moscow can deploy in the near future. They also have the advantage of being relatively cheap, already plentiful, and a simple technology that Ukrainian companies can mass produce in the near future with the right planning. If their individual accuracy is still too poor to kill tanks with single shots even using laser guidance, a salvo should do the trick.
If Hydra 70 rockets can be used as anti-drone weapons, then their original role as ground attack weapons should be an equally productive means of bolstering the firepower of Ukraine’s troops. In theory, response times of under a minute could become routine. That would have to compare well with first person drones, which you probably don’t launch until the enemy has entered range.
Despite the depletion of Ukraine’s air defenses, even having the capability to suppress air defenses some of the time, it’s notable that Moscow is very clearly not confident in its ability to secure lasting control of the skies beyond its side of the front lines. Contrary to the expectations of many NATO aviation enthusiasts and apparently almost all U.S. Air Force brass, air dominance or even superiority is likely impossible in the Network Age until the enemy is already beaten. The systematic obliteration of Iraq in Desert Storm was probably a unique case.
Today, the ability of the Houthis to defy the Eisenhower carrier group’s four-month effort to secure the Red Sea offers another stark reminder of how drones are altering the way war can be productively waged. You can destroy a group’s radars and quickly bomb missiles being set up for launch, but getting at every piece of a distributed arsenal while knocking down every drone that can spot a passing container ship and pass rough targeting coordinates to missile launchers is no simple task. There are only so many jets on a carrier, so many aircraft you can have ready to respond, leaving gaps the enemy can and will exploit. And it’s expensive as well as dangerous to have a carrier group operate in confined waters like the Red Sea.
Ike and her escorts have done an outstanding job, don’t get me wrong. It’s nice to see effective, unambiguous results from the United States military. But there have been a few close calls already, and it’s important to remember that the Houthis aren’t fighting for their lives, here. All they want to do is demonstrate a kinetic ability to make Israel’s allies react, not provoke a full-on war. For a group like theirs, this level of resistance is all they need to secure legitimacy and the recruits, arms, and prestige successful resistance brings.
Cheap, distributed air support won’t render high-end crewed aircraft obsolete. What it will do is force major shifts in doctrine, tactics, and organization - as well as the way air power is used as a geopolitical tool. Any country can develop world-class strike capabilities now; pricey Tomahawk or hypersonic missiles aren’t required or even ideal for anybody but defense company shareholders.
Another major development in democratized air support that I don’t have space to cover this week is bound to be drones that hunt drones. Equipped with short range air-to-air missiles or even just machine guns, they will attempt to destroy hostile surveillance and strike drones operating close to the front.
The side best able to blind the other will be the one that finds it easier to exert the control of the battlespace necessary to enable rapid movement over covered ground. That is almost certainly one of the keys to combined arms warfare in the near future.
Strategy and Geopolitics
Sadly for Ukraine’s front line fighters, most of these technological developments won’t arrive for months. And it would be a mistake to underestimate the frustration building among the ranks of Ukraine’s front line personnel right now. Many who have been fighting since 2022 need a break, at the very least several months if not a year or more away from the front.
I have often argued that the situation isn’t as bad as the media makes it out to be, and this assessment still holds. But even if a total collapse of the front is extremely unlikely, many Ukrainian brigades are undoubtedly exhausted. Moscow’s attrition strategy in Ukraine leads to bloody operations that aren’t worth the cost in the long run, but over the next few months this will still force Ukraine to send forces into engagements that drain it of scarce troops and shells. More are coming, but until around May 9th, thanks to the ruscist fetish for holidays, the orcs are on the march. Where there’s a whip, there’s a way, as the song from that creepy cartoon version of Lord of the Rings from the 1970s goes.
The failure of Ukraine’s parliament to set a set time limit for service before personnel can resign from the forces has to come as a blow at a bad time. I understand why Syrskyi wants to handle this separately from the basic mobilization law changes passed - time is pressing. After this spring wave, Moscow will send another and larger one in summer. However, Ukrainian lawmakers will need to move fast to address the issue before it festers, imbuing even more fatalism into the prospect of military service.
It is very difficult in a long war to connect individuals’ actions to the long-term objective day in and out. Hope of an end that doesn’t require death or incapacitation will lead to more personnel voluntarily fighting harder for longer. If someone who enlisted in 2022 hits early 2025 and no longer feels like fighting is worth it, forcing them to stay on the front into 2026 will only make them a liability. Push people too far, like Moscow does, and you wind up with atrocities and mistakes.
Truth be told, until Ukraine finds a way to hold and take ground without sacrificing too many lives, there’s an argument to be made that the blood of its soldiers will be better spent in the second half of 2026, as opposed the summer of 2025, as many analysts suggest is the plan. However, Moscow won’t be critically low on tanks and AFVs until late in 2025 at best.
Holding on to as many bodies as possible deep into 2026 isn’t guaranteed to leave Ukraine any better off in a relative sense than it will be in 2024 once sufficient artillery ammunition and the first modern jets arrive. Not only that, but by 2025 Moscow will have even more time to adapt, possibly discovering a combination of effects that will prevent Ukraine from breaking through its defenses even when Moscow’s military reserves are fully exhausted.
As ever, the solution to Ukraine’s most pressing problems is receiving the proper level of comprehensive support from its allies. There exists a distinctly passive-aggressive tendency on the part of US leaders in particular to not only drag heels on approving aid in sufficient amounts on a reliable basis but fail to proactively develop assistance programs that Kyiv’s officials don’t have the bandwidth to build themselves.
This failure adds even more credence to my argument that western leaders give every impression of wanting Putin to win because they fear what comes after him. Most appear to be deeply invested in a future defined by an eternal cold war with a China-led geopolitical grouping that only exists in the tentative form it now does because Beijing exploits western hypocrisy to sustain its own legitimacy at home.
Nobody wants to rebel against their masters if that exposes them to an even worse threat. So even though the leaders of today have no clue how to proceed and are relying on a skewed view of history to guide their actions, they’re pulling the entire world into the maelstrom of global collapse.
It’s an old story - this is what complex political entities do. Whether authoritarian or democratic, once a country contracts the imperialist virus the condition tends to be lethal in the long run. Leaders grasp at any excuse to avoid dealing with the consequences of their own lack of vision.
German chancellor Scholz has many arguments for why Berlin can’t give Ukraine Taurus cruise missiles; the latest and most plausible of all is that Scholz sees Taurus as Germany’s main deterrent against russia. This claim is so brazenly devoid of basic comprehension of simple military science that it beggars belief. Scholz wants to be able to say that because Germany might be able to hit a few targets in russia, a power with nukes, that deterrence exists. LOL.
If it convinces him to release the rest of Germany’s Patriot systems, then so be it. But really, the Taurus hesitation and excuses for it remind me of a German phrase I looked up just to get the point across to the few dozen folks who read this blog in Germany - Brot kann schimmeln, was kannst du, Bundeskanzler Scholz?
Translation: Bread can mold, what can you do, Chancellor Scholz? Entschúldigung if I fouled up the grammar there, German speakers, aber Deutsch sprache ist schwer sprache, ja?
Then there’s Joe Biden. For all the incessant petty squabbling between European governments and the institutional glacier that is the EU, at least it isn’t the federal government of the USA.
Zombie Idiocy perfectly sums up the state of affairs in the dismal two-party doom loop. You can’t even get a sane third party going in the USA thanks to the tight connection between media outlets and the parties. The closest America manages to come are conspiracy theorists, rich people with a massive ego, or a combination, like the latest Kennedy to tempt fate in the public eye.
The good news buried in the Iran-Israel fight, which presently looks more likely than not to escalate further with nasty impacts for all involved, is that aid to Ukraine should be pulled through Congress this week or next. As I expected, Trump isn’t keen on being seen by the old-school Reagan Republicans he’ll need to turn out to win in November as weak on Putin.
A large and growing portion of the modern Republican party is no doubt enthralled with Moscow. But Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are not, in that, much different from Nancy Pelosi and her protege Adam Schiff, to say nothing of a lot of the old-school left, people like Chomsky. Trying to claim that the crazies represent all Republicans only makes team Trump’s arguments more powerful, no amount of social scorn directed at voters who might dare consider voting for him effective at stopping him from winning.
This matters for Ukraine because it faces a future where Trump is reelected. The odds are probably 60/40 in Trump’s favor given the dynamics of US presidential elections. Maybe 50/50. Either way, using Ukraine as a tool to bludgeon Trump doesn’t do anything to help protect it.
Besides, Biden and Trump are creeping to the middle wherever they think they have room to budge. That means Biden will continue his public statements of support for Ukraine while also dispatching Jake Sullivan to tell Ukraine not to attack ruscist oil refineries. Trump, on the other hand, simply wants his Ukraine policy to look as if it’s making Europeans foot the bill bigly.
The House might pass the existing aid package that made it through the Senate, but my expectation is that Johnson will release his own that’s more supportive of Israel and structures Ukraine aid as loans. Which sounds like a slap, but could have a major upside. In the future, maintaining and even expanding effective US support for Ukraine will become much less controversial if it comes in loans instead of grants.
A loan can carry no interest and might be entirely forgiven under a future pro-Ukraine administration. The desire to see it repaid quickly creates incentives for russian assets in the USA to be seized and given to Ukraine. That setup would be difficult for Trump or the Republicans to kill.
The average Republican (I’m not one, but know some) is not pro-Putin and understands the simple logic in weakening Moscow. Realists often get a bad rap among international relations scholars, but in certain moments and domains the global system is sadly driven by pure zero sum thinking - usually when expectations about the thing have crashed, as is true today.
Almost nobody, not even China, actually wants a strong russia, particularly ruled by an untrustworthy type like Putin. The ruscist empire’s loss is everyone else’s gain so long as it doesn’t implode in a nuclear civil war - to the rest of the world, russia is a source of resources whose pretensions are tolerated because that’s easier than fighting it all the time. Why be the crazy neighbor’s target if you don’t have to, particularly if dealing with him draws everyone else’s attention?
But that’s as far as it goes. No one is coming to save russia from itself unless forced to by the fear of a big US-led coalition coming to contain them. This is why protecting Taiwan depends on making Beijing look west to secure its New Silk Road. Xi isn’t going after Taiwan if he has Central Eurasia’s issues to manage.
To sum up: Ukraine’s situation is difficult, but on a gradually improving trend. It’s set to be a difficult spring and early summer. Yet by late summer I suspect that Ukraine will be in a position to strike back hard - and the ground doesn’t get as muddy in Kherson and Crimea as early as other places on the liberation list.