Understanding The Future Of The War In Ukraine
Nearly ten months in, reliable information is emerging about what really happened in the early days.
Note: Originally published on Medium, December 7, 2022 with edits made 1/23/23.
The best sources for science-backed evaluations of the ongoing Russian attempt to destroy Ukraine remain:
RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute.
Eastern European research groups like Rochan consulting
Surprisingly, both independent and government-affiliated media in Ukraine
Liveuamap and militaryland.net, both open source
This does not mean they aren’t biased to some degree, but these folks generally do make a clear effort to apply rigorous scientific methods to understanding the conflict and its future trajectories. They don’t make stuff up or simply spin open source information as their own.
They are infinitely superior to literally everything produced by the US-based Institute For the Study of War, which sadly gets far more attention in English-speaking media. Wikipedia uses them too, which is deeply concerning, as it is supposed to be more objective than that, but I digress.
ISW, and other regularly seen talking heads like Michael Kofmann, Mick Ryan, and David Petraeus, promote a very particular narrative about the war designed to portray NATO and the Biden Administration in the best possible light. From the beginning, they have worked to obscure the truth on the ground by pumping out content derived from the same open source intelligence everyone else relies on, generally without attribution.
It’s a sneaky game US-based think tanks deploy to dress up their partisan propaganda as science. It works because the vast majority of Americans have no training in military science, geography, or defense policy. Such subjects are almost taboo for non-experts to discuss, and severed from any real democratic controls the American military-industrial-media complex wages a perpetual war against the rest of us to shape narratives about conflicts abroad.
Because most English-speaking media outlets uncritically spread what ISW and allied propagandists pump out, harsh truths about Russia’s war is constantly submerged. The most critical of these is the simple fact that Russia’s military is not entirely incompetent, it can and has adapted many of its tactics to mitigate shortcomings, and if anything is actually getting stronger right now, not weaker.
That means support for Ukraine must be strengthened too, and fast, probably by countries in Europe.
RUSI recently published a 70+ page report that serves as an early history of the military side of Ukraine’s desperate defense back in Spring. It is based on field research and direct interviews with Ukrainian sources, so it not a truly scientific study, but I’ll link to it over and over again because doing that right will take years, and having read enough of their analysis this past year I trust that RUSI gets as close as you can to the truth given the information available and the need to protect Ukraine’s operational security.
Some interesting highlights stand out:
Turns out, neither American Javelin and Stinger missiles nor Turkish drones saved Ukraine from destruction in the early hours of the conflict.
Joe Biden’s diplomacy and all his administration’s publication of intelligence didn’t deter Putin or even prepare Ukraine for assault on Kyiv.
Ukrainian Intelligence made the exact same assessment of Putin’s plan as I did, thinking the threat to Kyiv from Belarus was intended to tie down forces that would otherwise reinforce Ukraine’s main army deployed in Donbas.
Ukraine didn’t ignore the danger, but also didn’t believe Russian units would try to charge straight into Kyiv and had only a few units available to fight back. Thing, is, it didn’t matter.
To maintain operational security and avoid giving away their true intent, Russian forces couldn’t brief their soldiers on what was about to happen until literally hours before they went in. Russian soldiers had outdated maps and were told to avoid fighting where they could, because the expectation was that Ukraine’s forces would be divided and overwhelmed.
It is fair to note here that had Biden committed even a single brigade of airborne troops on a narrow mission to protect American citizens evacuating Kyiv, Russia could never have attacked the city without risking a direct conflict with the USA and NATO. America could have stopped this war from happening had its leaders possessed an ounce of courage or truly cared about American citizens.
In any case, the much-touted delivery of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine did little to keep it from falling under Putin’s jackboot. They only bolstered an arsenal Ukraine had already been preparing for exactly this kind of situation, and were outnumbered by domestic designs.
What saved Ukraine was the fact that, having been fighting Russian-backed forces for eight years now, Ukrainian troops and reservists were well-trained and understood what battle is really like.
Artillery was key to their ability to fight and win, and it was Ukrainian artillery that saved Kyiv — alongside the ferocious counterattacks launched by Ukrainian forces as they mobilized under extreme pressure. Drones helped too, mostly by letting scouts and even civilians hide while correcting fire for the guns.
When Putin attacked, Ukraine wasn’t ready to defend Kyiv. Its forces were outnumbered 12:1, yet they fought back and held on in the ground and the sky, suffering painful losses. Not expecting resistance, Russian forces took days to recover from the shock of being hit by massed artillery fires every time they massed together. The timing of their movements was all wrong, so supply chains were a mess and they were forced to talk to civilians to figure out where they even were.
If American soldiers had been in the same situation, the outcome would have been identical. I know, because I’ve seen this happen in practice engagements with my own eyes. I’ve watched officers and soldiers freeze and panic, even when the bullets weren’t real. That’s why you have to train personnel intensively for the mission, otherwise bloody debacles are the natural result.
Ukraine was shocked that Russia would actually go through with an all-out invasion on multiple fronts because this was, in military terms, an incredibly bad idea. It could only ever work if everything went according to plan, and the first rule of planning is to always expect things to go wrong.
Overconfidence plus Ukraine rising up as a nation to repel the invader defeated Putin’s initial assault. Once off balance, Russian forces in the north never regained their footing, and Ukraine has been growing stronger ever since.
But Russian forces were also not wiped out, and retreated in good order. And on the ground, Russian troops often did not prove to be incompetent when in a fight where they had adequate organization and support.
Ukraine isn’t talking about its casualties much because they are obviously grievious. Probably about equal to Russia’s, but coming from a population base about a third the size of its ruthless neighbor’s.
Ukrainian sources have ruthlessly mocked Russian military incompetence because it feels good, the memes are genuinely hilarious, and also because visible success has brought additional support from abroad. But along with deliberate efforts to mislead the American public by politicians and allied media voices, they have created the dangerous illusion of total Russian military incompetence.
In truth, as I’ve argued all year, Russia’s successes in the south, particularly taking the Azov coast, indicated what its forces can accomplish if things go to plan. The shift to focus on Donbas and pressing advances through shell-shattered terrain marked a major change in Russian tactics that reduced casualty rates and allowed it to make progress again.
Once its forces weren’t vulnerable to getting hit from all sides, Russia’s military started to work out how to fight again, and has in many cases ground Ukrainian units to dust. It is worth noting that most of Ukraine’s original army has been destroyed. With fewer than 100,000 regular soldiers, its remnants now form the core of new formations made up of newly-trained mobilized recruits.
Russia, after partial mobilization and the withdrawal from Kherson, is likely pursuing the same strategy with some 300,000 recruits. Some have, it is true, been thrown into the meat grinder around Bakhmut. But recent reports indicate the quality of Russian troops along the front line is improving.
Russia has scooped up hundreds of thousands of men with military experience and actually put them through training. The Battalion Tactical Group concept failed because management shortcomings, and Russia appears to be reverting to a more traditional brigade and division style of organization.
The ongoing effort to demolish Ukraine’s infrastructure is a prelude to a completely new offensive sometime this winter or after the mud clears in spring. It will involve even more troops than the offensive last February, and though much of their equipment will be old, so is most of Ukraine’s.
Failure to fully modernize Ukraine’s military with up-to-date gear with sufficient speed, including combat jets and armored vehicles, is creating a dangerous opening for Putin to win the next round. Americans in particular are bored of the war in Ukraine, and the cold dead hand of Joe Biden’s inept strategy continues to prevent countries in Europe from fully stocking Ukraine with high-tech gear.
In understanding any conflict, it is important to recognize that things are constantly happening simultaneously at multiple scale levels.
The Tactical level concerns low-level movement of troops in the field, their activities and relative capabilities.
The Operational level is broader, focusing on dispositions of major forces and supporting them in completing long-term tasks.
The Strategic level encompasses not only the fighting but the political context.
Ukraine was actually surprised by Russia’s operational Maskirovka before the assault began, but this was more than balanced out by the tenacity of Ukraine’s defenders at the tactical level. Russia has, until this summer during Ukraine’s counteroffensives, maintained key operational advantages that have shaped how Ukraine was forced to defend itself.
Improving Ukraine’s tactical capabilities with NATO-standard artillery when the Soviet-era stocks of ammunition ran out allowed it to regain an operational edge this summer. Russia’s offensive in Donbas was reduced to a slow grind forward only after whole cities were obliterated by artillery. This could only be sustained by centralizing artillery logistics, which meant putting huge amounts of ammunition in depots HIMARS rockets happily tore apart.
Despite the end of this effort, Russia is now working to regain its operational edge by narrowing its focus again and employing new weapons, like Iranian drones, to improve the reach of its firepower. It is also compensating tactically, training troops to actually fight and adopting rational means of employing them.
By Spring, without a radical boost in military aid, Ukraine will lose its operational advantages and most of its tactical ones, too. It will face the permanent loss of territory and a likely resumption of the Russian effort to destroy Kyiv. This, not the threat of NATO strikes, is why Putin has not gone nuclear yet.
He still might, as his air defenses prove inadequate in the face of long-range Ukrainian drones that appear capable of striking Moscow. And at the strategic level, despite all the self-congratulating blather by pundits in America and Britain, Putin has managed to draw even with both Ukraine and NATO.
India and China, along with most of the developing world, have not condemned Putin’s invasion. Russia has trading lifelines to the rest of the world that will likely prevent the collapse of its economy. Putin is shifting his rhetoric to present his war in Ukraine as an anti-colonial effort, taking advantage of the fact English-speaking leaders refuse to take seriously the concerns of people in these countries.
This leaves Ukraine in an extremely dangerous position going forward. Totally reliant on aid from abroad to keep fighting, Russia is working hard to squeeze it through tiring out people in countries that support Ukraine.
This effort is aided immensely by the American tendency to pronounce every setback a sign of Putin’s imminent defeat. Politics has become team sports in America, and so every issue winds up becoming partisan and distorted beyond repair. Soon enough, aid to Ukraine is likely to get caught up in DC gridlock.
This is why Putin will continue his war well into next year, and also why Russia’s elites will not turn on him until the battlefield situation becomes utterly hopeless. They have every reason to hope that western resolve will crack. It does every time this conflict edges closer to a NATO-Russia war that mounting evidence indicates the former is absolutely not ready for.
Understanding the war in Ukraine and its future is, sadly, not all that difficult. Captured documents indicate Putin’s regime was committed to the wholesale destruction of Ukraine. People were literally going to be picked out of the population and murdered if Moscow saw them as a threat. Zelensky and his government were to be arrested and liquidated.
Invading other countries cannot be allowed by the global community. It’s wrong when Russia does it and wrong when America does it. Foreign policy elites in the English speaking world don’t want to admit that the war in Ukraine is already out of their control. There is no freezing it now, shoving it back in a box.
This may well be the start of what future historians will call World War Three. Events have been set in motion that are radically altering geopolitical calculations everywhere. It will be a minor miracle if this doesn’t absolutely explode on a global level.
If I’m China, for example, looking at a crippled Biden Administration that has shown as much hostility as Trump, humiliating the US military by blockading Taiwan is an attractive option. Now that it is known that NATO countries, including the US, lack ammunition reserves and the industrial capacity to rapidly boost production, this will factor into the calculations of leaders everywhere.
The only way to preserve any semblance of a world order is to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as swiftly as possible. And that’s only happening if Ukraine is armed sufficiently to break Russia’s defenses in the occupied territories and restore its 1991 borders.
This is how the war must end. Anything less only puts off the moment of reckoning, just like not confronting Japan when it invaded China, Germany when it took Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet Union when it seized the Baltic States as part of the alliance with Hitler.
The hard truth about the war in Ukraine is that it ends in 2023 with a clear Russian defeat, or it expands to consume the globe. The world system is fracturing, following the adaptive cycle down a well-worn path.
A world yet to be born is being shaped by the blood sacrifice of Ukraine’s defenders, just as Midgard was by Odin from Ymir’s remains in the beginning of this cycle of the cosmos. Everything repeats, what was old become new.
War is no different. And the harsh lessons of history imply this one is only just getting started.