How Ukraine can win the war (or Russia lose it)
Ukraine's military survived the initial Russian onslaught. There is now reason to believe it can pull off a victory.
It is now over 24 hours since Russia’s launched its full-scale military attack against Ukraine. On the face of it, the scale of this invasion is extraordinary. An estimated 190,000 Russian troops (which represent no less than two-thirds of Russia’s entire army) have been deployed against Ukraine and they are backed by some of the most sophisticated weaponry any armed force on earth possesses. This is the largest invasion force ever assembled by any country aside from the US since World War II, with the objection of subjugating Ukraine entirely, annexing even more of its territory, and leaving it as little more than a puppet state of the Kremlin.
For those of us who followed the invasion as it unfurled, echoes of the “shock and awe” which the US unleashed against Iraq in 2003 were all too evident, as ballistic and cruise missiles exploded, fighter jets streaked across the sky, and massive rocket artillery barrages lit up the night sky. But as the day’s fighting drew to a close, the surprising fact was that Russia’s blitz appeared to have fizzled. Aside from some incursions in the outskirts, no major Ukrainian city has so far fallen to the Russian army. An impressive helicopter air assault on the Hostomel airbase just outside Kyiv was decisively defeated in a see-saw battle that lasted hours. And barely any headway has been made by Russia around Kharkov (Ukraine’s second largest city) or in the Donbas, the region that is the epicenter of this crisis.
The events of the first day must surely lead us to think of a possibility that appeared inconceivable just a day before: can Ukraine actually win the war?
Let’s begin.
Geography and momentum
It is hard to recall a recent war in which the defending side has suffered from such an overwhelming geographical disadvantage as Ukraine does against Russia. The country can be attacked in five different directions: the west bank of the Dnieper, the east bank, around Kharkov, through the Donbas, and through Crimea. On all of these fronts, the Ukrainian army is outnumbered and at risk of outflanking. The situation, quite simply put, is a military commander’s nightmare, being forced to react against a numerically and technologically superior opponent, without knowing where it will decide to concentrate force for a decisive breakthrough.
Furthermore, they are pitted against an army that been the greatest historical exponent of military deception on an operational scale, or maskirovka. Soviet and Russian military doctrine has always revolved around never letting your enemy know where you intend to strike, when you intend do, and with what forces. In 1942, the Red Army successfully fooled the German Wehrmacht into thinking that its flanks at Stalingrad were weakly manned only to unleash a massive pincer attack that destroyed the German 6th Army before the end of the winter. All of this while holding on to a thin stretch of the city with the barest of forces. In 1944, an even grander maskirovka misled the Germans into thinking the Red Army’s summer offensive would be directed at the southern sector of the front (towards Ukraine, as it happens). Instead, they struck through what is now Belarus wiping out between a quarter and half a million German troops and destroying three entire armies.
With the inability to match the forces arrayed against it, the conundrum for Ukraine is that it is forced into a difficult tradeoff. It can either attempt to stop the multiple Russian advances wherever these materialize at the risk of a breakthrough, or trade territory for time and space, enacting tactical retreats to better defensive positions while chipping away at Russia’s spearheads (and perhaps hoping that insurgents cause havoc further havoc behind the lines). It appears that Ukrainian forces are performing a mix of the two, as demonstrated by the negligible advances by Russia in the Kharkov and Donbas fronts, fierce resistance around Kyiv, but allowing a deeper advance of the Russians in the south, directly across Crimea.
It's worth understanding why the southern front has been more successful, at least in terms of territory taken. At time of writing, the left prong of the Russian advance has reached the east bank of the Dniepr at Kherson while on the right, they have managed to capture Melitopol. In this area, terrain greatly favors the attacker, being both flat and largely devoid of forest, though the massive Dnieper river impedes the possibility of a major outflanking maneuver. It is possible that the Ukrainian army has deliberately avoided making much of a stand in this difficult to defend region, which also does not appear to be of much strategic importance. But while the Dnieper is still preventing the Russians from further advance to the west (where the key port of Odessa lies), the risk to the east is greater as it would put a Russian army to the back of the Ukrainian forces holding the Donbas.
Whether this advance is the result of Russian success or whether they are being led into a Marne-style trap is unknown: if Ukraine has an armored reserve in that area, it could swoop south and cut off the Russian advance as it heads to Mariupol or Donetsk. Russia is surely aware of this possibility and may take a more cautious approach, but the lack of successes elsewhere my put pressure on them to take the risk. Who knows. What happens in the southern front in the next 48 hours will be crucial as it appears to be the only region where the possibility of a Russian breakthrough appears feasible at this moment.
Balance of power
Despite Russia’s “shock and awe”, it is worthwhile to consider an old adage in military strategy: you need a 3 to 1 ratio of force (manpower, material, technology, etc.) to have even the slightest chance of winning a battle and 6 to 1 ratio to guarantee it. On an aggregate scale, it is not quite clear Russia’s advantage over Ukraine reaches this threshold. Ukraine, in fact, is one of the best armed militaries in the world, and were it a NATO member it would rank third after the US and Turkey in terms of the size of its army and its stock of land-based offensive weaponry.
In terms of the quality of its weaponry, Ukraine has a largely similar weapons mix to Russia which is expected from a former Soviet republic that inherited large stocks of Soviet weaponry. Both countries, for example, are fielding large numbers of heavily upgraded T-72 tanks, BMP-series infantry fighting vehicles, BTR-series personnel carriers and their respective main frontline fighter is the Su-27 Flanker. However, Russia does have a considerable advantage in key areas, such as offensive missile systems, helicopters, and all categories of combat aircraft including fighters, ground attackers, and heavy bombers. Against this, Ukraine’s air force can offer little more than occasional tactical disruption. At sea, Ukraine’s navy is little more than a coastal defense force and will unlikely play any major role against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which also benefits from some modest amphibious capability though unlikely enough to be decisive (around 1-2 battalions of naval infantry).
Another Russian advantage are its airborne forces, the VDV, which are larger even than the US’s. This gives Russian commanders an extra element of operational flexibility given their ability to be deployed deeper into Ukrainian territory. However, the recent disaster at Hostomel airfield highlights the limitations of airborne assaults. According to reports, numerous helicopters were shot down and Ukrainian air defense in the area was too formidable for Russia to risk flying in larger transport aircraft to secure the airfield. After hours of fighting, Ukrainian special forces managed to retake it, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the vaunted VDV.
What also appears to be the case is that the Ukrainian military was not caught off guard by the timing and scale of the Russian attack. Although the mass rocket attacks captured on video are terrifying to behold, the fact of the matter is that dug in, well-fortified defenders can easily survive them, and they present little risk to heavier vehicles like tanks. Instead, Russian spearheads appear to have run into nimble, well-prepared defenders armed with sophisticated anti-tank weaponry, like portable Javelin missiles. And Ukraine’s air defense, while unable to protect every sector at every time, appears to remain effective enough to be a persistent threat, as Russian cruise missiles shot down over Kyiv are testament to.
The supply side
“Infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars” - Gen. John J. Pershing
Arguably, the biggest determinant of success on a modern, mechanized battlefield are logistics. As the sophistication and expense of modern weaponry increases, few countries can afford to maintain the ordnance needed to sustain military operations on this scale for anything more than a week or two. The consequence of this is two fold: you either reduce the scale of the fighting so that you do not run out of the more expensive stuff (cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, etc), or you maintain the intensity using cruder armament, like dumb bombs, saving your remaining high-tech weapons for limited, high priority targets. Both options only end up benefiting the defender, which does not see as big an erosion of its fighting capability as the attacker when using simpler weapons.
Over the past decade, Russia has introduced new and highly advanced armament such as hypersonic missiles which even NATO lacks. However, the flip side to this is that they have not entered service in large numbers. As such, the state of Russia’s arsenal is a bit of a chimaera: full of shiny new weapons displayed in arms fairs around the world, but barely a trickle of which are actually deployed with combat units. Russia also lacks the Soviet Union’s military-industrial power or the US and China’s financial power to build them in sufficient numbers in sufficient time.
There is reason to believe that their logistical problems are far worse than this. Russia’s military spending in 2020 is estimated at $61.7 billion, less than one-tenth that of the US and not much higher than many NATO militaries such as France, Germany, and the UK, all of which spend in the region of $52-59 billion. However, the difference between Russia and these mid-tier militaries is that the Russian armed forces are significantly larger in terms of both manpower and equipment. Even when discounting the lower overhead costs and cheaper equipment compared to its richer, Western European rivals, this does suggest that maintaining such a large military comes with some associated tradeoff and that tradeoff might very well be logistics (as well as other intangibles such as hours of training).
This could prove catastrophic if the Russian military does not manage to subjugate Ukraine in the first week of the war or even earlier, and especially if Ukraine continues to receive supplies of key weapons like anti-air and anti-tank missiles from NATO. The situation will be made infinitely worse if Russia decides to engage in urban combat, under the assumption that Ukrainian forces make a stand in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa or other large cities. Urban combat hugely favors the defender, and nullifies many of the advantage of high-tech weaponry as the US found out during the Iraqi insurgency as well as the Russians themselves in Chechnya.
NATO’s invisible hand
It is not a secret that numerous NATO countries supplied Ukraine with last minute weaponry in the weeks before the invasion. What is still a secret is whether NATO has assisted Ukraine in more covert ways, such as through military coordination and intelligence sharing. After all, it is very much in NATO’s interest for Russia to lose this war, while simultaneously avoiding involvement in it altogether. Supporting Ukraine under the table is the perfect way to balance these two objectives.
I have some suspicion, however, that NATO’s involvement went far deeper than that. One of the most surprising aspects of Russia’s initial invasion was the absence of crippling electronic warfare and cyber attacks, which happen to be Russian warfighting specialties. It was widely expected that any prelude to an invasion would involve massive Russian attacks of this nature against Ukrainian command, control and communications (C3) networks as well as key military and civilian infrastructure. But although there were some reports of Ukrainian sites briefly down it was not remotely on the scale that disrupted Ukraine’s armed forces, political leadership, and civil defense to adequately coordinate and undertake military operations.
It seems highly unlikely, dare I say near impossible, that Russia deliberately avoided a massive electronic and cyber attack in the opening stages of the invasion. Which leads to the possibility that it actually did attempt one but was thwarted. While Ukraine’s cyber capabilities are probably far from negligible, I suspect a successful defense against an attack on this scale was only possible if NATO also contributed towards defeating it. Other forms of electronic warfare would also be easily detected by civilians on the ground, such as disruptions of mobile or internet traffic. That fact that such disruptions have not been evidenced amid 24/7 coverage of the war on social media means that for some reason, they haven’t been undertaken or have failed.
This is of course, conjecture, but it’s a point that I have not seen many people address. If true, it suggests that NATO’s involvement in the conflict is far more substantial that we are being led to believe. And for Ukraine, this could have decisive consequences in its probability of success.
Known unknowns
“As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.” – Donald Rumsfeld, American warlord
War is laced with uncertainty. As the Prussian Field Marshal Moltke the Elder famously stated, no plan survives first contact with the enemy and it is clear that Russia’s concept of how the war would unfold in its first 24-48 hours has not exactly matched reality. As time passes, uncertainty will favor the defender more and more, with the psychological advantage of having your enemy know they are facing a formidable foe that is well equipped, tactically proficient, and fighting for the survival of their homeland. As the Russian war plan deviates further from its original conception, the risk of a major blunder also becomes more likely. Military history is riddled with crushing opening victories that were later snatched by a single strategic mistake, as Moltke’s own son found out at the Marne in 1914 when a battered and beat French army took advantage of an unexpected pivot in the German army’s direction on the outskirts of Paris and dealt it a colossal defeat.
The strategic momentum will, of course, remain Russia’s for some time. They will choose where to focus their attacks and what form these will take. But strategic momentum often belies the fact that the tactical initiative might be held by the opposing side. The performance of the German army in Normandy in the two months after D-Day is a classic example of this, one of the most tactically brilliant defenses in military history against an Anglo-American army whose numerical and material superiority relative to it was far in excess of Russia’s today relative to Ukraine. There is reason to believe that Russia’s failure thus far to achieve a breakthrough may be precisely because it has not been able to translate its strategic momentum into the tactical realm.
The final consideration is the fact that Russia is at a considerable disadvantage to its opponent in terms of troop morale and public appetite for war, which will only get worse as the war drags one without victory in sight. There are numerous reports of Russian units surrendering almost without a fight, with some POWs suggesting that they had been lied to about going to war at all. In contrast, the élan vital of the Ukrainians fighting for their homeland has been nothing short of heroic, such as the bravery of 13 soldiers on Snake Island who fought to the death after hours of shelling, and not before radioing the Russian warship to “go fuck itself”. The Russian army, while no longer the conscript-heavy force of its Red Army days, is still highly staffed with uneducated, poorly motivated troops who are forced to endure brutal conditions and abusive relationships with their superiors. Aside from the handful of elite troops like the Spetsnaz and VDV, it’s hard to imagine that this is an army that will fight for every square kilometer the way that their enemy will.
As for the civilian population, the fact that thousands of Russians have taken to the streets in protest even in the face of almost certain arrest is a testament that this is not a country that cares much about fighting a neighbor they have more in common than not. This is Putin’s war, not Russia’s war, and expecting the Russian people to undertake the sacrifice of losing sons, brothers and fathers as well as the and the hardship of a potential economic collapse will be too much to bear. And whatever appeal the war might have in its opening days could swiftly collapse if Russia’s fortunes begin to reverse, just as US popular opinion on Iraq soured after its swift initial victory descended into a chaotic sectarian civil war.
The worst outcome
There is one possibly terrifying consequence of Ukraine inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Russians. And it is that inflicting such a defeat is an intolerable outcome to Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. This raises the risk that he will resort to a more inhumane conduct of the war which could involve mass bombings against civilian targets or even the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This should not be unthinkable, as Putin’s conduct of this crisis has shown.
It remains to be seen what NATO and the international community’s response to such as a calamity would be. Short of a great power war (which nobody in their right minds should be eager for), turning Russia into a politically and economically isolated pariah state for the remainder of Putin’s time in office may be the only acceptable response. We may be fortunate if the Russian people decide that is too long a wait.
Did you like this article? Follow me on Twitter at @raguileramx and on YouTube at ProgressumTV. You might also like my book, The Glass-Half Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century (Repeater Books, 2020). My security-related work has appeared in The Military Balance, Armed Conflict Survey, and Strategic Survey from the International Institute of Strategic Studies.