Brian M Downing
The first year of the war went well for Ukraine. The Russians were stopped outside Kyiv and driven from Kharkiv and Kherson. Victory seemed assured. But there’s been little movement in the last six months. The war for now is a stalemate and Ukrainians are less buoyant. Perhaps more dispiriting than the stalled frontlines is America’s incomprehensible withholding of aid. The Ukrainian national will has been formidable and inspiring, but it’s being severely tested.
The Russian way of war
Putin and his generals adopted a blitzkrieg strategy to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, seize major cities, and force the country back into the empire that predecessors built over the centuries. Blitzkrieg warfare was mastered by Guderian and Rommel but Shoigu and Gerasimov are apparatchiks. They have little understanding of armor and infantry, initiative and maneuver, logistics and airpower. Their soldiers were poorly trained and badly led by any military standards and achieved little against the adaptive, motivated Ukrainians.
The Russians did not adapt, they reverted. They brought back the old methods that Zhukov and Konev used against the Reich. Relentless artillery poundings and massive frontal assaults wore the Wehrmacht down and pushed them from Stalingrad to the Vistula to Berlin. Significantly, as Shils and Janowitz found, Germany’s fighting ability remained intact until the final days. Russia’s objective is now Kyiv.
The Ukrainian national will
Kyiv recently stated that 31,000 of its soldiers have been killed. (Relative to population, that’s the equivalent of 250,000 American dead.) Civilian casualties are significant too. Mariupol has been leveled. Other cities endure repeated missile attacks, despite improving air defenses. Electrical production has suffered. Medical resources are hard-pressed.
There is evidence of exhaustion in combat units but not of discontent. Desertions are infrequent and fraggings unheard of. Draft evasion and flight abroad take place but not in appreciable numbers. The draft age was recently lowered from 27 to 25 (it was 18 in the US) to replenish the army. Soldiers trust their leaders, know their people support them, and believe wholeheartedly in the cause.
How does national resolve remain high? Ukraine hasn’t lost much territory since the opening weeks. In fact, it regained large swathes in the north and south. Russian advances in the last year around Bakhmut and Avdiivka were insignificant. Ukrainian soldiers had to pull back but as they did they saw fields littered with Russian corpses and unattended wounded.
Ukrainian units are homogeneous (though supported by Georgian, Chechen, and Eastern European volunteer battalions). The nation’s upper strata are in uniform and take casualties. Over the years an identity has been forged. Ukrainians are a people oppressed by German and Russian tyrants. The nation endured, fought back, and survived.
The strongest source of cohesion and will is, paradoxically, Putin and his clique. They promise to conquer Ukraine, eradicate its culture, and re-educate its young with an orthodox canon. Every Ukrainian knows that defeat doesn’t mean subjugation, it means annihilation. The people would be interned and relocated to remote parts of trans-Ural Russia, like the Tatars and Chechens in Stalin’s day. Their land and belongings would be doled out to Putin loyalists. The army promises veterans a plot of Ukrainian soil.
Though the summer offensive failed, Ukraine has had notable if unspectacular successes. Special forces and drones have struck deep inside Russia to damage oil facilities, munition plants, and most recently the Morozovsk air base near Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad). Crimea is subjected to drone and missile attacks that have forced most naval vessels to head for safer waters. Partisan warfare is growing. The peninsula is becoming a death trap for Russians deployed there.
National will isn’t inexhaustible – not Ukraine’s, not Russia’s. If American politicians could put aside fealty to a leader of dubious loyalties, Ukraine would become more confident and democracy more secure.
©2024 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.