Almost a month after sending tanks across the border into Ukraine, the results on the battlefield seem clear. Russia failed to achieve every objective it set for itself at the beginning of the conflict. It hasn’t taken Kyiv to install a puppet government. It hasn’t captured Odessa to cement control of the Black Sea coast. And, as fighting near Severodonetsk and Slovyansk indicated on Tuesday, it has not been able to bring either the Donetsk Oblast or Luhansk Oblast fully under Russian control.
The most Russia has been able to achieve is tentative control of territory along routes of egress, and a lot — a lot — of destruction. In return, it has paid an extremely heavy price. That price can be measured in over 10,000 Russian troops, hundreds of tanks and other armored vehicles, and dozens of aircrafts. It can be measured in a much more united NATO, Europe, and world which have come together to apply economic sanctions against Russia generally and against the oligarchs that rule under Vladimir Putin. And it has paid an enormous price in lost of respect, as Russia’s military has been revealed to be more decrepit, fragile, and incompetent than anyone would have believed a month ago.
On Telegram and Twitter, there are a number of Russian accounts that might best be described as cowering as they exchange reports of U.S. tanks massing along the border and anticipate a NATO invasion. After all, it’s what they would do, if the opposition proved to be so weak.
Still, there is a large contingent of punditry that has moved through this war in the following phases: Russia will win in a walk over. Russia will win in a matter of weeks. And now, Russia will win inevitably. At military magazine Task & Purpose, retired Marine Col. Andrew Milburn has a fine example of this latest step in the Russia-must-win evolution, with an argument that Russia controls the “long clock.” That is, putting aside the calendar of days and weeks, Ukraine will simply run out of bodies before Russia.
“The Russians are already adapting, and by doing so are narrowing the Ukrainians’ tactical edge. The one-sided culling of Russian armored columns that characterized the opening days of the war, and kept YouTube subscribers around the world happy, are a thing of the past. The Russians now lead their formations with electronic attack, drones, lasers and good-old-fashioned reconnaissance by fire. They are using cruise missiles and saboteur teams to target logistics routes, manufacturing plants, and training bases in western Ukraine. Realizing that the Ukrainians lack thermal sights for their stinger missile launchers, the Russians have switched all air operations to after dark. It may be for this same reason that Russian cruise missile strikes in western and southern Ukraine have also been at nighttime.”
There are more than a few problems with this “The Russians are already adapting” narrative. First of all, all air operations have not been changed to night. While missile strikes and high altitude bombing runs are indeed happening at night, that’s been true since the start of the war. These are systems that don’t need to see, so that’s been the approach of air forces everywhere. Second, multiple images and videos have shown that Ukrainians do have thermal sights on their man-carried anti-aircraft weapons. That’s true even for older systems patched together from Soviet hardware. But among the bigger problem with this statement is that Russian planes and helicopters are still flying by day. There are plenty of images and videos showing this. They’re just doing all flying a lot less often. It’s not that Russia has moved to sorties at night, it’s simply doing less sorties.
Likewise, if Russia has suddenly figured out how to incorporate “electronic attack, drones, lasers, and reconnaissance by fire” into their movements, then where is the evidence on the battlefield? Russia isn’t gaining ground, it’s losing it. It’s losing it around Kyiv. It’s losing it north of Kherson. Exactly where is Russia mounting these new and improved assaults?
These arguments are to support Milburn’s final point, which is that the longer this goes on, the more inevitable Russia victory becomes.
“Overconfidence may obscure for the Ukrainians one salient fact about this conflict: Time is not on their side. They have fought a skillful and determined defense, but have also had the advantage of home turf, interior lines and the inherent superiority enjoyed by a defender with well-prepared positions, cutting-edge weapons and clear fields of fire. The question now is whether they can pivot to the offense, with its requirement for more comprehensive planning, faster than the Russians can adapt. If not, a prolonged conflict seems likely, and in a war of attrition, the Russians — with a military four times that of Ukraine — will inevitably have the upper hand.”
Setting aside the fact that the visually verified loss of military equipment — tanks, vehicles, aircraft, etc. — has been over three times higher for Russia than Ukraine, this seems to be ignoring the fact that Russia and Ukraine aren’t fighting in a vacuum. Russia isn’t just a place where more chess pieces are stored, ready to be deployed to the board. It’s a country. One where the costs of this war are only starting to come home, along with the bodies of thousands of dead soldiers. There are also very real limits to exactly how bare Russia can strip the tens of thousands of miles of borders it shares with other countries. Having a army 4x larger on paper, and being able to deploy that army into one area of conflict is a very different thing. After all, the “they’ll run out of troops before we do” argument didn’t work well for the U.S. in any nation it’s attempted to occupy over the last 60 years, even when the numbers were much more lopsided than between Russia and Ukraine.
Whether or not Ukraine is able to turn counterattacks into a real counteroffensive is a legitimate question, one that will test their ability to execute on all the points where Russia has failed. And Ukraine’s ability to keep some air defenses intact and aircraft flying is a long way from being able to provide the kind of air superiority needed for an extended advance.
There are very good reasons to think that Ukraine can’t win this war in the sense of driving Russia off the battlefield. But there are no good reasons to think that Russia only has to keep throwing meat into the grinder to secure an inevitable victory. This probably isn’t the final state of the “Russia will win” analysts — there are still chemical and tactical nukes to invoke, after all — but it may be the least convincing.
Tuesday, Mar 22, 2022 · 6:21:00 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Earlier reports on Tuesday showed Ukrainian forces capturing two towns to the west and north of Kyiv, positioning them to encircle Russian forces in the NW suburbs of Irpin, Bucha, and Hostomel. Now it seems that effort is seriously underway, with Chechen volunteers—fighting for Ukraine—leading the charge.
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