After more than 28 months of devastating combat, earlier expectations of a decisive Russian victory have given way to the reality of a grinding war of attrition in Ukraine.
“Putin’s theory of victory is to make creeping advances in Ukraine indefinitely,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a private US military think tank. The strategy is designed to “protract the war” with the aim of “destroying Ukrainian statehood,” ISW concluded.
Putin’s original goal, to block Ukraine’s integration with the West, remains the same as it was when he first launched his so-called “special military operation” in February 2022. Meanwhile, Kiev still hopes to join the European Union and NATO amid the growing risk of annexation and a full loss of sovereignty.
Both sides are thus girding for an open-ended, long-haul conflict, analysts say. Ukraine’s Western allies believe Kiev can outlast Moscow’s assaults on civilian and military targets, so long as it receives enough weapons.
To make this allied objective a reality, Ukraine and the West must fashion a concise “grand strategy…aimed at inflicting unacceptable damage on Russia,” suggested the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think tank based in London. The goals must include bringing “Russia to a state of inability/unwillingness to continue the war,” RUSI said.
Early in the war, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin proposed just such an objective. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said.
US President Joe Biden later rejected the idea of bringing Russia to its knees, for fear that Putin would make good on his threat to use nuclear weapons, or that, in the face of defeat, Russia would descend into chaos.
In any case, Austin has not repeated the goal of an all-out victory. And, in terms of helping Ukraine defend itself, the US moderated its supplies of weaponry to Kiev, producing arms in reaction to Russian actions rather than seeking to deter escalation in advance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky resists the idea that a war of attrition is acceptable. He wants to launch a decisive counteroffensive this year, even though an effort to dislodge Russia from eastern Ukraine failed last year. “Yes, we have a counteroffensive plan. We will definitely win. We have no alternative,” he said back in April.
Zelensky and critics of the West’s response have heaped scorn on what they called a “drip-drip” policy of arms supplies.
The Ukrainian leader has been reluctant to frontally criticize Biden, but not the EU. In March, he lashed out at European nations for perceived inadequate delivery of artillery rounds. “Ammunitions is a vital issue,” he said. “Europe can provide more. And it is crucial to demonstrate this now.”
Restrictions on the use of allied-supplied weapons are also a sore point. After weeks of destructive Russian rocket attacks on the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, Biden lifted US prohibitions on US weapons use to strike targets inside Russia – though only to hit a small area near the border.
Chronic delivery delays have frustrated Zelensky as civilian infrastructure and soldiers’ lives are destroyed by unanswered attacks. Zelensky made the request to strike inside Russia on May 13. Permission was granted on May 31 but only after Zelensky complained publicly the week before.
So, who is winning this incipient war of attrition? Certainly, Putin has made consistent efforts to harden alliances with friendly countries. Even if they do not share his obsession with Ukraine, they are content to support a Russia dedicated to weakening a common enemy in the United States.
On Thursday (July 4), Putin visited Kazakhstan for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional grouping he has organized with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In Kazakhstan, Xi urged the ten-member group to “consolidate the power of unity” in the face of “the real challenge of interference and division.”
Xi made no mention of Ukraine in his speech, nor did Chinese news outlets in their account of the meeting. Xinhua news agency focused on how China and Russia are united in resisting Western “pressure.”
China is nonetheless still cautious in its support for Russia’s Ukraine war. It supplies parts and equipment for Russian factories that produce military equipment, but not weapons.
Just before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow announced a “no limits” partnership. After the invasion and now prolonged war, Xi has seemingly dropped the “no limits” description of relations, preferring to describe their close relations as a “friendship.”
Xi has also been careful to support a ceasefire in Ukraine, which is a position in line with many of China’s trade partners in Europe. And he has consistently echoed the Russian narrative that NATO’s expansion is chiefly to blame for the war.
The war has benefitted Beijing indirectly. Its trade with Russia has more than doubled since the war’s beginning, much of it involving the purchase of petroleum products at cut-rate prices. Despite a kind of professed neutrality, likely to avoid Western sanctions, China has also supplied Russia with parts for use in arms manufacture.
Last month, Putin visited North Korea and penned a “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty” that pledged Russia to help if North Korea was attacked. There was also an agreement for an exchange of military resources: rockets for Russia in return for technology for North Korea.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un called the agreement an “alliance.” Putin was seemingly more circumspect by using the word “partnership” to describe the relationship. In any case, the two sides opened the way for restocking Russia’s rocket supplies with North Korean rockets and artillery.
In short, between China and North Korea, along with armed drone supplies from Iran, there is no longer talk in the West of Russia running out of ammunition.
Zelensky, too, has been barnstorming the globe in search of weapons and diplomatic support. He held a peace meeting recently in Zurich, where some 80 attendees signed a statement reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
However, key countries did not participate: China stayed away, as did Brazil, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Ukraine’s Western allies, meanwhile, pledged to deliver long-awaited jet bombers to help Ukraine contest its air space against Russian planes.
Besides adding firepower, the allies also agreed to end the EU’s often disjointed support by putting NATO in charge of organizing arms deliveries and overseeing training. All NATO’s 32 members, not just the most fervent allies of Ukraine—for instance, the US, France, Poland and the Baltic countries bordering Russia—will be expected to contribute.
The decision aims to put “our support to Ukraine on a firmer footing, for years to come,” wrote NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in a June statement. The US will still lend a heavy hand: General Chris Cavoli, who leads the US military’s European Command, will head the effort.
However, a possible troubling concern for Ukraine is the sudden weakening of key allied governments in Europe.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron may have to share some powers with a far-right party that once opposed economic sanctions on Russia. Members of a rising far-right party in Germany have been accused of ties to the Kremlin and accepting bribes from China.
More concerning for Ukraine is the fate of Joe Biden, whose drive for reelection has been hobbled by complaints about inflation, a surge in illegal immigration and crime, along with concerns of his cognitive capabilities after a debate performance that highlighted concerns about his advanced age.
His possible successor, former president Donald Trump, who once called Putin a “genius,” is leading in election opinion polls. He has been vague about how he might handle US support for Kiev. However, during the televised debate with Bide last week, he spouted all sorts of platitudes about how awful the war is.
He said he would settle the Ukraine war “before he took office” in January 2025, but offered no details on how he would do so.
Zelensky replied testily. “If Trump knows how to end this war he should tell us today,” Zelensky told an interviewer. “Because if there are risks to Ukraine’s independence, if there are risks that we lose statehood, we want to be prepared for this.”
If I put this article and the article about the growing opposition against Macros in the Philippines together, the continuation of the war in Ukraine shows all countries in the world thinking about beeing an allay of the US what will happen, when supporting military aggression against neighbors.
Interesting.