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Abstract
As the Russia–Ukraine war enters its third year, Ukraine faces a daunting task: how to restore its military advantage. To maximise Ukraine’s chances of eventual victory, Western countries need to recognise that the driving engine of Ukraine’s effectiveness has been a destruction-centred approach. This approach has resulted in high levels of attrition and could prove an important part of the West’s and Ukraine’s theory of victory. The West enjoys the overall advantage in resources and should therefore focus on facilitating Ukraine’s ability to establish a decisive advantage in fires. The West also needs to help Ukraine scale its capacity to employ units so that it can exploit that advantage in offensive operations. The West will need to appreciate Ukrainian force structure and military culture, as well as the challenges posed by an increasingly mobilised military, which means avoiding the temptation to try to convert the Ukrainian military to a more Western, manoeuvre-centred way of fighting.
Notes
1 See Franz-Stefan Gady and Michael Kofman, ‘Ukraine’s Strategy of Attrition’, Survival, vol. 65, no. 2, April–May 2023, pp. 7–22; Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, ‘Beyond Ukraine’s Offensive’, Foreign Affairs, 10 May 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-war-beyond-ukraines-offensive; and Rob Lee and Michael Kofman, ‘How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success’, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 23 December 2022, https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/12/how-the-battle-for-the-donbas-shaped-ukraines-success/.
2 See Jack Watling, Oleksandr V. Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds, ‘Preliminary Lessons from Russia’s Unconventional Operations During the Russo-Ukrainian War, February 2022–2023’, RUSI, 29 March 2023, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-russias-unconventional-operations-during-russo-ukrainian-war-february-2022.
3 See ibid.; and Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi et al., ‘Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022’, RUSI, 30 November 2022, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022.
4 See Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, ‘Ukraine at War: Paving the Road from Survival to Victory’, RUSI, 4 July 2022, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/ukraine-war-paving-road-survival-victory.
5 See Mari Saito, Maria Tsvetkova and Anton Zverev, ‘Abandoned Russian Base Holds Secrets of Retreat in Ukraine’, Reuters, 26 October 2022, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base/.
6 See Isabelle Khurshudyan et al., ‘Inside the Ukrainian Counteroffensive that Shocked Putin and Reshaped the War’, Washington Post, 29 December 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/ukraine-offensive-kharkiv-kherson-donetsk/.
7 According to the Conflict Intelligence Team, a total of 123 military units were established, including 77 motorrifle regiments and 18 separate motor-rifle battalions. See ‘As Part of the Mobilization, More than 120 New Military Units Were Created in Russia. A Third of Those Called Up Were Sent to Personnel Units – To Make Up for Combat Losses’, Meduza, 5 October 2023, https://meduza.io/feature/2023/10/05/v-ramkah-mobilizatsii-v-rossii-sozdali-bolee-120-novyh-voinskih-chastey-tret-prizvannyh-otpravili-v-kadrovye-chasti-vospolnyat-boevye-poteri.
8 See Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, ‘Perseverance and Adaptation: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive at Three Months’, War on the Rocks, 4 September 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/perseverance-and-adaptation-ukraines-counteroffensive-at-three-months/.
9 See ‘Miscalculations, Divisions Marked Offensive Planning by U.S., Ukraine’, Washington Post, 4 December 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-us-planning-russia-war/.
10 See Valery Zaluzhny, ‘The Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces on How to Win the War’, The Economist, 1 November 2023, https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/11/01/the-commander-in-chief-of-ukraines-armed-forces-on-how-to-win-the-war.
11 Gady and Kofman, ‘Ukraine’s Strategy of Attrition’.
12 See Alexandra Prokopenko, ‘Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree’, Foreign Affairs, 8 January 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/putins-unsustainable-spending-spree.
13 We define manoeuvre operations or warfare at the tactical level of war as the combination of rapid movement with firepower. As Amos C. Fox explains, ‘modern maneuver warfare has two goals: (1) to achieve a psychological impact on an adversary – to create panic, or cognitive paralysis, forcing the enemy’s will to resist to collapse; and (2) to gain and maintain a position of relative advantage in relation to a belligerent. Creating confusion (a cognitive effect) and disorganization (a physical effect) are subordinate goals of maneuver warfare that contribute to the concept’s overarching aims. The idea of defeating the enemy through the most economic use of force is closely aligned with both of these goals.’ Positional warfare, he continues, ‘can be defined as the use of force – through tactics, firepower or movement – to move an opponent from one position to another for further exploitation or to deny them access to an area for further exploitation – while attrition warfare can be defined as the methodical use of battle or shaping operations to erode or destroy a belligerent’s equipment, personnel and resources at a pace greater than they can replenish their losses.’ Amos C. Fox, ‘A Solution Looking for a Problem: Illuminating Misconceptions in Maneuver-warfare Doctrine’, US Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fall 2017, moore.army.mil/armor/earmor/content/issues/2017/Fall/4Fox17.pdf.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Franz-Stefan Gady
Franz-Stefan Gady is IISS Consulting Senior Fellow for Cyber Power and Future Conflict, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Michael Kofman
Michael Kofman is a Senior Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.