Analysis | Ukraine Is Now About Who To Attack First

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The biggest question hanging over the battlefield in Ukraine for the first three or four months of this year is whether the Russian invaders or the defenders of Ukraine will launch a major and probably premature offensive. Both parties to the conflict are under different pressures to do so.

Militarily, Russia would likely benefit from moving slowly. It is the larger country with large but often untapped internal resources. It will take time to ramp up military prowess, acquire the electronics necessary for modern weaponry, train and properly equip the hundreds of thousands of troops that have been mobilized since last September — and fix the mess in its mobilization system, a problem that General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian employed in command of the invasion, has confirmed in a rare interview. It also takes time to clean up its volatile propaganda narratives: many Russians are still unclear about what they are supposed to be fighting for in Ukraine and what the ultimate goals of the war are. While the original propaganda line – Ukrainians are “fascists” – seems to have fizzled out, no new mass enthusiasm seems to have been sparked.

One of the most coherent new lines of propaganda is designed to prepare the Russians for a protracted conflict.

“Our most important task is to get our industry on a military track as soon as possible,” wrote pro-war blogger Gherman Kulikovsky on his Telegram channel, which has more than 620,000 subscribers. “A decade of wars awaits us, and these wars will erupt in different parts of the world. The military special operation [in Ukraine] is only the first hot phase of the Third World War.”

Supporting Russia’s plea for strategic patience is the somewhat counterintuitive notion that Ukraine’s main financial and military backer, the US, might feel like it’s benefiting from a protracted conflict, or at least not suffering too many ill effects. According to a recent Rand Corporation report entitled “Avoiding a Long War,” the potential benefits of a long conflict for the US include a weakening of Russia, as well as a reduced reliance of US allies on Russian energy and increased defense spending. These must be weighed against costs such as an increased risk of nuclear war, more Ukrainian casualties, and adverse economic impacts, including higher inflation. The report rates the possibility that Russia could seize more Ukrainian territory over time as a “minor” cost.

Depending on how cynical you are — and Putin and his cronies are very cynical — you might conclude that the Biden administration’s calculus ignores the threat of nuclear war, cares little for Ukraine’s casualties, for debilitation Prioritizing Russia and underestimating its combative and military-industrial potential. Such an assessment would suggest to Putin that he should grit his teeth and grab it.

The counter-arguments are psychological, but since in Russia one person makes the final decisions, they are not unimportant.

Any growing perception of Putin’s weakness – both at home and, more importantly, in the non-Western world, which he sees as its ally in what he calls an existential struggle with the West – creates an element of pressure that he must feel. A series of military defeats over the past year prompted the leaders of India and China to show anger and impatience with Putin; once always late for official meetings, he is now the one forced to wait for even once-docile post-Soviet leaders. Asian customers are now buying Russian oil at huge discounts created by Western embargoes: a barrel of Ural oil is about $31 cheaper than the Brent benchmark, the biggest difference since August. Russia’s reputation as a world power is at its post-Soviet low. A weak strong man is an oxymoron.

Ukraine’s western allies also did their best to ignite a fire among Russian strategists, who had resorted to grimly preparing for a long defense of already conquered territories. Ukraine has broken through western psychological barrier after western psychological barrier, finally securing supplies of tanks. Now fighter jets are not out of the question as Poland seeks to break through this new level of Western involvement in the war. That increases the temptation for Gerasimov, the foolish planner of the failed initial attack on Ukraine, to act pre-emptively — and for Putin to support such an approach.

Whether he will do so in the foreseeable future is another matter.

The Ukrainians have been warning of a major Russian offensive for weeks. The latest such warning comes from the head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, who says Russia will attack just before the anniversary of the invasion – simply because the Russian leadership is so quintessentially Soviet that everything they do is critical data bound. This notion is not grounded in the reality of the current conflict: rumors circulated time and again that Putin would carry out attacks on one anniversary or another, and the attacks never materialized. However, Ukrainian officials have consistently talked of an imminent Russian offensive to increase their chances of rapid arms shipments from the West and to try to sow panic in Russia, where a greater increase in military efforts would almost certainly mean a new wave of mobilizations.

The Russian military commanders seem to realize that they cannot do much with their forces. In January, regular Russian units tried their luck with tactical offensives near Orikhiv in the southern Zaporizhia region and parts of Donetsk region, but met with little success and encountered tough second lines of Ukrainian defenses. Without a decisive advantage in air and infantry numbers, Russian generals cannot hope for more. However, air superiority was elusive, and the Ukrainian military still has more ground forces than the Russian invasion force. The only Russian success in January – the capture of the salt-mining town of Soledar – was achieved by the private military company Wagner, which fed the convicts conscripted to it from the prison camps into vicious, bloody frontal attacks on Ukrainian fortresses and city blocks.

Putin’s “partial mobilization” decree of last September is still in force, and while it contains no public stipulations on the number of troops to be drafted, it does contain a secret part likely to allow for multiple waves of conscription. Those Russian men who have not fled or volunteered are watching the news with concern; A popular Android phone app called Mobilization 2023 even collects mobilization news and tips. So far, however, it’s been quiet, with no more recent draft efforts reported. That’s surprising when a major offensive is in the immediate plans – but an irrational Putin to launch one with existing forces cannot be ruled out, especially given his previous hesitance to aggravate the domestic political situation by putting too many men in urges the service.

For its part, Ukraine is under more pressure than Russia to attack first. Danilov – he of the Russian Offensive Warnings – has predicted on Facebook that 2023 would be the year of a Ukrainian offensive with newly delivered Western equipment. Ukraine simply cannot afford a protracted war. Each week of war brings more devastation, and each month millions of Ukrainian refugees in Europe continue to settle into their new lives. A full-scale mobilization campaign has been underway for months, and on paper at least, Ukraine’s human resource pool is much smaller than Russia’s. Western military aid is in practice dependent on further victories – Ukrainians can see this from their increased inflow after their military successes in autumn 2022. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s impressive popularity is a limited resource, especially given recent corruption scandals. So, Russian forces at the front expect a Ukrainian offensive soon. Russian Telegram channels, which are in favor of the war, say that Ukrainians will try to invade Russia’s Belgorod region. Western military experts write of the need to liberate Crimea to minimize the risk of another war. This ambitious goal requires a major southern offensive toward Melitopol and Mariupol to sever the “land bridge” from Russia to Crimea, captured by the invaders early in the campaign. A successful Ukrainian push to the south would result in a blockade of the peninsula, potentially rendering it untenable for Russia.

And yet any Ukrainian offensive now would encounter freshly fortified Russian positions manned by more experienced soldiers. With the attacker always risking bigger losses than the defender, the Ukrainians need more certainty about the potential losses. As both sides gather resources for an attack but hesitate to take the decisive step, the fragile balance on the ground is increasingly unstable. Something will have to give way soon.