It was supposed to be a blitzkrieg. After a month it turned out to be a war of attrition. And the RussoUkrainian conflict may descend into a no man’s land with armies in the trenches and sporadic bombing. As has already happened in Donbass. In this war of attrition, the Russian troops who left take everything and immediately fight and control only Kherson in the south of Ukraine, among the big cities. In short, the Russian advance is slow. Comparisons, albeit disproportionate, with the First World War are already being flooded: a war of attrition par excellence, but also a “useless massacre”. The strategy of attrition (also known as war of attrition) aims to deplete the enemy’s material resources and morale in order to force them to negotiate or snatch the initiative away from them. Ukraine is trying to do this, and that’s why Zelenskyy announced in these hours with satisfaction: “Putin’s attack has failed, we are now in a war of attrition”.
Ukraine, direct: phosphorus bombs in Lugansk, bridge to Kyiv destroyed. Phosphorus bombs in Lugansk. From the top of the NATO countries
Ukraine, the duel between the Boeing Doomsday “Doomsday” and the Putin Air Force. Why are they called that: a nuclear warfare command room
the previous one
During the First World War, after the Battle of the Marne, the war of movement faltered and the fronts stabilized: first of all in the west and then in Italy and the Balkans, turning the conflict into a war of position. The generals and heads of state, aware of the types of weapons at the soldiers’ disposal (rifles, machine guns and cannons) that prevented major offensives, sought to weaken the enemy army from within, both tactically and in confidence terrifying bombings in response to previous massive attacks, even for several days in a row both strategically, by blocking the trade in raw materials and preventing factories from manufacturing munitions. In this way, the ragged army became much more vulnerable to largescale, openfield invasions. It was only the introduction of infiltration tactics first by the Russians, then by the Germans, that allowed a return to a maneuvered war and the ability to make the battles decisive. Although the German high commands had already understood the new character of the Great War on the western fronts as a war of attrition and consciously used it in the Battle of Verdun, the allies of the Entente, on the other hand, continued to pursue the strategy of major decisive battles and considered the attrition only on a tactical level.
The strategy of attrition was instead deliberately deployed by Armando Diaz on the Italian front, repeatedly repelling Allied pressure for an offensive on the Piave until the right moment came to meet the Imperial and Regio Army, which was being threatened by the Failure of the battle was attempted on the solstice and subsequent consumption by starvation, disease and desertion.
Benefits for Kyiv
The war of attrition now has three advantages for Ukraine. First, to allow Russian hierarchs to distance themselves from Putin over time. Secondly, to give way to negotiations in conditions of increasing difficulties for Russia. Thirdly, give the sanctions time to weaken the Moscow state system and encourage the growth of public dissent, even if it seems weak at the moment, also because of very harsh repression.
Also, in this war of attrition, Russian forces have not advanced for a week, only bombing cities from afar. Ukrainian forces resist and in some cases recover part of the territory. On the ground, both sides seem stuck in their respective positions after a month. Military history experts illustrate various precedents and draw many parallels, even a bit acrobatic when it comes to wars of attrition.
The Athenians, weaker in land warfare during the Peloponnesian War, took advantage of the war of attrition. This category includes Quinto Fabio Massimo Verrucoso’s “temporary” tactics (nicknamed “Cunctator”, “Temporeggiatore”) against Annibale Barca during the Second Punic War. And so forth.
Going back to less distant centuries, here is Napoleon Bonaparte’s French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the static battles of World War II, including the Soviet city defenses during the Battle of Stalingrad. The kind of attrition that always hurts the invaders can also be credited with the Vietnam that Americans would sink into in the annals of the 1960s. Look at the double Afghan case: where first the Soviets used themselves and then, until the latest shot from that impregnable country, the Americans.
The current situation
Now Russian forces are stationed about 25 kilometers from Kyiv: there are sporadic deployments in the capital, but the bulk of the invasion corps is immobile. Not only that, satellite imagery taken by the United States shows that Russian positions around Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine have adopted a defensive posture, laying mines, erecting barriers and digging trenches as if to avoid a Ukrainian counterattack.
How long could this war of attrition last?
It went on like this for seven years in Donbass, and theoretically it could take just as long or even longer throughout Ukraine. Even if Mariupol and Kharkiv fall into Russian hands, and even if Kyiv should fall into Russian hands in the coming months, Ukraine, not yet occupied and not even threatened with invasion by land forces, is vast: most of its territory , about three quarters of the nation. The Ukrainian resistance could be established in the central and western parts of the country, which Moscow would need far greater forces than those deployed to date to capture without surrender: forces that it practically does not have.
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