18NEWS
Battlefield humiliation could lead to the president being ousted.
The West must keep up its support, says Lawrence Freedmansuccess as getting back to the position
before the Russian invasion. In practice,
if his forces can achieve that much then
there would be strong pressures from
his people to retrieve the separatist
areas. In military terms getting back the
annexed Crimea would be a step too far.
That even its most limited objective,
which would require inflicting another
massive defeat on Russian forces,
appears to be at all realistic underscores
the enormous achievement of the
Ukrainian armed forces over the past six
weeks.THE BALANCE OF POWER
Russia should have fewer problems with
logistics, and its air force, which has
made a surprisingly small contribution
to the war, will be able to fly more
sorties, although it appears to have a
shortage of precision weapons.
When it comes to the intangible
factors that shape performance in battle,
such as motivation and morale, Ukraine
has an advantage. Because it mobilised
fully at the start of the war, it has no
shortage of willing troops while some of
its best units are already deployed in the
Donbas region. It will need to keep
forces back to protect the northern areas
but it will be able to release some for
Donbas and they will have a shorter
journey than the withdrawn Russian
forces who will need to follow a
roundabout route through
Belarus and Russia to get to
the front, assuming that
they are fit for action.
The big issue for
Ukraine is
equipment. It is
already highly
dependent upon
the West, and for a successful offensive it
will need not only drones, anti-tank
missiles and air defence systems but
also heavy artillery and armoured
vehicles, and plentiful
ammunition.
The Ukrainian air force has
continued to play its part in the
war but it also needs new aircraft,
and these are proving the hardest to get.
It also needs equipment that can be
operated only with vast amounts of
training. At its meeting last week Nato
members, shocked by the Russian
atrocities, promised to keep the
equipment flowing, and include heavier
weapons, while being understandably
reticent about saying exactly what is
being sent to Ukraine and how it is
getting there. To get this kit to the new
front lines requires travelling long
distances.
The immediate challenge for Ukraine
is dealing with a new Russian offensive
that has already begun. It is for this
reason that Ukraine has sought toevacuate as many civilians as possible
from areas that may soon be in
contention, leading to the typically cruel
Russian attack on the railway station at
Kramatorsk. The reason for this
offensive is that Russian forces have not
yet taken Donbas and lack a defensible
border should Putin decide to call for a
ceasefire. Its priority is to encircle and
destroy the substantial Ukrainian army
in the region.
This has been assumed to be a
priority from the start of the war. Most of
the early scenarios assuming a pincer
movement up from the south and across
from the east to take Dnipro on the
Dnieper river. This now seems beyond
Russia’s capacity and so the more recent
suggestion is that they will seek to take
Slovyansk, which is near Izyum, one of
the few areas where they have made
recent progress.
But so long as they are on the
offensive, and reliant on the road
network to move their forces forward,
the Russians remain vulnerable to the
sort of tactics the Ukrainians have used
successfully up to now, with small
units, who know the terrain and can
move with stealth, mounting ambushes
using portable weapons and drones.
The Russians risk their own forces
getting encircled and suffering
conspicuous defeats. Should the
Ukrainians start on their own
sustained counteroffensive they,
too, will have to watch that
they do not overstretch
their forces, straining
both their logistics
and command
systems.
This is a
critical moment
in European history. As the Ukrainians
are doing the fighting they must set
their own war aims, including deciding
on what can be offered to achieve a
diplomatic settlement. They will
want this terrible war over as
soon as possible but not by
compromising their territorial
integrity.
The West has every reason to give
them maximum support. These coming
battles may lead to Putin being ousted
from power but that will depend on
Russians. An outcome that allows Putin
to claim that gains have been made will
certainly lead to continuing instability
and invite future conflict.
Russia after this conflict will not be
easy to deal with, but it would be better
if it were one left wondering how to
recover from a catastrophic folly than
one that had been left bloodied and
bitter but emboldened.
Sir Lawrence Freedman is emeritus
professor of war studies at King’s College
LondonThis is a
critical
moment
in our
historyUkraine is
desperate for
Nato aircraft,
such as the
MiG-29 Fulcrumtook heavy punishment and then took
more as they were obliged to withdraw.
The losses in men and equipment were
particularly heavy among those elite
units originally charged with seizing
Kyiv and installing a puppet
government.
Although Moscow is trying to bring in
fresh equipment and troops, there is not
much left in reserve and it is generally of
a lesser quality. As Putin is in a hurry to
get the war finished, his forces will have
to rely largely on those already
mobilised. It is this hurry that also
encouraged the destructive methods
adopted as problems emerged with the
first war plan.
Yet bombarding civilian areas has not
coerced Kyiv into concessions nor made
it easier to take cities such as Mariupol,
while ensuring that even if the army was
able to take and hold all of Donbas they
would be left presiding over broken
cities and a hostile population. Indeed
there is a view that Putin no longer really
seeks to acquire much Ukrainian
territory but instead has adopted a
“scorched earth” policy, attacking
crucial infrastructure as well as civilian
areas, so that if he is unable to acquire
the country he can leave it ruined for the
Ukrainians.
Putin’s failure demonstrates the
importance of realistic and coherent
objectives for a successful strategy,
enabling the military commanders to
focus on what they must achieve without
distraction. Here Volodymyr Zelensky
has been more careful. He has framedT
he Russo-Ukrainian war has
reached a crucial stage. Both
sides are gearing up for a
series of battles that will
decide whether Ukraine is to
be left partitioned, and
whether Russia can rescue
some semblance of victory
from an apparent defeat.
The longer this war goes
on the greater the suffering but also the
higher the stakes. Moscow is feeling the
most pressure. With the retreat of
Russian units from around Kyiv and
other northern cities, the cruel
rampages of their troops have been
exposed, leading to even tighter
sanctions.
Its demoralised and depleted army is
scrambling around for reserves while
being pushed to achieve quick victories
in the Donbas region that borders Russia
and contains the separatist areas of
Donetsk and Luhansk. It was their
supposed vulnerability to Ukrainian
forces that provided Vladimir Putin with
his original pretext for this war.
If his forces perform as badly in this
new phase of the war as they did in the
first then Putin will at least have to
explain to the Russian people why what
his spokesman called “significant
losses” have been incurred for no gain.
At most he will be looking around at his
subordinates and wondering about the
security of his own position. That this
war could lead to Putin’s downfall is a
heady prospect for not only Ukraine, but
also its western backers.Allowing it to influence the strategy
for prosecuting the war would, however,
be unwise. It risks encouraging the idea
that Ukraine is fighting for a western
geopolitical goal and not its own survival
as an independent state. It anticipates a
Ukrainian victory that still requires a
long, hard fight, and then assumes a
consequence that cannot be guaranteed.
Putin’s people occupy all the top
positions in Russia’s power structure.
Their fate is bound up with his.
Dissenting voices, whether on the
streets or in the media, have been
silenced. Political opponents have been
killed or imprisoned. It is foolish to set as
a war aim one that you cannot be sure of
achieving.SETTING WAR AIMS
That, after all, was Putin’s original
mistake. He might have asked the army
to concentrate on seizing Donbas in the
first place when this goal would have
been much more attainable with a
concentrated focus. Instead the
ambitious objective set for the Russian
army — to “de-Nazify and demilitarise”
Ukraine — was always beyond its
capabilities.
Reflecting a delusional view about the
lack of a Ukrainian national identity and
fighting spirit, it led to an arrogant and
ill-fated war plan. The army invaded
along numerous axes. As a result it
became spread out and overstretched,
and difficult to supply and co-ordinate.
As the offensive stalled, Russian units18 The Sunday Times April 10, 2022WAR IN UKRAINE
Putin may be in a hurry
to end this war but his
demoralised army is
scrambling for reserves