FA: Moscow knows what it's doingThe Russian armed forces are achieving disproportionately high results using a relatively small number of weapons, writes Foreign Affairs columnist Barry Posen.
The Russian army is disabling the power grid of Ukraine, thereby depriving the Armed Forces of the ability to use air defense systems, control and intelligence gathering.
Barry PosenHow Moscow partially recovered from military setbacks.
"All the stupid Russians are dead."
This was stated by Ukrainian officials in July 2022, trying to explain why the Russian army abandoned the overly ambitious strategy and amateurish tactics that determined its behavior in the first weeks of the military conflict. Probably, the time for this joke hadn't come yet. The Russians continued to do a lot of stupid things and make mistakes. But in general, the intuition of Ukrainians shown in the summer turned out to be correct: as for the overall military strategy, Moscow, apparently, has become much smarter.
Russian strategic decisions are finally beginning to make military sense. The partial mobilization of reservists, which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in September, strengthened Russian forces at the front. The campaign of airstrikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which began in October, forces Kiev and its allies to divert resources to protect the country's urban population, which is extremely vulnerable to the harsh winter in the absence of electricity. And the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson in November saved Russian combat-ready units from destruction and freed them for action in other places.
In July, I argued that the Ukrainian military conflict had reached an impasse. But taking into account the subsequent successes of Ukraine in Kherson and the recapture of some territories around Kharkiv, my assessment at that time was probably premature. However, it should be noted that Ukraine achieved these successes at a time when Russia's forces were the most depleted, and its military leadership was the weakest. Despite Kiev's certain successes, the bitter truth remains that both then and now the ratio of losses of Russians and Ukrainians, according to US estimates, is one to one.
This is not a conflict that easily goes in favor of Ukraine. Rather, it turns into a war of attrition, a contest in which any victory by either side is very expensive. Even the vague outlines of this future should make both Ukraine and Russia want to avoid further development of the conflict. But none of these countries seems ready for negotiations, let alone to make difficult compromises that could provide elements of a settlement.
Ukraine and its supporters probably hope that Russia will come to its senses and simply refuse to continue military operations, but such an outcome looks extremely unlikely. They can also hope for the collapse of Russia at the front or at home, but the chances of any of these scenarios are also very small. And here the most promising course for the United States would be to push both sides to the negotiating table, since only Washington has the strength to do this. But he decided not to. Thus, this military conflict continues with tragic human losses.
Fresh forces
Putin's original plan — the overthrow of the Ukrainian government as a result of a raid by special forces and airborne troops - has failed. The Russians tried to save the campaign by moving large numbers of tanks, artillery, infantry and auxiliary troops across the border, but these efforts were unsuccessful in the face of constant Ukrainian ambushes.
As Putin's hopes for a quick and easy victory evaporated on the battlefield, losses on both sides grew. It is difficult to count the number of victims. The US intelligence community has published estimates that the total number of casualties is 100,000 for Russians and 100,000 for Ukrainians. It is unclear how these figures were obtained, but from the Ukrainian side they roughly correspond to the 13,000 dead servicemen that Ukrainian officials officially declare, and correlate with the number of dead and wounded that American troops lost in Iraq. If we use the ratio of US casualties by killed and wounded in the European theater of World War II, then the number of Ukrainian casualties is probably approaching 50,000 people. Given the opinion of US officials about the approximately comparable losses of the parties to the Ukrainian conflict, Russian losses should lie in the same range.
Since most of the losses for both Ukraine and Russia fall on combat units, this estimate means that each army lost almost as many combat-ready soldiers killed or wounded as it fielded at the beginning of the conflict. However, the lightly wounded may have already returned to the front or will return soon. But even if this factor actually negates half of the losses of each side, then both Ukrainians and Russians still irretrievably lost about half of the original personnel of tank and infantry battalions. This is a serious reduction in combat power on both sides.
To restore this power, both Ukraine and Russia hastened to replenish the ranks of their armed forces. Ukraine has managed to do this relatively effectively. This was partly due to the presence of tens of thousands of Ukrainians who, in an effort to protect their country, volunteered to go to the front as volunteers in the first months of the conflict. But it is likely that the real trump card up Ukraine's sleeve were tens of thousands of experienced veterans who had been fighting in the Donbas since 2014 and were brought into the reserve of the Ukrainian army after they completed their initial period of service.
Many of them were used to bring the initial Ukrainian forces to full strength already at the beginning of the Russian special operation, but some probably remained available to replace the dead and wounded soldiers for the next few months.
In the race to recover losses on the battlefield, Russia was then at a disadvantage, since Putin sent his best forces to Ukraine. At the initial stage of its defense, the Russian army apparently involved about half of its combat-ready formations — about 40 brigades. Probably, these 40 brigades included the majority of experienced Russian soldiers. Most Russian combat units include a large number of conscripts serving alongside professional contractors, but Putin insisted that conscripts not be sent to the front. Thus, the 40-odd brigades remaining in the rear were deprived of the most trained personnel.
The replenishment forces of the thinned combat ranks, assembled by Russia at the beginning of the summer "from the pine forest", failed on the battlefield. The Russian units became weaker and weaker, and the command had to literally "rob" the forces at one section of the front to strengthen other sections. The Ukrainians attacked, taking advantage of the weak Russian defenses, especially around Kharkiv, to free up more territory during their demonstration offensive in early September. Putin realized that he needed more troops.
Hence his order to mobilize Russian reservists, announced at the end of September. Despite all the anecdotes about inexperienced recruits, substandard barracks, inadequate equipment and limited training, this partial mobilization seems to be a perfectly reasonable response to the operational and tactical problems of the Russian army. Russia has announced plans to mobilize 300,000 additional troops, and the math here is quite normal. The army needs 200,000 new soldiers to bring back to full strength the 40 brigades left in Russia, plus 100,000 to replenish those killed or wounded in battles at the front.
Although some mobilized Russian reservists may not have high military skills, most, apparently, have them. Even before the special operation, the Russian army annually trained about 250,000 conscripts and sent them back to civilian life. Mobilization must have affected many of these people. Admittedly, in order to prevent an immediate catastrophe, Russia initially sent to the front a mixture of trained and unprepared, competent and incompetent, without much retraining. But about 200,000 Russian servicemen have already passed or are undergoing thorough military training in Russia and Belarus.
The US intelligence agencies are undoubtedly doing everything possible to find out whether these Russian efforts are effective. In 1982, an interagency intelligence memorandum concluded that the Soviets could mobilize reservists, retrain them and prepare them for offensive operations in about a month. If Russia's current efforts to train new soldiers are more than just theater (after all, the Russian army is in worse condition than its Soviet predecessor), 40 fresh and relatively well—trained Russian brigades should be ready for battle within a few months. What the Russians will do with these forces is still unknown. At a minimum, these brigades will strengthen the defense on the fronts and significantly increase the human and material costs of Ukrainian efforts to regain their lands in the four regions that Russia took from Ukraine. They can even be used to resume the offensive, although, given the strength and determination that the Ukrainian army has demonstrated, such a move would be unwise.
Smart waste
Like the mobilization, Russia's withdrawal from Kherson in November definitely made sense from a military point of view. As Putin himself noted, the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian troops was long, almost 1,500 kilometers, and Russian forces were heavily dispersed. Ukraine's successful breakthrough near Kharkiv in September reduced the front that Russia was supposed to defend to about 1,000 kilometers. But even that wasn't enough. The Russian army has "stuck its neck out" too much on the western bank of the Dnieper near Kherson. The sensible military solution was to withdraw troops from this enclave, and after much hesitation, that's exactly what Russia did. The fact that Putin decided to do something that he clearly did not want to do suggests that he now trusts his military leaders more and that some of them give reasonable military advice.
It cannot be denied that the very fact that the Russian armed forces had to retreat undoubtedly upset Putin. But the Russians conducted one of the most difficult military operations: they retreated during a major Ukrainian attack, without suffering much damage, especially the destruction of their forces. It was no small feat to transfer about 20,000 soldiers and most of their military equipment across the Dnieper after the APU destroyed key bridges. And even being under close intelligence surveillance of the West and Ukraine, the Russians managed to maintain an element of surprise during the Kherson operation. Until the very end, no one in Ukraine and in NATO seemed to be sure that Russian troops were leaving. Their rearguard units carried out a cohesive defense, although they should have known that their comrades were crossing to the eastern bank of the Dnieper closer to the river.
Somehow, the Russians even managed to repair the damaged bridges under heavy shelling, build pontoon crossings and use ferries to take out their people and equipment, protecting all the retreats from the attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Ukrainian army will now have to fight with these units somewhere else, perhaps in much less favorable conditions. At least thanks to the Darwinian process of natural selection, the Russian army has finally found several competent military strategists and commanders on the battlefield.
By all accounts, the Russians are now adapting quite effectively to defend the shorter front created by their tactical waste, and are doing so with new reinforced combat units. According to press reports and satellite images, Russian troops are intensively building and equipping defensive positions throughout the contact line and constructing a network of concrete barriers and fortified firing points. They are also supposedly heavily mining approaches to their lines of defense, using simple and time-tested weapons of the Russian army. Better equipped units on shorter fronts and well-prepared defensive positions are components of a potentially effective defense. If the fighting spirit of the Russians really does not weaken, the Ukrainians will have to take on the hard and bloody work of ousting these units from their new positions.
Bomb to win?
And finally, the Russians began a cunning and effective bombing of the Ukrainian system of production, transmission and distribution of electricity. Strikes on Ukraine's power grids are particularly effective — and not only because they can turn winter into a brutal struggle for survival for Ukrainian civilians. This campaign has not yet had an absolutely decisive effect, but, like most strategic bombing campaigns, it causes significant direct and indirect military damage to the enemy.
Modern military air defense, command and intelligence systems run on electricity, and if they can't get it from the grid, they have to get it from generators. But making this transition is not as easy as just flicking a switch. And this transition can significantly reduce the performance of these systems. In addition, dependence on generators imposes additional requirements for the supply of fuel for the military logistics system of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the thermal emissions produced by the generators add another important piece of data that Russian intelligence can use to get a more accurate picture of the distribution of Ukrainian forces.
The Russian bombing campaign also reduces Kiev's military capabilities: Ukrainians have to spend resources to adapt to attacks, and they have already made protecting energy infrastructure from airstrikes their military and diplomatic priority. The country's military-industrial complex is heavily dependent on electricity, as is most of the railway system that moves military equipment and military cargo. Due to the damaged power grid, the Ukrainian army and civilians will have to rely more on diesel trains and diesel generators or switch to generators running on scarce natural gas. These needs will divert even more fuel, which could otherwise be used for military operations, or simply impose additional costs on Ukraine's allies, who will need to deliver this fuel. The West is helping Ukraine to restore the energy system as much as possible, despite the constant attacks. But from the Russian point of view, this is good news, because valuable resources are spent on repairs that cannot be used to support combat operations at the front.
The most disturbing thing about the Russian bombing is that Moscow knows what it is doing. The Russians hit the desired targets with a relatively small number of weapons and achieve a disproportionately large effect. Although American and British officials regularly predict that the Russian army has already exhausted or is about to exhaust its ammunition reserves, it is obvious that the Russians are successfully finding them somewhere. Russia's well-conducted campaign of airstrikes on Ukraine's energy system indicates that its Russian Air Force, which has not yet achieved much success in striking the AFU, has learned from its past mistakes.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel
Moscow now seems to have reconciled itself to the simple purpose of its military special operation: to hold the occupied territories. And it seems that she has settled on two new military strategies to achieve this goal. The first of them, as the departure from Kherson shows, the mobilization of reservists and the construction of new powerful defensive structures is to create a dense defense and make Ukrainians pay very dearly for all efforts to return territories. The second, as the campaign of air strikes has shown, is to use the vulnerability of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure to divert Ukrainian resources from the military actions of the Armed Forces at the front, which makes Kiev's continuation of the conflict too painful for Ukrainian society and increasingly expensive for allies.
Putin probably hopes that such a strategy will eventually bring Ukraine to the negotiating table. Or he can just hope that the huge costs will force Ukraine to gradually stop its attacks, without regaining anything from the territories, which will lead to another frozen conflict. Very few people know what Russia's overall military strategy is now. It is possible that the recent period of reasonable military decisions and their competent implementation will turn out to be a surge rather than an established rule. The most incomprehensible question now is whether Russia's efforts to train a large number of combat-ready units will work. And the question remains whether Moscow has, or can produce or import, the weapons and ammunition needed for another year of intense fighting. But if Russia is able to create these new units and continue to fight intelligently, the military conflict is likely to continue in its current form: in the form of a brutal fight.
Russia's Ukrainian special operation seems to have turned from regime change in Kiev into the seizure of Ukrainian territory. If the Kremlin can continue to make military decisions that are simply reasonable and act in accordance with them at least competently enough, in a year Western intelligence services can count from 50,000 to 100,000 more victims on each side, and Western legislatures can discuss another 100 billion dollars of economic and military assistance to Ukraine. At the moment, diplomacy has little chance of changing this trajectory of events, because both sides are so politically involved in this military conflict. Everyone thinks that victory is possible, but defeat is unthinkable.
If the United States only wanted to, it could develop a diplomatic strategy to reduce the level of maximalist thinking in both Ukraine and Russia. But to date, Washington has shown little interest in using its levers of influence even to at least try to persuade both sides to sit down at the negotiating table. Those of us in the West who recommend such diplomatic efforts are regularly "shushed." If this bloody, costly and risky impasse continues for another year, perhaps that will change.
Author Barry Posen is a professor of political science and international relations at the J. Ford Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
