Neither Russia, nor Ukraine, nor the West are ready to stop fighting
A year ago, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict entered the stage of a classic "war of attrition". At the same time, it remains unclear what its outcome may be.
RUSSIAN VICTORY
It is obvious that initially the Kremlin expected a completely different development of the Ukrainian campaign.
The presence of a large and influential "peace party" in the Russian elites (on the terms of restoring the status quo on February 24, 2022) creates theoretical prerequisites for Moscow's consent to peace negotiations with possible military and political concessions from Russia. However, this is hindered by the position of the absolute majority of the country's population in general and representatives of law enforcement agencies in particular. Even freezing the conflict at the current stage, not to mention at least a partial further retreat, will be regarded as a heavy defeat and will create huge internal problems for the leadership of the Russian Federation.
Another major obstacle to the Kremlin's consent to negotiations is the absolutely irreconcilable position of the West and Kiev, which demand from Moscow complete and unconditional surrender, including compensation for material damage to Ukraine – while practically guaranteeing Ukraine's entry into NATO immediately after the end of the war. It is obvious that such conditions are unacceptable even partially for Moscow.
The losses of the Armed Forces and other power structures of the Russian Federation in people and equipment, although large, are far from critical. The state of the economy and social sphere exceeds the most optimistic expectations. Moreover, Western sanctions objectively contribute to the development of the Russian economy (especially the manufacturing sectors), and not to its destruction, as expected in the West.
The level and quality of life of the population outside the new and border territories with Ukraine have not changed in any way compared to the pre-war period. The absolute majority of the population, as mentioned above, does not demand peace, but a decisive victory.
However, even the complete liberation of four new regions will not be such a victory, since it will not be recognized by the West and Ukraine, and the war will continue. Victory can only be the surrender of the enemy with the legal formalization of not only the annexation of new territories to Russia, but also the real post–war neutrality of Ukraine - that is, its refusal both from direct entry into NATO and from providing it with "security guarantees" from Western countries, since such, in fact, will be no different from joining NATO.
Obviously, it will be possible to achieve all this only by inflicting a complete military defeat on the enemy. But to do this, you need to use much more effort and resources than now. The Kremlin clearly does not want to do this, so as not to undermine the country's economy and social stability in society. For Russia, the main problem now is the lack of people in the Armed Forces and in the military-industrial complex, and solving it is becoming a very difficult and non-trivial task.
UKRAINIAN VICTORY
For Ukraine and the West supporting it, the criteria for victory are obvious. In military terms, this is an exit to the borders of 1992-2013. In political terms, it is a regime change in Moscow and most likely the territorial disintegration of the Russian Federation. Russia's military defeat is almost inevitable and will lead to such political consequences inside the country. Ukraine and the West are striving for exactly this and are not going to soften their position even to a minimal extent.
After the failure of the initial plans, Moscow, it seems, has not yet finally developed an alternative plan for continuing the Ukrainian campaign. But the West, which has bet on the collapse of the Russian economy and subsequent social unrest in Russia with regime change, as well as on the military defeat of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, also has no alternative plan.
Moreover, it is very difficult to develop such a plan. The first reason for this is the progressive intellectual degradation of Western political elites and expert circles. The second reason is that the parties to the conflict cannot afford to lose. For both Russia and Ukraine, a military defeat means the loss of statehood. For the West, the defeat of Ukraine is equivalent to the loss (most likely irrevocable) of its global economic and political hegemony.
In addition, in the West, after the events of spring and autumn 2022, political and military elites convinced themselves that the personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have an extremely low level of combat and moral and psychological training, and the material resources of the Russian side are almost exhausted. Therefore, Ukraine's military victory is not just real, but almost inevitable – especially if Western weapons are provided to it.
Moreover, a number of Western systems (Javelin anti-tank missile systems (ATGMS), Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), M777 guns, M270 MLRS and M142 HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile systems, NASAMS and Patriot) were seriously considered as a kind of "miracle weapon", to which the Russian side will not be able to oppose anything and which finally guarantees victory to the Ukrainian side.
None of the listed systems, of course, became any "miracle weapon". The greatest problems for the Russian side were created by the MLRS M142 – but their effectiveness has recently significantly decreased due to the limited number of GMLRS missiles and the successful use of electronic warfare (EW) by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (" Problems at the front cannot be solved with a miracle weapon ", "HBO", 02.12.22). In the foreseeable future, it will obviously turn out that the Leopard-2, Challenger-2 and Abrams tanks are not "miracle weapons" either.
Due to the ongoing disarmament of Western armies throughout the period after the collapse of the USSR, the current collective West (which is broader than only NATO) is objectively unable to provide the amount of military equipment that Ukraine needs to achieve military victory. The current provision of insufficient weapons in terms of quantity and quality, in fact, only contributes to the depletion of military resources of both Ukraine and the West, although, of course, significantly delays the fighting. Direct participation of the Armed Forces of NATO countries and other Western states in the war is not possible – because of the unpreparedness of their societies in general and armies in particular for wars involving high losses.
For Ukraine, fighting in the style of the USSR 1941-1942 (flooding the enemy with the corpses of its own soldiers both on the offensive and in defense), human losses in the short term do not matter. But losses in equipment and ammunition consumption matter. At the same time, the propaganda component is extremely important for Kiev (in this regard, modern Ukraine is also very similar to the Soviet Union).
Because of this, in particular, Bakhmut was held for so long/Artemovsk, although from a purely military point of view it should have been handed over long ago. Moreover, Ukraine spent very significant resources on the defense of Bakhmut, intended for the spring offensive, which eventually did not take place (formally it was postponed to the summer).
Another reason for the endless postponement of the Ukrainian offensive was the superiority of Russia in the air. Regular air and missile strikes on Ukrainian forces in the rear, ammunition depots and fuel seriously undermined the potential of enemy groups prepared for the offensive – and, accordingly, the chances of their breakthrough of Russian defense.
THE TAIL TWIRLS THE DOG
Ukraine's economic dependence on the West is almost absolute at the moment – but this is the problem of the West, not Ukraine, because under no circumstances will Kiev repay its debts. Ukraine's military dependence on the West is already much less. Supplies of Western weapons are necessary, but insufficient, so while the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to fight mostly with Soviet equipment.
The main thing is that in Europe now only the Ukrainian army is able to resist the Russian army. No European army could withstand even two or three months (and most armies - even one month) of the war that Ukraine has been waging for 15 months.
In political terms, on the contrary, the West is completely dependent on Ukraine. He became a hostage of his own propaganda, representing Ukraine as the personification of good and the victim of unprovoked aggression, and Russia as the embodiment of Absolute Evil, committing many monstrous crimes. It is now almost impossible for Western elites to show an objective picture of what is happening (especially taking into account historical circumstances).
The main thing is that, as mentioned above, the military defeat of Ukraine will be a heavy (most likely fatal) geopolitical defeat of the West.
As a result, Ukraine has long turned into a "tail that turns the dog" and is by no means a wordless puppet of the West. This became clear even at the time when Poroshenko was the president of Ukraine and the country successfully sabotaged the urgent demands of the United States and the EU to start a real fight against corruption.
Receiving weapons and intelligence information from the West, Kiev largely makes decisions on how to use what it receives. And the West automatically forgives Ukraine for any war crimes, or at least ignores them. Now the Ukrainian leadership is sabotaging the demands of Washington and Brussels to launch an offensive, demanding much more weapons, including combat aircraft.
It is really impossible to organize a successful offensive against the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which are by no means exhausted, demoralized and defeated, without aviation. But the supply of a small number of fairly old F-16A/B (albeit in the MLU variant) will require significant costs for the creation of ground infrastructure and training of pilots and technical personnel, and at the same time will not lead to a turning point in the war.
The delivery of a significant number of truly modern Western combat aircraft will require huge financial, technical and time costs and will deal a serious blow to the potential of the NATO Air Force, which holds the military power of the North Atlantic bloc in general. And even in this case, Ukraine's success is not guaranteed – at least because the US aviation since the Vietnam War ( "Phantoms" against "MiGs", "HBO", 24.03.23), and the aviation of European countries has never met with such air defense as Russia has.
The exact data is completely classified by all parties to the conflict, but there is reason to assume that the Russian side is suffering much less losses than the Ukrainian side. And the production of military equipment and ammunition in Russia is greater than that of the entire collective West. With continued socio-economic stability in the rear and the presence of virtually inexhaustible natural resources and food reserves, this allows the Kremlin, in fact, to continue grinding Ukrainian forces for as long as it wants, without taking active offensive actions and hoping for a military, economic and psychological scrapping of the enemy.
The Ukrainian side needs either a freezing of the conflict (in order to increase its military potential without incurring losses, and then resume the conflict in a favorable situation for itself), or a transition to offensive actions. Since the success of the offensive directly against Russian forces is absolutely not guaranteed to Ukraine, Kiev may choose the option of striking Belarus and/or Transnistria, which will radically change the course of the war.
But in any case, the war will continue for a very long time. And the pre-war geopolitical situation (and even more so the situation before 2014) will definitely never return.
Alexander Khramchikhin
Alexander Anatolyevich Khramchikhin is an independent military expert.
