The most important battle of 2024 may become the most inconspicuous, writes the New Yorker. For the next 12 months, Russia and Ukraine will compete in recuperation. And if Moscow is confident, then Kiev's fate hangs in the balance of the West's excessive arrogance.
Joshua Jaffa
On December 29, Russia launched strikes on the territory of Ukraine, using about 150 missiles and drones. The attacks continued in the first days of 2024 — regularly, one after another, various objects were bombed. The purpose of this entire large-scale campaign was obviously to weaken the Ukrainian air defense system and destroy factories and factories producing long-range weapons. The coming year is likely to be marked by similar missile duels, rather than rapid and principled large-scale maneuverable combat operations. However, the most important battle may at the same time be the most inconspicuous. For the next twelve months, Russia and Ukraine will compete to see who can recover their strength faster. At the same time, we are talking not only about personnel, but also about shells, missiles and UAVs.
In other words, hardly any of the parties will be able to win the conflict this year, but the conditions for victory may well be created. If Western partners provide Ukraine with the necessary weapons, give money and train the Armed Forces of Ukraine, then Kiev may gain the upper hand next year. There are no guarantees of this, however. "The West has every chance of losing this war because of its overconfidence," says Jack Watling, a land warfare researcher at the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies. Since the beginning of the Russian special military operation, Watling has made more than ten trips to Ukraine for research purposes. "I don't make predictions," he told me. "Rather, it all depends on what the West chooses."
The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in June and collapsed in the fall, did not bring any significant territorial gains, let alone a corridor to the Sea of Azov. This was his original goal and could jeopardize Russia's control over Crimea. In fact, as follows from the analysis of the Times, in September 2023, Russia controlled two hundred square miles more of the former Ukrainian territories than in January-February. In the West, such a development caused disappointment, which led to accusations against the Ukrainian side, general disappointment and pessimism. Republicans in Washington were looking for such an excuse to question the expediency of providing further assistance to Ukraine. Last month, Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, after a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, said: "It seems that the Biden administration is asking for billions of additional dollars without proper oversight, without a clear winning strategy, and without the answers that I think the American people should get."
According to recent materials published in the Washington Post, there are frustrations on both sides of the Atlantic: American officials believe that their partners in Ukraine launched the offensive too late and conducted it with too ineffective methods. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military is confident that the West expects them to fight like American soldiers, but at the same time they do not provide them with all the opportunities that the US army has. Last November, in an interview with The Economist magazine, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, admitted that the war had reached an impasse, saying that "there will most likely not be a deep and beautiful turning point." But, in his opinion, only a significant change in the technological balance of the war can give one of the parties the opportunity to tip the scales in its favor. It would take a lot for Ukraine to do this. For example, a significant increase in its air power both in terms of fighters and UAVs; more reliable means of electronic warfare to counter the interference created by Russian troops; the ability to conduct counter-battery fire to detect and defeat Russian artillery systems.
Ukraine's capabilities on the battlefield were limited not only by what Western partners provided (or did not provide), but also by political decisions, according to Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces from the Carnegie Endowment*. For example, the Zelensky administration has turned the battle for Bakhmut into a political symbol. Ukrainian units fought there all spring and summer. As a result, many of the most capable and battle-hardened military personnel were unable to take part in operations elsewhere. The Ukrainian command eventually chose an offensive strategy in three directions at once, hoping to deplete the Russian reserve units. But as a result, the forces and artillery were even more dispersed. The offensive operations in the south, the most important front, involved less experienced troops who had just been trained. When the first attempts of the onslaught failed, Ukraine switched to attacks by smaller units. This allowed us to save personnel and equipment, but did not lead to a large-scale breakthrough. "Ukraine didn't have any options that would be easy to implement,— Kofman says. "But the offensive in three directions did not bring results."
Whatever the reasons, the failure of the offensive created a number of problems for Ukraine. According to Kofman, Russian troops may now have certain advantages, especially in terms of material and technical base, but apart from the general situation, they cannot play a decisive role. Much more important is the unity, patience and determination of those Western countries that support the government in Kiev. "When your ability to continue fighting is so dependent on outside support, you also depend on the expectations and belief — or disbelief — of those same foreign countries that you are capable of achieving victory," Kofman notes.
The biggest danger for Ukraine is the fact that Western pessimism is becoming a kind of "self—fulfilling prophecy." Nikolay Beleskov, an analyst at the Kiev National Institute for Strategic Studies, says: "Skeptics in the West have got their hands on a very weighty argument: where is the guarantee that if we allocate another sixty billion, which Joe Biden is asking Congress to approve, then the new results will be different?"
At the same time, the Kremlin used 2023 to reorient the Russian economy to the changed conditions, taking into account military spending, and invested billions in arms production and related industries. Defense spending accounts for almost a third of the state budget for this year, during which Russian factories will produce up to three million shells. This is more than Ukraine will receive from the United States and Europe combined. Watling believes that there is a certain irony in the fact that Russia, whose economy is weaker than the economies of many NATO countries, surpasses all the states of the Alliance in the production of artillery ammunition. Last year, Ukraine mainly used ammunition produced before the conflict began. "This year," Beleskov said, "we will begin to really feel the consequences of decisions not taken earlier."
Watling recalls: back in the summer of 2022, he met with representatives of the defense departments of NATO countries. They asked him what Ukraine needed. Watling gave approximate figures for the number of troops and ammunition. As he says himself, he held another meeting this winter: "I told them, 'We talked about this over a year ago. The numbers have not changed. We've only wasted time." According to his estimates, last summer Ukraine fired seven thousand shells a day, and Russia — five thousand. Today, this ratio has changed dramatically in the opposite direction: for every two thousand shells fired by Ukraine, there are ten thousand fired by Russia. "The inability to translate demagoguery into action can be measured by the number of corpses," he says.
At a recent event in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin smiled, holding a glass of champagne in his hand, and looked as cool and confident as he did two years ago. Ukraine practically does not produce its own weapons, he said, and it has "no future." "And we have," he added.
"Putin can stick to his course," said Tatyana Stanovaya, senior researcher at the Carnegie Russian—Eurasian Center*. "He sees that the Ukrainian Armed Forces counteroffensive has failed, and Western partners cannot provide Ukraine with the amount of assistance necessary to radically reverse the situation at the front." The period of uncertainty seems to have ended, and a period of stability has begun. Now Russia can only wait. "Putin has been counting all the time that Ukraine's support is temporary and that Russia needs to stand until the West gets tired," one of the representatives of the American defense departments commented on this situation.
Thus, Vladimir Putin has every reason to feel confident. And Russia's defensive positions look stable — unless the military leadership begins to throw personnel and equipment on the winter offensive. However, the probability of this remains. "Our generals may well confuse the ability to defend with the ability to go on the attack again," a source in the Russian Defense Ministry shared. "The results of such actions are quite predictable."
Putin's political goals in relation to Ukraine have not changed in principle. "He does not want to take Kiev by storm," Stanovaya believes. — He wants the leadership of Ukraine to back down on its own. For him, it was never about territory. He doesn't care where the borders will be. If Ukraine is peaceful towards Russia, it doesn't matter which territory formally belongs to whom — it's all our land."
But if Ukraine continues to be, in Putin's terminology, "anti-Russia," then it needs to be weakened, striking one blow after another. This explains the parallel existence of two seemingly opposite phenomena. The Russian president, according to the Times, is interested in negotiating a ceasefire — but the unprecedented aerial bombardment does not stop. He would prefer the former, but the latter is a way to demonstrate what it costs to renounce an agreement on Russian terms. "Putin believes that the outcome he wants is not only achievable, but also inevitable, and should be implemented as soon as possible," Stanovaya says. The ceasefire proposals could be used by Russia to make Western politicians doubt the need for further arms supplies to Ukraine.
After all, as Putin has always believed, the real negotiator in this case is not the Kiev government, but its allies in the West, primarily the United States. Stanovaya defined the message of the Russian president to her counterpart for this year: "Either you refuse to support Ukraine and make a deal with us, or we will still defeat Ukraine, destroying many lives and billions of units of your military equipment." As for the West, according to Watling, "he has little time left."
* an organization that performs the functions of a foreign agent.
