How Long Will Ukraine Last?
In February 2022 the war in Ukraine was widely expected to last less than a week against a Russian invasion. Now, there is speculation that the Western support of Ukraine could last beyond 2025. There are similar estimations on when Russia’s necessary material and logistics will be eroded. Ukraine has been in the Russian sphere of influence for much of its history, and for hundreds of years was adjoined to Moscow through different regimes. Once the conflict manifested positive results for Ukraine’s defense, 45 countries hastily sent weapons once designated for their own militaries, to the soldiers who were now fighting their enemy.
NATO-supplied weapons have transformed Ukraine’s military since 2017. The impact of these was greatly underestimated by all invested in the conflict. The effect of those weapons on the battlefield has turned this war into one of attrition, one which despite hundreds of billions in military aid, Ukraine seems to be losing.
The length of the war has much to do with the changes in tactics which come both in the application of weapons and in the cost of war. A multi-million dollar tank or aircraft and its crew can now be taken out by less than $200,000 in shoulder-launched weapon platforms. Cheap commercial drones can provide unprecedented accuracy for artillery, live time reconnaissance, and act as unconventional weapons. A modified $3,000 commercial drone from Amazon with explosives can immobilize anything it wants to. Tanks operate further away from the front, helicopters stay high and away from any terrain unknown to friendly infantry units. World War II saw the dawn of quick motorized infantry units on the battlefield, combined with tanks and aircraft support. The trenches of the last war had become vulnerable to these high-speed attacks and were rendered an obsolete form of defense tactics. Until now, this had been the case in the tactical thinking of conventional warfare. Russian columns slowed to a stop and were halted as the Ministry of Defense realized what kind of war this was going to become, prolonged and greatly affected by innovation, and slow.
The Russian plan was straightforward and achievable, being to gain control of the Hostomel Airport near Kiev and use it as an air bridge to land forces and launch attacks on the capital. This would be done in tandem with other forces from the East, South, and North of Ukraine who were moving with haste along Ukrainian highways. If this plan had succeeded, Kiev’s regime would likely have either capitulated or been decapitated, thus ending the conflict. Russian soldiers who fled their equipment amid an ambush near Kiev are rumored to have brought their parade uniforms; they may have believed there would be victory marches.
As we now know, this did not happen. The columns of tanks and squadrons of helicopters were unexpectedly repelled for a week, then two weeks, and eventually a month before turning back. The Western weapons supplied by NATO countries had an immense impact on the failures of the first stage of the Russian invasion. Laser-guided anti-tank and anti-air missiles were now shoulder-launched from a treeline more than a mile away. Conventional combined arms attacks were rendered obsolete overnight. The convoys parked in place. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers being trained in NATO countries.
The assault on Kiev ultimately failed due to Russian miscalculations of the potency of the Ukrainian defense forces. The effect of commercial drones has been immense, specifically in the increased accuracy of artillery, which prevented the Hostomel Air Bridge gamble from succeeding. The Russian forces invested in the first weeks of the invasion may have been done with the certainty of success, but that vanished fast. When NATO saw the Ukrainian victory in the first wave of the invasion, it opened up its arsenals as a reward. Taking advantage of the mistake the Russians made, and providing further fuel to the fire the Russians set in Europe. The Ukrainian army of 2014 certainly would not have been able to produce these results. While not being a part of NATO, it has attained a massive inventory of weapons from 45 Western nations.
Ukraine has attempted counter-offensives which have offered more of a propaganda victory than a tactical one. Since the liberation of Kherson nearly a year ago now, there has been virtually no progress. “Despite heroic efforts and breaches of Russian defenses near Robotyne, Ukraine has liberated less than 0.25% of the territory that Russia occupied in June. The 1,000km front line has barely shifted” (Ukraine Faces a Long War, 2023). Russian offensives, however, at an immensely slow pace, gain Ukrainian ground. Bakmut, which was the largest battle in Europe since the Second World War, resulted in tens of thousands of casualties and, after months, a Russian victory. This battle may be an analogy for the war itself. An unclear strategic motivation pressing immense numbers of manpower and material into grinding and asymmetrical confrontations. A war with equal losses attrition will end a loss for Ukraine.
70% of the war's casualties are caused by artillery, and Ukraine says it has, despite being at the height of NATO’s material support, only 20% of the shells needed “On average Ukraine was firing 110,000 155mm-caliber shells a month, he says — a quarter of the amount used by Russia” (Bounds, 2023). It seems the predictors of the war, despite their mistake in the timeline, were correct in assuming Ukraine cannot materially oppose Russia. “Without meaningful pledges from foreign partners, Ukraine will not see peace as Russia will almost certainly continue its quest to obtain global respect by projecting military power over Ukrainian territories” (Kusa 2022). The most observable pattern is: one side makes trenches and lays defenses, attacking infantry supported by armor attempt to clear the trenches of the other, if possible, drones spot the targets and rain artillery down upon them, if there is no artillery before it is cleared, the field is held for the day. This process may only gain a few hundred yards per month. Unless there is a halt in Western aid to Ukraine, Kiev will fight to the last body they can supply to the front. They feel the world is behind them. While not achieving victory in the first days of the invasion, Russia ultimately will outproduce Ukrainian material support and have much more manpower. It has become a war of attrition, a war Ukraine will likely not win.
This war will last for years to come. Until there is a realization that borders and maps do not portray the reality of geopolitics, especially not in the ex-Soviet space. Russia has already paid the price of the international community’s sanctions. Now it is the West’s ambition to pick up the check for supplying all aspects of the war but the manpower. NATO will use it as an opportunity for learning and growth. Peace and the end of human suffering are seemingly less important than retaining some pseudo-state mired in corruption in Eastern Europe.
Works Cited
Foy, Henry, and Andy Bounds. “Ukraine Asks EU for 250,000 Artillery Shells a Month.” Financial Times, Financial Times, 3 Mar. 2023, www.ft.com/content/75ee9701-aa93-4c5d-a1bc-7a51422280fd.
Russia-Ukraine War Harbinger of a Global Shift a Perspective ... - JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/48676292. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.
“Ukraine Faces a Long War. A Change of Course Is Needed.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, www.economist.com/leaders/2023/09/21/ukraine-faces-a-long-war-a-change-of-course-is-needed. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.
