If the Ukrainian counter-offensive bogs down in a slow-moving ground campaign aimed at retaking one semi-abandoned village after another, there will be very serious consequences not only for Ukraine but also for the NATO member states and for the wider western world.
If by the end of the summer or early autumn this year there has not been a forced withdrawal of Russian forces from the greater part of the territories that they have stolen from a UN member state, it is hard to see how that end will be accomplished in 2024.
Classic military theory of conventional warfare tells us that a ratio of three to one in favour of attacking forces is required to capture territory and to expel well dug-in defenders. In terms of manpower, such a ratio is beyond the capacity of the Ukrainian armed forces along the entire front-line of occupation.
In those circumstances, Ukraine’s strategy will have to concentrate its forces in narrower spearheads aiming at breakthroughs, encirclement and destruction of static defending units. Hoping to rout demoralised defenders in strategically important locations by these means is the most obvious plan of campaign for Ukraine.
The big problem, of course, is that these considerations are equally obvious to the Russians. If they can motivate their defenders to wage a slow defensive battle of attrition everywhere the Ukrainians concentrate attacking formations, they will defeat the counter-offensive.
While motivation and morale are hugely important factors, the great bulk of Ukrainian forces are recent recruits with limited combat training; the same applies to the Russian forces. The Ukrainians need sophisticated satellite and drone intelligence to identify Russian defensive positions and points of concentration vulnerable to attack by drones, rocket systems and artillery in order to spare their advancing infantry and armour from excessive casualties and damage. Up to now the Ukrainians have had the advantage of superior intelligence, presumably with western assistance. The trick is to use that intelligence to sustain concentrated axes of advance to break through the frontlines and capture strategic targets or cut off Russian strategic supply lines.
Verdun-like struggles to capture or re-capture centres like Bakhmut are pointless if they involve heavy fighting in ruined built-up areas. The defender has a wholly disproportionate advantage in those cases The battle for Bakhmut proved how pointless and wasteful full-on frontal assaults on trophy positions can be. There are clear indications that the Wagner forces learned a very bloody lesion at Bakhmut which they will never allow to be repeated anywhere else.
It is impossible to see how this counter-offensive could result in the recapture of the Crimean Peninsula. The most the Ukrainians could do in the southern theatre of operations would be to make a major advance towards the Sea of Azov cutting or rendering unusable the land corridor to Crimea.
Of course, media armchair generals and commentators are not privy even to the outline aims of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. It may well be that probes and feint attacks will first be deployed in order to flush out Russian countermeasures and to launch later concentrated attacks once intelligence is to hand that demonstrates points of weakness. We may only be witnessing such a preliminary phase at this point.
But the political reality remains that the West’s appetite for massive assistance to Ukraine will ebb if this year’s counter-offensive bogs down or makes only limited territorial advances. That is Zelenskiy’s dilemma.
There is obvious western reluctance to tool up the Ukrainian air forces with state-of-the-art F-15 fighter aircraft. If recently supplied western tanks and armoured vehicles are combined with advanced weapon systems such as the American Himars rocket launchers to punch significant holes in Russian defences leading to major advances by the Autumn, it will be possible to sustain public opinion and political confidence in support of continuing the war.
It was noteworthy recently that Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, spoke in terms of a dual purpose for the Ukrainian counter-offensive – both recapturing territory and putting Ukraine into a much stronger position in any negotiations to end the conflict.
The fact that such negotiations are seen as inevitable does not mean that the counter-offensive is wholly redundant or unjustified. Everything depends on the circumstances in which such negotiations start.
Unless Russia is seen not merely to have failed in its earliest war aim which was to occupy and subjugate the entirety of Ukraine (and it has failed completely in that aim) but also to have lost on the battlefield to a major extent, the outcome of those negotiations will be very grave for Ukraine, the Balkans, Georgia, Moldova, and the Baltic states in the short to medium term.
Putin’s global strategy for Russia must be heavily defeated. His greatest global partner and admirer, Donald Trump is hovering in the wings, stage right.
The next twelve or fourteen months are critical for us all.