'The West must dispense with the fantasy that negotiations can end the conflict and instead keep working to help Ukraine. It must realize that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention is to destroy Ukraine and that he will therefore fight on until his military is physically defeated, treating any cease-fire simply as a chance to rearm for a more decisive attack in the future. In fact, pro-negotiation rhetoric already emboldens Moscow.''To win the war, Ukraine and allies should draw lessons from its nonlinear successes on land and at sea. The country must have the technologies needed to destroy Russian fortified positions, along with the equipment to interfere with Russian drones. This largely boils down to long-range firepower—including ammunition, missiles, aviation, drones—and electronic warfare systems. If the West cannot donate such weapons to Ukraine, it can help Ukrainians build them.
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To make a creative war strategy work, Kyiv must regain technological superiority. The counteroffensive plan severely underestimated the growing role small drones play in today’s combat, and one of the key lessons from 2023 is that Ukraine’s allies cannot ignore the rapidly evolving technological landscape of the war—in particular, the importance of first-person-view unmanned aerial vehicles. Autonomous and remotely guided weapons present a new chapter in warfare history, and they are the result of profound value innovation. They have made many traditional approaches and doctrines irrelevant.
Moscow is good at scaling up successful inventions, including first-person-view drones, and so Kyiv must continuously innovate to regain the advantage. But Ukraine has what it takes to do so: the country’s bureaucracy and economy, with its hundreds of defense startups, is far more agile and innovative than Russia’s, which are based on a rigid, top-down system. A recent Ukrainian initiative, for example, has encouraged citizens to assemble simple drones at home in order to increase output dramatically.
Finally, Kyiv must keep using large conventional weapons systems to implement comprehensive operational concepts. There are still Western capabilities, such as high mobility artillery rockets (HIMARS) and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), air defense units, and self-propelled artillery, that have no match in Russia and that Ukraine therefore deploys to its advantage. U.S.-made fighter jets, provided they are equipped according to up-to-date specifications, will be particularly crucial to Kyiv’s victory, assisting Ukraine in establishing local air superiority in future counteroffensives.
To keep fighting against Russian invasion, Ukraine will need continued Western support. In addition to sending more long-range missiles, fighter jets, and other sophisticated weapons, NATO countries must also commit to doing joint weapons development and production with Ukraine, particularly of unmanned capabilities and rockets as the war’s evolution makes many previous models uncompetitive. Scaling matters, and so Ukraine’s allies must also support its industrial projects and help it ramp up production.
Unfortunately, and despite the existential stakes, U.S. assistance to Ukraine is waning. If that continues, Russia will produce more systems than it loses, gaining the advantage and occupying more territory. Ukraine may be able to innovate better than Russia, but it cannot defeat the country on wit and creativity alone. Ukraine has no intention of capitulating in any scenario, but a long war that increasingly burdens Ukraine’s military, society, and economy will have disastrous consequences.
For the West, such a scenario would be both devastating and dangerous. NATO will be humiliated if, after it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine, Russia’s campaign does not come off as an unequivocal failure. Even if the frontlines remain where they are now, with Ukraine perpetually holding off Russian forces, Russia will have taken more land from its neighbor, showing up Kyiv’s partners. The message to the rest of the world will be that even the world’s most powerful alliance cannot help a brave large state defend its borders. Other countries, including China, may be tempted to launch expansionist attacks of their own. Moscow itself may decide to expand its empire farther by moving on a NATO member, like Poland, bringing the alliance’s countries into direct combat.
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..the U.S. government is not providing enough resources to win.
That must change. The West must dispense with the fantasy that negotiations can end the conflict and instead keep working to help Ukraine. It must realize that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention is to destroy Ukraine and that he will therefore fight on until his military is physically defeated, treating any cease-fire simply as a chance to rearm for a more decisive attack in the future. In fact, pro-negotiation rhetoric already emboldens Moscow.
The war in Ukraine may be proceeding much more slowly than it was before, but the West must remember that history is full of protracted conflicts—many wars take years to complete and win. Nothing happening on the battlefield today justifies strategic weakness or despair. Russia’s presence in Ukraine, its potential to mobilize, and its industrial base are large but finite. Ukraine has an unwavering determination to win. If Kyiv is backed by the combined Western economy, and even a fraction of the West’s combined defense budgets, it will be fully capable of succeeding. In these circumstances, victory is not a question of possibility. It is, instead, a question of the correct strategy and policy. Most of all, it is a question of choice.''..Ukraine can still win, removing Russian troops from occupied territories.
..If Ukraine can get systems, as well as major long-range firepower platforms, missiles, and F-16 jets, it will gain the competitive edge. Ukraine, however, cannot win by simply trying to outgun Russia symmetrically.
The United States and Europe, then, should stop talking about negotiations—which have never been a viable way to end the conflict. They must start making good on their promise to, as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin put it in April 2022, “move heaven and earth” to assist Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia will continue to terrorize Ukrainians with missile strikes and blackouts. It will, inevitably, make more gains on the battlefield. And in doing so, it will humiliate the West, which has invested so much in saving Kyiv.
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Unfortunately, so far, Moscow has managed to make the war into one of attrition, where it can compensate for its lack of technology by throwing large numbers of people into battle and arming them with old-school weapons. It has done so, in part, by manipulating Washington. Although the United States has established itself a leader of the Western coalition for Ukraine, Russia quickly realized that Washington was too afraid of escalation to fully help Ukraine. Moscow then successfully played with this fear to make sure the United States committed weapons to Ukraine much later than it should have. Some U.S. systems have not yet been provided, or they have been provided in tiny quantities. Russia has, simultaneously, actively invested in innovative technology—such as electronic warfare, air defense, and new drones.
Ukraine and its Western allies must deny Russia the ability to play its game. The allies must stop self-deterring and provide much larger quantities of conventional weapons, as well as innovative types of equipment. The West’s technology and resources and Ukraine’s drive to win are both still larger than Russia’s by an order of magnitude. As a result, this coalition can and must prevail.
Russia compensates for its shortcomings by exuding confidence, but the West must learn to stop taking the Kremlin’s statements at face value. Objectively, Moscow does not have too many reasons to be upbeat. Ukraine may not be winning the war right now, but neither is Russia. Despite tremendous losses when it comes to ammunition, equipment, and personnel, Russia’s gains over recent months were very insignificant. Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine inflicted casualties equal to 90 percent of all the troops Russia had at the beginning of 2022. And despite a mobilized economy and ramped-up production, Russia’s output of weapons is lower than what it needs.
If this trend continues, and Ukraine keeps receiving the assistance the West has promised, Russia will not be able to complete any of its campaign plans—especially given Ukraine’s strengths. Despite the recent setbacks, the Ukrainian military remains a formidable fighting force..
Ukraine’s efforts in the Black Sea in 2023 provide another case study in how the country can win through alternative techniques and by striking deep. Before the invasion, no one thought Kyiv had any chance against Moscow in the water: Russia had a sizable number of large military vessels in the Black Sea, whereas Ukraine had effectively none. Kyiv sank its only real warship when the invasion began (the ship had been undergoing repair) to prevent it from falling into Russian hands. But Ukraine has used surface drones, artillery, domestic special operation forces, and, later, Western missiles to launch successful attacks against Russia’s fleet. It sank the Russia’s Black Sea flagship in April 2022, for instance, by combining drone surveillance with a strike from homemade missiles.
Today, Ukraine has largely neutralized the Russian navy..
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To win the war, Ukraine and allies should draw lessons from its nonlinear successes on land and at sea. The country must have the technologies needed to destroy Russian fortified positions, along with the equipment to interfere with Russian drones. This largely boils down to long-range firepower—including ammunition, missiles, aviation, drones—and electronic warfare systems. If the West cannot donate such weapons to Ukraine, it can help Ukrainians build them.
..
To make a creative war strategy work, Kyiv must regain technological superiority. The counteroffensive plan severely underestimated the growing role small drones play in today’s combat, and one of the key lessons from 2023 is that Ukraine’s allies cannot ignore the rapidly evolving technological landscape of the war—in particular, the importance of first-person-view unmanned aerial vehicles. Autonomous and remotely guided weapons present a new chapter in warfare history, and they are the result of profound value innovation. They have made many traditional approaches and doctrines irrelevant.
Moscow is good at scaling up successful inventions, including first-person-view drones, and so Kyiv must continuously innovate to regain the advantage. But Ukraine has what it takes to do so: the country’s bureaucracy and economy, with its hundreds of defense startups, is far more agile and innovative than Russia’s, which are based on a rigid, top-down system. A recent Ukrainian initiative, for example, has encouraged citizens to assemble simple drones at home in order to increase output dramatically.
Finally, Kyiv must keep using large conventional weapons systems to implement comprehensive operational concepts. There are still Western capabilities, such as high mobility artillery rockets (HIMARS) and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), air defense units, and self-propelled artillery, that have no match in Russia and that Ukraine therefore deploys to its advantage. U.S.-made fighter jets, provided they are equipped according to up-to-date specifications, will be particularly crucial to Kyiv’s victory, assisting Ukraine in establishing local air superiority in future counteroffensives.
To keep fighting against Russian invasion, Ukraine will need continued Western support. In addition to sending more long-range missiles, fighter jets, and other sophisticated weapons, NATO countries must also commit to doing joint weapons development and production with Ukraine, particularly of unmanned capabilities and rockets as the war’s evolution makes many previous models uncompetitive. Scaling matters, and so Ukraine’s allies must also support its industrial projects and help it ramp up production.
Unfortunately, and despite the existential stakes, U.S. assistance to Ukraine is waning. If that continues, Russia will produce more systems than it loses, gaining the advantage and occupying more territory. Ukraine may be able to innovate better than Russia, but it cannot defeat the country on wit and creativity alone. Ukraine has no intention of capitulating in any scenario, but a long war that increasingly burdens Ukraine’s military, society, and economy will have disastrous consequences.
For the West, such a scenario would be both devastating and dangerous. NATO will be humiliated if, after it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine, Russia’s campaign does not come off as an unequivocal failure. Even if the frontlines remain where they are now, with Ukraine perpetually holding off Russian forces, Russia will have taken more land from its neighbor, showing up Kyiv’s partners. The message to the rest of the world will be that even the world’s most powerful alliance cannot help a brave large state defend its borders. Other countries, including China, may be tempted to launch expansionist attacks of their own. Moscow itself may decide to expand its empire farther by moving on a NATO member, like Poland, bringing the alliance’s countries into direct combat.
..
..the U.S. government is not providing enough resources to win.
That must change. The West must dispense with the fantasy that negotiations can end the conflict and instead keep working to help Ukraine. It must realize that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention is to destroy Ukraine and that he will therefore fight on until his military is physically defeated, treating any cease-fire simply as a chance to rearm for a more decisive attack in the future. In fact, pro-negotiation rhetoric already emboldens Moscow.
The war in Ukraine may be proceeding much more slowly than it was before, but the West must remember that history is full of protracted conflicts—many wars take years to complete and win. Nothing happening on the battlefield today justifies strategic weakness or despair. Russia’s presence in Ukraine, its potential to mobilize, and its industrial base are large but finite. Ukraine has an unwavering determination to win. If Kyiv is backed by the combined Western economy, and even a fraction of the West’s combined defense budgets, it will be fully capable of succeeding. In these circumstances, victory is not a question of possibility. It is, instead, a question of the correct strategy and policy. Most of all, it is a question of choice.'
- Andriy Zagorodnyuk,
How Ukraine Can Regain Its Edge, January 17, 2024
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