Ukraine’s Resilient Defence: A Three-Year Struggle Against Russian Aggression
By Philip Ingram MBE
We are three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, so, let’s put Ukraine’s war with Russia into context.
Russia wanted the war to last a few days. Its aim was to overthrow the Zelensky government, to put a puppet government in charge and therefore take control of the whole country and turn it into a puppet state like Belarus. They failed. Quite simply, they failed.
A very bold Russian plan, involving special forces, airmobile and airborne operations with a road too far link up operation from ground forces. The Russians expected Zelensky to melt away and leave the country to its fate however, the result was very different. The Russian attack was undermined by a dogged, determined Ukrainian defence, resulting in the Russians being forced back from Kiev, being forced out of the northern part of Ukraine and having to change their main effort into trying to capture additional parts of the disputed Donbas region, building on what they had started through 2014, but a very much secondary objective.
The Russians have failed to achieve much in the East. Yes, they’ve taken some territory, but they’ve moved forward at massive cost. Dead and injured, over 850,000. Thousands of tanks, thousands of artillery pieces, thousands of infantry personnel carriers, thousands of armoured vehicles, all destroyed.
The Russian Air Force has not really done much. Ukrainians have effectively rendered the Russian Black Sea fleet impotent and useless, pushed it away in the same way that the Argentinian fleet, after the sinking of General Belgrano in the Falklands War, took no further part to the conflict. We shouldn’t underestimate what Ukraine has achieved. The underdog, very much the underdog, holding back the Goliath that was Russia.
The war is not going to be won on the front line. It could be lost on the front line if Ukraine’s defences collapse and Russia gets an easy push forward, but that’s not going to happen. If it was going to collapse, it would have collapsed already. Russia is not going to be able to push forward in any significant or meaningful military way. The frontlines are literally entrenched. Russia is on path to have lost a million soldiers relatively soon.
If fighting continues, the war is going to be won or lost at the operational level. The Operational level is where it’s the country’s ability to continue to prosecute the conflict and have the ability to continue to support and deliver what is needed to the front line.
This is the ability to continue to support the conflict from a defence output, an economic output, and a political will perspective. This is where the Ukrainians are winning. They’re winning by attacking Russian oil infrastructure, undermining Russia’s ability to continue to finance the conflict. They’re winning by ensuring Russia’s oil output is undermining its wider economy. That has started and will continue to hit the Russian people. And as they become more aware of what’s going on, that will put more pressure on the Russian government to give up.
They’re winning by attacking Russian military manufacturing infrastructure, factories catching fire. They’re winning by assassinating Russian generals in Moscow. The psychological impact of that is phenomenal. They’re winning by attacking Russian command and control logistics, airbases, and more.
They’ve won in the Black Sea with the use of Ukrainian drones. Ukrainian home-grown military capability is growing at a phenomenal rate. Now able to produce millions of drones per year, western defence manufacturers opening factories to produce munitions, armoured vehicles and more. Ukraine, the powerhouse behind Soviet missile development is now about to deliver its own ballistic missile capability.
Meanwhile, sanctions are biting on Russia, it is relying more and more on China for high tech, for North Korea for ammunition, artillery and ballistic missiles, on Iranian technology for drones.
However, this comes at huge cost. The Russian economy is probably six to eighteen months off collapsing completely, and Putin knows it. This is why the lifeline thrown by Donald Trump makes no sense. It could be Trump doesn’t want to see Russia collapsing completely. If he gets this wrong, Russia will reset, rearm, learn its lessons and come back again. This time casualties will be even more and the cost to defending economies even bigger than the numbers being mooted today.
So, we shouldn’t underestimate what Ukraine has achieved and is continuing to achieve. And with continued support, and we should take the gloves off and allow it to use Western weapons at longer ranges, it will set the conditions for Russia to collapse.
The pressure that’s coming out of Donald Trump at the minute is by no means the end of what’s happening. His motivation is something that is not logical. There is no political logic to it, there’s no military logic to it. There is no other logic that comes to mind. Therefore, it is very difficult to predict what’s going to happen next.
But hats off to the Ukrainians, three years, massive cost. Of course, it’s time for the conflict to finish. Nobody wants a conflict to continue. But we have to remember that war is diplomacy by other means. It is whenever diplomacy fails, that the fighting, the military get involved to set the conditions to get back to the negotiating table. Maybe Donald Trump’s going to force those conditions. He seems to be using his tactics from his book, The Art of the Deal. If that is right, then once he has hooked Putin we should see a change in tack. I hope I’m right.
We have to remember Xi Jing Ping is watching all of this very closely to decide when he will try and take Taiwan by force. If Trump and the International Community get Ukraine wrong then the economic shock we suffered three years ago with Russians full scale invasion, will seem like small change compared to the economic shock if there is a pivot to conflict in SE Asia.
Recent Comments