Russia is grinding down Ukraine's army, inflicting heavy casualties even as Russia endures casualties to achieve this. Does this mean time is on Russia's side?
Russia began an operational pause to regroup its ground forces.
Ukraine’s troops now face a Russian force that has shifted strategy from the hasty, single-axis attacks that characterized the early weeks of the war. Now there are no more attempts at pincer movements but instead slow but inexorable advances, preceded by massive artillery bombardments—a few kilometers every day all along the front from Izyum in the north to Zaporizhzhia in the south, tightening the noose on a fragile Ukrainian salient protecting the road network that links Kyiv to the east.
Or will Russia expand its objective from the shrunken Donbas goal to make its gains commensurate with its losses? And can that broader objective be obtained?
Do read all of the article.
We still don't have a good handle on casualties on both sides. The author says time is not on Ukraine's side. Although he also says Russian casualties aren't likely to halt Russia, at least in the short run. Which implies that time isn't necessarily on Russia's side.
Still, the author is right that this could be a war of endurance. But does Russia's 3:1 advantage in population and vastly greater GDP mean Russia has the endurance?
On people, you'd think so. But the Iran-Iraq War suggests otherwise. Iran had three times the population while Iraq had the money to build material superiority. Iran had far higher willingness to fight and die. But after years of relentless Iranian offensives, during which Iran lost twice as many troops as Iraq, Iran's morale broke. It was not so simple to say Iran could suffer 3 times the casualties. Indeed, one would have thought superior Iranian fanaticism would make the casualty endurance higher than 3:1. But that did not happen.
Can that experience apply to this war?
Like Iran, Russia has a 3:1 advantage in population. But Russian morale as a conqueror, that is clearly not liberating people from Nazis, is not superior. This could break Russia before Ukraine. Just how do we define the transition from the short run to the long run?
What about GDP and defense spending? You'd think Russia clearly has the edge with a 9:1 GDP advantage.
But Russia is under Western sanctions that will harm Russia's ability to go to war production levels. Russian Soviet-era stockpiles will run low in time--or reach the material and ammo almost more dangerous to Russian users than Ukrainian targets.
And Ukraine is being supplied by the West, which has an immensely greater GDP advantage than Russia's advantage over Ukraine. So you can't just count the value of the arms and services provided to Ukraine when comparing the economic advantage. You'd have to count the research and development and logistics value on Ukraine's side of the ledger that provides the weapons, supplies, and services.
So when you compare the scientific, industrial, and military effort on both sides, is Russia really superior in material?
That depends on how much of the products of the Western military-industrial complex is funneled to Ukraine. I can't rule out that the West will end up trying to give enough to defeat Russia but fail to fine tune its effort enough to deprive Russia of victory.
Certainly, the problem of plugging Ukraine into the Western military procurement and logistics system to take advantage of Western weaponry is immense even if the West reduces the limits on what is provided. Perhaps too difficult in the short run. But only if Russia can exploit that problem.
Russia may well be able to grind down Ukraine. That was my view before the war--a partial and ugly win by a Russian military not nearly as good as Russian propaganda portrayed--that left most of Ukraine independent. I was right that the war would be neither short nor glorious for Russia.
The question now is amazingly whether Russia wins. Russia initially performed worse than even I suspected and the West has armed and supported Ukraine more than I hoped. Russia could find itself the victim of that process.
And until we see one side ground down and breaking, we may not be able to predict it.
ISW updates continue here.
UPDATE: Per the ISW update, Russia's operational pause seems to have been prematurely ended:
The assaults are still small-scale and were largely unsuccessful. If the operational pause is truly over, the Russians will likely continue and expand such assaults in the coming 72 hours. The Russians might instead alternate briefer pauses with strengthening attacks over a number of days before moving into a full-scale offensive operation. A 10-day-long operational pause is insufficient to fully regenerate Russian forces for large-scale offensive operations. The Russian military seems to feel continuous pressure to resume and continue offensive operations before it can reasonably have rebuilt sufficient combat power to achieve decisive effects at a reasonable cost to itself, however. The resuming Russian offensive may therefore fluctuate or even stall for some time.
The pressure to advance will mean Russia has less chance to succeed. But will it preempt a Ukrainian counteroffensive?
