I heard an analyst say that Russia isn't intending to achieve a battlefield victory to win the war. That Russia is choosing to wage a war of attrition to grind down Ukraine with Russia's larger size. I disagree that Russia chose this path.
Russia chose to carry out a rapid regime change with a virtual military parade into Ukraine's cities. That failed.
Then Russia chose to wage a narrow military offensive in the Donbas. That failed.
Now Russia is on Plan C--long attrition.
Maybe that works. But attrition is more complicated than simply saying Russia is much bigger and has the advantage. Maybe, I observed, Russia will have to go to Plan D:
People like to say Russia can't afford to end the war without victory. So we should just let Ukraine die. At the moment Russia can't admit defeat. But at some point if Russia continues screwing the pooch, ending the war with retreat may seem like the best outcome Russia can get.
What is Putin's calculation now? Is clinging to Ukrainian territory at this price worth it? Or is that level of sacrifice finally dangerous to Russia or to himself? Will battlefield defeats and retreats in Ukraine's counteroffensive be too much to bear? Will fighting on seem too risky?
Lord knows I wrongly thought a far lower price was too much to ask of the Russian people.
But those who think Putin can't afford to admit defeat and so must continue to fight make a mistake in logic on the first part of that equation. That is, all Putin has to do to end the war is refuse to admit defeat. Indeed, go all in on spinning reality:
Putin is creating a narrative in which for all intents and purposes his “special military operation” in Ukraine never happened, and instead, NATO took up arms against poor, innocent Russia which, heroically and against all odds, repulsed the Western attack without losing any territory whatsoever. By this reckoning, Russia wins a great victory even if the Ukraine-Russian border remains pretty much as it was before the shooting started.
China did this after invading Vietnam in 1979, pulling its bloodied and stymied army out after claiming it had taught Vietnam a lesson against defying China.
If Putin can't afford to end the war against Ukraine without victory, he can simply claim victory by saying Russia's glorious military under Putin's leadership made Ukraine a desert by battering Ukraine into perpetual weakness and emptied NATO's armories of weapons and ammunition.
The fact that NATO doesn't invade Russia after Russian troops pull out of Ukrainian territory will be cited as proof of success. Never mind that NATO has no desire to do that.
And if any Russian challenges that narrative, they might fall down a flight of stairs or out a window. Eventually the message of victory will be pounded home.
Heck, even open defeat in Ukraine could be seen by Putin as the best option available.
Calculations change.
Heck, what is Zelensky's calculation if the counteroffensive isn't successful--or isn't successful enough? Are the Ukrainian people willing to sacrifice more to reclaim more territory? Or do they think Russia received enough of a bloody nose to never try that again, as Finland achieved in its Winter War of 1939-1940?
Might Ukrainians think money to rebuild is a worthy trade for Crimea remaining with the Russians?
You never know. Britain and France went to war with Nazi Germany in 1939 over the fate of Poland. By 1945 the fate of Poland as an issue was moot even with Germany crushed.
UPDATE (Monday): Weather, weapons delivery, and training have delayed Ukraine's long-telegraphed counteroffensive. Sure, Ukraine wants more time. Every commander wants more. But so does Russia. Who needs this time more?
I keep recalling reading former German commanders on the World War II Eastern Front who said it was always best to counter-attack Russian advances quickly with whatever you could scrape up rather than wait for the Russians to dig in and prepare. This was more tactical than operational advice. But it worries me.
Many of the tank crews say Russian defenses are more dug in than they were during the early stages of the war and Petro says that combat is becoming more and more like "trench warfare."
I will say that the delay in Ukraine's counteroffensive that has given time for Russia to build heavy fortifications is a problem the Iraqis developed in the Iran-Iraq War. Dug in on a long line and optimized to hold off Iranian human wave assaults, the Iraqi regular army lost its ability to fight mobile warfare. That led the Iraqis to expand their small Republican Guard force into a six-division mobile warfare force.
This problem also afflicted Western Front units in World War I where many divisions were rated as "trench warfare only" units. How many of the units on both sides would be rated this way now? But at least Ukraine is building a mobile force.
UPDATE (Monday): Russia claims to control Bakhmut. Ukraine says it still has some tiny toe-hold in the city. Even if Ukraine's claim is true, Russia effectively has the city. On the other hand, the more significant fight for the city is on the northern and southern flanks of the city.
UPDATE (Monday): Russia's invasion proved its army was highly over-rated by most Westerners. Will Ukraine's counteroffensive prove the Russian army is still over-rated?
As I've said, you can't win without attacking at some point. Russians ran from a small and bold counteroffensive at Kharkiv and pulled back rather than fight the small and cautious Ukrainian counteroffensive at Kherson.
If the Russians run again, we'll again see that Russia's ground forces are over-rated. I suspect the Russians are still over-rated. But I fear the Russians are good enough.
UPDATE (Monday): Huh:
Clashes broke out on Monday in Russian villages near the Ukrainian border, according to local officials and verified videos. The Russian regional governor said that a Ukrainian sabotage group had crossed into Russian territory, while Kyiv said that anti-Kremlin Russian partisans were behind the attacks.
Quite the distraction. I mentioned an attack there as a purely hypothetical option. I sincerely doubt Ukrainian troops--other than special forces or intel raids--would cross the border.
The Free Russia Legion claims responsibility. If Ukraine set them up, so what? Russia denies invading Ukraine in 2014-2015, after all. Just local Ukrainians rising up, Russia claimed.
UPDATE (Monday): ISW: "Elements of the all-Russian pro-Ukrainian Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR) conducted a raid into Belgorod Oblast on May 22."
UPDATE (Tuesday): Will this force Russia to divert troops to the Russia-Ukraine border to man the border defenses built to stop a purported Ukrainian invasion threat:
Russian troops and security forces fought for a second day Tuesday against an alleged cross-border raid that Moscow blamed on Ukrainian military saboteurs but which Kyiv portrayed as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans.
Russia should basically ignore this threat and simply send reaction forces to defeat any raids. But can Russia afford to ignore the threat after their propaganda campaign played up the threat?
UPDATE (Friday): Did a Ukrainian surface drone hit a Russian intelligence-gathering ship in the southern Black Sea?
NOTE: The image was made with DALL-E.
NOTE: ISW coverage of the war continues here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
