The war will drag on--assuming Russia can't exploit the hiccup in American military aid to break through Ukraine's defenders. But just as the war extends into the future, we recognize the war started in earnest in 2014. And Russia's campaign to reconquer Ukraine started a decade before that Russian military escalation. What escalation might Putin intend next?
Avdiivka has fallen. Ukraine believed they'd bled the Russians enough and had best get out while they could before Russian troops enveloped and trapped the small city's defenders. The war will go on, as it has in a different form for for two decades now.
A strong case can be made that Russia's war to seize Ukraine began in 2004 with a covert attempt by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin to subvert Ukraine's election and install a pro-Moscow vassal.
In Ukraine's 2004 national elections, Russia-backed Viktor Yanukovych ostensibly defeated democratizer Viktor Yushchenko. To the Kremlin's dismay, mass demonstrations erupted -- the Orange Revolution (November 2004 to January 2005). Ukrainians took to the streets and rejected the flawed election.
TDR was on that Orange Revolution, which our Secretary of State understood in the proper context:
"It is not a matter of (spheres) of influence, it is a matter of allowing a country to choose how it wishes to be governed and who it wishes to have as its friends," Powell said on a trip to Bulgaria.But it looked ugly two years later as Ukrainian security forces faced off against each other. And Russia waged a cyber-war on Estonia. As I warned:
Oh, and we should stand firm with Estonia in the current cyber-war so that Moscow doesn't get the wrong idea about Western resolve. This isn't about Estonia and it isn't about Ukraine. It is about a Russia that is pining for its glory days and we don't know what they are willing to do to regain the old Soviet borders.
In 2004, Russia was too weak to do more than exploit internal divisions in post-Soviet Ukraine still struggling for its identity.
In 2014, Russia was strong enough to prepare the ground to seize Crimea from Ukraine--but not the Donbas. And then through 2015 seized portions of the Donbas against fierce Ukrainian resistance--while denying it was invading Ukraine. Russia proved its military wasn't good enough for war. Notwithstanding Western panty-throwing early on at what was eventually dubbed "hybrid" warfare.
And in 2022, after building up its military into what Putin thought was a Red Army reborn, Russia openly invaded Ukraine rather than rely on using fading internal divisions in Ukraine for a coup or using glorious "hybrid warfare". While denying it was doing more than defending itself from NATO, Nazis, and Satan himself. That stage continues.
As Russia gets stronger, it resorts to more force to restore its Soviet-era empire that stretched to the Elbe River in the middle of Germany. If Russia is allowed to halt to reload, what level of force will it use against Ukraine in the next inevitable round after digesting lessons of its failure in this round?
If America falters in stopping Russia in Ukraine, what level of force will Russia have after digesting Ukraine? Who will Russia target? And where will it stop? And how much of a "distraction" from facing China will that be for America?
As George Friedman observed, America has had a very good strategy so far:
I think the Ukraine model is going to be one we'll be looking at for a long time. If they won't defend themselves, do not join them. If they will defend themselves, send everything you’ve got.
America must resume robust military supplies and services support to Ukraine. We complain of
allies who won't fight our common enemy and yet shrink from supporting
an ally that damn well proves its willingness to fight? How does that even make sense? Get over the fact that Democrats are suddenly--and suspiciously--anti-Russian and welcome them to the party!
Keeping Russia as far east as we can reduces the amount of blood and treasure America has to expend. Send what we've got--and make more!
UPDATE (Monday): ISW thinks the Russian offensive culminates in the Avdiivka region now that they face new Ukrainian units:
These newly committed [Ukrainian] units are likely able to establish and hold defensive positions against Russian forces, degraded by their assaults on the town, west of Avdiivka. Russian forces, which have suffered high personnel and equipment losses in seizing Avdiivka, will likely culminate when they come up against relatively fresher Ukrainian units manning prepared defensive positions.
Maybe. Assuming the city was the objective and not simply battering forward to maintain territorial progress no matter what the cost. After all, the capture of Avdiivka will be old news by the time Russia's "election" rolls around. What fresh victory will be required to validate Putin's decision for war two years ago?
UPDATE (Tuesday): I'll guess that prior to withdrawing the infantry that Ukraine pulled back any air defenses to keep them from being abandoned in a withdrawal if Russians pursued closely:
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said that Russia has “temporarily established limited and localised air superiority” during the final days of its activity in Avdiivka before the Ukrainian withdrawal.
We'll see if Russia can't repeat that. Especially after losing a number of jets in recent days.
UPDATE (Tuesday): Five million Ukrainians under Russian occupation face Putin's forced Russification and ethnic cleansing to bring them under control.
For people supposedly in need of rescue by Russian troops from Nazis, NATO, and Satan, that seems like a lot of effort to have to make. Decades of Soviet efforts didn't prevent their subject people from fleeing the first chance they had in 1991. But just because it probably won't work doesn't mean it isn't evil.
UPDATE (Tuesday): If not there, the Russians will attack somewhere:
Russian forces will likely have to conduct an operational pause before resuming significant offensive operations in the Avdiivka direction or will have to transfer additional reinforcements from other sectors of the front to the area to prevent operations near Avdiivka from culminating. Russian forces have reserves available for such reinforcement in other sectors, but ISW has observed no indication that the Russian command is moving those reserves toward Avdiivka at this time.
Could we get a sense of urgency in restoring American military aid to Ukraine? All Republicans want Biden to do is first defend the southern border under our laws. How is that possibly a deal breaker for him?
UPDATE (Thursday): Russia regained the momentum in its invasion? Maybe. Russia certainly has the initiative. But it is more accurate to say America's polarized politics handed Russia some momentum by denying Ukraine adequate weaponry and ammunition.
After America pulled out of South Vietnam, South Vietnam conducted an offensive into Laos to cut of North Vietnamese supply lines. It was costly to both sides. But it used up a lot of ammunition and equipment on the assumption America would resupply South Vietnam. That was a bad assumption as Congressional Democrats cut funding to sustain South Vietnam's military.
Let's hope history isn't rhyming.
UPDATE (Thursday): Russia is learning:
Russian forces are conducting a cohesive multi-axis offensive operation in pursuit of an operationally significant objective for nearly the first time in over a year and a half of campaigning in Ukraine. The prospects of this offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk sector are far from clear, but its design and initial execution mark notable inflections in the Russian operational level approach.
And is able to execute with a lower level of difficulty because of the interruption of American military aid to Ukraine which reduces Ukraine's ability to hammer the offensive as Russian troops come out from behind their minefields and out of their bunkers.
It is an interruption and not the end, right? We can't possibly be letting Russia win this interim war of aggression, can we?
Still, not all is coming up roses for the Russians:
Prominent independent Russian milblogger Andrei Morozov reportedly committed suicide on February 21 after refusing the Russian military command’s orders to delete his reports about high Russian casualty rates around Avdiivka.
He said he despaired of helping the incompetent Russian military fix its flaws that leave troops as cannon fodder.
Sadly, Ukraine doesn't have the cannons to exploit the disregard for the fodder.
UPDATE (Friday): Russia doesn't want peace:
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia would likely have to seize Kyiv sooner or later while identifying Russia’s possible further territorial objectives in Ukraine.
And if it agrees to a ceasefire it is for the purpose of reloading.
UPDATE (Saturday): If Russia is inevitably going to win, why are they making such a weird effort to craft that message?
Recent Kremlin rhetoric has focused on portraying Russia as able to outlast Ukraine’s willingness and ability to fight, including outlasting Western military support for Ukraine, and Russian milbloggers‘ consistent claims of ineffective Ukrainian air defenses and other battlefield capabilities are congruent with this disinformation campaign. Ukrainian shootdowns of Russian strategic-level aircraft, especially twice within mere weeks of each other, severely undermine this Russian narrative. The milbloggers’ enthusiasm for attributing staggering incompetence to Russia’s own air defenders—the only possible explanation for multiple instances of friendly fire taking down the aircraft helping coordinate the air defenders themselves--is odd.
It works in the West because many people fall prey to the problem of seeing your own sides problems more clearly while the enemy's problems are in a fog. Oh, sure, we know Russia is taking have casualties and losing lots of equipment. If that was happening to us, we'd say we're doomed. Remember how Iraq "broke" our Army?
But I digress.
But if losses happen to Russia? Oh, they can afford it! They'll never lose heart! Once more it is time to quote Kipling:
Russia is hurt. I have no idea how much. But Russia is going to great lengths to tell us they aren't hurt.
It took Russia's army three years to break in World War I. That's not a prediction. But it is a possibility. The Western Allies back then counted on Russia's ability to lose unlimited men and materiel fighting the Germans and keep on coming for more.
It is not futile to belatedly arm and sustain Ukraine. Better a bigger war in Ukraine that defeats Russia this decade is better than Russian victory in Ukraine and a bigger war across Europe next decade that involves our troops fighting Russians.
UPDATE (Saturday): Freedman gets it:
The wear and tear of a long war is taking its toll on Ukraine. But the Ukrainians have shown that they can keep fighting. The current Western fixation on Ukraine’s problems, and the difficulty of working out exactly what is going on in Moscow, has led to easy assumptions that Russia can keep fighting without also showing wear and tear. In fact, for all the resources that Putin has thrown into this war, the results have been meager since its opening weeks, when Russia acquired the bulk of the territory it currently occupies. Russia can find additional basic manpower, but it has a much harder time replacing lost junior officers and modern equipment.
Bleed Russia. Don't worry about "forcing" Ukraine to fight for their own future free of Russian oppression. I assure you, if Ukrainians don't want to fight Russia, they'll stop fighting regardless of what we send.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.