Benjamin Hart
Ukraine had high hopes for its long-anticipated counteroffensive, the goal of which is to reclaim territory Russia seized in the country’s south and east last year (as well as Crimea, taken in 2014) and force Vladimir Putin into a weak negotiating position. And although the country’s forces have made some promising recent gains, the operation has thus far been a deadly and demoralizing slog. Ukrainian soldiers have run up against vast minefields and other elaborate Russian defenses and have been able to make only slow progress, at a steep cost in men and equipment. With the limited time before the onset of the fall mud season, what can Ukraine realistically accomplish? For perspective on that question, I spoke with John Nagl, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who has written extensively about counterinsurgency and is now a professor of warfighting studies at U.S. Army War College. (Nagl made clear that his views on the war did not reflect those of the army, or the Department of Defense.)
I was reading a Wall Street Journal article you were recently quoted in, and its premise was that the West had not properly trained or equipped Ukrainian forces ahead of Ukraine’s big counteroffensive, which hasn’t been hitting its goals. That was mid-to-late July; have things changed much since then?
Not a lot. The defensive is the stronger form of war, as we teach at places like the Army War College. You should have a three-to-one advantage if you’re going to succeed on the offense. Force ratios are really tough to determine in this war, because the Ukrainians have been really closed-lipped about their capabilities and the forces they have, but it’s probably closer to a one-to-one. You try to achieve local superiority, but that’s hard to do because the other side is also looking to create a counteroffensive. In fact, the Russians have done that in the northeast of the country.
The Ukrainians aren’t just lacking air power and air superiority, without which the United States would not attempt a deliberate attack; they also lack the force ratios. They lack expertise in combined arms warfare. They probably don’t have sufficient armor. They’re running short on artillery. They don’t have the long-range fires we’d like to have. In addition to close air support at the point of penetration, you’d like to have the ability to interdict deep with deep fires, either with air power or with really long-range missiles to take out ammo dumps and to preclude the possibility of reinforcements. Once you figure out where the enemy is trying to breach, you move reinforcements to that area. I think often about Hitler’s failure to achieve air superiority over the English Channel, when Churchill said, “Never has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
Though air superiority was never on the table for Ukraine in this counteroffensive.
That’s correct. The hope was that the Russian forces were fragile, and I don’t think it was an invalid hope. I think it was worth the try.
Because of the disorganization and shambolic nature of their fighting early in the war?
Absolutely, but also because of the political fragility of Putin, the internal dissent he’s facing, the loss of so many of the good Russian forces, the evident morale problems we’ve seen among the Russian forces, and poor training among the conscript forces who are defending. But the truth is that defense isn’t just the stronger form of war, it’s the easier form of war. So far, the Russian forces haven’t broken. That’s not to say they won’t, but it’s also the key to this war.
Without western support, Ukraine loses. You can criticize western policy and say we’ve given them just enough not to lose at every phase of the war. I don’t think it’s an unfair criticism, but that certainly hasn’t been why we’ve been relatively stingy with our support, or at least tardy with our support. We are fighting a proxy war. The brave Ukrainians are doing the fighting and the dying, and the United States and our allies are providing the weapons with which they’re conducting that war against a nuclear-armed power.
You can see why Zelenskyy might be frustrated, since the timeline seems to be that he requests something from the U.S., is rejected, and then three months later he gets it. Given this pivotal point in the war, why wouldn’t Biden be a bit more generous right now?
Predictions are difficult, especially about the future. President Biden has been feeling Putin out. Putin keeps drawing red lines, and we keep pretty deliberately crossing them and he redraws another red line further back. I have no idea what sort of ears we have listening to Putin and his deliberations, but it appears that we have ears pretty close to Putin, or did. Early in the war, we knew that he was going to attack and broadcast it to the world. Without knowing what’s being said in the Kremlin, I am not willing to fault the Biden administration for being careful as they essentially play chicken with a nuclear-armed power that can destroy the United States in the blink of an eye.
Well, when you put it that way …
But that’s the game, right? Biden’s primary responsibility is the safety of the American people, and in my eyes at least, he has balanced his desire to defend Ukraine, preserve the rules-based international order, and stick more than a finger in Putin’s eye. He has achieved all of those objectives while not creating conditions that lead to global thermonuclear war against an opponent who is not necessarily stable.
Where you stand depends on where you sit. Zelenskyy would prefer us to take more risks. He says, “Putin’s not going to go nuclear.” Okay, how do you know that?
Yes, it certainly calls for a good dose of caution.
I don’t fault the Biden administration for that. Also, there is no single magic weapon. F-16s are terrific airplanes, but they are effective in a coordinated network of air-defense systems and artillery systems designed for suppression of enemy air defense and airborne-warning and control systems and in-the-air traffic controllers. So giving the Ukrainians F-16s, which is going to happen, isn’t the magic bullet either, because the Russians have not been wasting time.
Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country in the world. There are millions of mines along the front line in Ukraine. The most likely outcome of this war, I think, is a frozen conflict on the ground as we wait to see what happens politically. Who is the next president of the United States? The Ukrainians are watching that with, as you can imagine, enormous interest. As long as the next American president and the next American Congress continue to support Ukraine, Ukraine will not fall. The Ukrainians will continue to fight. They will fight conventionally.
If the country falls, they will fight as insurgents and try to turn this into Afghanistan, after which the Soviet Union essentially ceased to exist. I wrote a piece before the invasion, back in February of ’22, in Foreign Policy. I believed that Ukraine would fall, and I argued that Putin was going to be the dog who caught the truck — that the grinding insurgency that he would be confronted with would lead to the collapse of his regime as it had led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was wrong on the first part. I’m comforted that I had really good company in being wrong. Everybody thought that the Russian advantage was going to prove decisive, including General Milley, who has access to a lot better information than I do. But Ukrainians are absolutely determined to fight for the survival of their country. I just got back from ten days in Poland — I attended the NATO conference on the subject with a bunch of Ukrainian professors, military analysts, people like me. Their determination was absolute. One of the faculty members stood up — her son had been killed the week before. Another of the faculty members talked about his grandma being gunned down by a helicopter. The Russians are literally flying attack helicopters and taking out little babushkas.
Whatever happens on the ground here in the short-term, Ukrainians are going to hate the Russians with a blinding passion for generations to come. This war has been a catastrophe for Russia, and for Putin personally.
One of the few optimistic pieces I’ve read about Ukraine’s position recently was about cluster munitions, and how they were helping break some of these heavily mined lines.
Google it for me — I can’t remember who it was, but somebody said, “There’s an awful lot of ruin in the nation.” I think it was a Brit.
It was Adam Smith.
Adam Smith said, “There’s a lot of ruin in the nation.” So to paraphrase, there’s an awful lot of ruin in a prepared defense. The cluster munitions are killing an awful lot of Russian soldiers. Certainly the Ukrainians are glad to have them, but by themselves, they are not going to win this war. F-16s are terrific airplanes, by themselves they’re not going to win this war. Additional Leopard tanks are terrific weapons. By themselves, they’re not going to win this war. Have you read Steve Biddle’s piece in Foreign Affairs?
He’s the smartest guy on the planet. He talks through why new weapons don’t make that big of a difference, why it’s hard to create breakthroughs in modern war. The most likely outcome is that this war turns into a frozen conflict, not far from the present lines, until either the West stops supporting Ukraine or the Russians decide to stop prosecuting the war. Probably with the demise of Vladimir Putin.
None of it adds up, but it certainly inspired the Ukrainians to fight on, right? It’s a huge, huge crack at the waterline in the bad ship Putin. So, that’s what they’re fighting for. They do need to demonstrate to the United States and the West that they’re worth continuing to support, and they are earning that with their blood.
We thought the Russians might be more fragile than they are. That hasn’t turned out to be the case. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to break tomorrow. If a Russian unit cracks at the right place and the Ukrainians happen to have a couple of tank battalions right there? Could they in fact cut the land bridge to Crimea? They could. Is it worth trying? Absolutely. Is it likely? It’s not. But it’s nonzero.
People like Michael Kofman have said that these counteroffensives tend to take many months, and we’re still relatively near the beginning of this one.
Was it Hemingway who said, “When you go broke, you grow broke gradually and then all at once.” The counteroffensive succeeds slowly and then all at once.
Is there a particular point where you’d say, “Okay, there’s been no breakthrough. There probably won’t be one”?
The fighting conditions go to hell in October. Mud is the enemy, speaking as an old tank driver. If we haven’t had the breakthrough by November, we’re not going to have the breakthrough.
Perhaps it’s more likely that those months would see more political talks, since there’s less possibility for a military advance.
Correct. What does political negotiation look like? Is Ukraine willing to settle for getting the Donbas back? The Russians aren’t willing to give up Crimea. The most favorable Russian regime from the West’s perspective wouldn’t give it up. If Navalny is the Russian president, I don’t think he’s willing to do that.
The best outcome I can see for Ukraine is giving up Crimea and an American tank division stationed in Donetsk. That’s a win for Zelenskyy. That’s a win-win for Ukraine. Are the Americans going to be willing to do it? I’m not sure. Again, I’m not sure they should. I don’t want Americans and Russians shooting at each other directly.
But Poles? They’re probably ready. The Poles hate the Russians with a blinding passion, and Poland is buying a whole bunch of tanks.
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