Building a Theory: Ukraine’s Way of War

MICK RYAN

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As I write this, I am on the long, slow train that takes me away from Kyiv and back to Poland.

I am sad to leave this beautiful city, it’s amazing people and the friends I have made there. It is city that has charmed me on each of my visits so far. During my time in Ukraine, I have also been able to speak to an array of people during this visit to better inform my theory about the developing Ukrainian Way of War.

As I described in my first post in this series, the focus on my visit to Ukraine was examining how it fights the war, not individual battles or campaigns. To that end, a variety of discussions with different military and government officials has provided a huge amount of information to support my research.

But, it is important to note that the intellectual underpinnings of the Ukrainian approach to fighting this war were developed well before the 2022 Russian invasion.

Thinking About a Future Russian Invasion

During one of my discussions with a senior Ukrainian official, he described some of the thinking and planning that was undertaken by the senior personnel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2021. By that point, there was a general sense that some form of major Russian operation was likely. These discussions centred on how Ukraine could not afford to fight how Russia would fight and how much of its former-Soviet doctrine stipulated.

They would need an asymmetric approach to respond to any significant Russian military operation against Ukraine. This asymmetric approach would seek to utilise what the Ukrainians believed were the key advantages they had over the Russians.

First, Ukraine had a geographical advantage. It was far larger than all of Russia’s other targets in the past two decades (Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea). As such, Ukraine could utilise both its size as well as the different varieties in terrain to absorb the Russians while giving Ukraine time to mobilise. The size of Ukraine would also necessitate long Russian supply lines. Ukraine believed that the Russians had a targetable vulnerability with their tactical logistics, and attacking this would be a priority.