Ben Barry
Russia’s success in taking the city of Avdiivka, along with its territorial gains since, raises the question of whether the Ukrainian assessment in late 2023 that the war would stalemate in 2024 may have been optimistic.
Moscow’s willingness to take territory in the face of high casualty figures, coupled with a boost in output of artillery shells, is in contrast with a lack of sustained Western supply of artillery ammunition to Kyiv. Those dynamics have created the conditions for the most recent shift in the land-campaign’s momentum as the third year of fighting in Russia’s full-scale invasion sets in.
The new phase comes after a challenging year for both sides in which they struggled to mount successful attacks. Offensive operations achieved limited territorial gains and incurred significant casualties. Russia and Ukraine have both found breaching operations difficult, hindered by well-fortified defensive positions and slowed by artillery fire, land mines and loitering munitions. The struggles have exposed training and leadership deficits which have limited the tactical effectiveness of offensive operations on both sides, while showing skill in orchestrating positional defences.
Russian campaign
The months-long battle for Avdiivka likely sets the tone for Russia’s 2024 ground campaign. For Moscow, winning control of the city is a key piece of the puzzle for its ambition to take control of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and to underpin its illegal, verbal annexation of the territories with actual territorial control. Russia also appears to be undertaking synchronised attacks in northeast Ukraine to support that objective.
Heavy Russian casualties may mean Moscow will not mount a major offensive until after the pro forma, mid-March re-election of President Vladimir Putin. Over the spring and summer, Russia is likely to mount a series of major attacks designed to inflict Ukrainian casualties, push defenders westward and expand its control of occupied territories.
The IISS assesses that Russia can sustain its campaign for some time. Moscow has been able to bring on enough contract soldiers to sustain its force structure and should be able to replenish tank losses on the battlefield for two or more years. It also has put its economy in a war setting, with total military spending now representing one-third of its national budget and reaching about 7.5% of GDP. Supply of artillery ammunition, loitering munitions and ballistic missiles from Iran and North Korea also shifts the balance of firepower against Ukraine. That means that over the coming year Russia will probably be able to generate sufficient missiles and drones to maintain its recent level of pressure on Ukraine’s air defences, attack its defence industry and attempt to erode Ukrainian civilian and military moral.
Ukrainian positioning
On the ground, Ukraine has moved to the strategic defensive with an eye on preserving troop levels. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the Munich Security Conference last month that the Avdiivka withdrawal was aimed at preserving soldiers’ lives. Kyiv has indicated it is fortifying defensive lines, which likely drove a decision to also retreat from hard-to-defend villages around Avdiivka that quickly fell to Russian forces.
This defensive focus comes at a time when Ukraine has faced difficult choices absent the Western delivery of advanced weapons that Kyiv asked for to gain a decisive advantage. Those requests included enhanced electronic-warfare capabilities, more surveillance and attack uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs), better mine-breaching tools and F-16 combat aircraft (though training on those is now underway). Until such equipment and more artillery ammunition arrives, though, the dilemma for Ukraine’s army is choosing between a forward-defence posture to keep Russian forces from cities and towns at the cost of higher casualties, or pulling back to conserve troops.
Another manpower consideration for Ukraine is the that the average age of front-line infantry soldiers is widely reported as being around 43 years. Former Ukrainian armed forces command Valerii Zaluzhnyi, before being replaced, had asked Kyiv to mobilise 500,000 more recruits for the army. The request was declined. While it would have been difficult to mobilise such numbers in one wave without damaging the economy, the current way of sustaining troop numbers looks increasingly untenable.
With Ukraine resetting its ground forces in the aftermath of its largely unsuccessful counter-offensive of 2023 and recent Russian advances, the country is doubling down on its deep battle strategy, with UAV attacks as far afield as Moscow, St Petersburg and the Nizhny Novgorod region in central Russia, some 1,000 kilometres from Ukraine.
Reality bites
The coming months are shaping up to be more critical to the direction of conflict than the 2024 stalemate scenario suggested.
Unless the West restores aid to Kyiv to previously provided levels, including sufficient artillery for Ukraine to achieve the superiority it enjoyed at the height of last year’s counter-offensive, Russia will retain the battlefield initiative. That could spell, in the worst-case scenario, a series of tactical defeats for Ukraine that could lead to a collapse of parts of its front line.
For now, US efforts under President Joe Biden to provide Ukraine with another meaningful military-aid package remain blocked by House Republicans. Europe, meanwhile, has not demonstrated the industrial capacity or political will to quickly address Ukraine’s urgent needs, although several military-assistance efforts are in the works. While the United Kingdom has pledged to supply ‘thousands’ of new, long-range attack UAVs, when they may arrive remains uncertain.
As the conflict evolves throughout 2024, a key element could well be a contest between Russian attritional tactics and efforts by Ukraine to gain an asymmetric advantage through advanced Western technology, providing this arrives in sufficient time and volume. If that happens, the war momentum could swing again, benefitting Kyiv. But for now, the land war looks bloody and favours Moscow.
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