Ukraine War: No End In Sight
Russia is humiliated but not defeated. Ukraine is winning but at a very high price.
Once it became clear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, I’ve continuously asked the question: How does this all end? It has seemed clear for months that there was no face-saving way out for Vladimir Putin and that nothing short of the total removal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory would be acceptable to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Not much has changed.
NYT (“Hard-Line Positions by Russia and Ukraine Dim Hope for Peace Talks“):
As the battle for Ukraine turns into a bloody, mile-by-mile fight in numbing cold, Ukrainian and Russian officials have insisted that they are willing to discuss making peace.
But with a drumbeat of statements in recent days making clear that each side’s demands are flatly unacceptable to the other, there appears to be little hope for serious negotiations in the near future.
Ukraine this week proposed a “peace” summit by the end of February, but said Russia could participate only if it first faces a war-crimes tribunal. That drew a frosty response from the Kremlin, with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov saying that Kyiv must accept all of Russia’s demands, including that it give up four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.
“Otherwise,” he said, “the Russian Army will deal with this issue.”
Russia does not fully control any of those regions, and has even lost territory there in recent months as Ukrainian forces fight to reclaim all the land seized by Moscow. But on Wednesday, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said it was impossible to accept a peace plan that did not recognize those four Ukrainian regions as part of Russia.
“Any plan that does not take into account these circumstances cannot claim to be a peace plan,” Mr. Peskov said, according to the state-run Tass news agency.
The hard-line positions suggest that both sides believe they have more to gain on the battlefield, analysts say.
Well . . . yes. That’s true by definition.
If anything, positions have hardened. Ukraine is now, not unreasonably, demanding more than the status quo antebellum but justice. Russia has inflected unspeakable damage on their country and simply letting them walk away is unacceptable. Meanwhile, Putin is humiliated and has to get something pretty significant to show for the tens of thousands of dead Russian soldiers lost in his adventure.
Ukraine holds the momentum, having retaken much of the land that Russia captured early in the war. But Moscow’s forces still occupy large chunks of the east and south, and Russia is readying more troops and launching aerial attacks on infrastructure, deepening Ukrainians’ misery even as Russian soldiers struggle on the ground.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military said that Russia had launched a barrage of strikes at the southern city of Kherson, including one that damaged a maternity ward, as officials continued to urge on residents to evacuate. Images shared by one Ukrainian official after the strike showed blown-out windows, a hole in the roof and piles of rubble in one of the rooms.
Kherson has been battered by shelling since Ukraine retook the city last month, with Russian forces using new positions on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River to launch near daily barrages at the city.
The war has now passed its 300th day. There have been no peace talks between Ukraine and Russia since the early weeks of the conflict, which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, and both sides have signaled a determination to keep fighting.
Visiting Washington last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that weapons and aid from the United States and allies would help Ukraine sustain its resistance well into 2023, emphasizing that “we have to defeat the Kremlin on the battlefield.”
And President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in a brief televised interview over the weekend, said that he was prepared to negotiate over “acceptable outcomes,” but insisted that “99.9 percent of our citizens” are “ready to sacrifice everything for the interests of the Motherland.”
Western officials have dismissed Mr. Putin’s periodic offers to negotiate as empty gestures. In calling for talks without hinting that he is prepared to abandon his onslaught — and repeating a propaganda line that Russia is fighting a defensive war for its own survival — Mr. Putin is trying to send the message that Russia will eventually win, and that the sooner Ukraine capitulates, the fewer people will die.
Despite Zelenskyy’s bold leadership and the tremendous resolve of his people, Russia would almost have certainly won by now absent massive assistance from the West, the United States in particular. We are therefore, by definition, helping to prolong the fight and increase the body count.
Given that we’re both on the side of right and weakening the biggest threat to the security of Europe, I absolutely support those efforts. There is a certain cynicism to being “willing to fight to the last Ukrainian” in a war we’re not willing to send American forces to fight. But, while the Ukrainians are in a sense our proxies in a war against a country we have labeled an “acute threat” in our national security strategy, it’s very much their fight. They’re begging for more resources and, within reason, we should give them what they’re asking for.
But, again, it means that the killing and destruction is going to continue for a very long time.
While Russia’s losses are believed to be enormous — more than 100,000 killed and injured, American officials have said — Mr. Putin has signaled recently that he is prepared to accept many more. He told senior military officials in a televised meeting last week that of the 300,000 reserves called up this fall, half were still at training bases and represented a “strategic reserve” for future fighting.
On Wednesday, Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, said that his country’s economy had contracted by 2 percent over the past 11 months. That is a smaller decline than many experts had predicted at the start of the war, and suggests that Moscow has so far managed to weather the effects of Western sanctions.
This month, Mr. Putin emphasized that there were “no limits” to Russia’s military spending.
But as the evidence of Russian military atrocities has multiplied — and with Ukraine’s continued battlefield success — Kyiv’s negotiating position has hardened.
In late March, weeks after the invasion and with Russian troops still threatening to seize the capital, Ukrainian negotiators at a meeting in Istanbul proposed adopting neutral status — in effect abandoning a bid to join NATO, which Russia has long opposed — in exchange for security guarantees from other nations.
They also suggested separate talks on the status of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, and of Donbas, the eastern area claimed by Moscow.
Those terms are now off the table.
“The emotional background in Ukraine has changed very, very much,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, told the BBC in August. “We have seen too many war crimes.”
Meanwhile, WaPo weighs in with a disturbing update: “Putin, unaccustomed to losing, is increasingly isolated as war falters.”
As Putin approaches New Year’s Eve, the 23d anniversary of his appointment in 1999 as acting Russian president, he appears more isolated than ever.
More than 300 days of brutal war against Ukraine have blown up decades of Russia’s carefully cultivated economic relations with the West, turning the country into a pariah, while Kremlin efforts to replace those ties with closer cooperation with India and China appear to be faltering the longer the war grinds on.
Putin, who started his career as a Soviet KGB agent, has always kept his own counsel, relying on a close inner circle of old friends and confidants while seeming to never fully trust or confide in anyone. But now a new gulf is emerging between Putin and much of the country’s elite, according to interviews with Russian business leaders, officials and analysts.
Putin “feels the loss of his friends,” said one Russian state official with close ties to diplomatic circles, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Lukashenko is the only one he can pay a serious visit to. All the rest see him only when necessary.”
Even though Putin gathered leaders of former Soviet republics for an informal summit in St. Petersburg this week, across the region the Kremlin’s authority is weakening. Putin spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping over video conference on Friday morning in Moscow in an effort to showcase the two countries’ ties. Although Xi said he was ready to improve strategic cooperation, he acknowledged the “complicated and quite controversial international situation.” In September, he’d made clear his “concerns” over the war.
India’s Narendra Modi this month wrote an article for Russia’s influential Kommersant daily calling for an end to “the epoch of war.” “We read all this and understand, and I think he [Putin] reads and understands too,” the state official said.
Even the Pope, who at the beginning of the war appeared to take care to accommodate Kremlin views, this month compared the war in Ukraine to the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
Among Russia’s elite, questions are growing over Putin’s tactics heading into 2023 following humiliating military retreats this autumn. A divide is emerging between those in the elite who want Putin to stop the military onslaught and those who believe he must escalate further, according to the state official and Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Putin, quite simply, has no way out. He’s not going to win his war but he can’t stop fighting it, either. He’s an international pariah and his war crimes have made that irreversible. His attempt to show strength not only demonstrated that he is much weaker than anyone realized but simultaneously forced his neighbors to get stronger.
That NYT heeadline (“Hard-Line Positions by Russia and Ukraine Dim Hope for Peace Talks“) is one for the ages.
Who writes this trash?
How is it “hard-line” to not want your citizens tortured and slaughtered like what happened in Bucha (or Mariupol, Kherson, etc., etc.)?
@drj:
While I hate to let NYT editors off the hook, I think part of the problem is that “Hard line” has become too charged of a term and readers infer an element of negative judgement in the term.
Ukraine’s demands are a hard line and justifiably so. But they’re still a hard line. If Ukraine were to soften their demands(I don’t believe they should) it could possibly open the door to ending this particular conflict. Despite this potential positive outcome, the negatives created far outweigh the positives.
I can see no reason to accept this propaganda as fact, quite the contrary.
Well, maybe if he stopped throwing oligarch’s out windows at the slightest provocation, he’d have more friends to commiserate with.
@drj: I agree with @Mike Petry. As noted in the OP, I think Ukraine’s position more than reasonable. That doesn’t make it not “hard-line.” Their demands are simultaneously maximalist—ensuring prolonged war—and entirely justified.
@drj: The NYT is wedded to the “both sides” paradigm.
@drj: Discovering the massacres & torture in Bucha made anything resembling negotiation impossible for Zelinsky.
I don’t think it’s just Zelenskyy though. As long as the vast majority of the Ukrainian public wants to continue to resist, it will be hard to force an undesirable peace on them.
@Mike Petry:
Because that is what the term means. The word “hard-line” and its derivatives carry connotations of severity and extremism.
I would assume that NYT writers know this.
Not to rag on this, but I think this is factually incorrect. The war-crimes tribunal is not a serious demand. If Russia were to abandon all claims on Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory and accept its existence as an independent state, it would be dropped in a heartbeat.
The fact is that Russia’s current leadership is unwilling to accept a truly independent Ukraine. Any pause in hostilities would only be used to prepare for the next attempt to take over the country.
Consequently, Ukraine doesn’t want to be pushed into making compromises with a dishonest negotiating partner. The demand for a war crimes tribunal is part of an attempt to prevent this. Would you want to negotiate with someone who doesn’t even recognize your right to exist?
It’s pretty ridiculous to call a refusal to negotiate under such circumstances “severe” or “extreme.”
More generally, this isn’t only about using the “correct” language in a purely abstract sense, it’s primarily about using language that doesn’t give a distorted picture of the reality it seeks to describe.
@drj:
And that’s exacty why bothsiderism is so insidious.
Calling it out isn’t so much about wanting to hear “us good, them bad,” it’s about wanting to be provided with a fair and accurate description of reality.
That both sides have publicly staked out maximalist positions hardly merits a news story.
My local congressional door stop, Greg Steube, is a hardcore MAGAt, who does nothing but pander to the GOP base. He did a local op-ed saying he voted against the Omnibus because he wouldn’t approve any more funding for Ukraine until Biden showed him a plan for ending the war. Why the hell Biden would tell Greg Steube his plans escapes me. But I fear it does come down to Biden to find a way out. Xi seems to be able to hold a hard line against popular pressure, then yield without losing authority. Perhaps Putin can be shown how to do that.
It seems to me that there is still considerable support for the Ukraine war among Russians. This is in contrast to the situation with the hard-line (heh) anti-Covid policy that Xi reversed himself on. Xi is politically secure, having just installed a bunch of made men in key posts this last year, and the population isn’t going to turn on him for this.
Putin’s position is not so secure. He may get defenestrated himself, but there’s no guarantee that his replacement won’t be even more hawkish.
Stripped of moral concerns this war is nearly perfect from our perspective and the longer it lasts the better. Those billions we’re spending on weapons for Ukraine are mostly for American-made toys, so jobs and profits etc… I doubt we’ll hear much push-back even from Republicans who have Lockheed-Martin suppliers in their districts.
NATO has been greatly expanded and strengthened, and there are salutary knock-on effects in Asia in the form of a re-arming Japan. Europe is being weaned off Russian energy – and Russia doesn’t have a lot of other markets it can actually supply through limited pipelines and scarce ships. Russia is falling ever further behind economically and technologically, experiencing a brain drain and suffering casualties that will only hasten Russia’s demographic collapse. Russian arms exports are now only for third-rate militaries interested in internal repression.
The Bear has been isolated, crippled and neutered. Which is all good. And China has learned that Putin is to Xi as Mussolini was to Hitler – not a lot of practical use if the shooting starts. Thanks to Joe Biden and to the defeat of Donald Trump, the world is coming to grips with a new and unexpected reality: far from a widely-assumed decline, the US remains the world’s sole superpower.
Our occasional commenter Cheryl Rofer has a post at LGM extensively quoting a British Russia expert. Amongst other things, she says it’s possible for Russia to lose this war. I confess I discount that possibility, but I am not an expert. I even rather hoped at the beginning for a quick, easy Russian victory because I felt the only possibilities were a quick Russian win or a slow, bloody Russian win. Looking at the disparity in population and GDP it’s hard to see how Russia loses. But maybe Western support and Russian corruption evens it out. I would like to think Ukraine can drive Russia from their soil and the lady Rofer quotes is an expert. And Biden, through the depth and breadth of the “Deep State” panopticon, has a much better informed view than I do. I hope he sees a path to a less awful endgame.
Note that Rofer is quoting a Twitter thread. Much as I enjoy Musk’s discomfiture, I hope he doesn’t destroy an important asset.
@Michael Reynolds:
Indeed. Under Biden we’re back in the hegemon business. And with notable exceptions, we’ve generally been a fairly benevolent hegemon, accepted in that role by much of the world. The modern world is struggling with enforcing an idea that some behaviors by national governments are unacceptable. We’ve tried clumsily in Libya and Kosovo and elsewhere. Now we’re stumbling forward in Ukraine and trying to get ahead of the game in Taiwan.
@gVOR08:
The richer, more populous, more technologically sophisticated outside often loses to a determined local populace. Citing just the most obvious examples: France-Vietnam, USA-Vietnam, USSR-Afghanistan, USA-Afghan Taliban.
@gVOR08:
Ukraine has a population of 40 million.
Historical analogies indicate it should be able to sustain a million plus miliary on a war footing for at least six years
As for economies, Ukraine has the support of a combined US/EU economy of GDP c $40 trillion; Russia has a GDP of $1.75 trillion.
A rounding error.
There was never a path to a quick, easy Russian victory.
Not even if they had succeeded in seizing Kyiv in the first month (which I admit I expected at the outset).
Russia is now hoping that it can win the “long war” by pounding Ukrainian civilians, and “political operations” vs NATO.
The obvious answer is to end the continuing influence of the “de-escalation” advocates in Washington and Berlin, and accelerate the destruction of the Russian army.
It will avail them nothing to to mobilize forces, if they can be killed faster then they can be reinforced.
@gVOR08:
Ukraine can win and Russia can lose. Yes, there’s a disparity in population. . . but not in resources. Ukraine’s GDP is not Russia’s problem, NATO’s GDP is. Russia: 1.7 T. NATO: 40 T. Ukraine has the morale, the superior doctrine and training, better weapons, better intel, the home field advantage, and the advantage of interior lines for defense. It’s harder to attack than defend, and as a rule the attacking forces need a higher level of competency, which the Russians clearly lack.
Here’s a scenario: Ukraine severs the land bridge to Crimea. They cut off water and power while encouraging the civilian population to walk across what’s left of the Kerch bridge. They begin shelling Russian air and naval bases and sinking Russian ships.
Russia’s core defense interest is in maintaining their Black Sea fleet and in particular Sevastopol. Once Ukraine is in HIMARS range of Sevastopol the Russian military will be faced with losing any hope of controlling the Black Sea. That’s the point where some generals and admirals need to get together and remove Putin.
Is that destined to happen? No, of course not. But it is quite plausible. In fact, I’d argue that the only force capable of gaining a Russian victory is the Republican Party.
@JohnSF:
Great minds and all that.
In a perfect world the Ukrainians would retake Crimea and lease the Sevastopol base to the US. Ukraine wouldn’t even need NATO membership. The Black Sea would belong to us, just as the Baltic Sea does now, thanks to Czar Vlad.
Even in purely military terms, Russia ain’t doing so well.
Imagine it’s 2003 and the US Army invades Iraq with approximately 80% of its maneuver units (in reality it was c. 40%).
Not only does the invading force fail to capture Baghdad and Basrah, but the after nine months the invaders are forced to withdraw from the only provincial capital (e.g., Nasiriyah) they managed to capture in the early days of the war.
Ammunition is running low. Losses in personel and equipment are mounting. The US lacks the industrial capacity and training facilities to replace losses. M60 tanks that were last upgraded in the early 1980s are pulled out of storage.
Obviously, the Iraqis aren’t marching on DC, but an Iraqi victory doesn’t exactly look far-fetched in such a scenario.
@James Joyner: Yes, I was going to say that Ukraine is Russia’s Vietnam.
@reid:
It is far, far worse than that.
@drj: Indeed, I thought about editing my post to append “x 10”.
@Michael Reynolds:
Going to have to disagree a bit re. Black Sea naval options for Russia.
Novorossiysk in the Krasnodar/Kuban area is a good enough substitute.
The Russian problem these days is that with NATO naval and air power in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, the Black Sea Fleet is a horribly vulnerable.
Very few wars end with justice being achieved. Very few. Eventually it becomes all about ending the killing, just a matter of time before it becomes priority #1.
Pickering said about as much in his interview on CNN a couple weeks back. The US and Ukraine should prepare for the day when window opens for negotiations, and that day is not here yet.
Here is a take on that from Ukraine’s top artillery officer in the latter half of this interview. It may be an insight to the real thinking in Ukraine’s leadership. Feb 22 lines may be the real minimum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5hmhU5LvC8
Interesting point that Ukraine now appears to be downing the overwhelming majority of the Iranian drone strikes. And that this is being done not by SAM systems, but radar controlled AA guns with proximity fused shells.
And clever use of networked forward observation.
Quite similar in principle to the UK anti-V1 defences developed in 1944.
It is still possible for Ukraine to lose. One way for Ukraine to lose is if the US/NATO turn off the arms spigot. Keeping the spigot open requires that production gets up to Ukraine’s consumption rate pretty darned soon. One thing that can keep that from happening is so many people in the US MIC have to admit that 11 carrier strike groups, 2,500 F-35s, and 3,000 M1s of various vintages in storage reflects really bad thinking.
@dazedandconfused:
Historically I’d guess more wars are driven to a conclusion by one side, not settled by negotiations.
See WW2, WW1, American Civil War, Vietnam Wars, Franco-Prussian War, final stage of Napoleonic Wars etc etc etc.
There are obvious exceptions: Korean War, Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War 1905, some iterations of the Italian Wars, French/Napoleonics.
But even these were often, in effect, dictated by the victor upon a plainly defeated opponent.
A precise count would be an interesting exercise.
Another aspect: the Russian continued attempts to take Bakhmut are leading to disproportionate loss levels. Recent Estonian estimates that Russian casualties are running to 1000 to 2000 per day. with the majority in Bakhmut area.
And also massive but indeterminate Russian losses of artillery and other assets to Ukrainian long range counter-battery fire and other long range targeted strikes.
Point being, instead of holding defensive lines and prepping for an offensive in spring, with cohesive forces formed around experienced but rested units, and mobilised forces with months of training, Russia is looking to need ANOTHER mobilization in early spring, pouring it’s mobiks down a rathole, and continuing to jam it’s best formations into a meatgrinder.
Once again, their operational planning appears IMHO to have lost touch with reality.
Maybe the hope is that a Bakhmut breakthrough can be achieved leading to political advantages in West and Ukraine?
Or a “Falkenhayn calculus” as with Germany in WW1 re. Verdun: Ukraine can be “bled white in Bakhmut”?
Maybe someone should remind Putin that von Falkenhayn f@cked up?
@gVOR08:
Interesting re. Ruth Deyermond via Cheryl Rofer.
I’d already come across the thread via Alexander Clarkson. another KCL guy.
If Musk does completely bork twitter that’s something I’ll miss: the tweets by genuine experts, in things like strategic studies, energy economics, epidemiology, etc etc.
Interesting comment by Cheryl:
This view by Brit tweeter “Captain Haddock”
First, given the atrocities we already know about, which were directed at civilians and have no plausible connection to any military goal other than cruelty for its own sake and, second, given the eliminationist rhetoric from Moscow which sees Ukrainian culture itself as a problem to be erased, I challenge the assertion that the war is prolonging the killing.
I think if Ukraine surrendered tomorrow, the killing may very well escalate to Holodomor levels.
@Michael Cain:
Ukraine has had two major successes recently, the Kharkiv offensive of Sept and the taking back of the right bank at Kherson. One more major defeat might collapse what little morale remains in the Russian armed forces and public support. Things are going fairly well for Ukraine and very poorly for Russia.
It might have been unwise to utterly dismiss the big red button under Putin’s paw. This act of trying to end the existence of Ukraine is not proof but it is an indication his cheese may not be fully on his cracker anymore. Go all in and the guy might react like a cornered rat, trickle it in and he will get used to it, as the proverbial slow-boiled frog. I would hesitate to judge the thinking un-good at this point.
@JohnSF: FWIW: The US developed radar directed AA for the B29 program. Didn’t realize it was also a product of Winston’s “wizard’s war”.
Leaving aside irrelevant debates about NYT headlines, the fundamentals are correct – both sides are taking hard-line positions WRT to their political goals, and, in fact, each has escalated their war goals from what they were initially.
This is important in understanding that this war is not ending anytime soon. As I try to point out here repeatedly, war is a political activity for achieving political ends, and those political ends can change over time and adjust to realities on the battlefield and elsewhere.
Secondly, I would be suspicious of anyone who makes claims about one side or another ultimately winning or betting that one side will achieve its maximalist objectives. That is historically very rare, and I think too many, particularly in the US, still tend to look at WWII as some kind of normal war. Most wars do not end like that.
Third, attrition, force sustainment, and western support for Ukraine are the most important factors for the future course of this war. This is, again, something most Americans do not understand, having been used to short campaigns of major combat in which questions of long-term supply and logistics never come up.
The kind of heavy combat forces fighting in this war is brutal not only on people, but also equipment and supply chains. Even after accounting for normal usage, the rule of thumb in this kind of war is to expect force attrition of approximately 1% per day. Some of that attrition can be recovered by repair, maintenance, reutilization, and other things, but much of it is just lost.
And in a large war with significant high-intensity combat, stuff gets used up quickly. Sustaining ammunition, supplies, and replacements is no small feat.
The most obvious example of this is artillery.
At the beginning of the war, Ukraine had former Soviet/Russian artillery pieces. And they had a few week’s worth of stockpiled ammunition. That was used up quickly, and there was no ready source for replacement.
So very rapidly, NATO countries transitioned Ukraine to NATO-standard 155 artillery pieces and the requisite ammunition for them. Ukraine is now entirely dependent on the west for artillery. Contrary to what you may have read, Ukraine is an artillery-heaving army like the Russians, not an air-power-heavy army like the US. But those artillery pieces and ammunition came out of existing stockpiles. The artillery pieces themselves see a lot of use and break and the barrels wear out and need replacement.
For ammunition, it was recently reported in the WAPO (IIRC) that the US production capacity for 155mm artillery shells is around 14k per month. 14k supplies approximately two days worth of artillery shells for Ukraine’s needs. US production should be up to around 20k/month sometime next year – about 3 days worth of use for Ukraine.
People laughed when Russia likely penned a deal with North Korea for artillery shells – well, the US penned a deal with South Korea to buy 100k artillery shells from them and will likely buy more. South Korea is the one ally we have that maintains a significant artillery-heavy army and significant production capacity for ammunition. They also make some of the best artillery in the world. Publicly those shells are going to replace US stocks so that South Korea can claim they are not in any way a party to the war. And that is true as we’ve been supplying Ukraine primarily from our stockpiles and not actual production. It’s unclear how much of our stockpiles have been given to Ukraine, and that info would be classified. But 155mm arty shells are fungible.
Artillery is only one piece of this puzzle – the same problems are happening with tanks, APC’s, aircraft, air defense, and most every major category of equipment.
President Biden had previously scoffed at providing Patriot batteries to Ukraine, but the reality is that Ukraine is running out of missiles and spare parts for its existing systems, so now we are sending a single battery with likely more to follow. The longer the war goes on, the more likely Ukraine’s equipment gets replaced with western equipment, which will increase the demand on western defense production capacity and draw down NATO’s own war stocks leaving it less capable of its own military operations.
One can talk about how multi-trillion dollar economies back Ukraine compared to Russia with its comparatively small economy, but the fact is that the West cannot meet Ukraine’s needs for military equipment without huge investments in additional production capacity.
It’s important to note that Russia is in the same boat, which is why they are turning abroad to meet equipment needs. But Russia maintained a lot of production capacity after the cold war – not enough to meet their needs, so they face many of the same challenges. The advantage Russia has is that it is not nearly as dependent on foreign supply as Ukraine.
Again, it’s hard to underplay how important sustainment will be in the outcome of this war.
Ukraine will lose absent support from the west – and it cannot win unless NATO countries make the investments necessary to increase production capacity – a very expensive investment. Are western governments willing to spend potentially hundreds of billions annually to fully support Ukraine? I’m skeptical.
We’ve already seen Germany – predictably – renege on its promise to increase defense spending – it now says it may get to 2% of GDP by 2025.
It’s also clear who is doing the heavy lifting here: the US, UK, Poland, and Lithuania. NATO may be strengthened in some senses, but the burden-sharing has gotten worse, and today NATO looks even more like a system of American protectorates than a real alliance with shared burdens.
I don’t see this changing, which means the US will need to invest significantly in increasing defense capacity to support Ukraine over the long term. It will be interesting to see how this plays in domestic politics and shake the partisan divide up as so much else has.