Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been asking for your questions on the war for our military analysts and international correspondents.
Every week we’re picking one or two to answer – here is this week’s…
Will the Ukrainians have another spring offensive or wait again until the summer?
Declan
Military analyst Sean Bell answers this one…
Thank you for this interesting question, Declan.
For the past few months, the tide of the war in Ukraine has been in Russia’s favor as shortages of weapons have limited Ukraine’s strategic options.
Russia has been attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure and major cities with barrages of missiles and drones, leaving Ukraine with critical shortages of aid defense missiles.
The Russian air force has also been more active in support of its frontline forces, capitalizing on Ukraine’s growing shortage of defensive missile capabilities.
Despite the broad spectrum of military action from both sides, the primary metric of success in this conflict is territory gained/liberated, and Russia has been focusing its ground forces on the Donbas region.
Putin’s long game
Despite suffering huge casualties, Russian forces have clearly been capitalizing on Ukraine’s dwindling stocks of artillery shells and bullets to gain momentum on the front line.
Vladimir Putin is evidently playing the long game here, as he has always anticipated that the West’s enthusiasm to support Ukraine would wane, leaving Russia to achieve its invasion objectives.
Although the recent announcement of a new package of $60bn military aid from the US will be welcome news for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the immediate challenge will be to translate the commitment of cash into weapons and ammunition in the hands of the Ukrainian fighters – and swiftly.
Momentum is invaluable in military operations, and reversing Russian progress across the frontline will be one of Ukraine’s main priorities this spring/summer.
Having stabilized the frontline, Ukraine’s attention can then turn to the broader strategy of “what next.”
Last year’s much anticipated “spring offensive” failed to make significant territorial gains, so Ukraine will need to reconsider its wider strategy to focus its limited resources most effectively.
Feast-famine approach won’t work
Longer-term, the West needs to agree to its strategic approach to the conflict.
Large-scale conflicts consume ammunition and weapons at a rate well beyond the capacity of peacetime stockpiles, and require an industrialization of national defense industries to produce the huge volumes required.
Russia has grown its industrial defense base to three times its pre-war levels, and is also using oil revenues to fund ammunition imports from North Korea and Iran.
The West has yet to match this capacity.
If Ukraine is to prevail in the war with Russia, it will need a predictable and sustainable supply of weapons – not the feast/famine approach that has characterized the past two years.
The West has the defense industrial capability to over-match Russia, but has yet to demonstrate the political resolve to fulfill that potential.
West’s politics will be key
In the meantime, Russia knows that a more direct commitment by the West in support of Ukraine would be decisive – Russia could not achieve its war goals.
That is why President Putin and Russian foreign minister Lavrov use threatening rhetoric whenever the West considers increasing support for Ukraine, with regular threats that such support would increase the risk of nuclear war.
However, it is Russia that invaded Ukraine, and it is Russia’s military action that is causing such devastation to Ukrainian communities across the frontline.
Ultimately, the West can halt Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine – by providing weapons, boots on the ground and/or establishing a no-fly-zone – if it has the political resolve to do so.
If not, this latest round of military aid to Ukraine risks being seen as a short-term palliative, without a long-term strategy.
