The State of the War

Michael Kofman is useful, as usual:

We’re talking about the past several months, not necessarily about how things are likely to evolve in the spring and summer. But if we go back to the fall, things were looking quite a bit more grim. Russian forces were making accelerated gains on the ground, and they were taking more territory each month from July until November. Then their momentum slowed down considerably over the course of the winter.

The first reason for this, from my point of view, was weather. That may seem a bit of an obvious point, but it did significantly affect Russian operations over the course of the winter. The second was a degree of exhaustion. The Russian military paid a high price for those gains we saw in the fall, both in terms of manpower and equipment. Russian losses in September and October were high, and it pulled units out to reconstitute or regroup.

The third, which I found most interesting from my field work in Ukraine, was that the Ukrainian military began to successfully adapt to how Russian forces were fighting. If we take a wider look at 2024, the Russian military had made a general trade-off in how it was prosecuting the fight. It was essentially grinding its way through the front and pressing Ukrainian forces from their positions in a way that wasn’t going to achieve operationally significant breakthroughs for the Russian armed forces but could make use of their fairly poor force quality and their significant advantage in manpower and matériel. On the ground, what that looked like in practice was essentially assault groups of small numbers of men, fire teams, light motorized attacks, alternating with mechanized attacks — but generally staying away from attempts at large-scale combat operations or big envelopments.

And on the reduction/cessation of US support:

How long could Ukraine hold out? This depends on a couple of factors. First, what is the offensive potential of the Russian military and what kind of offensive does it intend to launch in the spring and summer? Second, to what extent can Ukraine’s other western partners step in? I think when it comes to artillery production, Europe is in a much better position now than it was in previous years. I think in many categories, other than the ones I just outlined, the Europeans could step in and help sustain the Ukrainian military effort.

And Ukraine itself now makes many of the munitions and drones that it needs, including mines. So if we’re looking at the tactical level and what’s being consumed the most at the front, Ukraine could probably sustain itself for quite some time, and we’d be seeing a steady degradation rather than any sort of sudden collapse. And even then, the jury’s out on how the fighting might unfold. But the impact would be visible over time, and I think one should not be too cavalier or hand-wave away the extent to which U.S. support and U.S. organization of military assistance writ large for Ukraine has been a significant contributor to Ukraine’s military efforts.

The latest from the negotiations:

Ukraine is under pressure to respond this week to a series of far-reaching Trump administration ideas for how to end the war in Ukraine by granting concessions to Russia, including potential U.S. recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and excluding Kyiv from joining NATO.

The ideas were outlined in a confidential document presented by senior Trump administration officials to their Ukrainian counterparts in Paris on Thursday, according to Western officials. They were also shared with senior European officials at the daylong meeting. 

The U.S. is now waiting for Kyiv’s response, which is expected to come at a meeting of U.S., Ukrainian and European officials in London later this week. Then if there is a convergence among the American, European and Ukrainian positions, the proposals could be floated to Moscow. 

To put pressure on Ukraine and Russia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the administration may pause its negotiating efforts if headway isn’t made on core issues in the next several weeks.

A few thoughts:

• The relative stability of the front is a consideration for Ukraine’s bargaining position but the point is to arrive at a cease-fire before the front collapses, not after.
• We overuse the phrase “slowly, then all at once,” but it can accurately describe how an army collapses. Measuring Russian progress in terms of square miles and time is helpful to a point, but military precarity can arrive suddenly. Russia really hasn’t shown that it can do maneuver warfare but if Ukrainian units start retreating or collapsing all bets are off.
• The biggest reason for Ukraine to pursue a cease-fire at this point is that it is, in effect, drawing dead. Ukraine is extremely unlikely to recapture significant territory if it can hold out for six months, a year, or eighteen months. Things would be different with a different occupant in the White House, but It Is What It Is.
• The terms mooted above are… fine? I don’t know that Russia accepts them because they don’t obviously touch on two core Russian demands that most people have tried to ignore, denazification and disarmament. The former can possibly be addressed by elections (Ukraine is preparing the ground for elections) but the latter is the real problem; what restrictions, if any, can be imposed upon Ukraine’s re-armament?

Photo Credit: By Viewsridge – Own work based on: Russo-Ukrainian conflict (2014-2022).svg by Rr016 & Ukraine adm location map improved.svg by Yakiv GluckTerritorial control sources:Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map / Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed relief mapISW, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141