Ukraine Becomes a War of Attrition on Two Fronts

T he term “special military operation” was not just a euphemism. It also reflected the Kremlin’s hope that it could take Ukraine by means of a swift “decapitation.” Kyiv would be overrun, Ukraine’s leadership would be killed, arrested, or driven into exile, and the country would fall under Russian control. We will never know what was meant to have come next. Two days before the invasion, Russia had recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” that, with Moscow’s backing, had broken away from Ukraine in 2014. Those have since been annexed by Russia, along with Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts (regions), although parts of all these territories are still in Ukrainian hands. Moscow probably always intended that this portion of Ukraine would be transferred to Russia, not least because it constituted a broad land bridge to occupied Crimea.

A good guess is that Putin’s scheme was to turn the rest of Ukraine into a Russian vassal state on the Belarusian model before incorporating it either de facto or de jure into a union with Belarus and Russia after, undoubtedly, brutal Russification. According to Putin, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians form one triune Russian people, a bizarre reading of history that goes a long way to explaining the unmistakably genocidal aspect to this conflict.

Putin’s decision to invade was almost certainly made easier by the thought that he could get away with it. He underestimated the extent to which Russia’s earlier aggression had unified what was left of Ukraine, as well as the improvement in Ukraine’s now battle-hardened army, which had also been buttressed by some $2.5 billion in aid from the U.S. He seems to have believed that Ukraine was so rotten that its people would fall gratefully into his arms. He was wrong.

Putin also failed to anticipate the strength of the Western response. It is hard to blame him. To be sure, some NATO members had increased military spending in the years after 2014, but otherwise relatively little had changed. Russia remained a valued business partner, and, critically, it continued to be a key supplier of natural gas to Europe, a role that, if anything, became more important as the continent put the pursuit of decarbonization ahead of energy security. Meanwhile, the White House was being run by the team that had presided over the scuttle from Kabul. If Moscow’s plans for a quick takeover had succeeded, it was reasonable to expect that protests and another round of sanctions would be followed by a return, especially by the larger Western European countries, to business as usual.

But Ukraine tore up Putin’s script. The Russian invaders may have shown themselves to be remarkably incompetent, but the Ukrainian resistance was far fiercer and far more effective than predicted. Russian dreams of an early knock-out faded, meaning that, unlike in 2014, the West was not presented with a fait accompli. Moreover, the invasion raised the obvious concern that Russia might well turn its attention to NATO’s eastern borders if Ukraine fell and was then successfully subjugated. There was thus a clear strategic case for helping Ukraine defend itself. And, vitally, the spectacle of Russian aggression and Ukrainian resistance, not to speak of the overnight transformation of a somewhat unimpressive (and not particularly popular) Ukrainian president into a charismatic war leader, had given an enormous boost to political support for Western aid, even if it was at the cost of an energy crunch at home.

But while Europe, helped by a comparatively warm winter, has weathered a difficult energy market better than expected, it now must face the prospect of the war entering its second year with no end in sight. Despite the progress Ukraine’s forces made in the second half of last year, there is no chance that they will be able to recapture all the territory lost to Russia, although (according to one poll) a significant majority (around 70 percent) of Ukrainians themselves believe in victory. For most Ukrainians, that victory means restoration of the pre-2014 borders — and that’s before reparations and war trials.

For its part, the Kremlin will not accept defeat, something that its recent suspension of the last nuclear treaty in force between Russia and the U.S. was presumably meant to demonstrate. Less apocalyptically, it seems indifferent to how many of its troops it has to sacrifice. Russian casualties are estimated to be (the numbers are heavily contested) somewhere between 100,000-200,000, of which 60,000 may have been killed, and it has lost an immense amount of matériel. Moscow has mobilized up to 300,000 reservists to replace the fallen, and is finding new (or old) equipment to back them up. Russian tactics in 2023 — sometimes little more than human waves — may be crude, but in a war of attrition against a smaller opponent (Ukrainian military casualties may stand at around 100,000), they can be enough. Hoping for a coup in Moscow, or for Putin’s death, is not a strategy. His successor could easily be even worse. The country’s economy is holding up better than is often assumed, and those Russians who have not fled abroad (maybe as many as a million people have, although hard numbers are difficult to come by) seem supportive of the war.

And Russia is less isolated than is sometimes assumed. India (a country friendly with Moscow since Soviet times) is the third-largest importer of crude oil in the world, and has been an eager buyer of (cheap) Russian oil. In December, it bought 33 times as much Russian crude as in December 2021. Others in the “global south,” such as Brazil and South Africa, have adopted a policy of, broadly speaking, non-alignment, which, as in the Cold War, works to Moscow’s advantage.

Above all, China is onside. Whether or not China supplies Russia with suicide drones (as is reportedly under discussion), and whether or not Beijing has acted as a restraining influence, China has been a valuable source of support, selling Russia a wide range of goods and, of course, buying Russian oil and gas and other raw materials at (naturally) favorable prices. The war in Ukraine is working out well for China. It is a major distraction for the U.S. and, at the same time, has reduced Russia to the level of a junior partner. That’s something China, still well aware of the way it was humiliated by the czars, will savor for historical reasons, but which also comes with practical benefits. As Beijing moves to a more autarkic economic model, it is establishing secure supply lines for those commodities it does not have at home. Russia, cut off from many of its major markets, is not only a captive supplier of sorts, but one with a shared border. Beijing could not ask for more. The Chinese leadership will not let Russia crash to defeat, and, if it chooses to furnish Russia with matériel, it is well able to do so. Its ground-weapons-production capacity comfortably exceeds NATO’s.

What lies ahead, therefore, is likely to be a war of attrition on two fronts. There is the battlefield, but there is also the war of attrition effectively being fought between the Russian and Western economies. The West is much, much richer, but it is democratic. Most of its voters currently favor supporting Ukraine, but for how long? While Europe has dodged the worst of the crisis once forecast for this winter in the aftermath of the cut-off of Russian gas, it did not do so cheaply (Germany alone has spent nearly $500 billion dealing with the effects of the energy squeeze), and there are clear signs that the continent’s higher energy costs are beginning to drive heavier industry elsewhere. What’s more, there may well be another scramble to refill gas-storage reserves for next winter. Competition for imported liquefied natural gas will be stiff, and, unlike in 2022, Russian gas will be missing for all of 2023, meaning that more gas will have to be found to replace it than last year. The idea that renewables will fill the gap is laughable, and Europe’s rushed and reckless “race” to net zero has left it with fewer alternatives to which it can turn. If Europe is faced with a harsh energy crunch in the winter of 2023–24 after what it has already been through in the last twelve months, it is easy to see how its support for Ukraine could start to erode. Indeed, here and there it already has.

Should Western support fall off, Ukraine will eventually lose this war. And should that be the reason that Russia prevails, the credibility of NATO’s commitment to its Eastern members will inevitably be weakened, despite the fact that Ukraine is not itself a member of the alliance. That in turn will increase the likelihood that, sooner or later, Moscow will be tempted to test the strength of that NATO commitment to, say, the Baltic states.

NATO thus finds itself in an appalling position. The threat, albeit remote, of nuclear retaliation means that it cannot risk giving Ukraine enough support to ensure that it will secure the total victory — Crimea and all — that it deserves. On the other hand, even if we ignore the horrors that would be unleashed on the Ukrainian people, the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat are so dangerous to the West that abandoning Kyiv is or ought to be out of the question.

As matters now stand, there is no obvious resolution to this impasse. It is impossible to envisage a peace deal that would satisfy both sides. The best that can probably be hoped for is, however unfair to Ukraine, an armistice similar to that which ended the fighting in Korea, with the demarcation line pushed as far forward in Ukraine’s favor as its forces can achieve. The Korean armistice has only held because the U.S. has stood behind South Korea. A Russo–Ukrainian armistice would only lead to a similar result if the West refused to let itself be lulled into thinking that its job had been completed. Armistice or no armistice, if Russia came to believe there was an opening for a third attack on Ukraine, it would be back for more.

That means that NATO should continue to bolster its own defenses, and those of Ukraine. Ukrainian membership in NATO would be a step too far, but the road to the EU should remain open even if it will be a far slower journey than Ukraine would like. And in the meantime, the West should do what it can to help Ukraine rebuild as well as rearm. The stronger Ukraine is, and the stronger the backing that it enjoys, the less likely that Putin or a successor will convince himself that it’s a target to consider.