I will try to sum up some impressions from various readings – everything from Le Monde via The Guardian and Aftenposten to Klassekamben ( Francesca Borri ), Foreign Affairs, Adam Tooze on substack, and a couple of books: D-day by the Swedes Tamelander and Zetterling, and World War I by Norman Foster. Plus various talking heads on Youtube. I find to my dismay that some of the people who share my view on the war are right-wing crackpots, like Scott Ritter. John Mearsheimer is clearly not a crackpot, but the press is busy sidelining him.
First, the outlook for Ukraina is bleak. It is unlikely that the frontier will move much. The summer of 2023 has passed and the offensive has not paid off. Otherwise our press would have been full of jubilant reports. It isn’t. Instead there is a steady drip of human-centred stories about the toll of war on both sides – e.g. Russian convicted murderers returning to their home town in far-flung corners of the Russian empire after having been cleansed by 6 months at the front… and Ukrainian wives and mothers searching for and finding the sad remains of their loved ones. We have learned about the minefields, thicker than anything seen before, the deep defenses, and the steady build-up of artillery on the Russian side.
The west is digging out F-16s, with photo-ops for everyone, with warnings from those that know what war is about: that a couple of fighter jets, or indeed tanks, on their own cannot change the course of a war. So, while these weapons may keep the Zelenskiy show on the road, back home he is blocking journalists and has never taken questions at home (Borri). In other words, he’s playing for time.
My take on this whole war requires two references to Greek mythology: Ikaros and Pyrrhos. Ukraine, like Ikaros, flew too close to the sun – Russia – believing that NATO (read: the US) would make them unassailable. And Zelenskiy’s victory is already Pyrrhic – the economy is in tatters and millions have fled; many will never come back. To sum up: if you talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. Putin made it clear where the red line was. To cross it was foolish, or maybe foolhardy, and also unnecessary, and here we are. Look at it from Putin’s perspective: clearly he knew that the cost of war would be enormous on all fronts – yet he went to war. Clearly this was a non-negotiable point, and all the fluff about “Nazis” was simply for internal consumption. It is also likely he would have murdered Zelenskiy if he could, but that there was never a plan to invade all of Ukraina.
Going back in time, we all “know” what WWI was like, but one question is rarely answered: how did it end? I see two-three reasons in Foster’s book:
– the US entered the war with its huge resources
– Germany was running out of resources, so despite peace on the the Eastern front, Germany was less able to fight
– the tank, the light machine gun, better use of artillery, and the plane made it possible to break down trench defences, when these elements were used together (Foster).
The question is relevant, since the war in Ukraina is looking similar to WWI with its trench warfare, minefields, and seeming paralysis.
The end of WWI saw the introduction of the modern way to carry out an attack: air-launched munitions and ground artillery smash the defenders to bits, and then the tanks move in supported by mechanized infantry and more close air support. This is what we call blitz-krieg. This is also essentially what the US did in Desert Storm where they had complete control in the air and vastly superior mobile artillery.
To win you have to have more troops, more artillery, and supremacy in the air. And that is true even today. You also have to use the different “tools” together. As an example, the Afghan Army was trained to operate like the US, and that means dependence on air support. Once the US pulled out, the Afghan Army was left with a useless way to go into battle. The Afghan air force had no way of maintaining airworthiness on the highly advanced planes and helicopters left behind. This was only a part of it – the Army’s morale was low, and everyone realized the Taliban was going to win, so why waste your life. Why indeed. Let’s not forget that the Americans were foreigners and infidels, too, so working with them was treason, or close to it – but it was a paid job.
This type of battle requires close coordination, which is why we hear about “training” and “maturity” in the press. The tanks on their own are very vulnerable. Infantry on its own is vulnerable. The planes are vulnerable to “flak” – anti-aircraft fire, and to missiles. A quick glance at this list explains why the tank assault on Kiev failed: no infantry to support the tanks, no air-support (the Ruskies didn’t want to risk losing planes), and in the event, no logistical support. A tank without fuel is a useless – a death trap. This mode of battle requires both mindset, means, and training. The Germans were excellent at it throughout WWII – they gave their commanders at battalion level the authority to make decisions – the reasoning being that these knew best what the situation on the battlefield was. This is the opposite of the Russian mindset. NATO is probably a lot closer to the ways of the Wehrmacht. Tamelander writes that the Wehrmacht observed that when the Americans encountered resistance, they pulled back and called in air support. Makes sense if you’ve got it, because you save your own troops from destruction. This is how the US fought the Japanese, too, with enormous superiority in firepower they smashed the Japanese defences. And their cities…
Even in WWII, artillery was a big killer (50% of casualties), and part of the reason why northern France was reduced to rubble after D-day (https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-126-for-the-anniversary-2c1) (https://www.usni.org/press/books/beyond-beach) (60.000 civilian deaths, and how many railwaymen, cheminots?).
It is always risky to predict the future, but a prolonged stalemate looks probable, with Putin punishing Ukraina by killing civilians in pure terror attacks. This is what you can expect in a modern war. Lots and lots of civilian deaths – nothing new, nothing unusual, nothing unusually cruel, even, in this. Just closer to home.
A stalemate lies ahead of us. Russia has no interest in penetrating deeper into Ukraina, nor does it want to muster the means and pay the price. Putin has largely achieved his war aims. He has stopped the West. I cannot see that some new (combination of) military technology could bring about a Ukrainian victory, largely because at the end of the day you need lots of infantry to take and hold territory, and I cannot see that Ukraina can muster that strength. To avoid a bloodbath, it is also necessary to neutralise Russian artillery on a large scale, which in turn requires Ukraina to build up a large capacity in artillery.
So there is no obvious end to this – and I cannot see the facts on the ground changing significantly.
schoutbynacht 