Four years later, no end in sight Russia-Ukraine war
· Citizen
‘Breathe deeply, calm down, and don’t go running to stock up on food and matches,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians one month before the Russian tanks rolled across the border on 24 February, 2022.
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The American and British intelligence services knew the Russians were going to invade and told him so, but neither he nor his generals believed it.
Most of the European Nato members didn’t believe it, either. That was partly because they still remembered the lies that the CIA and MI6 told them 20 years before to trick them into invading Iraq, but mainly because they couldn’t believe the Russians were that stupid.
Looking back much later, one European intelligence official said: “We didn’t believe it would happen, because we thought the idea that [the Russians] would be able to walk into Kyiv and just install a puppet government was completely insane.”
That was my mistake too. Right down to a few days before the invasion, I went on insisting that the intelligence must be wrong because Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be that stupid.
But he was. He was surrounded and insulated by people for so long that he had no personal contact with external reality.
Putin was catastrophically, preposterously wrong. Four years and between 200 000 and 400 000 dead Russian soldiers later (estimates vary), the Russian army holds about 20% of Ukraine’s territory.
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At one point in late March of 2022 Russia controlled 27% of Ukraine’s land, but two major Ukrainian counteroffensives drove it down to 19% by April of that year.
All the further fighting since then, despite the massive casualties, has increased Russian’s holdings by only about one percentage point, to 20%.
The stalemate was inevitable, because the dominant new technology, drones, makes it dangerous for soldiers to move on the surface at all – and by now the kill zone is up to 30km deep.
Like the machine guns and long-range artillery of World War I, the drones force everybody to take shelter below ground.
Both sides are affected by this phenomenon, but the Russians, who are attacking, have to get out of their trenches and dugouts much more often than the Ukrainians.
The Russian army, hampered by corruption and incompetence in the early days of the war, is now a lot more professional, but it still cannot get breakthroughs.
The omnipresent drones, rather than any superior skill or courage on the part of Ukrainian soldiers, produces a kill ratio more than two-toone in favour of the Ukrainians.
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That largely cancels out the two- or three-to-one numerical superiority enjoyed by the Russians and creates a war of almost pure attrition in which the Ukrainians have an equal chance of winning.
That’s not what Donald Trump says, of course, but then he’s trying to browbeat Zelensky into accepting a ceasefire or peace deal no matter how badly it affects Ukraine’s future.
What Trump cares about is getting his cherished Nobel Peace Prize and closing his own trade deal with Putin (probably already drafted) which would doubtless make both men a lot richer.
All Trump’s trash talk about Ukrainians having “no cards” and being “losers” is just part of the bullying process.
Zelensky knows that, but he has to be careful not sound too confident or Ukraine’s foreign supporters might slack off.
It’s a fine line to walk, but he does it well. Wars of attrition generally end when one side cannot continue because its soldiers mutiny in the field, or because its citizens at home refuse to support it any longer.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia is that point yet. Suffice it to say that both sides can fight on for another year and probably will.