For Ukraine, the full-scale war against Russia has been extremely difficult. During the first year, Russia incurred huge losses to Ukraine, and Kyiv was able to liberate roughly half of all the territory Moscow took in its initial offensive. But Russia continued to bombard Ukrainian cities, including the capital, with missile attacks, and millions of Ukrainians had to endure Russian occupation. The second year was about repelling Russia’s attacks in the East, Ukraine’s campaign in Black Sea and Crimea, but most of all about Ukraine’s land counteroffensive, which had stalled out before it could sever Russia’s land routes to Crimea. By the end of the year, Kyiv found itself playing active defense across much of the 1,000-mile frontline, repelling Russian advances. There is still plenty of action on the frontlines, and Ukraine has had its share of tactical victories. But it is not hard to understand why, in November, Ukrainian Commander in Chief Valery Zaluzhny declared that the war had reached a stalemate.
As a result of these struggles, a growing chorus of Western analysts and officials have suggested that Ukraine is unlikely to make substantial gains—let alone outright victory—in the months ahead. They say Ukraine should, instead, pursue a negotiated settlement with Russia. Yet such pessimism is unwarranted. Despite the recent setbacks, Ukraine can still win, removing Russian troops from occupied territories.
But to do so, Ukraine needs to win the technological and production race to build the key new weapons systems of this war, not just compete in traditional legacy systems such as artillery and tanks. For example, Ukraine has used small portable drones to help preserve ammunition and to take down expensive Russian weapons systems. It has had tremendous success against Russia in the Black Sea through other unconventional tactics. By expanding and augmenting this approach, Ukrainian forces can seriously disrupt and degrade Russian troops across Ukrainian land, eventually forcing Moscow to retreat. The war against Russia is, after all, a technological battle where drones fight against armored equipment and guard minefields, and where precision-guided weapons must contend with sophisticated electronic warfare systems. If Ukraine can get systems, as well as major long-range firepower platforms, missiles, and F-16 jets, it will gain the competitive edge. Ukraine, however, cannot win by simply trying to outgun Russia symmetrically.
The United States and Europe, then, should stop talking about negotiations—which have never been a viable way to end the conflict. They must start making good on their promise to, as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin put it in April 2022, “move heaven and earth” to assist Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia will continue to terrorize Ukrainians with missile strikes and blackouts. It will, inevitably, make more gains on the battlefield. And in doing so, it will humiliate the West, which has invested so much in saving Kyiv.
OUTSIDE THE BOX
Ukrainians have accepted that defeating Russia is going to be a formidable challenge. They realize that victory requires not only commitment and sacrifice but also meticulous planning targeted at exploiting Moscow’s weaknesses. There is no point in trying to combat Russia by outperforming it where it is strongest, which is to say by going toe-to-toe with its vast military-industrial complex—although that complex is mostly focused on an older generation of equipment. Its population is thrice the size of Ukraine’s, and its economy is more than ten times as large. Sanctions have failed to bring the Russian economy to its knees.
Unfortunately, so far, Moscow has managed to make the war into one of attrition, where it can compensate for its lack of technology by throwing large numbers of people into battle and arming them with old-school weapons. It has done so, in part, by manipulating Washington. Although the United States has established itself a leader of the Western coalition for Ukraine, Russia quickly realized that Washington was too afraid of escalation to fully help Ukraine. Moscow then successfully played with this fear to make sure the United States committed weapons to Ukraine much later than it should have. Some U.S. systems have not yet been provided, or they have been provided in tiny quantities. Russia has, simultaneously, actively invested in innovative technology—such as electronic warfare, air defense, and new drones.
Ukraine and its Western allies must deny Russia the ability to play its game. The allies must stop self-deterring and provide much larger quantities of conventional weapons, as well as innovative types of equipment. The West’s technology and resources and Ukraine’s drive to win are both still larger than Russia’s by an order of magnitude. As a result, this coalition can and must prevail.
Today, Ukraine has largely neutralized the Russian navy.
Russia compensates for its shortcomings by exuding confidence, but the West must learn to stop taking the Kremlin’s statements at face value. Objectively, Moscow does not have too many reasons to be upbeat. Ukraine may not be winning the war right now, but neither is Russia. Despite tremendous losses when it comes to ammunition, equipment, and personnel, Russia’s gains over recent months were very insignificant. Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine inflicted casualties equal to 90 percent of all the troops Russia had at the beginning of 2022. And despite a mobilized economy and ramped-up production, Russia’s output of weapons is lower than what it needs.
If this trend continues, and Ukraine keeps receiving the assistance the West has promised, Russia will not be able to complete any of its campaign plans—especially given Ukraine’s strengths. Despite the recent setbacks, the Ukrainian military remains a formidable fighting force. It has succeeded in battle by identifying and exploiting weaknesses in Moscow’s force structure and operational plans, as well as by using geography, timing, and unconventional technologies to its advantage. Ukraine’s arms industry, for example, has helped offset Russia’s stockpile advantage by using handheld drones to precisely identify targets for artillery—curtailing the number of munitions Ukrainian soldiers have to expend. The drones, many of which cost between a few hundred and tens of thousands of dollars to make, can also carry explosives, allowing them to down sophisticated Russian weapons, such as artillery, radars, armored vehicles, and rocket launchers.
Ukraine’s efforts in the Black Sea in 2023 provide another case study in how the country can win through alternative techniques and by striking deep. Before the invasion, no one thought Kyiv had any chance against Moscow in the water: Russia had a sizable number of large military vessels in the Black Sea, whereas Ukraine had effectively none. Kyiv sank its only real warship when the invasion began (the ship had been undergoing repair) to prevent it from falling into Russian hands. But Ukraine has used surface drones, artillery, domestic special operation forces, and, later, Western missiles to launch successful attacks against Russia’s fleet. It sank the Russia’s Black Sea flagship in April 2022, for instance, by combining drone surveillance with a strike from homemade missiles.
Today, Ukraine has largely neutralized the Russian navy. Moscow positioned 11 landing ships in the Black Sea as it prepared for its invasion; it has been able to use none of them. Its ships have, in fact, retreated hundreds of miles away from Ukraine’s shores. The only Ukrainian territory that Russia took through naval power was Zmiinyi Island (also known as Snake Island) in February 2022. It lost this speck of land four months later when Ukraine, using a combination of coastal artillery and domestic land artillery systems mounted on rafts, eliminated Russian positions on the island. Ukraine’s naval efforts have been so successful that commercial ships can now dock and sail around Ukraine’s most crucial port without Russian interference. Russia can no longer safely send its warships out from Crimea.
AHEAD OF THE GAME
To win the war, Ukraine and allies should draw lessons from its nonlinear successes on land and at sea. The country must have the technologies needed to destroy Russian fortified positions, along with the equipment to interfere with Russian drones. This largely boils down to long-range firepower—including ammunition, missiles, aviation, drones—and electronic warfare systems. If the West cannot donate such weapons to Ukraine, it can help Ukrainians build them.
Ukraine will use these techniques in ways that continually surprise Russia. Kyiv, after all, was able to push Moscow’s troops out of Kharkiv Province because the Russian military was caught off guard when Ukraine began advancing. But Moscow was ready for the most recent counteroffensive, which was telegraphed for months in advance in media outlets across the world. As a result, Russia had prepared elaborate defenses, including multiple lines of trenches, minefields, and artillery that proved too treacherous for Ukraine to cross. By pouring substantial resources into manufacturing its own cheap drones, for example, Russia prevented Kyiv from clearing many mines.
To make a creative war strategy work, Kyiv must regain technological superiority. The counteroffensive plan severely underestimated the growing role small drones play in today’s combat, and one of the key lessons from 2023 is that Ukraine’s allies cannot ignore the rapidly evolving technological landscape of the war—in particular, the importance of first-person-view unmanned aerial vehicles. Autonomous and remotely guided weapons present a new chapter in warfare history, and they are the result of profound value innovation. They have made many traditional approaches and doctrines irrelevant.
Moscow is good at scaling up successful inventions, including first-person-view drones, and so Kyiv must continuously innovate to regain the advantage. But Ukraine has what it takes to do so: the country’s bureaucracy and economy, with its hundreds of defense startups, is far more agile and innovative than Russia’s, which are based on a rigid, top-down system. A recent Ukrainian initiative, for example, has encouraged citizens to assemble simple drones at home in order to increase output dramatically.
Finally, Kyiv must keep using large conventional weapons systems to implement comprehensive operational concepts. There are still Western capabilities, such as high mobility artillery rockets (HIMARS) and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), air defense units, and self-propelled artillery, that have no match in Russia and that Ukraine therefore deploys to its advantage. U.S.-made fighter jets, provided they are equipped according to up-to-date specifications, will be particularly crucial to Kyiv’s victory, assisting Ukraine in establishing local air superiority in future counteroffensives.
THE COST OF DEFEAT
To keep fighting against Russian invasion, Ukraine will need continued Western support. In addition to sending more long-range missiles, fighter jets, and other sophisticated weapons, NATO countries must also commit to doing joint weapons development and production with Ukraine, particularly of unmanned capabilities and rockets as the war’s evolution makes many previous models uncompetitive. Scaling matters, and so Ukraine’s allies must also support its industrial projects and help it ramp up production.
Unfortunately, and despite the existential stakes, U.S. assistance to Ukraine is waning. If that continues, Russia will produce more systems than it loses, gaining the advantage and occupying more territory. Ukraine may be able to innovate better than Russia, but it cannot defeat the country on wit and creativity alone. Ukraine has no intention of capitulating in any scenario, but a long war that increasingly burdens Ukraine’s military, society, and economy will have disastrous consequences.
For the West, such a scenario would be both devastating and dangerous. NATO will be humiliated if, after it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine, Russia’s campaign does not come off as an unequivocal failure. Even if the frontlines remain where they are now, with Ukraine perpetually holding off Russian forces, Russia will have taken more land from its neighbor, showing up Kyiv’s partners. The message to the rest of the world will be that even the world’s most powerful alliance cannot help a brave large state defend its borders. Other countries, including China, may be tempted to launch expansionist attacks of their own. Moscow itself may decide to expand its empire farther by moving on a NATO member, like Poland, bringing the alliance’s countries into direct combat.
Unfortunately, and despite the existential stakes, U.S. assistance to Ukraine is waning.
But in such a scenario, Russia will not need a big war with the West to advance its agenda. It will be able to succeed by taking advantage of NATO’s fears of escalation and direct conflict. Once it proves that the West will not enforce its strategic position, Russia can erode the bloc’s security architecture by constantly challenging Western countries and then agreeing to preserve the fragile status quo, but only with major concessions to Russia. Eventually, of course, that status quo will no longer benefit the West.
NATO leaders know these facts. The U.S. government, especially, has repeatedly issued many statements explaining why the West must support Ukraine, focusing on the conflict’s precedential value and historical significance. Yet despite this rhetoric, the U.S. government is not providing enough resources to win.
That must change. The West must dispense with the fantasy that negotiations can end the conflict and instead keep working to help Ukraine. It must realize that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention is to destroy Ukraine and that he will therefore fight on until his military is physically defeated, treating any cease-fire simply as a chance to rearm for a more decisive attack in the future. In fact, pro-negotiation rhetoric already emboldens Moscow.
The war in Ukraine may be proceeding much more slowly than it was before, but the West must remember that history is full of protracted conflicts—many wars take years to complete and win. Nothing happening on the battlefield today justifies strategic weakness or despair. Russia’s presence in Ukraine, its potential to mobilize, and its industrial base are large but finite. Ukraine has an unwavering determination to win. If Kyiv is backed by the combined Western economy, and even a fraction of the West’s combined defense budgets, it will be fully capable of succeeding. In these circumstances, victory is not a question of possibility. It is, instead, a question of the correct strategy and policy. Most of all, it is a question of choice.
By Andriy Zagorodnyuk
