Food for thought.
Let’s talk Ukraine.
There’s a lot of analysis out there that I believe is driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of the way Russia fights wars.
Bottom line up front: Russia’s current goals in Ukraine aren’t necessarily victory, at least not in the traditional military…
— Angry Staffer 🌻 (@Angry_Staffer) April 26, 2024
Here’s the entire contents of the tweet. (just below)
I found it interesting and approachable, but not overwhelming, and I thought it might generate some good discussion.
Angry Staffer
11:47 AM · Apr 26, 2024
Let’s talk Ukraine.
There’s a lot of analysis out there that I believe is driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of the way Russia fights wars.
Bottom line up front: Russia’s current goals in Ukraine aren’t necessarily victory, at least not in the traditional military sense.
We’ve seen evidence of this since even before Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. More on that later.
Would Putin like to “get the gang back together” and continue rebuilding his sphere of influence in the former Soviet states? Absolutely. Is that his primary goal? Not even close.
Putin’s stated goal for decades has been preventing NATO expansion, which he views as an existential threat to the Russian Federation’s survival. His “special military operation” obviously failed spectacularly in this regard.
Putin was furious when Estonia and Latvia joined NATO; he’s clearly not happy about Finland and Sweden joining either, but Ukraine? Ukraine would be the ultimate insult.
So what’s the best way to keep Ukraine from joining NATO?
– You could corrupt their electoral process and install a puppet. They tried that and failed.
– You could conquer the whole country. They tried that and failed.
– You could keep them in a perpetual state of warfare—a stalemate and a war of attrition—knowing that NATO won’t allow them in while they’re tied up in a hot war. That’s where we’re at now.
Back to how we’ve seen these signs since at least Crimea:
To put these datapoints together, it’s important to understand how invested Russia is in their nonlinear war strategy.
In 2014, after Yanukovych was ousted, sentiment was that Ukraine would gravitate more towards NATO. Putin immediately moved to annex Crimea.
In April 2014, the Crimea occupation evolved into fighting in Donbas, and thus began the perpetual conflict strategy.
In 2015-2016, Russia was working on two additional fronts: devastating Ukrainian critical infrastructure with a barrage of cyber attacks, and interfering in our Presidential election.
For context here: remember some of Russia’s goals with their 2016 influence operation:
– hurt US support for Ukraine (they did that when Trump and Manafort forced a massive change in RNC Ukraine policy)
– denigrate Hillary Clinton with the goal of hurting her Presidency, or electing Donald Trump
– They had a clear preference for Trump, and after watching Trump get impeached for trying to extort Zelenskyy, it’s clear why:
Electing Trump furthered their goal of keeping Ukraine in conflict indefinitely.
To be clear, in February 2022, Russia seems to have shifted their goals temporarily; hey legitimately thought they could take Kyiv in a 3-Day operation, in what has to be one of the biggest intelligence failures in history.
Now they’re back to plan stalemate. Some of this is because they know if Trump gets elected in 2024, US support for Ukraine (and probably NATO) will end.
With this understanding of Russia’s goals, the way forward is pretty clear in my eyes:
We give Ukraine what they need to win. Immediately. Simply giving them enough to defend themselves only acts to further Russia’s goals of a tactical stalemate.
A tactical stalemate will never put enough pressure on Putin to force an end to this war. We have to stop being risk averse and let Ukraine go on offense.
This last aid package — combined with EU support — goes a long way towards advancing this capability, but we still have work to do.
Totally open thread.