Ukraine's Most Underrated Military Advantage Is Leadership

Much has been written about Ukraine's capacity for innovation and the results it has produced from drones to missiles to electronic warfare. 

But Ukraine's key strategic advantage over Russia may be the quality of its leadership, from the office of the presidency to the officers in staffs and on the ground who have learned the hard way how to assess the right troops and weapons, then apply them at the right time, in the right place and in the right way. JL

David Deptula reports in Forbes:

Military  effectiveness is determined not simply by weapons, but by the quality of the decisions governing their employment. Ukraine has found ways to outthink, out plan, and outperform its opponent. Equally important is the integration of military capabilities: airpower, land and maritime forces, intelligence, space, cyber, electronic warfare, and logistics contribute to using the right force at the right place at the right time. The measure of success is not how many targets are destroyed or how much ground changes hands but that military actions achieve operational and strategic objectives. Operation Vivaldi, conducted by Ukraine’s 3rd Corps, offers is instructive. The emphasis was on creating favorable conditions before committing forces, reducing the delay between recognizing a problem and acting on it. The results validated the importance of focusing military operations on achieving strategic effects rather than destruction for its own sake.

Spending time with senior Ukrainian military officers who are directing their country’s war for survival is a reminder of how much lies behind the daily reports from the battlefield. Maps tell us where forces are positioned. Intelligence can identify capabilities and vulnerabilities. Neither fully captures the judgments, institutional constraints, or accumulated experience of commanders who must make decisions while lives hang in the balance. 

The most revealing discussions do not always take place at a podium. They occur when people with different military experiences have enough time and trust to challenge assumptions, acknowledge mistakes, and ask difficult questions. For Americans, those exchanges offer valuable insights into many aspects of this war. For Ukrainians, they provide an opportunity to examine Western approaches to joint or integrated military operations, campaign planning, and military leadership. Both sides have something substantial to learn. 

One conclusion stands out: military effectiveness is determined not simply by the weapons a nation possesses, but by the quality of the decisions governing their employment. For Ukraine, facing an adversary with greater manpower and industrial capacity, that distinction is not academic. Russia can sustain a war of attrition on terms Ukraine cannot afford to match. Ukraine must instead find ways to outthink, out plan, and outperform its opponent.

The Value of Candor

The Ukrainian commanders I met last weekend in a discrete, private location in the U.S. are dealing with challenges that should command the attention of every Western military professional: integrating uninhabited air, sea, and ground vehicles with conventional forces, operating under electronic attack, sustaining forces under attack, defending against missile and drone strikes, and conducting strategic attacks inside Russia to undermine its ability to continue their aggression. They must also adapt to a Russian military that is learning, in part because delays by Ukraine’s partners in providing critical capabilities have given Moscow time to adjust—the gift of time.

A weekend of discussion cannot resolve these problems. What it can do is illuminate the assumptions that govern how commanders confront them. Why does a headquarters require an additional approval before acting? Why are information and capabilities divided among commands that ought to be working toward the same operational effect? Which practices are dictated by necessity, and which survive merely because they have always been done that way? 

Such questions are most productive when raised among people who understand the weight of command. Candid exchange builds professional trust; trust creates the space for disagreement; and disagreement, handled constructively, produces learning. The relationships also endure. A connection forged in person can become a channel for rapid consultation when circumstances change on the battlefield.

Moving Beyond the Soviet Inheritance

One of Ukraine’s enduring military challenges is not technological. It is institutional: replacing remnants of Soviet command culture with a system that better enables initiative, operational integration, and accountability. This should not be confused with any lack of courage or ingenuity among Ukrainian forces, which have repeatedly demonstrated both. 

The traditional Soviet approach emphasized centralized decisions, rigid hierarchy, and detailed instructions from higher headquarters. That can produce uniformity, but it can also suppress initiative and slow action. On a battlefield saturated by surveillance and precision weapons, the time between identifying an opportunity and exploiting it can determine success or failure. 

Western doctrine instead places greater emphasis on mission command. Senior leaders communicate the desired objective, the reasons it matters, and the resources available; subordinate commanders are expected to apply judgment in determining how to accomplish the mission. This is not freedom to ignore orders. It is disciplined initiative within the commander’s intent.

Equally important is the integration of military capabilities. Modern joint warfare demands that airpower, land and maritime forces, intelligence, space, cyber, electronic warfare, and logistics contribute to a coherent campaign using the right force at the right place at the right time. The measure of success is not simply how many targets are destroyed or how much ground changes hands. It is whether military actions produce the effects required to achieve operational and strategic objectives.

The practical importance of this distinction was demonstrated in the planning and execution of the air campaign for Operation Desert Storm. The objective was not simply to destroy enemy forces and infrastructure, but to systematically disrupt the enemy’s ability to function as an integrated whole. The results validated the importance of focusing military operations on achieving strategic effects rather than destruction for its own sake. That principle remains equally relevant in the Russia-Ukraine war, where expending scarce personnel and ammunition on disconnected tactical successes can become a costly substitute for meaningful operational progress. 

Ukraine should not attempt to copy an American model wholesale. Its combat experience has produced innovations that Western forces would be foolish to disregard. But making decentralized execution, integrated planning, and an effects-based approach routine throughout a large military organization takes more than a new field manual. It takes education, repetition, institutional reinforcement, and a change in command culture.

What Better Command Practices Look Like

Operation Vivaldi, conducted by Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, offers an instructive illustration. According to a September 30, 2026, statement from Ukraine’s presidential office, the operation disrupted a Russian drive toward the Slovyansk–Kramatorsk area and helped recover control over approximately 176 square kilometers of territory.

More revealing than the map is the preparation behind that result. In a September 23 account, the corps’ deputy commander, Colonel Rodion Kudriashov, described months spent reorganizing headquarters, improving command relationships and logistical coordination, and better integrating intelligence and uninhabited vehicles. The emphasis was on creating favorable conditions before committing forces and reducing the delay between recognizing a problem and acting on it. 

That is operational art in practice: arranging capabilities, decisions, and timing to achieve an objective, rather than assuming additional troops or weapons alone will suffice. It does not eliminate friction, uncertainty, or casualties. It can, however, increase the effect achieved with the resources available.

One of the corps’ deputy chiefs of staff, spoke publicly about the value of leadership education, supported in this instance by the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, in strengthening planning, leadership, and decision-making. His observations underscore the practical value of professional military education at the operational level, where the ability to think critically, anticipate enemy actions, integrate capabilities, and make timely decisions can determine success or failure.

Operation Vivaldi’s accomplishments belong to the Ukrainian commanders and service members who planned and executed it. But their experience also illustrates why investing in the intellectual development of military leaders is so important: superior leadership and decision-making are essential ingredients of battlefield success. 

Military Education Is Not a Substitute for Military Power

Assistance to Ukraine is usually counted in dollars, ammunition, and warfighting material. All are necessary. Yet the combat value of any delivery depends heavily on whether commanders know how to integrate it into operations. Poor coordination can squander precision weapons; weak planning can expose forces unnecessarily; excessive centralization can allow a fleeting opportunity to disappear.

Professional military education is therefore an important complement to materiel assistance, not an alternative to it. Since 2023, the Ukrainian Freedom Fund has supported Ukrainian leaders through over 150 professional-development activities. The significance of that number is not the amount of certificates earned. It is whether officers take better staff processes, stronger command relationships, and more effective methods of decision-making back to their units—and whether those practices endure after the instructors leave.

The practical value of this education is increasingly evident to Ukrainian commanders. A senior training officer on Ukraine’s general staff told our group that demand for Ukrainian Freedom Fund leadership and operational planning courses has grown as unit commanders recognize the benefits of applying NATO planning processes to improve coordination and combat effectiveness. Senior Ukrainian and former senior U.S. military officers reinforced this point, emphasizing that more sophisticated air campaign planning and integration are essential to realizing the full combat potential of Ukraine’s F-16s. The broader lesson is that advanced military capabilities deliver their greatest value when matched by the knowledge, planning expertise, and command structures necessary to employ them effectively. 

Americans Have as Much Reason to Listen as to Teach

These exchanges are not simply one-directional. Ukrainians have accumulated a depth of recent combat experience using uninhabited vehicles, electronic attack, dispersed operations, contested logistics, and rapid adaptation. Their practical lessons should be examined seriously as the U.S. military reassesses its doctrine, training, force design, and readiness.

But we must also be discriminating about which lessons to adopt. Ukraine’s ingenious employment of small, attritable drones reflects both innovation and the constraints imposed by shortages of artillery, aircraft, and other capabilities. We would be learning the wrong lesson if we concluded that America should prepare to fight China primarily through a grinding contest of attrition. Our objective must be to prevent such a war by being able to rapidly achieve air and space superiority, integrate multi-domain capabilities, field sufficient capable capacity, and generate decisive effects at scale. Perhaps the most important lessons to come out of this war that the U.S. must incorporate are do not allow the enemy sanctuary, and do not provide them the gift of time.

One of the greatest benefits of interactions with Ukrainian commanders is the opportunity to distinguish what is universal about warfare from what is contingent on Ukraine’s circumstances. They can challenge Western assumptions just as Western experience can help them question inherited practices. That is what makes the dialogue consequential. 

The Return That Lasts

Institutional transformation is neither quick nor linear. Some units will adapt faster than others; changing a headquarters chart is easier than changing its habits. Nevertheless, officers developing judgment and professional competence today will later command larger formations, teach successors, and influence the design of Ukraine’s military institutions. Their experience will help determine whether wartime ingenuity becomes enduring capability—and whether Ukraine’s armed forces continue moving toward NATO-compatible methods without losing what they have learned in combat.

That is the lasting value of engagement with senior Ukrainian military leaders. The immediate benefit is insight; the more important result may be relationships and ideas that outlast any meetings. This work will never be as photogenic as delivering a new aircraft or missile. But neither that aircraft nor that missile can compensate for poor operational decisions.

Helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression means more than providing the means to continue fighting—although that is critical. It also means helping Ukraine fight more effectively, conserve the lives of its people, and secure its independence. The most important capability is not always the weapon in a commander’s hands. It is the judgment that determines how, when, and why that weapon is used.