"All the Cards?" Why Russia Has Achieved So Little In Ukraine

As spring begins to sprout in Ukraine after a long, difficult winter, Ukrainian forces are on the march. Yes, you read that right. Ukrainian forces, not Russian, are advancing in the country's southern battle zone as its troops have effectively thwarted Russian advances in Pokrovsk and the Kremlin finds itself short of money and new troops. The usual doom-laden warnings of imminent Ukrainian collapse and 'inevitable' Russian victory are strangely absent from the usual dismissive sources. Even the chronically Ukraine-skeptical New York Times is running op-ed pieces, like the one below, critical of Putin's chances!

And despite Putin's maximalist demands for Kyiv's surrender - seconded by his admirers in the White House - he can have no confidence, four years on, that his operationally incompetent army, air force and navy are capable of delivering even modest gains, let alone his downwardly revised military and political objectives. The reality is that Ukraine's military has gotten smarter and stronger, while the Russians continue to flounder, having achieved little at great cost in men and materiel. And that is unlikely to change, even with temporarily rising oil prices, thanks to Russia's weak economy, technological deficiencies and organizational confusion and corruption. Russian dreams of victory have evaporated thanks to Putin's poor decision-making and inadequate strategic capabilities. JL

Lawrence Freedman comments in the New York Times:

A Russian victory in Ukraine remains elusive. Its territorial gains are modest, it controls no regional capitals, is unable to exploit any breakthroughs. These meager results have cost of 1.2 million Russian casualties. If Russia has 'all the cards,' why has it achieved so little? Its progress been frustrated by its own operational weaknesses as well as a much smaller army’s resilience and innovative tactics. Neither Putin’s military objectives nor his political ones have been met. Ukraine has the strongest, largest, most battle-hardened army in Europe. NATO has expanded to include Sweden and Finland, as Germany is again a military power. While Russia has been bogged down in Ukraine, it has become dependent on China and unable to help its Syrian, Venezuelan, Cuban and Iranian clients. However hard Russia tries, it cannot subjugate Ukraine. 

Before sunrise on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine from five directions. Moving quickly, it took swaths of territory in the south and east and quickly reached the outskirts of Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, the second-largest city, in the northeast. The safest assumption then was that the country would be under Russian control in a matter of days.

Four years later, a Russian victory remains stubbornly elusive. Russia’s territorial gains are modest, and it controls no regional capitals. Its forces have been moving forward, but only just, and seem unable to exploit any breakthroughs. These meager results have been achieved at a cost of over 1.2 million Russian casualties since the start of the war, according to an estimate by the Center for International Strategic Studies, which called the numbers “extraordinary.”

There is nothing inevitable about a Russian victory in Ukraine. The narrative that Russia has, to quote President Trump, “all the cards” and that Ukraine must make big territorial concessions in order to avoid even worse losses, has dominated negotiations. But at this point in the war, it’s fair to ask: If Russia has all the cards, why has it achieved so little? Why has its progress been so often frustrated by a much smaller army’s resilience and innovative tactics, as well as Russia’s own operational weaknesses?

Some of the first steps toward any durable peace agreement are to understand that a Russian victory is not inevitable and to convince Russia of it. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the next round of talks among Ukraine, Russia and the United States would probably take place this week in Abu Dhabi, but the timing and location of that meeting are now in doubt because of the war in Iran. Many of Russia’s failures in Ukraine have their roots in decisions made during the first days in February 2022, when Russian forces underestimated their opponents and advanced on too many axes at once. When what was supposed to be a quick push to take Kyiv stalled, supply lines became overextended and forward troops became so vulnerable to counterattacks that they had to be withdrawn. Those mistakes turned a short war into a long war.

By early 2024, Moscow seemed to have rallied and was confident that it could win this long war. Ukraine had been shaken by a disappointing counteroffensive the previous year; it was short of troops and struggling with recruitment. Russia had no problems with recruitment, thanks to large sign-up bonuses, and its economy, increasingly on a war footing, was booming — albeit unsustainably.

With Ukraine outnumbered and outgunned and with the aid from the United States stalled in Congress, Russia embarked on an offensive that has yet to conclude. But instead of executing blitzkriegs, Russia has made remarkably slow progress, and its casualty rate is staggeringly high. According to estimates, in the past year Russia suffered roughly 400,000 casualties, including killed, wounded and missing, to acquire around 0.8 percent of Ukrainian territory.

And here we are. Neither President Vladimir Putin’s core military objectives nor his political ones for his special military operation have been met. Ukraine retains its independence. And instead of being demilitarized, it has one of the strongest, largest and most battle-hardened armies in Europe. NATO has expanded to include Sweden and Finland, and Germany is once again becoming a serious military power.

While Russia has been bogged down in Ukraine, it has become increasingly dependent on China and unable to help its Syrian, Venezuelan, Cuban and Iranian clients. Oil revenues have diminished, even with a rally this week, and the economy suffers from high interest rates, inflation and minimal growth. Given the vast gap between the initial objectives and what has been achieved, Mr. Putin has understandably tried to emphasize successes. Late last year, he claimed that the cities of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, and Pokrovsk, in Donetsk, were under Russian control. Kupiansk has since been mostly liberated, and Ukrainian forces were still fighting in Pokrovsk — the fall of which had been described in various outlets as imminent since August 2024 — until January. And if Russia has now finally captured Pokrovsk, reduced to rubble and with its railway lines and roads no longer functional, its value is surely ambiguous. Mr. Putin’s army has squandered men and matériel merely to make his boasts come true. While the battle has been underway Ukraine has built up a formidable defensive line to protect the so-called fortress belt of Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in Ukraine’s main industrial region. It is not surprising that Moscow demands that these cities be handed over without a fight in negotiations. It can have no confidence — even if the war lasted well into 2027 — that it would be able to take them.

It would be premature to call an offensive that is not yet over a failure — despite the meager gains, high costs and lack of momentum. But the basic feature of the front line, with troops easily spotted and eliminated, is that it is now extremely difficult to mount large-scale, fast-moving massed offensives. This is why Russian advances have largely depended on small-scale infiltrations on foot, bikes or buggies.

Mr. Putin has been ready to pay an extraordinarily heavy price to achieve his geopolitical ambitions. Perhaps that readiness is why whenever the question of whether Russia can keep the war going is posed, the answer invariably comes back that it can. In Moscow, it may not feel like a proper defeat until Russian troops are in full retreat.

Ukraine, of course, has suffered grievously in the past four years. In addition to its heavy military losses, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed. Russian attacks on energy infrastructure left Ukrainians dealing with regular blackouts and insufficient heat throughout a harsh winter in which temperatures dropped to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Even so, a majority of Ukrainians continue to oppose territorial concessions and are confident that they can impose ever higher costs on Russia, even if Ukraine lacks the means to liberate all its territory from Russian occupation for now. Ukrainian commanders have claimed that Russia has been unable to replace its frontline losses with new fighters in recent months and have set a grisly target of inflicting 50,000 casualties a month to bring home to Moscow the costly futility of this war.

Russia has failed at much since it began its full-scale invasion in Ukraine, but it has had some success in creating the narrative that its victory in Ukraine is but a matter of time. The first step toward a durable peace is to defeat that narrative: However hard Russia tries and however much pain it inflicts, it cannot subjugate Ukraine.