As the talks about a potential ceasefire continue, fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine is fierce, and problems—from manpower shortages to stalled military aid—amount. However, Ukrainians have always been resourceful. And today, they have innovations and warfighting experience to share with allies and partners, so that we are all best prepared for what might come next, says Taras Chmut, Head of the Come Back Alive Foundation.
Ever since the declarations from Munich, Washington, London, Paris, and now Riyadh captured everyone’s attention, the focus seems to have shifted away from the battlefields in Ukraine. Yet, the military action has never slowed down there either. In what direction is the frontline moving?
There has never been any pause in hostilities, and one cannot foresee one happening in the future either. By the end of last year, Russians had failed to achieve their operational and tactical goals, which was, in part, connected with taking—or, to be more precise, the failure to take—the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast.
Starting from February and March of this year, Russia’s offensive has slowed down significantly, which can be attributed to its high casualty rates during the autumn and winter months. Russia needed to find ways to, first, compensate for the previous losses in manpower and materiel and, second, to continue grinding forward. The focus of the Russian advancement, however, has changed, as the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been pushed out of the Kursk region—the only direction where the Russians have been successful. Their plans were significantly delayed, though. Russians would have wanted to achieve that objective by the end of last year.
Now, the enemy has been actively preparing for a new offensive in Sumy Oblast, where their primary goal is to pull the defence forces in that direction and, should the conditions prove favourable to Russia, to either establish fire control over the city of Sumy or even to encircle the regional capital.
The second offensive is directed towards Kharkiv Oblast and even down to the south, in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The area between the Oskol River and the city of Kharkiv is one potential territory that could, in the future, be exchanged in the course of some negotiation process, as a land swap. The same applies to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Russians are now trying to shift the focus from the Pokrovsk direction towards Dnipropetrovsk.
These are the three primary directions where Russians have been trying to advance. However, they have remained active in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine have recently lost some ground, as well as in Kherson Oblast, where the Russians have been testing the waters, searching for the weaker spots in Ukraine’s defences in order to force the Dnipro River and land on the right bank.
Taras Chmut is a military analyst and the Head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, a charitable foundation for competent assistance to the Armed Forces. He has served in the Ukrainian Marine Battalion and is a veteran of the war in Donbas.
Besides Russia’s mounting offensives, what are the most acute internal challenges to Ukraine’s defence effort?
If one wants to understand the main challenges the Ukrainian state is facing as part of its war effort, the first would be the mobilisation campaign and the human resources in general: Ukraine simply does not have that many people compared to Russia. The necessity to sustain mobilisation at 30 000 troops per month, as stated by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, remains critical. If we factor in new directions, such as the Sumy region, it will require extra resources and manpower. If the Armed Forces of Ukraine were to begin contemplating launching another counteroffensive, for instance, to regain some of the lost territories, it would put even more strain on the troops.
The secondary challenge that stems from it is the quality of training: one’s ability to recruit enough people is different from one’s ability to give them the necessary training, and this is where Ukraine is confronted with a tremendous problem.
The third challenge is the pace of procurement, which applies to both the Ukrainian defence budget and the military and technical assistance from the foreign partners. On top of that comes the chaos in some partner countries—the US, first and foremost—which is rather damaging to Ukraine’s ability to plan. For instance, we may be publicly promised—and counting on—some specific type of military assistance, but what eventually arrives, as well as the terms when it arrives, happen to be quite different.
Moreover, now that the US’ position has changed dramatically, we have been suffering from a dire shortage in anti-missile defence systems, especially ballistic missile defence. In this area, unfortunately, there is very little that Europe can offer. One can already see that the Russians have been taking advantage of this shortcoming: attacks on the cities of Sumy and Kryvyi Rih before that, when densely populated areas were targeted, resulting in a high death toll among civilians. Meanwhile, Ukraine simply has no defence systems to intercept such ballistic missiles.
Europe hopes to turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine” that proves “indigestible to future invaders.” What are Ukraine’s most urgent needs, and how can Europe meet them?
Europe is an entity that is comprised of several dozen different states. When taken together, their economic potential is much higher than that of Russia and the US. They could, essentially, meet the entire spectrum of the defence-related needs that Ukraine has in terms of weapons and equipment: from ammunition to nuclear weapons, from aircraft to aircraft carriers. In fact, Europe can produce and provide everything. The real question concerns the readiness of specific European countries and specific local manufacturers to supply such materiel, as well as the ability to cover the costs of such deliveries.
One has to take into account the fact that any type of weapon requires at least nine months to produce. And given that there is no real sense of urgency in Europe right now, the realistic timeline starts at one year, or even longer. In the meantime, Ukraine needs a lot of weapons, as in the conditions of a hot war, equipment gets lost, damaged, or worn out at a much higher pace.
As to what Ukraine needs most, the most critical demand is still manpower, followed by training. Then comes ammunition of all types, missile defence systems, and air defence systems as a derivative, as well as long-range strike capabilities, implying 100 km or more. The list continues with armoured vehicles, artillery, communications systems, radio electronic warfare capabilities, etc. Moreover, these demands have not changed much over the last years. Nor will they change in the coming months.
The understanding of these needs in European capitals, however, varies depending on the country. Among hundreds of political and military officials in each of those countries, there is no shared understanding either. There are as many opinions as there are people.
Amidst the fundamental revisions in the US position, Europeans themselves worry whether they can still rely on their most powerful ally. In this light, what are the most valuable contributions to collective defence that Ukraine can offer its partners?
There is a lot that Ukraine can offer. In fact, one may even argue that Ukraine can offer more to Europe than Europe can offer to Ukraine. Ukraine is the only country that has experience of fighting the real war of the future—the war of defence against an enemy whose economic and military power, as well as manpower, by far outweighs its own. In over three years since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has been successful at repelling the Russian aggression.
Therefore, the first unique thing that Ukraine possesses is the real war-fighting experience—this is something that all European nations are missing. Second, Ukraine has acquired enough skills and knowledge in planning and preparing at the state level. Third, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have tried and tested, in real wartime conditions, most of the European and American weapons systems; therefore, they know better than anyone what works and what does not work on the battlefield, why and to what extent.
Fourth, Ukraine itself has generated multiple innovative solutions, largely born out of necessity in the course of this brutal war. It primarily concerns unmanned vehicle systems and technology: drones to be used in the air, at sea, and on land. These are followed by the means of radio electronic warfare and reconnaissance, armoured vehicles, and artillery systems. That is not to forget about IT and digital solutions—software that not only has been developed locally but has already undergone testing.
Finally, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have mastered planning and executing complex missions such as intelligence operations, as well as carrying out deep strike operations into the enemy territory and repelling massive missile attacks by the enemy forces. This is, above all, about skills and experience in designing complex military processes—but doing so in hardened, wartime conditions.
Regardless of the outcome of the so-called peace negotiations, now championed by this White House, what should Ukraine, as well as Europe, be preparing for today?
It all depends on what kind of agreement it is, who and when signs such a deal, and what its terms and conditions are. Each element of this equation will define how Ukraine, Europe, and the world, more broadly, will look after it has been signed.
However, in general, Ukraine and Europe have to start preparing for the next big war, regardless. Probably, every country should be best prepared for a random act of aggression by any of its neighbours. Yet, if one were to be more practical, they have to understand the environment in which they would be operating. If Russia were to disintegrate into 30 independent states, we would probably be the least of their concerns. Then, Ukraine should be preoccupied with recovery, reconstruction, and demining, as well as the return of its population to Crimea and the Donbas.
However, should Russia succeed in occupying Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts in their entirety and then lay its claims as far as the cities of Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro, Ukraine should be actively preparing for the next full-scale invasion. These are just the two extreme scenarios.
Should Ukraine see thousands of NATO troops deploy on its soil along the Dnipro River, all the way down to Odesa or at least Kherson, the settlement conditions would be very different. Absent such Allied reassurance force, the situation would change drastically.
As to which conditions are more realistic, it is exclusively up to those who are engaged in the negotiations process to decide. People who actually sit at the table are the only ones to shed any light on this process; the rest of us can only interpret the news reports. Nor do we know which conditions the Ukrainian society would accept. It would depend on how the government communicates it to the public and what Ukraine is seen to get in return. Any negotiation process implies that sides make some concessions: what each side is willing to give and how significant such sacrifices are will ultimately determine whether the negotiation succeeds or fails.
Very few people in Ukraine believe in the ongoing negotiation process. This outlook is neither pessimistic nor optimistic—it is realistic. It might as well be that the sole purpose of this negotiations track is for the US and some nations in Europe, who are still sitting on the fence, to finally realise that it is futile to talk to Moscow. There is neither anyone to talk to nor anything to discuss — power is the only argument. It must, therefore, dramatically change the way we approach things. But for this scenario to materialise, we need to see the negotiations run into a dead end, and not through the fault of Kyiv. Ukraine has had eleven years of war to understand this. We have learned this lesson at least three times already. We know it for a fact. However, this truth might be less self-obvious for our western partners. So, they continue to believe it is worth trying to reach some sort of a deal, once again.
This article was written for the Lennart Meri Conference special issue of ICDS Diplomaatia magazine. Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).