Ukraine: Here's the concept. Make it work.
Zaluzhny spells out how to break the logjam. Western politics must now respond.
When Ukrainian politicians meet their Western counterparts for the first time, they typically ask them, bluntly: "Do you want Ukraine to win?". To those on the receiving end, the question has seemed superfluous. But in the aftermath of General Valery Zaluzhny’s 1st November essay and article in The Economist, it is not.
There is a growing and justified fear among observers of the conflict that the Biden administration's war aim has become for Ukraine "not to lose".
Aided by Scholz' reticence, and the Sunak government's sudden loss of focus on Ukraine, this is rapidly solidifying into the default Western position.
That, presumably is why the US mission to NATO on 20 November tweeted that America is "focused on setting conditions for a just, durable, and sustainable peace", adding
“We will continue to support them to be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table when the time comes.”
But as Francis Farrell writes, in the Kyiv Independent, "not losing" does not simply translate into freezing the conflict along its current front lines. It could easily translate into strategic defeat, both for Ukraine and the West.
There is no guarantee that any peace with Putin will be "durable and sustainable", even in Ukraine were to accept the gross injustice of territorial losses in the Donbas and Crimea, which it might have to if negotiations were forced on it today.
The signals coming from Western governments have, understandably, caused dismay in Ukraine - above all among the men and women risking their lives in the battles around Avdiivka, Robotyne and the Kherson bridgehead.
So what we've reached is a junction point where Ukrainian operations and Western strategy have to align.
Zaluzhny's Economist essay - which looks like a masterstroke of public diplomacy the more I observe Western reactions to it - needs to be matched by candour and energy on the Western side.
I continue to believe that, as Zaluzhny argues, there are military-technical solutions that can break the log-jam - but only if matched by actions at the level of political economy and geo-strategy in the West
The absence of such actions would reveal a paucity of Western strategic thinking in response to Putin's aggression. It would be like NATO setting up a neon sigh in front of the Kremlin: do it again.
So in this edition of Conflict & Democracy I am going to spell out where I think we need to go next, in terms of Western logistical and technological support, aid, capacity building and political solidarity.
Zaluzhny's argument: From manoeuvre to position
It is interesting, according to interlocutors in Kyiv, that full version of Gen. Zaluzhny's essay only exists in English. It is not, in this sense, addressed to people in Kyiv but in London, Washington, Paris and Berlin. It's been interpreted as a shopping list of military hardware - but it is much more.
It is, in fact, the concept of operations for a new kind of land warfare, which all Western militaries should take note of.
Zaluzhny's logic flows thus:
The absence of Ukrainian air superiority is the strategic obstacle to a successful offensive to retake conquered territory
Though Russia cannot achieve air dominance, the absence of any kind of air superiority for Ukraine has turned Russia’s mine obstacles, tactical EW assets and even mid-range artillery into battle-winning defensive capabilities.
Having initially won the counter-battery fight, Ukraine has lost its edge here, too, due to its inability to achieve mass (despite between 60% and 80% of all Ukrainian "tasks" on the battlefield being artillery strikes).
The slow and meagre supply of long-range strike ammunition (HIMARS/ATACMS) matters because Ukraine is now having to use such capabilities defensively.
Interestingly, Zaluzhny makes no great claims for - nor does he even refer to - the success of the counter-offensive against the Black Sea Fleet. Even though that success has been tangible, seriously attriting Russian maritime power and forcing the relocation of bases away from Crimea, one could impute that Zaluzhny does not see the effects as decisive without the ability to conduct successful manoeuvre operations on land.
So his explicit objective, in the phase of the war that might open in Spring 2024, is to break the positional stalemate and inflict a breakthrough.
Unfortunately, however, the formations required to do this, even if they could be empowered with the kit he is requesting (see below), are themselves being degraded by Russian offensive operations.
Zaluzhny's concept for breaking the logjam consists of a classic military-technical solution, on a par with the Allied turn to combined arms ops and achievement of air superiority in 1918, or the Soviet return to Deep Battle doctrines in 1942. This is the kind of major, realtime evolution that post-Soviet doctrine is well equipped to conceptualise - and should, in and of itself, be studied critically here in the West.
Gen. Zaluzhnys writes:
"The need to avoid the transition to a positional form of hostilities, such as the "trench war" of 1914-1918, necessitates the search for new and non-trivial approaches to breaking the military parity with the enemy. The main idea of the way out of the current situation can be presented illustratively in the picture."
The keyword here is “non-trivial”. We are talking about a qualitative change in the character of warfare during the next offensive phase.
The logic behind the above graphic could be interpreted as follows.
First, it is not a plan dependent on gaining air superiority. Rather Zaluzhny wants to negate the effects of Russia's air superiority on land combat, using EW and other means to a) blind Russian ISR, b) reduce the precision of Russian artillery support and c) win the counter-drone contest.
Second, he wants to Ukraine regain the advantage in the counter-battery fight, again using a mixture of drones, GPS accuracy and EW - alongside more and better artillery tubes.
Third, he proposes a series of technical solutions to mine breaching and clearance that would require the deployment of unconventional devices plus ISR on a scale not currently available outside, say, a US heavy armoured division.
Fourth, he wants to dramatically build up reserves of both combatants and materiel - whose absence he blames for the inability to exploit success, and even to adequately conduct current defensive battles.
In addition to these points, he says:
"It should be taken into account that the widespread use of information technology in military affairs and the rational organization of logistics support play a significant role in finding a way out of the positional form of warfare."
That is code for: we need to fight smarter, and more like the USA.
Interestingly, the request list does not include more tanks and APCs (though I am certain they would be welcome). Nor is it over-obsessed with neutralising Russian combat helicopters (though, again, Ukraine needs the means to do so).
It is a concept designed to re-empower the mass Ukraine already has, or could realistically generate through promised equipment supplies, by transforming its information element.
There are obvious parts of this ask that can only be supplied from the West: more 155m artillery shells, more precision guidance kits, more EW equipment, more ammunition for ground based air defences of all ranges, more long range strike weapons - from ATACMS to Taurus to Storm Shadow.
But even if Western governments handed over large parts of their own EW inventory to Ukraine, and did the training, the Ukrainian Armed Forces would need to become skilled and adept at using this combination of assets in a new way.
The ultimate message is: this is doable if (and here's the implicit part) Russia does not simultaneously beat us with its own technological innovation cycle, and by drawing on its strategic depth. Unfortunately, according to Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, it’s observably starting to do the latter.
For Ukraine's Western allies, there is not much we can do about Russia's ability to innovate on the battlefield, other than starve it of hi-tech components and bring the moment of Ukraine's next counter-offensive as close as possible.
But there is everything to do at the level of logistics, know-how, digital tech and political willpower, to signal that we are in this until Russia loses the will and the means to fight.
Sources of Western paralysis
Until the late autumn of this year, the main source of Western paralysis looked like disunity. The Sunak government had lost its enthusiasm for pro-activity long before Ben Wallace quit as defence secretary. Scholz, hemoraging electoral support, had never been enthusiastic about Ukrainian victory on a scale that might trigger a Russian strategic response. France was beset by internal political problems. So everything depended on Biden.
At some point however, between the failure of the summer counter-offensive and November, the Biden administration switched from looking like it was prepared to give Ukraine the means to win - including ATACMS - to signalling its preparedness to contemplate freezing the conflict. That's what "as long as it takes" actually means in diplo speak.
I have no sight-lines into how this decision came about. My guess is it was the product of a pessimistic readout of the results of the counter-offensive, combined with an equally pessimistic readout of the impact of the war on Biden's electoral support, combined with a doomy prognosis on Russia’s ability to mobilise its strategic economic depth.
The impact, however is clear: all Western capitals apart from the Baltics looked happy to slot in behind the US position - and then Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, massively reducing Western bandwidth to deal with Ukraine, and strengthening the hand of Russian political proxies here.
This, in turn, was always a possibility rooted in the failure of Western politicians to adopt a wartime mindset during the Ukraine crisis. Only Biden (and briefly Johnson) ever snapped out of the crisis-management approach, and even then only between the first Ramstein meeting and the Prigozhin mutiny.
What needs to happen next
There are five levels at which Western proactivity can help turn things around.
First, an explicit commitment to supply Ukraine with the capabilities that Gen. Zaluzhny requests - including adapting our own innovation pipelines to these urgent operational needs. Here, I would like to see the British MOD publicly and enthusiastically answer this call, scouring all the early stage projects it is financing to search for capabilities that might be pulled through into urgent use.
Second, a commitment to create a long-term logistical and training infrastructure for Ukraine's war effort. Both these commitments will require not just the USA but major European powers to abandon fiscal austerity when it comes to Ukraine, and invest up front in such production capacity that the private sector, with its reliance on illiquid capital markets, cannot finance at the right speed and scale.
Third, an intervention to build capacity and resilience inside Ukraine at all levels, from maintenance shops for the Leopards and Bradleys, through to staff training for its officer corps, through to political capacity building.
In this regard there are obvious tensions within the Zelensky administration and continuous stories about splits between the Presidency and the General Staff. As I have no sightlines into these matters, I’ll stay away from them - other than to make the obvious point that changing the commander won't resolve the military-technical challenge that Russia's switch to positional warfare and strategic depth poses.
Fourth, we need an ideological offensive - both among voters and the political class of the West - that explains what the stakes are. The choice is not between a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2024 and a "frozen conflict". Because a frozen conflict represents a strategic victory for Putin.
On the principle of exploiting success, it would simply encourage him to prepare for a new land grab somewhere else - quite possibly with an army re-equipped by China - while triggering more Gazas, more Nagorno-Karabakhs, more trouble in the Sahel, more Kosovos.
Getting politicians - engrossed in their justified obsessions over climate, social justice, public services and the immigration debate - to look up and see the asteroid that will metaphorically hit their planet if Putin wins: that is going to need a cross-party coalition of the willing - in journalism, politics, the think tank world and the Western militaries.
Fifth, and finally, we need to seize this moment to ostracise Putin's mouthpieces here in the West. Their fact-denying antics during the Bucha massacre turned out to be nothing compared to what they've been capable of during the Gaza crisis. Right now there are people out there monetising outrage and division over Israel-Palestine - but they map fairly congruently onto the people doing the same over Ukraine, and before that Syria.
While they must always have freedom of speech, they don't need freedom of reach, nor the freedom to monetise outrage and disinformation.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Conflict & Democracy to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.