Ukraine Needs a New War Plot, and the Kursk Offensive Is the First Step, - FP
Date: 2024-09-06 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: WAR
All wars have a simple strategic plot. Both World War II and the Vietnam War had their slogans. Audiences, both domestic and foreign, were told the basic principles of a plan to win a war, especially if it drags on.
And it is precisely this easy-to-understand plan that Ukraine has been lacking for the past year. Two and a half years into the full-scale war, Kyiv desperately needs its own slogan. Now it has a chance to get one, writes Raphael S. Cohen, director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the Rand Corporation's Air Force Project, in a column for Foreign Policy.
"For the first year of the war, Ukraine was a straightforward protagonist. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was an unlikely hero, but once Russia attacked, he became the war's leader. His famous response when the United States offered to evacuate him from Kyiv — "I want ammunition, not a taxi" — could not have been better if it had been written by a Hollywood screenwriter. But just as important as the messages was that Ukraine also had a clear — and simple — theory of how it would win the war. First, it stopped the Russian advance on Kyiv. Then it routed Russian forces around Kharkiv and recaptured Kherson," the article says.
As Western-made weapons poured into Ukraine, the counteroffensive in the spring of 2023 was expected to at least push Russia closer to its borders, if not end the war entirely. But that final step never materialized, not least because months of Western hesitation to provide critical equipment such as tanks and aircraft gave Russia the time it needed to complete massive fortifications along the front.
“When the 2023 counteroffensive faltered, Kiev lost more than troops and equipment. It also lost a compelling argument about how it intended to win. The lack of a compelling narrative was not only a PR challenge for Kyiv, it also jeopardized future Western military aid. Western observers increasingly saw Ukraine as locked in a protracted war of attrition against a larger and more powerful Russia – which also became the Kremlin’s new storyline after the first storyline (Kyiv’s rapid disintegration and the installation of a Russian satrap) was exposed as illusory,” Cohen continued.
After that, the West believed that this was a war that Ukraine could hardly win. This narrative, in turn, has fueled growing skepticism in Washington and other Western capitals about whether military aid to Ukraine is still a good investment.
The charge that the Russia-Ukraine war is a stalemate may never have been entirely accurate. While much of the Western media attention has focused on the stagnation at the front, Ukraine has celebrated a number of less visible but perhaps equally important achievements, including displacing Russia’s once-vaunted Black Sea Fleet from Crimean ports and the western Black Sea. This is no mean feat for a country without a navy.
Furthermore, Ukraine’s lack of military progress is at least partly due to the months-long suspension of American and European aid, as well as strict red lines limiting the use of any Western weapons to attack airfields, bases, and other military installations on Russian territory.
"Such delays, some of which continue today, meant that Ukraine risked getting bogged down in a kind of strategic quicksand. To get more military aid, it had to prove it had a fighting chance by demonstrating significant results on the battlefield – but it had to do so without violating strict restrictions on the use of American and other Western weapons. At the same time, significant victories on the battlefield, especially against a Russian army that was training and rearming, required even more Western military aid and even more daring tactics. Ukraine found itself in a vicious chicken-and-egg dilemma that led nowhere," the author writes.
And then Ukraine launched an operation in the Kursk region. Although this counteroffensive came as a surprise to many, including U.S. Defense Department officials, it makes perfect sense.
"Ultimately, Ukraine needed to do something big. It needed to show that while the Russian military may be huge, it is still uneven and, in places, fragile. Ukraine also proved that, despite the hand-wringing in the West, and especially in the United States, over the threats of nuclear escalation that have characterized the Kremlin's war messaging from the start, Putin is not as eager to use his nuclear arsenal as those messages suggest, for many reasons. Consequently, those threats should not be a reason for the United States to impose strict restrictions on Ukraine's conventional military operations. In other words, Ukraine needed to do something big and show – once again – that it could win," Cohen explains.
And Ukraine needed to give its own population some good news after years of destruction and bloodshed.
"The Kursk offensive gives the Ukrainians what they needed – a strategic reset," the article notes.
But while the Kursk offensive is a first step, Ukraine will have to offer more if it is to maintain the momentum it currently enjoys. Perhaps most importantly, it needs to find a new strategic direction, the expert believes.
"Ukrainian leaders need to convince both their domestic voters and their supporters abroad that they have a plan to win the war. Judging by Ukraine's actions, the country's new, as-yet-unarticulated strategic message appears to have three relatively well-defined parts: survive, strike, and seize. The first, survive, focuses on countering Russia's punitive attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and halting Russia's slow-moving advance in the Donbas. The second is to strike at military and industrial targets deep inside Russia, not only to weaken Russia's military capabilities but also to increase the economic and political costs of the war for the Putin regime. The third and final part is the "seize" section, which is where Kursk fits in. That operation emphasizes seizing Russian territory along the border, likely both as a buffer to protect Ukrainian territory from Russian aggression and as a potential bargaining chip later," writes Raphael S. Cohen.
In the end, all three elements are necessary but likely insufficient to build a new theory of victory for Ukraine, the author writes. It will undoubtedly increase pressure on Moscow, but these elements alone will probably not allow Ukraine to regain its lost territory, since Russia continues to advance in eastern Ukraine despite the Ukrainian offensive on Kursk.
Future strikes and seizures of enemy territory will also not dramatically increase domestic pressure on Putin to the point that he will end the war.
"Most Ukrainian analysts I spoke with acknowledged that most Russians, especially those with influence over Putin's autocracy, simply don't care enough about Kursk to force Putin to abandon his war aims. That leaves the question of what the next and final element of Ukraine's victory theory might be, if there is one. Essentially, Ukraine has two main options: surrender or resignation. In the former case, it can hope that the mounting pressure on Putin's regime will eventually cause it to collapse under its own weight," the text says.
But betting on Putin's collapse is by no means guaranteed, and even then it is not certain that whoever comes after the Kremlin dictator will end the war.
Alternatively, Ukraine could seek a settlement. By intensifying the pain for Putin’s regime with the Kursk offensive and continuing to strike deep into Russian infrastructure, Ukraine can pressure Putin to change his cost-benefit calculation and back down from his maximalist demands. Kiev could then trade captured Russian territory for Russian-captured Ukrainian territory.
“In some ways, this approach seems simpler. Ukraine has already inflicted significant damage on Russia and can almost certainly do more, especially if the West lifts restrictions on its weapons use and other ‘red lines.’ Kursk also demonstrated that Ukraine can seize Russian territory. The question is whether it can seize enough territory and, just as important, hold on to it to gain enough leverage to retake all of Russia-occupied Ukraine,” Cohen added.
Ultimately, Ukraine will have to choose whether its war will be about survive-strike-change-suppress or survive-strike-change-settle.
"Or maybe it's something else entirely. After all, it is the Ukrainians who are bearing the brunt of this war. And then Ukraine's supporters in the U.S. and around the world will have to give it the resources and political space to make that narrative a reality. The good news is that the basic idea of the narrative — a modern-day David versus Goliath in a battle between liberal democracies and a united bloc of revanchist autocracies — remains as compelling as ever," the author continued.
But with the U.S. presidential election approaching, and challenges looming around the world, Ukraine's leadership must tell its partners and allies — and its own public — how it will win.
"If not for the West, then certainly for the Ukrainians themselves," Raphael S. Cohen concluded.
