Do I have a better explanation? No, but that's my point. To this day, perhaps the most important question of all about this war, the biggest surprise -- why did it happen when it did? -- remains deeply mysterious, as do Putin's motives (or perhaps impulses).
God Doesn't Favor the Bigger Battalions
Once Russian troops did cross Ukraine's border, just about everyone expected Kyiv to fall within days. After that, it was assumed, Putin would appoint a quisling government and annex big chunks of the country. The CIA's assessment was that Ukrainian forces would be trounced in no time at all, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley reportedly told members of Congress that resistance would fizzle within a mere three days. Those predictions briefly seemed on the mark. After all, the Russian army made its way to the northern suburbs of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv -- think of a military bent on capturing Washington, D.C., reaching Bethesda, Maryland -- before being stopped in its tracks. Had it taken that city, we would be in a different world today.
But -- perhaps the biggest surprise of all -- the far weaker Ukrainian army not only prevented what was then considered the world's second-greatest military superpower from taking Kyiv, but in September 2022 ejected Russian forces from the northeastern province of Kharkiv. That October, it also pushed them out of the portion of the southern province of Kherson they had captured on the right bank of the Dnipro River. In all, Ukrainian forces have now retaken about half the territory Russia occupied after the invasion.
As winter approached that year, the crescent-shaped frontlines extending from northern Luhansk Province (one of two that make up the Donbas region) all the way south became the scene of World War I-style trench warfare, with both sides throwing their troops into a virtual meat grinder. Still, since then, despite having overwhelming superiority in soldiers and firepower -- the estimated artillery exchange ratio between the two forces has been put as high as 7:1 -- Russia's advance has been, at best, glacial, at worst, nonexistent.
The Russian army's abysmal performance has perplexed experts. According to American, British, and Norwegian estimates, it has suffered something on the order of 180,000-200,00 casualties. Some observers do believe those numbers are significantly too high, but even if they were off by 50%, the Russian army's casualties in one year of fighting would exceed by perhaps twofold the losses of the Soviet Union's Red Army during its 10-year war in Afghanistan.
Russia has also lost thousands of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters, while vast amounts of equipment, abandoned intact, have fallen into Ukrainian hands. All of this, mind you, after Putin initiated a mega-bucks military modernization drive in 2008, leading the Economist to declare in 2020 that "the Russian military dazzles after a decade of reform" and NATO had better watch out.
For the surprising evolution of the war, unlike so much else, I do have an explanation. Military experts typically dwell on what can be counted: the level of military spending, the number of soldiers, tanks, warplanes, and artillery pieces a military has, and so on. They assume, reasonably enough, that the side with more countable stuff is likely to be the winner -- and quickly if it has a lot more as Russia indeed did.
There is, however, no way to assign numerical values to morale or leadership. As a result, they tend to be discounted, if not simply omitted from comparisons of military power. In Ukraine, however, as in the American wars in Vietnam in the last century and Afghanistan in this one, the squishy stuff has, at least so far, proven decisive. French emperor Napoleon's dictum that, in war, "the moral is to the physical as three to one" may seem hyperbolic and he certainly ignored it when he led his Grande Arme'e disastrously into Russia and allowed the brutal Russian winter to shred its spirit, but in Ukraine -- surprise of surprises -- his maxim has held all too true, at least so far.
When it comes to surprises, count on one thing: the longer this war continues, the greater the likelihood of yet more of them. One in particular should worry us all: the possibility, if a Russian defeat looms, of a sudden escalation to nuclear war. There's no way to judge or measure the probability of such a dreaded de'nouement now. All we know is that the consequences could be horrific.
Though neither Russia nor the United States seeks a nuclear war, it's at least possible that they could slide into one. After all, never, not even in the Cold War era, has their relationship been quite so poisonous, only increasing the risk of both misperception and overreaction born of worst-case thinking. Let us hope, in this war of surprises, that it remains nothing more than another of the scenarios strategists like to imagine. Then again, if as 2021 began, I had suggested that Russia might soon invade Ukraine and begin a war in Europe, you would undoubtedly have thought me mad.
Copyright 2023 Rajan Menon
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
