At the British site Spiked James Woudhuysen cautions Westerners not to be overconfident of a quick Ukrainian victory:
The Russian elite – with its penchant for meat-grinder militarism – might deem a protracted, bloody war of attrition and occupation perfectly worthwhile if it can restore Russia’s prestige abroad and shore up Putin’s regime at home. The Kremlin may be deluded, but in times of war rationality doesn’t always have the upper hand.
We’ve seen Russia try to lay waste to recalcitrant peoples before – think Chechnya during the 1990s. With its central location, its population of 45million, its agriculture and iron and gas deposits, Ukraine is much more important to Russia than that benighted country, of course. But the brutality of the Russian army’s attack on Mariupol suggests that Moscow might be prepared to try to visit on Ukraine the sort of destruction it visited on Grozny in 1999-2000.
So while the Ukrainian resistance has indeed been heroic, Russia’s defeat is not yet assured. Moreover, the Kremlin will draw strength for a while yet from what it perceives as the weakness and disunity of Ukraine’s Western backers.
concluding
Ukraine must win, and there’s no reason to think that it can’t. Ukrainian leaders have already proved wrong those in Western political and media circles who thought, at the invasion’s beginning, that Ukraine didn’t stand a chance and should just give in. Ukraine certainly doesn’t look like it will ever be a pushover for Putin.
Moreover, the Kremlin faces severe military weaknesses in supply, command, morale, training, numbers and all the rest. Dissent inside Russia may also one day grow to be significant.
But the last thing the Ukrainian cause needs right now is the complacent optimism of the Western political and media class. This approach dangerously underestimates the Kremlin’s willingness to go the distance.
And Ukraine has to be ready. This is not over, not by a long way.
Von Clausewitz was the first to draw attention to the uncertainty of situational aware of combatants frequently referred to as the “fog of war” (Nebel des Krieges). It is still a factor and an enormous one, particularly in information operations. With modern technology we have become accustomed to minute by minute updates on events but that is an unreasonable expectation, particularly in warfare. If we are certain of events, it all but surely reflects propagandization. During the war in Ukraine “open source intelligence” has been tremendously useful in combating Russian disinformation but I have rarely seen it applied to combat Ukrainian disinformation of which there should be no doubt there is some. The Ukrainian government, for example, is highly reluctant to publicize information on military casualties or equipment losses. We receive information on Russian casualties and equipment losses on a daily basis but little about Ukrainian losses. It is in the Ukrainians’ interest to paint the brightest possible picture of the situation and they have done a good job of it.
IMO a quick victory by either the Ukrainians or the Russians is unlikely and actually becoming less likely by the hour. I genuinely want the Ukrainians to maintain their independence but I also think we should be under no illusions of the likelihood of that prospect.
