The Daily Escape:
Dune Evening Primrose, Anza Borrego Desert SP, CA – November 2022 photo by Paulette Donnellon. This flower only blooms at night.
The war in Ukraine has entered a new phase. Early predictions that Russian forces would roll over token Ukrainian resistance didn’t last long. Confidence grew in a possible Ukrainian victory after Kyiv took advantage of America’s HIMARS artillery and other highly capable Western equipment began to degrade the Russian logistics and command systems.
Then, Ukraine launched a series of counter-offensives that have liberated formerly Russian occupied territory. November’s evacuation of Kherson by Russia showed that Moscow hasn’t yet found a way to stabilize its front lines in the face of Ukrainian military ground tactics.
But the ground has now shifted. The newest Russian commander, General Sergei Surovikin, in October began a bombing campaign on Ukrainian utilities throughout the country. It soon became clear that Russia is attempting to take out as much of Ukraine’s electrical grid as it can.
The WaPo said in late October:
“Russia’s ongoing attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have been so methodical and destructive that administration officials say they are being led by power experts who know exactly which targets will cause the most damage to Ukraine’s power grid.”
Tactically, Ukraine’s weapons and ammunition can be replaced by the west. Troops can be trained to use new systems; cash can be transferred from Washington and/or Brussels. But the electric grid infrastructure cannot be easily fixed with replacements or money. There isn’t a large inventory of Soviet-era power generating and transmission gear laying around Europe that can be marshaled to fix the Ukrainian grid.
The grid destruction is taking place primarily by precision missile strikes launched from aircraft flying within Russia. We’ve seen that Russia continues to struggle in the land battle, but they have much more latitude to strike against Ukraine’s society and economy from within their own country.
We may have to refine our viewpoint about who is winning and losing this war. The US and NATO have focused on the land battle, which now favors Ukraine. But Russia seems willing to use air bombing to grind western Ukraine into a wasteland. The precision bombing of infrastructure can go on all winter, while the movement of ground forces will largely come to a halt as winter deepens.
Russia could make western Ukraine so close to uninhabitable that many of its citizens leave for Europe. No electric power in western Ukraine also means no water. That would mean the only people who could continue to live there would be the hardiest.
Russia can do all of this while the ground war is literally frozen in place. Russia can do this without a major commitment of additional troops, tanks, or new logistics paths into Ukraine.
If this is Russia’s plan, it makes sense. It’s incremental, has flexibility and fully utilizes Russia’s current advantages, including control of its own airspace. And since NATO and the US haven’t supplied Ukraine with weapons that could reach Russian soil or airspace, Russians are invulnerable to sustained Ukrainian attack.
Russia isn’t acquiring and defending new territory; it’s degrading much of Ukraine instead. Whether this is a winning strategy or not, it’s evidence of new and higher quality military thinking on Russia’s part.
It isn’t necessarily a winning strategy if the west supplies Ukraine with better air defense weaponry or with weapons that have the range to reach into Russia. There are two types of weapons to consider. Those that have a range that could strike behind Russian lines, and those that could reach into Russia itself.
Longer-range weapons raise concerns that the conflict could escalate to include NATO. But at the currently underway Bucharest NATO meeting, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Ukraine should be free to strike military sites inside Russia as it fends off attacks on its critical infrastructure. Washington has previously denied Kyiv’s request for the 185-mile range ATACMS missile, which can reach into Russia.
America is at a similar point in the Ukraine war to where it was in the Afghan war: The enemy is striking it from another country, and our policy is not to pursue them inside their political borders.
The difference is that America was doing the fighting in Afghanistan and Ukraine is doing the fighting inside Ukraine. But in both cases, the US policy is strategically flawed. Russia must be made to pay real costs if they are going to use stand-off weapons to grind Ukraine into dust.
The challenge for NATO’s and America’s generals is to recognize that the Russian war strategy has changed, and to adapt to it. Russia wants to make it into a war of attrition. Ukraine wants to retake its lands.
How should Biden and NATO respond? Can the West sustain Ukraine in a prolonged existential conflict like this without changing its strategy?
