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All the signs suggest there is more to come. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, warned in November that Russia had stockpiled missiles for winter and was planning to launch them in massive waves over the coming weeks in an attempt to plunge Ukraine into darkness.
This bleak prediction arrives as the Kremlin’s unprovoked war against its neighbour goes into its third year, and 12 months after Ukraine appeared to have the upper hand in the fight.
It is a marked contrast from Zelenskyy’s visit to the US capital in early 2023, when he received several standing ovations from American lawmakers as he told them that “you can speed up our victory.”
Ukraine appeared to have the upper hand on the battlefield after counteroffensives in eastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson resulted in the liberation of the largest swaths of territory from Russian forces since they were pushed out of Kyiv and Chernihiv in the spring of 2022.
The sweeping advances gave troops a big morale boost and a weary Ukrainian society confidence that the war could end in victory.
“At that time, the country was living with the feeling that the only thing preventing the end of the war was the weather,” Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Kazarin wrote recently for the independent Ukrainian Truth news outlet.
Russia, meanwhile, was reeling from its defeats. When it launched an offensive in January 2023, the Ukrainians held off its forces. It eventually found limited success in the eastern city of Bakhmut, where it employed scorched-earth tactics. But it was a Pyrrhic victory in which tens of thousands of its battle-hardened fighters were killed and huge amounts of artillery munitions expended.
But in the months that followed, Ukraine’s counteroffensive fell short of its lofty objectives, including retaking territories controlled by Russia and severing their land bridge to Crimea. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded, and hundreds of western-supplied fighting vehicles and weapons were destroyed. As a result, Ukrainian spirits have fallen and polls indicate that the unprecedented unity shown at the start of the war may be fracturing.
More crucially, the country is now facing a mobilisation challenge.
Zelenskyy’s army chiefs have asked him to conscript upwards of 500,000 new soldiers, a figure that takes into account Ukraine’s staggering losses and the fact that many troops have fought for nearly two years without rest. But the president has said he needs to hear “more arguments” to support the move, while also worrying about making an unpopular decision when his own poll numbers are falling.
Echoing a growing fear among ordinary Ukrainians that the outcome of the war may not go in their favour, Kazarin said: “We enter this winter with an apparently smaller reserve of psychological resilience — and with an apparently greater collective fatigue.”
The nation’s worries are not entirely misplaced. Right now, it is Russian forces who are on the offensive.
Its military is trying to encircle the strategic industrial town of Avdiivka, where Ukrainian troops are barely clinging on, in their pursuit of capturing the entire Donetsk region. In December 2023, the Russians also took what was left of the destroyed town of Marinka, 40km north-east.
However, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence department, argues that Russian attacks have thus far failed to achieve any breakthroughs. “Their latest pathetic attempt . . . [has] been going on for two months,” he says from his Kyiv office. “No results.”
But it is Russia’s gains on the battlefield that have forced Ukraine into adopting a more defensive posture — a strategy supported by Kyiv’s strongest allies.
The Estonian defence ministry published a report in December saying Ukraine should switch to a “strategic defence” to give the country and its allies time to build up its industrial base, train reserves, increase manpower and boost artillery production capacity to resume an offensive campaign in 2025.
That aligns with the strategy that Washington is reportedly selling to Ukraine. The Americans are also pushing for a more conservative approach. Instead of ground offensives, the focus would be to hold the territory it has now, entrenching positions and beefing up supplies and forces over the coming months.
500,000
Number of soldiers army chiefs have advised Zelenskyy to conscript
In the meantime, according to the US view, Ukrainian troops could continue to look for weak spots in Russian defences to exploit when the opportunity arises. Equally, Ukraine could carry on with — and possibly step up — the long-range air attacks with missiles and drones that have proved successful in strikes on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea and airfields there, for example.
Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s number two commander in charge of ground forces, suggested this week that the strategy does not amount to a drastic shift. “Our goals remain unchanged: holding our positions . . . exhausting the enemy by inflicting maximum losses,” he told Reuters.
There are others in Kyiv who worry that relying only on a defensive strategy would be detrimental to Ukraine’s war effort. Focusing on containment with no offensive component would be “a mistake of historic proportions”, warns Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defence minister of Ukraine. Without it, Putin “will be projecting around the world that the war is unwinnable for Ukraine”, he says. “It basically just hands him the initiative.” For that reason, Zagorodnyuk adds, keeping Russia on its toes is essential.
Budanov, the military intelligence chief, agrees that it is important for Ukraine to continue pressing Russian forces, particularly in Crimea through its air campaign, sea drone attacks and covert operations. “Our units repeatedly entered Crimea [last year],” he says, vowing to send more commandos to the peninsula to disrupt Russian logistics.
There are some reasons for Ukrainian forces to remain upbeat. Since it launched its offensive around Avdiivka in October, US intelligence estimates that the Russian military has suffered more than 13,000 casualties and over 220 combat vehicle losses, or the equivalent of six manoeuvre battalions.
Budanov says those figures have grown significantly in recent weeks but could not give exact numbers. However, the first western official involved in Ukraine policy suggests that in November 2023 Russia suffered an average of 1,000 dead and injured each day. Ukraine, the official adds, was in a “strong defensive position” around the industrial town that is home to a big coke plant that once powered the region’s metallurgical factories.
Another reason for Ukraine to increase focus on strengthening defences, suggest Ukrainian security officials speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, is that Russia may be planning a large-scale offensive as early as summer.
Its goal would be to capture the remainder of the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — Putin claimed to have annexed in September 2022. In addition, the officials say, another attempt at Kharkiv or even Kyiv was not out of the question.
A newly declassified US intelligence assessment reviewed by the FT in December also notes that Putin’s ultimate goal in Ukraine of conquering the country and subjugating its people remains unchanged.
That explains why Russia is continuing its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine across multiple axes, particularly around Avdiivka, but also towards Lyman, and Kupiansk to the north-east, the document said.
Russia has been bolstered in recent months by shipments of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea and increased production of arms and munitions that are being helped by Chinese chips for manufacturing machinery. These efforts have put them in a better position than they were after being weakened in the 2023 battle of Bakhmut, the officials say.
Whether the Russians will be successful is another question. Budanov is not convinced that his enemies can produce as many shells and troops as they are losing, even with North Korea’s support. On top of that, Ukrainians have proven adept at defending their territory.
“It’s clear that both sides find it challenging to engage, train and sustain [their] armed forces,” says Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies. “Neither is able to create and leverage [a] preponderance in numbers.”
But first, both sides must face the brutal winter. While the sub-zero temperatures will undoubtedly have an effect on Russian military logistics and operations, it will not completely put a stop to them, says Zagorodnyuk, the former Ukraine defence minister.
Being prepared to strongly defend its territory may be the smarter move. After all, warns Zagorodnyuk, “Russia will always try to attack in winter.”
But a military deadlock may benefit Moscow, according to the US intelligence. Putin, it adds, is banking that a stalemate will drain western support for Ukraine and ultimately give the Kremlin the advantage.
The western official working on Ukraine policy says: “It’s probably fair to say that the Ukrainian system is entirely dependent on the continued military assistance from the west.”
www.ft.com
This bleak prediction arrives as the Kremlin’s unprovoked war against its neighbour goes into its third year, and 12 months after Ukraine appeared to have the upper hand in the fight.
It is a marked contrast from Zelenskyy’s visit to the US capital in early 2023, when he received several standing ovations from American lawmakers as he told them that “you can speed up our victory.”
Ukraine appeared to have the upper hand on the battlefield after counteroffensives in eastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson resulted in the liberation of the largest swaths of territory from Russian forces since they were pushed out of Kyiv and Chernihiv in the spring of 2022.
The sweeping advances gave troops a big morale boost and a weary Ukrainian society confidence that the war could end in victory.
“At that time, the country was living with the feeling that the only thing preventing the end of the war was the weather,” Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Kazarin wrote recently for the independent Ukrainian Truth news outlet.
Russia, meanwhile, was reeling from its defeats. When it launched an offensive in January 2023, the Ukrainians held off its forces. It eventually found limited success in the eastern city of Bakhmut, where it employed scorched-earth tactics. But it was a Pyrrhic victory in which tens of thousands of its battle-hardened fighters were killed and huge amounts of artillery munitions expended.
But in the months that followed, Ukraine’s counteroffensive fell short of its lofty objectives, including retaking territories controlled by Russia and severing their land bridge to Crimea. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded, and hundreds of western-supplied fighting vehicles and weapons were destroyed. As a result, Ukrainian spirits have fallen and polls indicate that the unprecedented unity shown at the start of the war may be fracturing.
More crucially, the country is now facing a mobilisation challenge.
Zelenskyy’s army chiefs have asked him to conscript upwards of 500,000 new soldiers, a figure that takes into account Ukraine’s staggering losses and the fact that many troops have fought for nearly two years without rest. But the president has said he needs to hear “more arguments” to support the move, while also worrying about making an unpopular decision when his own poll numbers are falling.
Echoing a growing fear among ordinary Ukrainians that the outcome of the war may not go in their favour, Kazarin said: “We enter this winter with an apparently smaller reserve of psychological resilience — and with an apparently greater collective fatigue.”
The nation’s worries are not entirely misplaced. Right now, it is Russian forces who are on the offensive.
Its military is trying to encircle the strategic industrial town of Avdiivka, where Ukrainian troops are barely clinging on, in their pursuit of capturing the entire Donetsk region. In December 2023, the Russians also took what was left of the destroyed town of Marinka, 40km north-east.
However, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence department, argues that Russian attacks have thus far failed to achieve any breakthroughs. “Their latest pathetic attempt . . . [has] been going on for two months,” he says from his Kyiv office. “No results.”
But it is Russia’s gains on the battlefield that have forced Ukraine into adopting a more defensive posture — a strategy supported by Kyiv’s strongest allies.
The Estonian defence ministry published a report in December saying Ukraine should switch to a “strategic defence” to give the country and its allies time to build up its industrial base, train reserves, increase manpower and boost artillery production capacity to resume an offensive campaign in 2025.
That aligns with the strategy that Washington is reportedly selling to Ukraine. The Americans are also pushing for a more conservative approach. Instead of ground offensives, the focus would be to hold the territory it has now, entrenching positions and beefing up supplies and forces over the coming months.
500,000
Number of soldiers army chiefs have advised Zelenskyy to conscript
In the meantime, according to the US view, Ukrainian troops could continue to look for weak spots in Russian defences to exploit when the opportunity arises. Equally, Ukraine could carry on with — and possibly step up — the long-range air attacks with missiles and drones that have proved successful in strikes on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea and airfields there, for example.
Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s number two commander in charge of ground forces, suggested this week that the strategy does not amount to a drastic shift. “Our goals remain unchanged: holding our positions . . . exhausting the enemy by inflicting maximum losses,” he told Reuters.
There are others in Kyiv who worry that relying only on a defensive strategy would be detrimental to Ukraine’s war effort. Focusing on containment with no offensive component would be “a mistake of historic proportions”, warns Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defence minister of Ukraine. Without it, Putin “will be projecting around the world that the war is unwinnable for Ukraine”, he says. “It basically just hands him the initiative.” For that reason, Zagorodnyuk adds, keeping Russia on its toes is essential.
Budanov, the military intelligence chief, agrees that it is important for Ukraine to continue pressing Russian forces, particularly in Crimea through its air campaign, sea drone attacks and covert operations. “Our units repeatedly entered Crimea [last year],” he says, vowing to send more commandos to the peninsula to disrupt Russian logistics.
There are some reasons for Ukrainian forces to remain upbeat. Since it launched its offensive around Avdiivka in October, US intelligence estimates that the Russian military has suffered more than 13,000 casualties and over 220 combat vehicle losses, or the equivalent of six manoeuvre battalions.
Budanov says those figures have grown significantly in recent weeks but could not give exact numbers. However, the first western official involved in Ukraine policy suggests that in November 2023 Russia suffered an average of 1,000 dead and injured each day. Ukraine, the official adds, was in a “strong defensive position” around the industrial town that is home to a big coke plant that once powered the region’s metallurgical factories.
Another reason for Ukraine to increase focus on strengthening defences, suggest Ukrainian security officials speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, is that Russia may be planning a large-scale offensive as early as summer.
Its goal would be to capture the remainder of the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — Putin claimed to have annexed in September 2022. In addition, the officials say, another attempt at Kharkiv or even Kyiv was not out of the question.
A newly declassified US intelligence assessment reviewed by the FT in December also notes that Putin’s ultimate goal in Ukraine of conquering the country and subjugating its people remains unchanged.
That explains why Russia is continuing its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine across multiple axes, particularly around Avdiivka, but also towards Lyman, and Kupiansk to the north-east, the document said.
Russia has been bolstered in recent months by shipments of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea and increased production of arms and munitions that are being helped by Chinese chips for manufacturing machinery. These efforts have put them in a better position than they were after being weakened in the 2023 battle of Bakhmut, the officials say.
Whether the Russians will be successful is another question. Budanov is not convinced that his enemies can produce as many shells and troops as they are losing, even with North Korea’s support. On top of that, Ukrainians have proven adept at defending their territory.
“It’s clear that both sides find it challenging to engage, train and sustain [their] armed forces,” says Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies. “Neither is able to create and leverage [a] preponderance in numbers.”
But first, both sides must face the brutal winter. While the sub-zero temperatures will undoubtedly have an effect on Russian military logistics and operations, it will not completely put a stop to them, says Zagorodnyuk, the former Ukraine defence minister.
Being prepared to strongly defend its territory may be the smarter move. After all, warns Zagorodnyuk, “Russia will always try to attack in winter.”
But a military deadlock may benefit Moscow, according to the US intelligence. Putin, it adds, is banking that a stalemate will drain western support for Ukraine and ultimately give the Kremlin the advantage.
The western official working on Ukraine policy says: “It’s probably fair to say that the Ukrainian system is entirely dependent on the continued military assistance from the west.”
‘Active defence’: how Ukraine plans to survive 2024
After its summer counteroffensive ended in failure, Kyiv is shifting to a new strategy as it prepares itself for a third year of war
www.ft.com
