By Paul Robinson, Canadian Dimension, 9/27/24
“Next year in Ukraine, expect the unexpected,” I wrote in Canadian Dimension at the end of last year. And indeed, the past nine months have been full of surprises. I don’t know, for instance, of a single military analyst who foresaw that the Ukrainian army would launch a large attack on Russian territory, as it did in the Kursk region a few weeks ago. Wars are inherently difficult to predict.
That said, there comes a time when the general trend in a war becomes evident. Individual incidents may still surprise, but the overall movement of the conflict is no longer in doubt. In the middle of 1942, for instance, it would have been rash to predict the outcome of the Second World War. But by the middle of 1944, it was fairly clear what the result was going to be. The Germans were still able to pull off a few shocks, such as the Battle of the Bulge, but it was obvious that they were doomed.
In much the same way, the general direction of the war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly clear, and it doesn’t look good for the Ukrainians. That’s not to say that it’s glowingly positive for the Russians, but we have reached the stage where the odds of Ukraine achieving its objective of recapturing all its lost territories are vanishingly small. The issue is more likely how much more territory it will lose rather than how much it will be able to recapture.
Today, the Russians are in the process of surrounding and capturing the town of Vuhledar (Ugledar), which is the linchpin of the Ukrainian defence in the southern part of Donetsk province. What remains of the town’s garrison is faced with the grim choice of fighting its way out, staying and dying, or surrendering. The town’s capture now seems inevitable and will be a major victory for the Russian army.
Meanwhile, the Russians are advancing elsewhere, grinding the Ukrainians down with superior numbers of troops, equipment, and ammunition. As one prominent Ukrainian military analyst noted this week, “Unfortunately, the situation on the frontline is dire in many areas. These tiring efforts to paint a rosy picture … are hindering honest discussions and urgent calls for help … Ukraine is going to lose the war unless there are radical changes in how this war is approached.”
There is, however, little prospect of such a radical change, and even if it were to happen it might not matter, for the simple reason that Russia’s resources greatly outmatch those both of Ukraine and of its Western allies (or at least what the latter are willing and able to give it). It is hard to see how the Ukrainians can reverse their decline.
All of which provides a context for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s much-hyped ‘victory plan’ and his visit this week to the United States.
It would appear that while Zelensky continues to talk of restoring all of Ukraine’s lost territory he has begun to wake up to the reality that this is impossible by direct military means. Unable to shift military dynamics in his favour, he is hoping instead to shift the political dynamics by refocusing the Ukrainian war effort away from defending its own territory and towards striking the territory of the Russian Federation. He also perhaps hopes to drag NATO deeper and deeper into the war on his behalf. This could, at least in theory, put political pressure on the Russian authorities to end the war, even as the Ukrainian position on the frontline continues to deteriorate.
This explains the attack on Russia’s Kursk province as well as Zelensky’s repeated demands for permission to use NATO weapons to strike deep into Russian territory and his continued requests that NATO grant Ukraine immediate membership.
The exact details of Zelensky’s victory plan are a closely guarded secret, but press reports suggest that the core of it lies exactly in this—NATO membership and long-range weapons along with permission to use them deep in Russia.
As plans go, it’s not a very good one. NATO membership isn’t on the cards, while if long-range weapons could win the war, Russia would have won it long ago, as it has been using them in abundance against Ukraine for nearly three years. Ukraine’s fundamental problem is Russia’s growing advantage on the ground, in terms of manpower and weaponry. The victory plan fails to address this in any way, merely relying on the hope that damaging Russian infrastructure will somehow change Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mind about continuing the war—a rather long hope indeed.
American officials are supposedly “unimpressed” by the plan. Zelensky’s meeting with US President Joe Biden on Thursday evening passed almost without comment in the media. There were no big announcements indicating a shift in US policy in the direction Zelensky wants. Notably there was no talk of NATO membership, nor of lifting of restrictions on long-range attacks. Zelensky’s victory plan is dead in the water.
That’s not to say that Zelensky is going home empty handed. This week, Biden announced another $8 billion of aid to Ukraine. But it is unclear when the weapons and ammunition associated with this will actually reach Ukraine, beyond which it is just more of the same, and to date it is obvious that the same is utterly inadequate. Thus, while the US has rejected Zelensky’s plan, it hasn’t come up with anything remotely plausible to replace it.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that this is not the last large tranche of aid that Ukraine will receive from the US. Relations between the Republican Party and the Ukrainian government are going from bad to worse. This week, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives accused the Ukrainian ambassador to the US of electoral interference on behalf of the Democratic Party for having invited only Democrats to accompany Zelensky on a visit to an American military factory. Republicans are already reluctant to spend more money on Ukraine. If, as seems likely, the latter’s military situation continues to deteriorate, that reluctance will probably only grow, as more and more people make the argument that it is pointless, and even counterproductive, to throw more and more money at a lost cause.
Among those making this argument is Donald Trump, who on Wednesday blamed Biden for encouraging Ukraine to continue with a war it could not win, thus bringing ruin to the country. “Any deal—the worst deal—would’ve been better than what we have now,” Trump said. “If they made a bad deal it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.”
Dare I say it, but Trump has a point. One of the criteria of just war theory—that body of philosophy that helps one determine if war is justified—is that of “reasonable chance of success.” Given that wars inevitably involve great destruction and suffering, waging one which cannot reasonably hope to succeed cannot be justified. As things stand, it’s very hard to say that Ukraine has a reasonable chance of success. Indeed, it’s very hard even to say any more what “success” might be.
Unfortunately, there is as yet hardly a politician in the West who is willing to admit this. Speaking to Zelensky on Thursday, Biden told him, “Ukraine will prevail, and we’ll continue to stand by you every step of the way.” This is obvious nonsense, as the US clearly doesn’t support “every step” that Ukraine wants to take. It’s unwilling, though, to tell Ukraine that it should consider stepping in a different direction entirely. The result is a slow, but accelerating deterioration of that country’s position. Sadly, it appears that neither the Ukrainians nor their Western allies have a realistic idea of how to improve their situation while also being unwilling to admit that they don’t and to draw the necessary conclusions. This does not bode well for the future.
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.