Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted last week that his country's 2023 counteroffensive "did not achieve the desired results," and that "we have a new phase of war." Russian strongman Vladimir Putin could have said the exact same thing this time last year after his country was forced to retreat from huge swaths of occupied Ukraine.
So what can we learn from each side's successes and failures?
This is the first in a multi-part series on lessons from the Russo-Ukraine War. How many parts? Ask me again when it's over.
Today's lesson: Quantity still has a quality all its own.
Like pretty much everyone else, I'd spent years misattributing that quote to either Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin, but, apparently, it only dates back to 1979 about NATO's need for more forces. Defense analyst Thomas Callaghan used it in Allied Interdependence Newsletter No. 13, which I'm sure is fascinating reading. The sentiment was echoed a year later by Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), who said on the same topic, "At some point, numbers do count."
That's one reason Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive (previously known as the Summer Counteroffensive) has stalled: Russia has the numbers and Ukraine doesn't.
Russia might be plugging the gaps in their lines with vintage tanks from the '60s and with barely-trained draftees who are almost as old — but this is the point where numbers do count. "Russian troops don’t have to be good," I warned in June of 2022, "they just have to be there." A barely-trained draftee with a rifle might not be much of a soldier, but he's still a guy with a rifle who has to be rooted out of his trench.
Combined, Russia and Ukraine have suffered well over half a million missing, wounded, or killed in action. Washington estimates that Ukraine has lost around 70,000 dead and between 100,000-120,000 wounded. There are several thousand more missing or captured. Russia is believed by the U.S. to have lost something like 120,000 dead and another 175,000 wounded or missing.
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Those figures are from August before Russia launched its blood-drenched offensive to capture Avdiivka. "Throughout November 2023," the UK Ministry of Defence reported last week, "Russian casualties, as reported by the Ukrainian General Staff, are running at a daily average of 931 per day."
"The last six weeks have likely seen some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far. The heavy losses have largely been caused by Russia’s offensive against the Donbas town of Avdiivka."
The following video from Avdiivka is disturbing.
🔥 RUSSIAN LOSSES | AVDIIVKA 🔥
— Cloooud |🇺🇦 (@GloOouD) December 4, 2023
🇺🇦Ukrainian 47th Mechanised Brigade posted a video result of 🇷🇺Russian unsuccessful assaults on the outskirts of Avdiivka.
It’s fucking madness…
The territory is literally littered with bodies of the Russian invaders pic.twitter.com/DyJ01nLyxn
Always take Kyiv's estimates with a grain of salt, but even at the usual "inflation" rate* of 25%, Russia is wasting men like Washington wastes billions.
(*If Kyiv reports 125 dead Russians, the actual number is probably around 100.)
None of these figures includes civilian casualties, but, as the defender, Ukraine's are much higher than Russia's.
I don't mean to imply that Ukraine is about to collapse and that Russian troops will finally march into Kyiv as they tried and failed to do almost two years ago. If Russia's quantity still isn't enough to conquer Ukraine, Ukraine's quality isn't enough to win back the occupied regions. I've written again and again for more than a year that now would be a good time for the White House to use every carrot and stick at its disposal to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
The need for now has never been more urgent.
What is the Biden administration doing? It's sending just enough aid to keep Ukraine fighting but not enough to force Putin to the negotiating table. The correct weapons, doctrine, and training could blunt Russia's numbers and bring peace — but peace doesn't seem to be on the Biden agenda.
Today's lesson is clear. A small qualitative edge is not enough to overcome a huge quantitative deficit. Judging by this country's shrinking defense budgets and industrial base to support it, we will enter our next major war with neither quality nor quantity — because victory doesn't seem to be on the Biden agenda, either.
Today's lesson isn't complete, however, because it factors into the next three parts in the series — Drones Haven't Replaced Traditional Airpower, Arm Like You Mean It, Don’t Sanction Like You Don’t Mean It — which all interlock with one another. This is going to be quite the ride over the next few weeks, so hang on.
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