Is Ukraine About to Suffer a Catastrophic Defeat?

It was perhaps the most stunning moment yet in the war. A moment when a conflict that had seemed settled into stalemate suddenly roared to life. In early September of 2022, Ukrainian forces operating around Kharkiv Oblast managed to launch a surprise attack that shattered Russian lines. Using speedy four-wheel vehicles, the Ukrainians were able to run riot behind Moscow’s undermanned defenses.

Overwhelmed, the Russian side collapsed into panicked flight. What followed was the fastest territorial change since the opening days of the war. In less than a week, Ukrainian forces liberated over 8,000 square kilometers. And while Russian lines would eventually stabilize not far outside Kupyansk, the political impact was enormous.

It was thanks to this shock Ukrainian victory that Vladimir Putin was forced to order his unpopular “partial mobilization.”

Russian Advances After the Fall of Avdiivka

Seventeen months later, the 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive remains one of Kyiv’s biggest wins. Although territory has changed hands since — most notably at Kherson, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka — it has never again been at such speed or scale. At least, until now.

It looks like the conditions might all be in place for another Kharkiv-style victory. Only, this time, it is not Russian lines that look brittle and ready to snap, but Ukrainian ones. Since Avdiivka fell on February 17, Russian forces have been pushing ahead.

Grinding across the landscape as Ukrainian troops fall back, probing for weaknesses. Outside Avdiivka, the settlements of Lastochkyne and Sjeverne have already been overrun. Up at Bakhmut, long-held Ukrainian positions near Chasiv Yar and Bohdanivka now fly the Russian flag.

On the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, a Ukrainian bridgehead established in autumn seems on the verge of collapse. Even areas liberated during Kyiv’s disappointing summer counteroffensive are now at risk. Security analyst Jimmy Rushton, posting on X, described interviewing a defender at Robotyne who told him: “The Russians are advancing around 250 to 500 meters per day.

They’re hitting us with everything; artillery, FPV drones, aviation (glide bombs) and helicopters. They use ATVs to advance quickly, copying our tactics from the counteroffensive. They’re fighting much smarter and they have the advantage in numbers and firepower.”

These advantages are not localized. Up near Kharkiv, Ukrainian commanders report that artillery ammunition has nearly run out. Air defense is stretched so thin that Moscow is able to gain occasional, limited air superiority in some sectors.

In terms of manpower, too, Ukraine is disadvantaged. Not only are their lines undermanned, but they also cannot compete with the Russians in terms of reserves. Analyst Emil Kastehelmi noted on X: “While Ukraine was on the offensive in 2023, Russia silently amassed significant forces.”

British think tank RUSI estimates that Moscow’s military hit 85 percent of its recruitment targets last year — a far higher percentage than anyone anticipated. That translates to tens of thousands of men who can be called upon to exploit any serious breach in Ukrainian lines. To quote Kastehelmi again: Russia “has likely calculated that the offensives can continue for many weeks or months, and if more significant progress is achieved somewhere, they’re prepared to support it.”

The Staggering Cost of Russia’s Grinding Advance

None of this is to say that the Russians will definitely achieve a major breakthrough. Although they appear to be on a roll west of Avdiivka, the Ukrainians do have more-defendable terrain they can fall back to. The Institute for the Study of War highlights “water features further west of Avdiivka, particularly the body of water that runs between Berdychi-Semenivka-Orlivka.”

Launching these attacks carries its own costs. Attackers nearly always suffer higher casualties than defenders, and Moscow in particular treats its men like an expendable resource. Around Avdiivka alone, it is estimated that Russia sustained thousands of casualties.

Pro-war milblogger Andrei Morozov on Telegram put the number at 16,000 “irreplaceable human losses” — meaning all those killed, plus those too badly wounded to ever fight again. Ukraine’s figures, by contrast, were closer to 7,000. Necessary equipment was also knocked out of the fight.

The UK Ministry of Defense estimated losses of 400 armored vehicles and tanks, while analyst Michael Kofman put the number closer to 600 to 700. Nor was the massive toll of taking Avdiivka a one-off. Independent Russian outlet Meduza recently published a statistical analysis of combat deaths, using data from inheritance records.

The headline finding is that between 66,000 and 88,000 Russian soldiers are now estimated to have died since the war’s start. Even at the lower end, that is still higher than total American deaths in Vietnam. The Russian way of fighting this war has become one in which Moscow accepts eye-watering levels of casualties and equipment losses, under the assumption that Ukraine has a lower threshold of pain.

While this is currently allowing Putin’s forces to advance, even some in Russia’s defense industry are worried about the toll. Analyst Ruslan Pukhov recently warned: “Such a strategy, however, is quite costly for the Russian Armed Forces in terms of losses, which could lead to depletion of its forces. This, in turn, could give the Ukrainian side the initiative once again.”

Putin’s high-cost tactics may not be sustainable in the long run, but they are very effective in the short and medium term. RUSI estimates that Moscow has enough manpower to absorb losses at a steady rate until the end of 2025. Despite losing nearly 9,000 fighting vehicles, the International Institute for Strategic Studies thinks the Russians have enough capacity to sustain similar equipment losses well into 2026.

Brittle Lines: Ukraine’s Fortification and Manpower Crisis

What is meant when analysts say Ukraine may be on the verge of a catastrophic defeat in Donbas must be clarified. No one with any expertise is expecting the entire Ukrainian army to disintegrate and Russian tanks to roll into Kyiv. What could very conceivably happen, though, is a defeat like the one Russia suffered during the Kharkiv counteroffensive in 2022 — one in which Ukraine rapidly loses a significant chunk of territory in the east or south and simultaneously suffers a crushing psychological blow.

A blow that could throw society into chaos and, at worst, cause Western powers to push Kyiv into a negotiated peace that results in surrendering large chunks of land. There seem to be two major factors that point to brittle Ukrainian lines: lack of fortifications and lack of manpower. One of the main reasons Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive was a disappointment was the existence of strong Russian fortifications that had taken months to prepare.

Known as “Surovikin Lines” after the commander who ordered their construction, they constituted the largest set of defenses built in Europe since WWII — large enough to blunt Ukraine’s counterattack and rob it of momentum. Ukraine, by contrast, does not have anything remotely comparable. Michael Kofman said on a recent War on the Rocks podcast: “Ukraine does not have good secondary lines.

It does not have something like the Surovikin lines.” Back in November, Ukraine approved the construction of its own defensive lines. But work was slow, and it seems not undertaken with any urgency.

The ISW has quoted military observers calling Ukraine’s secondary lines “disappointing.” A Ukrainian reserves officer who posts under the name Tatarigami echoed the criticism: “When assessing the state of prepared fortifications post-Avdiivka and other key areas that might become frontlines this year, ‘disappointing’ is probably the best description. The defenses are not as nearly good as the ones the Russians have built.”

On the manpower front, around the same time approval was given for constructing defensive lines, Ukrainian society began a discussion over the need to mobilize more men. Last autumn, the military leadership flagged the increasingly urgent need to mobilize up to half a million, and the civilian government did nothing. The Ukrainian parliament is still on the second reading of its mobilization bill.

Opposition parties are standing against it. Businesses are against it. While it is almost certain to pass in the next month or two, that is about four months too late.

Ukraine’s troops are currently stretched painfully thin. On the frontlines, the average age of soldiers is between 40 and 45. Even if the bill passes tomorrow, Emil Kastehelmi estimates it will take a month to get new recruits to training centers, where they will require a minimum of two months’ training, and likely more.

If the mobilization bill passes in late March, fresh troops will realistically reach the front in significant numbers in mid-to-late summer.

Western Complacency and the Dangerous Head Start Given to Moscow

The West also needs to shoulder some blame. Ukraine does not have the capacity to train and equip 500,000 mobilized men. It can only do so with Western support and assistance.

But with much of that assistance — at the time of writing — still held up in the US Congress, Kyiv runs the risk of taking the massive economic hit of dragging half a million young people out of the workforce, only to discover it does not have the backing to even train them. The fall of 2022 was a good time to be a pro-Ukraine politician in Europe or America. The Kharkiv counteroffensive had just humiliated Russia.

Ukraine had liberated Kherson. While the bloody Battle of Bakhmut was starting to heat up, the atmosphere was so positive that officials were briefing Kyiv could retake Crimea by summer of 2023. Amid the euphoria, a dangerous complacency set in — a feeling that Russia was destined to lose, so why bother raising tensions now.

The trouble was, Russia did not see it that way. After two shock defeats, Putin did not just mobilize men. He mobilized his country’s defense industrial base.

Began churning out tanks and drones and artillery shells. Fast forward to today, and Russia is spending somewhere between six and eight percent of GDP on its war machine — equivalent to forty percent of the entire state budget. Europe and America, by contrast, failed to act with comparable urgency.

It was not until the counteroffensive started going wrong in summer of 2023 that either realized what Moscow had realized nearly a year earlier: that this was going to be a long war of attrition, in which the key to winning would be to put all industries on a war footing and try to outlast the enemy. That year of complacency has given Putin one hell of a head start. Not an insurmountable one.

Most analysts predict that combined NATO munitions production will overtake Russia in 2025. RUSI sees Moscow’s material advantage peaking at the end of 2024 then sharply declining. But that lack of urgency back in 2022 means that Ukraine now needs to survive the rest of this year on the back foot.

European Urgency and the Congressional Bottleneck

The good news is that European capitals are finally starting to feel this urgency. After insisting for the whole of 2023 that EU-bought ammunition for Ukraine must be sourced within the bloc — leading to a shortfall of over half a million promised shells — Emmanuel Macron of France pivoted this week to back a Czech plan for buying shells from outside Europe. With multiple other NATO countries now also offering funds for the plan — including the Netherlands and Canada — it looks like Prague may be able to get 800,000 much-needed shells to Ukraine within a matter of weeks.

Germany, meanwhile, is reported to be in secret negotiations with India to buy several hundred thousand additional rounds. This will at least eliminate one of Ukraine’s biggest disadvantages. But critical gaps will still remain — in manpower, yes, but also in things like air defense.

Things that likely rely on Congress passing the American aid package. Washington does not yet seem to feel the same sense of urgency. House Speaker Mike Johnson again reiterated that he would not allow a vote on Ukraine aid until the problems had been solved at the US southern border.

Johnson’s motives are assumed to be honest, and he really does think the border situation is a graver crisis than Ukraine. He probably, deep down, does not want Putin to win his war. The trouble is that solving the border issue could take months.

While Ukraine will not collapse in that time, decisions taken now will impact how the war plays out later this year — and Johnson is in danger of replicating the complacency that the West foolishly embraced in autumn of 2022. To quote analyst Michael Kofman again: “Folks assume that if they don’t make hard choices this year, this thing will solve itself. But that’s not a likely outcome.”

Far more likely is that the consequences of inaction at the beginning of 2024 will be felt as Russian jets bomb Ukrainian cities to rubble, the civilian death toll mounts, and a war that the West could have won without losing a single NATO soldier turns into the grinding destruction of an entire European country. Because if the fall of Avdiivka shows anything, it is that the war is not in a stalemate. If nothing is done, things will not continue across the next year as they did across 2023 with largely static lines.

Instead, the Russian advantage will slowly mount until it really is impossible to play catch up — until the Kremlin’s forces are able to inflict a defeat that will not just devastate Ukraine, but will place Europe on the brink of wider war and shatter America’s reputation across the globe. Despite what some claim online, Russian victory is not inevitable. The West has the money, the industrial capacity, and the technology to deliver Putin a stinging defeat — to stabilize Ukrainian lines in 2024 and lay the ground for a 2025 in which it is Kyiv again pressing forwards while Russia retreats.

But this will only be possible if politicians act today.

Sources

1. https://warontherocks.com/2024/02/the-russo-ukrainian-war-at-two/
2. https://www.iswresearch.org/2024/02/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment_27.html
3. https://www.vox.com/2024/2/22/24079595/avdiivka-ukraine-russia-war-artillery
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/europe/russia-deaths-avdiivka-strategy.html
5. https://twitter.com/emilkastehelmi/status/1761453249180168647
6. https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1761740793440596050
7. https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1762240498029167085
8. https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1762421448985997744
9. https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1762454281503085005
10. https://kyivindependent.com/france-netherlands-back-czech-plan-to-buy-ammunition-for-ukraine-outside-eu/
11. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/02/24/at-least-75-000-dead-russian-soldiers
12. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024