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Foreign Policy - Ukraine Needs a New Storyline

But as important as the messaging, Ukraine also had a clear—if simple—theory for how it would win the war. First, it stopped the Russian offensive in Kyiv. Next it broke Russian forces around Kharkiv and retook Kherson. Finally, as Western-made arms poured into the country, a final counteroffensive in the spring of 2023 would at the very least push Russia back closer to its borders, if not finish the war entirely.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the latter step never materialized, not least because months of Western hesitation to deliver critical weapons such as tanks and aircraft gave Russia the time it needed to complete extensive fortifications along the front. When the 2023 counteroffensive petered out, Kyiv lost more than troops and equipment. It also lost a compelling argument for how it intends to win.

Arguably, the accusation that the Russia-Ukraine war was stalemated was never entirely accurate [lol. lmao]. While much of the Western media attention focused on the stagnant front lines, Ukraine notched a series of less headline-grabbing but arguably equally important achievements, including pushing Russia’s once vaunted Black Sea fleet out of its Crimean ports and the western Black Sea—a significant feat for country without a navy. Moreover, the lack of Ukrainian military progress was at least partially due to monthslong holdups in U.S. and European aid deliveries, as well as strict red lines limiting the use of any Western weapon to attack airfields, bases, and other military assets on Russian territory.

While practically every one of the dozens of Ukrainians whom I interviewed—at different levels of seniority, both inside and outside of government—recognized the need for victory and the existential stakes at hand, few were able to articulate just how Ukraine would come out victorious.

In this respect, the Kursk counteroffensive arrived not a moment too soon.

While the counteroffensive came as a surprise to many—including officials in the U.S. Defense Department—the push into Kursk makes perfect sense. Ukraine, after all, needed to do something big. It needed to show that while the Russian military may be vast, it is still uneven and, in places, brittle.

Inferring from Ukraine’s actions, the country’s new, if still unstated, strategic tagline seems to have three relatively well-defined parts: survive, strike, and seize. The first—survive—focuses on withstanding Russia’s punishing assaults against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and halting Russia’s slowly advancing offensive in the Donbas. The second—strike—seems to revolve around hitting military and industrial targets deeper inside Russia, not only in order to wear down Russian military capabilities, but also to increase the economic and political costs of the war for the Putin regime.

The third and final part—seize—is where Kursk fits in. This action emphasizes capturing Russian territory along the border, presumably both as a buffer to protect Ukrainian territory from Russian aggression and as a potential bargaining chip further down the road.

Ultimately, all three elements are necessary but likely not sufficient [lol. lmao.] in constructing a new theory of victory for Ukraine. While the survive, strike, and seize elements of Kyiv’s nascent strategy will undoubtedly ramp up the pressure on Moscow, they probably will not, by themselves, allow Ukraine to retake its lost territory. Indeed, Russia has continued to advance in eastern Ukraine, despite the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk. Nor will future strikes and seizures dramatically ramp up domestic pressure on Putin to the point where he will end the conflict. Most Ukrainian analysts whom I interviewed admitted that most Russians—particularly those who actually have influence in Putin’s autocracy—simply don’t care enough about Kursk to force Putin to abandon his war aims.

Thus, the question that remains is what the next and final element of Ukraine’s theory of victory might be, if it exists at all. Essentially, Ukraine has two basic choices—supplant or settle.

But with U.S. elections on the horizon and growing challenges around the world competing for scarce attention and resources, Ukraine’s leadership owes its partners and allies—as well as its own public—its theory of how it will win.

The authors thesis is fundamentally contradictory.

The author argues that Ukraine’s theory of victory is to survive and seize bargaining chips, but also that these seizures of strategically unimportant areas obviously don’t affect the war in a meaningful military sense.

And so the author concludes by admitting Ukraine has no theory of victory.

Even in the best case scenario that Ukraine can horse trade Kursk for a bit of territory, Ukraine has fundamentally lost the war.

The question not being addressed is post-war neutrality. It seems the deep state are now fully engaged in preserving a rump Ukraine that is NATO-aligned and hostile to Russia so we’ve entered the true negotiations here of drawing permanent spheres of influence.

By Raphael S. Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force.