Putin’s campaign is a logistical nightmare

With a strategy based on flawed assumptions, Russia’s capabilities look likely to degrade further

Two weeks into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is clear that the Russian military forces are underperforming, while Ukrainian forces are far exceeding expectations. To be clear, Russia is not likely to win this war. It probably won’t be able to capture Kyiv, and any city it does gain will not be held onto for long. This is not political hope-talk but my professional assessment as the former commanding general of US Army Europe.

Russia’s key problem is logistics. Look, for instance, at the infamous convoy that has now stalled north of Kyiv. It is a commander’s nightmare, forcing troops to consume the supplies they were meant to carry forward. No military planner would purposely allow such a large group of personnel to sit road-bound on a single highway, surrounded by agricultural land too soft to allow vehicles to divert.

While Ukraine may not have the air capabilities to destroy all of these vehicles, it can take bites out of the convoy. Indeed this is already happening.

Russia’s logistics capability may only have been readied for a lightning campaign, in anticipation that Kyiv would be captured in a matter of days rather than weeks or months. That, of course, has not happened – and the more that flawed assumption is disproven, the more sluggish the entire operation will become. The further into Ukraine Russian oil tanks move, the more exposed they are to attack.

Russia will soon struggle to deliver basic food and petrol supplies to the front, leaving soldiers hungry and immobile.

Such failures have given President Zelensky the opportunity to galvanise his population and the Ukrainian armed forces. They are now capable not just of holding ground but pushing back too, as they did in Kharkiv last week. Russia will have to fight a war of attrition to avoid outright defeat, bombing roads and flats as well as military infrastructure. Even then, Moscow could quickly run out of the kinds of ammunition required to sustain it at an intense level.

President Putin might well be asking how, after all the rhetoric about modernising his forces, it has come to this. The truth is that there appears to be a lack of high-intensity experience. Apart from Syria – which is an air operation, with air bases serving as simple logistics hubs – Russia has not been able to test its new systems over terrain as large as Ukraine. Interventions in Chechnya and Georgia did not pose the same challenge of sheer land mass.

The West should respond to this weakness with strength. We can help push the Ukrainians over the line. A no-fly zone, which I originally supported, would not solve the problem, since most of the damage being done is by artillery and rocket fire based on the ground.

Something we can do immediately is provide Ukraine with the capability to knock out these rocket launchers and missile sites. Counterfire radars, for instance, not only provide an early warning of attack but also identify the point of origin so that it can be rapidly targeted. Ukrainian forces already know how to deploy these systems to great effect. Give them more.

We could also train Ukrainian special forces to go after the launch sites in the same manner US special forces went after scud missile sites during Desert Storm and the Iraq war. This would mean providing intelligence, specialised weaponry and laser designators.

Ultimately, this campaign will end with information operations. We have seen how effective the Ukrainian government has been with its social media efforts, jolting the world to its cause and discrediting Putin’s claims domestically. Western institutions should back this up with a campaign targeted at the Russian army’s spring conscription period, which will begin on April 1. Tens of thousands of Russian families will be asked to step forward.

If we can reach these families with the realities of the war, showing that their teenage sons are being used as cannon fodder, perhaps they will pressure the Kremlin to stop killing fellow Slavs.