As war persists, prospect of stalemate looms
US officials: Russia is shoring up defenses and learning lessons
WASHINGTON — As the war in Ukraine soon enters its second year, Ukrainian troops will find it more challenging to reclaim territory from Russian forces who are focused on defending their remaining territorial gains rather than making a deeper push into the country, American officials say.
Over the course of the first 10 months of the war, the Ukrainian military has — with significant U.S. support — outmaneuvered an incompetent Russian military, fought it to a standstill and then retaken hundreds of square miles and the only regional capital that Russia had captured.
Despite relentless Russian attacks on civilian power supplies, Ukraine has kept up the momentum on the front lines since September. But the tide of the war is likely to change in the coming months, as Russia improves its defenses and pushes more soldiers to the front, making it more difficult for Ukraine to retake the huge swaths of territory it lost this year, according to U.S. government assessments.
All of these factors make the most likely scenario going into the second year of the war a stalemate.
“I do think that it is far easier for Ukraine to defend territory than to go on the offensive to recapture territory,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former senior Pentagon official and Russia expert. “We need to be providing Ukrainians the necessary equipment and training to do that.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine asked for such assistance when he met President Joe Biden and addressed Congress on Wednesday evening.
Although Ukraine’s military has consistently outperformed the Russian army, senior Ukrainian officials have warned about the possibility of a major Russian offensive. But experts say Russia does not have the forces ready for any significant offensive in the next few months.
Ukrainian officials have said they plan to continue a counteroffensive against the Russians. The focus will be in the south, where the Ukrainian military and political leadership believe they need to make gains against Russian forces to restore Ukrainian territory.
American officials say Ukraine will likely avoid sending its army directly into Crimea and will rely on more covert operations — similar to the attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge that knocked out a key Russian supply line — and airstrikes to attack Russia’s military positions in Crimea.
Ukrainian officials have told their American counterparts that it is critical to pin down Russian forces in Crimea. If they let up pressure there, the Ukrainians worry it would allow the Russians room to move more forces or defensive equipment out to other areas, according to U.S. officials who were speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ukraine has also been reliant on U.S. intelligence reports that pinpoint where the Russian army is at its weakest. The Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive outside Kharkiv in September was successful in part because the Ukrainians were facing a hollowed-out, unprepared Russian force. American officials do not believe that even the Russian military command knew how weak those forces were or how badly prepared they were for a Ukrainian strike.
American officials are continuing to search for weak points in the Russian lines. Finding those fragile units could allow for smaller victories by Ukrainian troops, American officials say.
“What this war has shown us is that it is better not to underestimate Ukraine,” said Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy.
Nevertheless, Ukraine’s ability to mount effective strikes against Russian bases and supply lines will not be enough to dislodge Moscow’s troops from the parts of the country where they are concentrated.
Any smaller breakthroughs by Ukrainian forces in the next few months are unlikely to lead to a broad collapse of the Russian army, these American officials say, but Russia also is unlikely to achieve anything resembling a broad military victory in Ukraine.
“This war favors the competent over the incompetent, as all wars do,” said Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who writes regularly about Russian operations in Ukraine. “The Russians have been unsuccessful because they are showing their customary incompetence.”
But U.S. officials say there is evidence that the Kremlin is learning from its mistakes. It has put a single general in charge of the war — Gen. Sergei Surovikin — who American officials say is executing complicated military operations more efficiently.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian military officials have said Moscow has conducted stepped-up airstrikes on the army’s defensive lines, increasing Ukrainian casualties.
As botched as the initial Russian partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists was, the sheer numbers are now making a difference along the defensive lines. And unless those troops suffer a bad winter, which is possible with poor logistics and bad leadership, they will only shore up more by the spring, American officials say.
Russian forces are also digging into defensive positions and building trenches, and they have given up areas that require larger numbers of troops to hold, moving instead to easier-to-secure positions.
Surovikin, who has led Russian forces since October, is using a strategy that emphasizes strategic defense, these U.S. officials say. He has, so far, been able to improve defenses and inject discipline into Russian troops deployed in Ukraine’s south and east. Their current push in Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region is limited, designed to secure better positions from which to defend against a Ukrainian counterattack.
“He’s consolidating positions, and he’s trying to build a network of trenches and a more sensible set of positions and checkpoints,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corp.