Third year of Russia-Ukraine war: Can NATO prevent tides turning in Moscow’s favour?

As the war in Ukraine completes two years, Russia seems emboldened by success in capturing Avdiivka and seems to be advancing westwards near Bakhmut, Donetsk City, Robotyne, and Krynky, besides capturing the settlement of Pobeda. It is showing intent to unlock the frozen conflict, which was witnessing only standoff attacks from opposing sides through drones and missiles in the recent past, with both sides licking their wounds, counting their losses, and struggling to recuperate their combat power.

The rhetoric of the US-led West seems to be shifting from “Putin must lose” to “ Putin must not win ” as it struggles to meet Ukraine’s expectations of financial and military support. Wherein President Biden promises to support Ukraine ‘ for as long as it takes ’ seems to be shifting subtly to “ as long as we can ” as he faces delays in clearing the foreign aid package.

Russia too is not too comfortable having suffered considerable losses to the Black Sea Fleet and struggling to contain repeated standoff attacks by Ukraine on Russian cities, which was once thought to be out of bounds for Ukrainians using western long-range arsenal, to prevent escalation to a NATO-Russian showdown.

There is no doubt that because of Western compulsion not to lose against Putin, Ukraine will get the desired aid, arsenal, and ammunition sooner or later, but the question remains as to who will provide it with enough trained soldiers to match Russian soldiers on the frontlines, as the asymmetry of numbers might prove to be a game changer in a protracted war of attrition.

Hard Realities

Certain stark realities determine the maximum limits of the war. Firstly, Russia, with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles under Putin, will not get annihilated or decisively defeated without using any of these major weapons.

Secondly, the US will not risk the annihilation of Washington or New York to save Zelenskyy or Poland.

Thirdly, Russia will not be able to annihilate Ukraine if continuously supported by NATO.

Fourthly, Europe will have to follow American dictates, as it knowingly fell prey to the American design of cutting off its dependency on Russia and ignored its own security and Russian security concerns for too long.

Fifthly, Ukraine can’t recapture entire lost territory without NATO getting fully involved with troops, meaning Third World War and Nuclear ‘ Armageddon ’ Risk. The war will therefore continue to be prosecuted within these maximal limits.

Russia has three times the population of Ukraine, double the military budget, and, most importantly, a strong president who is thoroughly committed to ending the war only on his own terms. Due to a lack of options, NATO is still trying to use old instruments of war like economic war through additional sanctions on Russia ( 500 additional entities by the US) and information war by picking up Navalny’s death as a rallying point, who was more of a hero of Western media but no worthwhile threat to Putin.

While the kinetic, contact, hybrid war between Russia and Ukraine is witnessing relatively slow progress on borders with frequent standoff strikes, offensive actions are also happening in the US-led NATO’s undeclared, non-kinetic, non-contact war against Russia in the economic, information, diplomatic, and political domains. The scale of war is increasing, with both sides increasing their use of more dangerous arsenals, proxy elements, non-state actors, drones, cyber warfare, and other modern instruments. The dimensions of war are growing to encompass targeting dual-use key infrastructure, the energy grid, covert operations, an expanded information war, and a psychological offensive.

For Russia

Russia’s political aim at the beginning of the war was to arrest the trend of eastern expansion of NATO into its backyard, foreclose the option of inclusion of Ukraine into NATO, liberate complete Luhansk and Donetsk regions to act as buffers, and ensure the security of Crimea by connecting it with Donbass Region through a land corridor.

The aim plus included completely cutting Ukraine off from warm water access to get absolute freedom of manoeuvre for its Black Sea Fleet and join up with Transnistria. Capturing a complete Ukraine was beyond Russian capability and continues to be so, but an end state along its linguistic borders is thought to be within its achievable limits.

After two years of war, Russia has captured 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory after Crimea but has not yet liberated the entire Donbass region. It has yet to capture Odessa and join up with Transnistria, which is not easy. It miscalculated the Ukrainians’ will and resolve to withstand the Russian onslaught and underestimated the magnitude of support by the West to boost Ukrainian resistance initially. Ukrainians fought with determination to blunt the Russian offensive on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and other areas.

Russia suffered heavy casualties in men and material in the first year of war but learned some lessons quickly; hence, it developed a strong and viable defence line along the captured territory that could withstand the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive.

While enduring the counteroffensive in the second year, it simultaneously worked towards its recuperation of combat capabilities faster than the West and has reached a position to threaten Ukraine to fulfil its remaining aims again in the third year, despite paying heavy costs in terms of casualties of men and material, besides the economic and diplomatic squeeze. It is estimated that Russian military production grew by 400 per cent , compared to 20 per cent in Europe since 2021.

For Ukraine

President Zelenskyy was expecting violent action from Russia after signing a decree aimed at de-occupation and reintegration of the Crimean Peninsula on February 26, 2021. Joint exercises with NATO were adequate to alarm Russians, even if such acts were aimed at impressing the domestic audience.

Ukraine’s aim in the initial stages was to blunt the Russian offensive and impose punitive costs on Russians with all the assistance from US-led NATO using state-of-the-art weaponry and systems.

Ukraine’s strong resolve to resist the Russian offensive has been noteworthy, having deliberately prepared for the conflict since 2014.

To overcome the adverse asymmetry in military asset holdings and deploy military assets in civilian areas, Ukraine turned towns into fortresses and residential areas into pillboxes. It involved mercenaries and civilians fighting as part of the war machine and launched sniper attacks, ambushes, small-team operations, and drone attacks on softer convoys.

It successfully provoked Russians to target residential areas in order to gain propaganda advantage from civilian casualties through superior information warfare, backed by NATO, despite losing air cover in the early stages of war. It thus forced Russians to fight the war of attrition at the ground of Ukraine’s choosing.

The Russians were organised for mechanised warfare. They were inadequately prepared to deal with fighting in built-up areas and against Western weapons and equipment. Thus, they achieved territorial gains at a very heavy cost of casualties.

Overhyped by the NATO, the second year of war saw overconfident Zelenskyy claiming to win back all his territory, assuming that meeting his war requirements may give him a fair chance to defeat Putin in the counteroffensive.

The counteroffensive was supported by a hollow media campaign that made everyone believe that Ukraine was winning, whereas it was losing its combat power in the failed counteroffensives to the Russians, who were holding a strong defence line.

The prolonged failures on the ground have caused war fatigue in the West. The military campaign in Ukraine was mainly based on American proxy and has been adversely impacted by the diversion of focus of the US in the Middle East.

Ukraine today suffers from devastated infrastructure, 14 million people displaced, a tattered economy, and is heavily dependent on Western aid to sustain its resistance, with its sovereign decision making it hostage to the US, which wants it to fight till last Ukrainian standing!

For US-led NATO

While Russia can be accused of launching ‘Special Military Operations’ violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine, the eastward expansion of NATO knocking on Russian doors was also a major provocation. While unprepared, Europe may have no option but to follow the USA for collective security against the overhyped threat of Russia, but it was mainly to meet American interests.

The expanded NATO means a larger captive market for American military hardware and oil and the assured sustenance of military industrial complexes, jobs, and the economy of the US.

In 2023 alone, US weapons sales overseas jumped to a record of $238 billion, and British arms maker BAE recorded its highest ever profit at $3.4 billion. Knocking off the energy dependence of Europe from Russia through the destruction of Nordstream pipelines doesn’t seem to be in the interest of Europe (but it is in the interest of America), which is adequately vindicated by the downslide of the economy of Europe in comparison to Russia.

The US-led strategy, therefore, was to let Ukraine fight a proxy war to weaken Russia as an extension of Cold War 1.0 so that NATO doesn’t run into the risk of a third-world war or nuclear war and doesn’t bear the burden of body bags. They found a willing Zelenskyy to undertake it on their behalf, with assured support from NATO. As this narrative is globally known, NATO doesn’t want to lose face by stopping the war at a point where it looks embarrassed and defeated by Putin, so it will find the hopeless continuation of the war a better face-saver.

Global Impact 

Two years of the Russia-Ukraine War have caused tremendous economic, energy, and food crises globally and pushed people not connected with the war to face immense inflationary pressure.

Strategically, it has left the US entangled in Cold War 1.0 and Cold War 2.0 (with China) together, overstretching its capabilities. The most damaging impact for NATO has been the rise of an opposing power block consisting of Russia, China, Iran, Belarus, and North Korea, which US-led NATO is finding difficult to handle, with some of them supporting the military effort of Russia undeterred by the West, which has already sanctioned them.

Frequent compromises with China by the West have become more frequent in recent times, as no one wants China to join in the war effort of Russia militarily beyond giving dual-use assistance, but China continues to extend an economic lifeline to Russia with trade booming over $200 billion.

It has also given more strategic space to China in areas like the Middle East. Serious distractions like the Israel-Hamas war and the resultant Red Sea crisis have placed the US in an awkward position, hampering its capacity to take on major challenges at other flash points, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

The sanctions have not been adequately effective, as Western dependence on Russian nuclear fuel, fertilisers, and gas is not easy to scrap overnight. The resource-rich Russia has started looking at Asia for trade much more seriously than Europe. World economies have also started looking for alternatives to the US-dominated financial system.

The Future 

As of today, President Putin is much more confident in prosecuting this war than any of his opponents. He has trained manpower advantages on his side, has been able to endure the sanctions, and has made some economic gains.

His military industrial complex has been able to put his surge capacity into motion to generate more hardware, ammunition, and combat power. His major concern will continue to be maritime warfare, where he is still struggling. The option to use nuclear weapons in case of an existential threat will continue to be a powerful tool to prevent NATO from entering into contact war with Russia in the future too.

On the other hand, Ukraine is struggling for aid and weapons. While it may eventually get them, the problem will be the shortage of trained soldiers on the battlefield, which will be a major factor in changing the tides in Russian favour in the immediate future.

The rhetoric and brave front of Zelenskyy talking about the next counteroffensive are good for information warfare but may not swing the situation on the ground in his favour as he is banking on what Sean McFate calls “killing with borrowed knife”.

It may be too late for Ukrainians to realise that Zelenskyy’s wish to join NATO has been too costly for their people, and their call for sovereignty has made them a vassal state of the US, but they know that ultimately their geography has changed forever. The initiative of individual European countries signing security pacts or agreements with Ukraine may be good optics with some aid, but it doesn’t let them act beyond Article 5 of NATO’s Charter to enter into war against Russia for Ukraine, independent of NATO’s approval.

Turkey claims that in the second month of war it facilitated peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, leading to the signing of a feasible deal, but it was put on hold by Zelenskyy after he met Boris Johnson, indicating Western interest in continuation of war. A recent survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology indicates that 72 per cent of Ukrainians believe that talk with Russia must start. Also, the percentage of Ukrainians feeling that they can win against Russia has dropped from 35 per cent to 23 per cent .

Putin has talked of negotiations, but he would proceed on his own terms, which practically seem to be Russianisation of areas captured as buffers with NATO, a neutral Western Ukraine (which may be part of the EU), a secure Crimea, and the Black Sea. He would attempt to capture the entire Donbass in 2024 and extend the southern corridor to Transnistria in 2025. He is confident of getting back to power and keeps showing his physical fitness through optics, like travelling in a nuclear capable bomber at considerable height to nullify Western propaganda about his sickness.

NATO seems to be stressed and fatigued, supporting never-ending Ukrainian demands over domestic needs, which will impact the combat capability and morale of Ukrainian fighters in the long run. Finding manpower to fight will be the biggest challenge for Ukraine, which NATO can’t help much with. At the beginning of the third year of war, it seems NATO will find it difficult to turn the tide against Russia.

The author is a strategic and security analyst. He holds a PhD from JNU and has authored over 450 publications. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._