Another week has gone by, and Ukraine continues to shock the world with its extraordinary battlefield gains. Ukrainian forces have retaken thousands of kilometers of their territory from Russian invaders. How did they do it? I think four reasons stand out.
The tremendous fighting spirit and resolve of the Ukrainian military and people
Morale is an often forgotten component of warfare. But Ukrainians are fighting for their country and are near totally united in its defense. This defensive effort belies the Russian claim, central to President Vladimir Putin’s ideological construct for the war, that Ukrainians are only a subset of a greater Russia.
The nearly $20 billion dollars of Western military hardware provided to Ukraine
This centers on U.S. support and includes HIMARS artillery weapons systems that have proven highly effective against Russian forces. But we shouldn’t forget the 10-plus years of training Ukrainian forces have received from U.S. intelligence and special operations forces, nor should we ignore the provision of intelligence that the United States has purportedly given Ukraine so it can conduct pinpoint targeting of Russian forces. This may be President Joe Biden’s finest hour. He made the final decision to assist the Ukrainians and press NATO to do so on a vast scale. It’s an important recovery for this administration after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The disastrous state of the Russian military
They are a Potemkin village that is corrupt, lazy, leaderless, rudderless, unmotivated, often drunk, and now on the run. Stunning is an understatement.
The near total failure of Russian intelligence to provide anything of value to Putin
The big three Russian intelligence services — the FSB, GRU, and SVR — have continued their abysmal showing. The scale of this latest surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive is solely on them.
There are further points of note, however.
For one, the Western military analysts in think tanks, academia, media, and government who also seem to have gotten this all wrong (again!). Those who said Kyiv would fall in 36 hours. Oops. Most recently, these analysts were calling for a stalemate into winter. That was the conventional wisdom, with only a few pundits arguing that with sufficient Western assistance, Ukraine could actually win. There should be a post-war reckoning on the analytic tradecraft of military-political analysis related to this conflict. It has been too poor too often. And policy is affected by poor analysis.
What next?
First and foremost, don’t take the Ukrainian boot off the Russian neck. Let’s not get into hand-wringing over what happens if Ukraine actually wins. As a former practitioner of these arts, not an academic or policymaker but someone who has been on the ground with foreign forces, perhaps I look at this differently. But let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a U.S. military or intelligence operator working with Ukrainians. It is their country, and we in the West must not press them to stop. We can’t go wobbly. We must continue to arm Ukraine and provide intelligence and targeting assistance. Ukraine will stop when they decide their war aims have been met. What are we scared of? Ukraine will not invade Russia. They do not threaten Moscow. They just want their territory back. Moreover, after all of the atrocities committed by Russian forces (we’re learning more and more as Ukraine retakes its territory), can we blame them? Ukraine is in the driver’s seat — let them drive!
What about that issue of Russian nukes?
Please, let’s not get sucked yet again into this blackmail loop. It ultimately only neuters our actions. Yes, of course, we must plan for the what-ifs. Still, I don’t see that Putin is threatened enough right now to contemplate the use of nukes. Doing so would align the world against him, likely even drawing China into criticism of his war. Top line: The fight is not in Russia and Moscow is not under siege. At the same time, there must also be a threat that NATO will destroy the entire Russian military in Ukraine, piece by piece, if Russia uses a tactical nuke. If we obsess over warnings from the nuclear Armageddon crowd, we wouldn’t have given the Ukrainians even a Hello Kitty backpack filled with blankets and MREs, let alone HIMARS and HARMs!
Top line: Let’s keep the faith and keep helping Ukraine free their people and their land from this foreign aggressor.
Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. A former CIA senior operations officer, he retired in 2019 after a 26-year career serving in the Near East and South Asia. His book Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA was published in June 2021 by HarperCollins.
