The first part of the Ukrainian war, which was started by the Russian attack on February 24th, can be divided into five stages. Russia tried to achieve its goals with methods similar to the peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan in January 2022, relying on minimal use of heavy weapons and a small army.
Faced with increasingly strong Ukrainian resistance and a failure in the field, the Russian forces withdrew to more defensible positions and started to reorganise at the end of March. This was the second stage, which lasted about a month.
In the third phase of the war, the reorganised Russian forces began their attack. Their main goal was clearly the occupation of the Donbas. Despite its initial successes, the attack, in hindsight, was launched with insufficient forces and thus ran out of steam by the beginning of the summer.
The fourth stage of the war began with the Ukrainian attack in the summer, reinforced by a mobilisation and Western, primarily Polish and Czech, tanks. The operations of the Ukrainians in the north and south had significant results, and the incoming reinforcements stopped the Russian advance in the Donbas region, the main theatre of the conflict. However, despite the new tactics, modern Western equipment, and superior Ukrainian manpower, the Russian forces retreated to their new defence lines and, by autumn, stopped the counterattack as a result of their artillery advantage. With the onset of rainy weather, the frontlines stiffened.
The fifth stage of the war started with the Donbas offensive, which was launched in December 2022, after the Russian mobilisation had taken longer than expected. This assault had not achieved significant results up to the time this article was published—although it is true that the encirclement of the most important point of the second defence line, Bakhmut, which had a population of 70,000 before the war, is slowly being completed.
It seems, as in Mariupol, the Ukrainian leadership wants to hold on till the last man, playing for as much time as possible until the arrival of Western military equipment. The city’s fall would not be a fatal blow to the Ukrainian forces stationed in the region, as the third and last defence line at Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, among others, is intact for the time being.
From a military point of view, even the results of Ukraine’s summer offensive, involving the recapture of significant areas in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, are overshadowed by the fact that Ukraine was able to resist what is arguably considered the second-strongest army in the world for a whole year. Even considering the enormous military and financial aid coming from the West, the fact that the country did not collapse either militarily or socially can clearly be considered a significant success for its political and military leadership. Conversely, the fact that Ukraine could not translate military successes into political gains could be considered a failure for the country. After all, the ultimate goal of any military operation is to achieve a political reward. The ineffectiveness of the peace talks last spring and the rejection of a political settlement after the summer offensive show that Kyiv has set political goals that are extremely difficult to achieve militarily.
Without taking a moral stance, Russia could claim success for its Donbas operation. This is based on the consideration of the military (strategic, operational) elements, which includes curbing and then stopping the Ukrainian summer offensive launched from a significantly dominant position, accompanied by the surrender of territory, and the slow but constant advance of the Wagner Group, Russia’s private paramilitary organisation. Nevertheless, the first period of the Russians’ operation—that is, the missed surprise and the weeks when, despite the obvious error of the initial offensive and the significant losses, they continued to push a concept that proved unsuccessful—can clearly be seen as a Russian failure.
Another important point is that the conflict has revealed the serious shortcomings of the Russian military-industrial complex. This includes the military fiascos of the initial period, such as the inflexible and inefficient military leadership at all levels, and the breakdown of military equipment ranging from clothing to drones.
Among the military lessons of the Russian-Ukrainian war, three areas are worthy of mention. The first concerns the operational level, where the complexity of modern armed operations increases. With the spread of drones, previously operated only by the most developed and richest states, electronic warfare has become more important. However, despite their success in the early stages of the war, unmanned flying devices, like most previous military innovations, did not significantly change the characteristics of combat. Quickly introduced countermeasures and similar constructions appearing on the other side can offset the effect of almost any device, at least in the case of warring parties with a similar level of development. The reduction in the effectiveness of new super weapons, whether it is the Javelin anti-tank missiles, the sea drones attacking the city of Sevastopol, or the HIMARS rocket launchers, also indicates the return of industrial-based war.
Curiously enough, the two superpowers never disarmed: both the United States and Russia have retained a significant portion of their military arsenals accumulated during the Cold War. Among the tanks appearing in the news, the Russians have a stockpile of ten thousand, and the United States keeps its six thousand M1 Abrams battle tanks in strategic reserves, too. The same is true for several other types of military equipment, ranging from artillery pieces to aircraft.
However, the protracted conflict in Ukraine has revealed a number of obstructions that have not been apparent until now. The most important of these is the NATO-standard ammunition for tube artillery, the 155-mm shrapnel shell. By February 2023, we have come to the point that even increased production is not enough, so NATO, and particularly the USA, is forced to release its ammunition supplies, pre-installed in other regions for a possible conflict. The same is true for the vital shoulder-mounted anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. The decisive factor of World War II, the industrial capacity, which is part of the wider environment of warfare, that is, to the strategic or military aspects, cannot be changed easily and in the short term.
The third lesson, in many ways, belongs to what can be called the grand strategy, i.e. the concept of using all the means of states and federations—we are talking about Elon Musk’s low Earth orbit satellite, Starlink. This typical phenomenon of the modern world can be used for several purposes. Russian electronic warfare would have made Ukrainian military communications much more difficult if it had been forced to rely solely on its own devices. However, the satellites appearing 550 kilometres above Ukraine, which is legally considered a no man’s land, not only enabled communication between military units but, according to the news, also facilitated the firing of Ukrainian artillery devices. Although Musk claims that Russian military hackers have tried to break into the system several times, they have never been successful. It is interesting though that the Russian armed forces, which already have several types of anti-satellite systems, did not try to shoot down the privately owned satellites.
Information that is difficult to classify at the levels of military science, more precisely the issue of its transfer, also belongs here. It was already known from the beginning of the conflict that the Western states share almost all of their information of military importance with Ukraine. NATO’s support in the sinking of the Russian cruiser, Moskva, in April of 2022, represented an unprecedented escalation in the use of information from spy satellites and other sources, as during the attack, the Ukrainian missiles were at least partially guided by a Boeing P–8 Poseidon patrol aircraft operating in Romanian airspace. This kind of support goes far beyond the scope of traditional military assistance and could lead to the danger that the West becomes a warring party. Needless to say, this would have unforeseeable consequences.
No analysis can be complete without at least partially looking for an answer to the question of what to expect after the first year of the war. Since the effect of the Russian enlistment of 300,000-500,000 reservists ordered in September is not yet noticeable on the front, speculation continues as to whether a major attack is expected from some direction, or whether the Russian leadership will try to proceed on a broad front by taking advantage of its dominant position. The decreasing number of military conscripts in Ukraine and the military equipment to be provided by the West, which will only be available in the second half of the year or even later, indicate that Ukraine’s military situation will soon become significantly more difficult, which raises the possibility that the conflict will end later this year.
However, this war has already produced so many surprises that we cannot be sure of anything—only that sooner or later, the desired peace will be arrived at and significantly influenced by the results achieved on the battlefield.
