UKRAINE CAN WIN

As I type this parties are meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss the next steps in ending the war. Bearing in mind that the first steps have resulted in almost immediate breaching of the deal by Russia, and the war goes on.

The war is nowhere near over. Peace can only come if both sides feel they have gotten what they want and Russia hasn’t, and Ukraine won’t get that it needs to agree.

America and Russia sit there trying to broker a deal – Trump has given away almost every negotiating card he had, Russia has done nothing in return. Ukraine feels it must take part, because it needs the remaining aid and intelligence operations provided by the Americans, and because Trump is happy to use that as leverage against America’s ally.

Yet even as they sit there, Europe has finally woken up and is deliberately being left out of the negotiations. The last thing Trump wants is Europe sticking its nose in and the Russians like keeping Europe out as the secondary power they think it is.

Neither of them seem to understand that between them, they have ensured that Europe being ignored and talking directly to the Ukrainians about their weapons and economic needs is happening, even as they talk about a peace Russia has no intention of concluding.

UKRAINE’S STRATEGY

If you look at the map, Russia now occupies less of Ukraine than it did in March 2022. Every advance it has made has been long and costly in terms of men, machines and resources. The loss of Avdivka early in 2024 was a combination of American failure to deliver much needed artillery shells and a good deal of assumption about the defences that Ukraine placed too much confidence in. While we can generally condemn Russian methodology, sometimes they have a stroke of genius on the battlefield. Undermining the Avdivka defences using a pipeline, spiking the Ukrainian defences at Ochertyne during a botched rotation that left it undefended due to poor communications – that produced the Pokrovsk salient. The defeat of the Ukrainians at Koronovo in Kursk, and again with their surprising effectiveness using a newly trained fiberoptic drone regiment in recent weeks, a complete surprise they never saw coming. So while in general the Russians rely on methodical, barbaric and wasteful practices, occasionally they get it right and you cannot count them out from doing so again.

Ukraine long ago – mostly after the miserable failure that was the summer offensive in 2023, realized its best way forward was a long slow retreat, an endless series of delaying battles, fortified positions, cost-extracting combat determined on their terms, ‘The Steel Porcupine’ strategy. Forcing the Russians to follow every retreat into another kill zone, taking down as many Russian soldiers and vehicles as they can for every position, while maintaining losses of their own to a minimum.

When the chance comes to counter attack, or its required to slow or correct a Russian position, shaping it for the benefit of the Ukrainian defence, then that happens, and even now is happening over quite a wide area of the front, but they’re under no illusion its going to change the overall direction of the battle.

It’s always been about time, gaining time for Ukraine, using up Russia’s. Because the key to this war is time. Russia’s is running out, which is why Putin tries to gain more, Ukraine needs more to ensure it can outlast Russia sooner rather than later.

And Ukraine is winning the time war. It’s also winning the arms production war, and it’s winning the overall strategic economic war. And its going to win, because while Europe took a long time to wake up fully and get out of bed, its now out running a marathon and its seen where it has to get to fast.

THE AMMUNITION WAR

Russia in volume terms, is producing or is buying in from N.Korea more than enough artillery ammunition to wage its war. If anything its over producing. However Ukraine has specifically and deliberately carried out a surgical and exacting long term war against Russian artillery that has reduced the quantity of barrels available to the Russians by around 82%. That’s a staggering figure. Much of what Russia has available are the old D-30 field artillery from the 1950’s. The vast majority of its heavy artillery – it started with a 10:1 advantage – has gone, it’s now around 1.8:1. And it shows on the battlefield.

Ukraine was suffering in early 2024 when Avdivka fell, from a failure of ammunition supply, primarily from the US. European production was insufficient but growing and the rate at which ammunition was being used was frankly prodigious, especially in modern warfare, but in terms of scale represents a minuscule amount compared to the western front in WW1 – just to keep things in perspective. So much ammunition was being used in 2023/24 that Western armies like the French and British realized they had just three days worth of shells.

However, Europe was not asleep on the subject even though it appeared that way. The industrial wheels were turning, they just took time to get going when they were basically stationary. The Czechs also made major contributions by combining infant European production to their Czech Initiative to buy 1,000,000 + shells that year – and they did. They’ve increased that to 1,500,000 this year in addition to massively increased European production which is improving every month.

And they have not been alone, because Ukraine, coupling with generous nations like Denmark and Norway, Finland and other’s, including Germany’s Rheinmettal, has managed to produce enough 152mm ammunition for its own ex-soviet artillery, and its become self-sufficient, and is now producing significant quantities of its own 155mm.

The entire artillery landscape has changed dramatically – the Americans are no longer critical to stabilising it and therefore that’s one area they no longer have any leverage over. Across Europe, shell production is going to continue war or not, because not one army has anything like enough to wage modern combat, no matter how it develops.

THE TACTICAL DRONE WAR

Almost a year ago China began restricting exports on drones that could be used for dual purposes. Then they started restricting the parts to make drones, although they weren’t overly rigorous about it. Ukraine saw where this was going and began a program to build its own drones without Chinese parts of any kind. They reached that sufficiency in February 2025, with domestically built drones now Chinese parts free. Ukraine is building so many domestically it has offered the excess for sale abroad!

European and American drones have provided types such as interceptor drones and powerful loitering anti-armor drones superior to the Russian ones that inspired them. Russian combat units despair of the number of Ukrainian recon drones, FPV drones and their superior capabilities. Add to that the Ukrainians increasing capacity in the electronic warfare environment and the Russians often find they’re unable to operate their own drones. Both sides have resorted at times to fibreoptic drones that can’t be jammed, but they’re limited because of the cable spool and their range. However the Russians used them very effectively to break the last of the Kursk salient.

The Drone and and EW combination has also proven to be doubly useful. Ukrainian drones carrying jammers aloft with EW packs have been instrumental in wrecking the targeting of one of Russia’s main advantages – the glide bomb. Their accuracy has been seriously compromised and their effectiveness substantially reduced.

The tactical drone war is also taking on a new front. The ever increasing use of robotised defence positions using unmanned machine guns, mine laying surface drones, mobile mortars and combat drones, wheeled, tracked and most sinister of all, the growing capabilities of the robot dogs. Once merely a warning from Sci-fi movies and programs like Black Mirror, gun armed, low profile recon robot dogs have been trialled. There’s a whole plethora of potential ground based platforms that stand to revolutionize the front line – and Ukraine is leading the way in concepts and design.

They need to reduce their casualties to the minimum and if this helps so be it. Russia too has ambitions in this area, but theirs are less altruistic and while they have deployed some quite sizable units, they’ve been captured easily and failed to produce the required results. Either way, the speed at which technology changes in war and how fast what might have taken a decade in peace time to develop, gets to the battlefield, is so rapid its almost frightening.

THE STRATEGIC DRONE WAR

Russia started this with basic Iranian Shaheed 136’s flying at low levels and smashing into whatever they could hit. They’ve now morphed into a networked, higher flying weapon, supported by decoys, with greatly improved accuracy and capacity to line up and dive bomb their target as they did in Odessa last week. It’s an unpleasant development with many new challenges in blocking them and shooting them down.

However while Ukraine gets hit with these almost every night their effect on Ukraine’s economy has been far less than you’d expect. The Russian SRBM’s and the use of cruise missiles has caused far more damage to the energy sector, to the point where non-nuclear power generation in the country has virtually ceased. Yet Ukraine carries on. Russia just hasn’t been able to get to a stage where it has crashed Ukraine’s economy. The reason is because Ukraine is not alone. Western allies feed it with electricity and tens of thousands of diesel power generators to keep the lights on and industry turning out the weapons of war as well as life’s necessities.

Ukraine’s own strategic war against Russia is now at a level – and still increasing – that the Russians simply cannot possibly have imagined was even possible when they launched their three day invasion.

New drones with 3,000km range bring virtually every oil refinery into range. And once the refineries are hit, and hit again when repaired to the point it’s not even worth bothering with them, they go after the storage sites, the pumping stations, the pipeline nodes. Its clearly rattled the leadership because it was the first thing Putin wanted stopped for a ceasefire.

Airfields that launched massive missile raids on Ukraine are now in range, and several have been completely ruined. Factories have been hit that produce Russian electronics, optics, and weapons. Frankly I would not have hesitated to hit Russian thermal power stations – but Ukraine has scrupulously avoided becoming as bad as its enemy. I would not have been so generous. War is war and if you’re destroying mine then you too shall suffer this fate. Maybe Russians would start to understand what this is really like for their victims in Ukraine.

The oil refineries and soon the production fields that are now in range, are Russia’s cash cow. The oil terminals in St Petersburg and Novorossiysk on the Black Sea have been hit repeatedly. Russian warships have been driven from the Black Sea into hiding by drones.

THE ECONOMIC WAR

Russia is loosing the economic war. Its economy is the size of Italy. It’s financed by raw material and commodity sales. Without oil exports in its shadowy tanker fleet, its budget would collapse. Its overly dependent on China buying what it sells and they only have to cut back for their own reasons – as they announced they would do just this last weekend, and the situation worsens dramatically for Russia.

The over heated, inflation racked economy, stumbling on 21% interest rates, chronic food inflation and a need to continuously pump money into the economy that simply makes things worse, simply cannot last indefinitely. The saying that ‘a war economy rarely collapses – until it does’, is where Russia sits now. It will take just one jarring event and it will come off the rails. It has no Plan-B, no backup, it has no means of bailing itself out. When it goes it will pop like a cheap balloon and everything will unravel so quickly you’ll barely be able to keep up.

Ukraine is not in that position. It has financial help from the IMF, from the EU and independently from individual governments. It has trade deals and last year exported more grain than it did in 2021 – despite the war. Its people send remittances back home from work in Europe, there is a whole network of goodwill and support that maintain the economy in a vastly varied way never reliant on a single source. Are things difficult? Of course they are, yet Ukraine is incredibly resilient and it simply isn’t going to have its freedom negotiated away by Trump & Putin.

Ukraine is infinitely more resilient than Russia, it’s more determined, more sure of its destiny and its right to exist. No matter what Russian and the Americans now think, it’s far from over.

POLITICAL SUPPORT

Russia depends on its handful of Axis of Evil allies, but their alliance is based on them being outcasts and autocrats. Its an alliance of the aggrieved. They can cause a lot of trouble but they’re not invincible. Support for each other is contingent on their respective value and when they don’t have any they will be dropped.

Europe+ is not like that. It still believes in democracy and liberty, that they’re better together in willing mutual support. That their values matter and are worth fighting for. And that’s why they support Ukraine. Between them they have ten times the economic power of Russia, and they have Ukraine fighting a war they support because its not just defending Ukraine, its defending all of Europe+, even those like Orban’s fascist Hungary who would seek to undermine it.

Europe has woken up, it’s in the race, its priorities for defence have changed drastically. Germany, Britain, France, and many more are looking at huge increases in defence spending – even when they could do without it and populations aren’t happy about the compromises it requires. Defence is the first responsibility of any government. No defence, no country, what then for your precious social welfare programs?

The threat is on our doorstep and we see it at last, clearly for what it is. Ukraine will not be abandoned by Europe. If America turns its back, against the wishes of its own people who by a good majority support Ukraine, Europe+ will still be there anyway. If Ukraine choses peace then we will support it and we will help maintain it. If it chooses to fight on because its presented with an unjust peace, when America again tries to leverage its aid, we will be there to replace it.

This is what Russia doesn’t want to understand and doesn’t want to hear. Its mistake is negotiating with the Americans, because it’s deluded that that alone will get it what it wants. America doesn’t care as long as it can in the end, walk away with Trump looking good – at least spinning it so hard it thinks he does.

Neither of them seem to understand that Europe+ and Ukraine not only can win, they will win. Because it matters that much to both of them, it is an existential fight, and they have the means and the will to do it, and they have time, the one commodity Russia doesn’t have.

The Analyst

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