WHY UKRAINE WILL WIN & RUSSIA WILL LOSE

You know by now if you read these posts of mine, that my belief in a sense of history is core to interpreting the world around us. There’s an argument that nothing is genuinely new, it’s been done before and you can find an allegory for it the past.

What has always been a problem in this war, has been our acceptance in the collective West, of Russian military might as being unchallengeable.

We, in our foolishness, assigned to Putin’s Russia the same deference we learned in WW2, and the Cold War. Russia was powerful, and essentially militarily unbeatable, because even if it failed it had so many nuclear weapons it would take the world down with it. Putin in his manipulative way, has not been slow in reminding us of that capability.

Russia we say, is a Great Power, yet there is no definition for what a great power is. Certainly in military terms you could call it a great military power, yet in reality what it appeared to be, was not what it actually was.

No war is ever short. Wars end when there’s no means to carry on fighting. Israel and the Arabs found that out in 1973 when in the space of five days Israel alone burnt through $7 billion in equipment when its entire annual national income was just $12 billion. The Arabs were in an even worse state.

Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran was supposed to be a lightning war, it ended up more like WW1 for 8 solid years and neither side gained a single square meter in the end. Iraq only managed to hold on because it received billions in Soviet and Western aid.

So here’s the point. How did much smaller in human terms Iraq, hold out? Iran could have overrun it in 1982/3. The answer is it was able to regenerate its rapidly depleted forces with aid deliveries and weapons. Iran could not, but like Russia now, it did have manpower.

Iraq had allies. Allies who saw it as fighting a proxy war against Islamic fundamentalism and revolution in Iran. It scared the crap out of the Soviets with their Muslim empire and terrified the Arab monarchies whose oil the West depended on. So yes, it had allies. Allies happy to see it fight the war they hoped would overturn the Iranian revolution.

It resulted in a stalemate but Iran was economically hobbled for decades by the cost of it and has never truly recovered. Iraq may have gone down a different road afterwards, and sealed its own fate, but at the time even the draw was seen as a partial victory in the West and Russia.

Russia started its war with Ukraine thinking it would be easy. Putin believed his own propaganda and had clearly no idea how bad corruption inside the army really was, and still is.

Ukraine appeared weak, itself rife with corruption and Russian agents in the military. It spent barely $5 billion a year on defence and most of that was consumed dealing with holding off the Russian’s separatist army in Donbas.

What nobody understood was that Ukraine by 2022, had created the core of an eight year experienced army and it knew how to fight.

Plans had been laid out in how to defend the country in the event of an attack and the military knew to disperse before an initial onslaught and save much of its equipment.

Quickly, despite their initial reticence, Ukraine’s allies started to line up. Biden was more sanguine, apparently stating that ‘I suppose that means I’ve got to deal with Russia swallowing Ukraine’. There was almost nobody who thought Ukraine could win even if they wanted it to.

And yet…some allies were more forthcoming than others. They began to provide enough equipment to hold the line and in late 2022, to actually roll back a huge area of the Russian advance, after they had themselves withdrawn from many areas as their army failed miserably to take Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Yet the reality is these nations in the EU and the US are allies. Over time they came to realise the role they must play, albeit painfully slowly. But they are allies with a shared value, a shared purpose and they all know the cost of failure, finally.

Ukraine suffered losses but it was able, thanks to its allies, to initiate force regeneration through donors, and then through its own domestic efforts in partnership with those very allies who were once solely equipment donors.

The ability to regenerate the machines of war, manufacture its own artillery and missiles has been extraordinarily successful and expands daily. More importantly the creation of a drone industry that clearly is far ahead of Russia’s speaks volumes about the unity of purpose, the stability of government, and public support no matter how wearying the war becomes.

The true Great Powers – a title that should be cast aside in reality for ‘All-Aspect Capable Nation’, in that they have technology, finance, and industrial know how, as well as advanced militaries of their own – even though they are not world class. Countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany. Even the small Baltic States have their own role. They came round to knowing they’re best served financing industries and cooperating with Ukraine, investing in its future, supporting its development and keeping it not just in the fight but potentially able to win it.

Poland has been absolutely key to making sure Ukraine survives and continues to, their willingness to be the gateway for a the vast arms deliveries and trade routes is critical. They have been a supportive ally.

Ukraine therefore has unquestionable allies, allies who understand that it is fighting their fight and they must help it.

What does Russia have?

Its industry has been truly appalling at regenerating the machines of war. It’s had to buy or borrow equipment and copy it from Iran, and when they were in need of air defences during Israel’s attacks, Russia came up with a big fat zero. Not so much allies as mutually self interested cooperatives, each with its own agenda, none of it based on shared values.

North Korea only supplies Russia because it’s raping it for technology and cash. China is doing what it can because of its obsession with its own position. It’s not a real ally in the sense that they would come to Russia’s military rescue. They would help to a point – as long as they were being paid. Besides which they have covetous eyes on Russia’s far east. Russia’s fall would have potential benefits even if it wasn’t entirely desirable. They are at best allies of convenience.

This is Russia’s ally base. They feed on Russia’s pain. They’re not real allies in the same fight for their freedom. None of them have much to fear from outside and none of them need Russia as much as it needs them.

Russia may have managed to reforge its lost manpower but their cost to achievement ratio is beyond the level of dismal. Its real failing has been regenerating its armed forces and making them viable. It has failed in that completely, relying on old technologies that regularly get wiped out in short time by more current Ukrainian drone weapons.

Russia occasionally takes a small lead in drone warfare, but it’s usually by use of overwhelming numbers in an area Ukraine doesn’t expect it. Its only had one seriously breakthrough moment when it used fiber optic drones in Kursk for the first time and sent the Ukrainian defenders reeling. Since then they have become ubiquitous on both sides.

The fact remains that while Russia expends resources on trying to defeat Ukraine at the strategic level, the reality is now that Ukraine is having as much if not more, of an effect on Russia. The scale and pace of its offensive strategic campaign is exponential, and the fact is that that campaign is actually reducing the effectiveness of Russia’s. Russia is not far now from facing the destruction of the very factories that build the weapons it tries to hurt Ukraine with. The day that happens – and its not far off, will be the real marker that the tide of war has permanently and irrevocably changed so that even the Russians can see it.

But it goes far further than just who is winning the war because they have allies. Ukraine is on the cusp of becoming the next, if not the most important country in Europe. The war will end, and when it does Ukraine is going to be in possession of the most cutting edge military on the planet. A force that’s built, developed and operated a drone – and a robot – based army. It will not just know how to build them, it will know how and why to develop them. But most of all it will have incredible resources – because it’s already using Ai drones to analyze and select targets if they’re unable to contact their base operator. Ukraine will possess algorithms and data to power them that no other country on the planet will possess. It will have the key to Ai drone operations and in doing so it will be at the forefront of tomorrow’s military technology.

It will also have the people and the industrial experience, the vital know-how that will be instantly coveted by countries like the United States, who will probably realise all too late that the weapons they promised and never delivered, Ukraine never in the end needed. Their failure to supply even one third of what they promised? It turns out it didn’t matter in the end. Ukraine propelled its military down the only path it could and now its the global leader in that technology.

Ukraine has already revolutionized the next war. Extrapolate is capabilities and its technology and know-how 20 years down the line, investment will pour in, it will be an Ai and military applications titan. Already Zelensky knows this. He sat in the meeting with Trump the other day and offered him Ukrainian drone data – its crown jewels – for Tomahawks. The Americans, still planning yesterday’s war, ignored it.

Now is the time for all these armies in the West to disgorge their old weapons of dubious value – the tank especially because while it isn’t yet totally doomed, like the Dreadnought before it, it is fast becoming obsolete. Would it not be better to hand them to Ukraine before they have no value? At least get something out of them before they rust and become a scrap cost to our public purse?

Ukraine has every advantage, it has allies, it has innovation, it has valuable technology and human know-how. It has fought a major military power to a near standstill with barely a fifth of its resources or industrial base at the start of the war. It has purpose, it has unity, it doesn’t question its right to be free, both democratically and free of corruption and injustice. It knows without question it has no desire to be Russian.

Trump once told Zelensky he didn’t have the cards. he did, He just played them close to his chest, and he had more practice at playing the new game for the new world order. Trump – and his administration – are still thinking in yesterday’s terms. So is much of NATO, but some of them – especially the most threatened and the most flexible have started to see the light. The conventional powers of western NATO will take more convincing with their ingrained military thinking and slow to change mind sets.

Ukraine will win because everything ultimately is going its way, and over time the degree to which that is happening will become unstoppable. Change is happening and Ukraine is driving that change. We haven’t even got close to comprehending how far it will go and the difference it will make. But I would bet my bottom dollar on Ukraine becoming a major power in its own right in the next twenty years. It will change geopolitical outlooks and create a new power centre in Eastern Europe that is long overdue – and the likes of Orban & Lukashenko and the others will be brushed aside as that order is established.

I have no fear at all for Ukraine’s long term future. This war is ultimately theirs to win, and the peace theirs to thrive in. We can embrace it or we can ignore it, at our own peril.

The Analyst

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