Understanding the Russia-Ukraine War: Key Dynamics, Phases, and Lessons Learned

· algiegray's blog

Key takeaways:

  1. Traditional battlefield dynamics and well-established concepts in military operations are reinforced in the Russia-Ukraine War.
  2. New capabilities and technologies have not replaced established systems but rather operate alongside them.
  3. Understanding contingency and human agency is crucial for analyzing the war's outcomes.
  4. The war can be divided into two periods: the initial Russian invasion and the long war.
  5. The war has gone through distinct phases based on operations conducted and shifts in initiative.

# Traditional Battlefield Dynamics and Military Concepts

# New Capabilities and Technologies

# Contingency and Human Agency

# Two Wars: Initial vs. Long War

# Periodization of the War

# Lessons Learned

[source](Chapter Six The Russia-Ukraine War Military Operations and Battlefield Dynamics Michael Kofman The Russia-Ukraine War, currently in its third year, with little sign of abating, is the largest conventional armed conflict in Europe since World War II. Although the war aims and scope of the Russian invasion broadly tracked with prewar assumptions, the interaction between Russian and Ukrainian forces during the opening phase of the war did not align with prewar expectations in terms of Russia’s force employment, the concept of operations, the conduct of its initial strike, and the absence of a Russian air superiority campaign, as well as the defense that Ukraine mustered. After the first month of intense combat, the course of the war began to align with historic patterns of large-scale conventional wars, featuring prolonged periods of positional fighting, offensives and counteroffensives, sieges in urban terrain, phases dominated by high levels of attrition, and operations to break through a prepared defense. Although Russia was expected to win relatively quickly but did not do so, overall this war does not fall outside historical trends or expected patterns for large-scale conventional wars.1

Despite the technological innovations employed—from new types of drones to Starlink terminals used for battlefield communication—the Russia-Ukraine War continues to reinforce the importance of several traditional battlefield dynamics and well-established concepts in military operations. The first is the importance of mass and ability to employ forces at scale, which becomes more difficult over time as the quality of the force diminishes and its equipment is attrited. Concentration and dispersal remain challenges in this war, with technological developments driving forces toward dispersal on the defense and making it difficult to concentrate on the offense. Second, the criticality of firepower and attaining a fires advantage over an opponent in order to inflict attrition, shock, and suppression has proved particularly important as the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, from a force structure and doctrine perspective, were organized around the employment of land-based fires (both being successors to the Soviet army, which was oriented around decisive employment of artillery). The third is the process of mobilization and reconstitution by which a society is able to sustain a prolonged conventional war, and also that which turns such wars into contests of endurance between national systems. Fourth, this war reinforces that military strategy remains political in nature, where political considerations and assumptions often tend to reign supreme over military logic and a rationalized view of war that often stems from military sciences.2

This war also illustrates that capabilities tend to have their greatest impact when first introduced at scale but then drive cycles of adaptation and eventual deployment of counters. There are no silver bullets or game changers, although some capabilities can affect the course of an operation by providing a temporary advantage. What mattered most over time was resilience, adaptation, and effective force employment. The war has been broadly fought with traditional 20th-century conventional capabilities, which were enhanced or supplemented (but not replaced or substituted) by novel systems, new forms of communication, and reconnaissance.3 In essence, new capabilities and technologies operated alongside established systems rather than rendering them obsolete, as both sides engaged in cycles of adaptation and iterative learning from each other. It is also worth noting that over time the battlefield dynamics were inherently shaped by defense industrial capacity and the ability to mass-produce ammunition, repair equipment, and deploy new types of systems, such as drones, on a large scale.

Finally, the course of the war demonstrates the importance of understanding contingency and human agency in history. The clearer this history becomes, the more evident it is that the outcomes of key battles, especially early on, were not overdetermined.4 How forces are employed, the introduction of new technologies or tactics, the decisions of commanders and political leaders, along with chance, played a significant role beyond the base correlations of manpower or firepower on the battlefield. This was truer in the earlier phases than during the overall course of the war, however. Strategic factors such as manpower, materiel, money, and mobilization capacity cast a long shadow over the arc of a conflict. As a war becomes more of a marathon and less a race, the material enablers or constraints, state capacity to translate resources into military potential, and other considerations start to become deterministic. Hence any analysis must engage with the inherent tension between the contingency of individual battles or decisions and the structural variables at play. A caveat: there is still a great deal we do not know about this war, including the specifics of individual battles; this chapter represents an early attempt at answering some of those questions based on what is known but over time will need to be refined and corrected as better evidence emerges.

A Tale of Two Wars: The Initial Period vs. the Long War There are two ways of looking at the war: one that separates it into the initial and then follow-on period of war, or another as a series of phases that periodize it based on the operations conducted and shifts in initiative. This chapter will include both, tying them together in terms of the main factors that proved the most salient or decisive in shaping battlefield dynamics. The first lens positions the war as two war periods: the initial Russian invasion, which failed to achieve its objectives, and everything else that followed. From this perspective, the Russia-Ukraine War consists of a “special military operation,” in which Russian forces attempted to conduct a coup de main by decapitating Ukraine’s leadership, isolating Ukrainian forces, and rapidly occupying the country. This operation can be periodized to February 24–March 25, 2022, by which point Russian forces are already withdrawing from Kyiv and beginning to redeploy for a more conventional campaign in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.5

The first period of the war can be judged as deciding whether Ukraine would retain its sovereign status and identity as an independent nation, and the course of the battles in that period stemmed in large part from Russian political assumptions going into the war as well as Ukrainian assumptions in advance of the invasion. The Russian assumptions were that Ukraine could easily be paralyzed and overtaken without the need to plan for a prolonged conflict; the Ukrainian assumptions were that there would be no Russian invasion or that at worst a Russian military operation would focus on Ukraine’s Donbas region rather than an occupation of the entire country. What follows, then, is the “long war,” a traditional, conventional conflict whose overall aim is to determine the geographic boundaries of that state and its economic viability. While Moscow seeks to destroy Ukraine as a state, its minimal war aims are focused on the Donbas, securing “annexed” territory, and undermining Ukraine’s economic potential rather than seeking to install a pro-Russian government in the capital and occupy the country. Moscow seeks to impose its will on Ukraine, but the goals pursued after March 2022 appear revised down from installing a pro-Russian regime and occupying most of the country.

Consequently, the first period of the war is characterized by a Russian effort privileging speed, simultaneity, and shock, which interacted with a Ukrainian mobile defense and positional defense fixed around urban terrain. Many of the battles during the first month of the war were meeting engagements, as Russian forces attacked along numerous axes of advance and Ukrainian forces scrambled to deploy and defend. This intense maneuver phase is not atypical at the start of a conventional war. It then transitioned to a series of campaigns that were broadly defined by set-piece battles, attritional fighting, telegraphed offensives against prepared defenses, and localized counterattacks.

Similarly, an intense period of air combat then led to a degree of mutual air denial as both air forces found ways over time of contributing to tactical engagements or through long-range strike campaigns. Alongside the ground war, a series of skirmishes were fought for control of the Black Sea over the course of 2022 and 2023, determining access to Ukraine’s economically vital ports. Here Russia’s Black Sea Fleet first held the initiative by enforcing a blockade but over time lost it, finding itself displaced from the northwestern parts of the Black Sea and increasingly hunted by Ukraine’s missile strikes when docked in port. The efforts on land and at sea were loosely coordinated, proving to be complementary theaters of war more than integrated efforts. The importance of both was expressed by the father of the Soviet navy, Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, who once wrote that “armies win the war, but navies determine the peace.” The outcome of the contest for the Black Sea may therefore prove the most significant factor in how the war ends and in determining Ukraine’s economic viability. It may also prove a significant source of leverage for one side versus the other in future negotiations.

Periodizing Military Operations A periodization of the war based on the operations conducted yields roughly six distinct phases. These are the initial invasion of February 24–March 25, 2022, the battle for the Donbas of March 25–August 31, Ukrainian offensives between September and November of 2022, the Russian winter offensives between December 2022 and April 2023, Ukraine’s offensive between June and September of 2023, and the follow-on period during which Russia had retaken the strategic initiative from October 2023 through the winter of 2024. This chapter will subsequently explore these periods, but it is useful to lay out first what ties them together: in essence, the arc of the war, from the perspective of military operations and battlefield dynamics.

After the initial Russian invasion failed, the Russian military faced a structural deficit of manpower. This is because it invaded with a peacetime force structure that depended on, but had not conducted, mobilization and had no plan for prolonged sustainment or how to replace major combat losses. Russian forces compensated for this deficit with a significant advantage in firepower, which enabled progress, but that advantage dwindled over time. Ukraine had mobilized first, filling its manning tables and expanding its brigades, which then had manpower to hold trenches or defend cities but lacked munitions. Hence it faced the inverse problem: After the introduction of Western artillery and precision-strike capabilities, Russia’s fires advantage declined, and more importantly Russian forces fired through their ammunition reserves. In the first year of the war, Russia lacked mass but had firepower, whereas the opposite was the case for Ukraine. Ukraine was able to take advantage of an important asymmetry during the fall of 2022, when, after months of attrition, Russian forces lacked manpower and had exhausted their offensive potential.

Mobilization in the fall of 2022 stabilized Russian lines, and Ukraine no longer enjoyed a decisive advantage in manpower, fires, or the capacity to employ forces. However, for much of 2023 Russia had to ration artillery, finding itself with mass but lacking a fires advantage. Consequently, it was successful in mounting a prepared defense but unsuccessful in prosecuting offensives because the force at its base required a combination of mass and fires as the key ingredients in how it operates. Ukraine similarly found itself without a decisive advantage in either manpower or fires in 2023 but with the daunting task of having to pursue a set-piece battle against a prepared defense. This interaction between availability of mass and fires is an important factor in success or failure of operations throughout the war.

No less important was force employment: what the force made of the means it had available. Both sides struggled with employing forces at scale, albeit at first for different reasons. The Russian military took heavy losses in the initial invasion, dramatically degrading its force quality, command capacity, and ability to operate doctrinally. Russian units couldn’t put the pieces back together because the pieces weren’t there, and hence regressed to fighting largely as small packets of either mechanized units or dismounted infantry. Over time the Russian army could replace quantities of manpower and materiel but not regenerate the loss of quality to enable larger-scale operations or greater complexity in how forces were used. This challenge was compounded by growing defenses on both sides, making it difficult to concentrate the force on the offense. Ukraine’s military was oriented around defense in depth and mobile defense from the outset and was centered on brigade structures without higher command echelons (division, corps, army) and thus lacked the experience, command, and logistical layers necessary to employ forces offensively on a larger scale. Brigades did (and still do) much of the planning, integrated horizontally. There were operational command layers above them, but day to day they were not tying the fight together. Force employment constraints and issues stemming from lack of organizational capacity were compounded by significant losses among officers and noncommissioned officers in the Ukrainian military during the first year of fighting.

Consequently, by 2023 both Russia and Ukraine maintained hundreds of thousands of troops along a 1,000-kilometer line of contact but with a circumscribed capacity to conduct offensive operations. This meant in practice that both sides tended to pursue smaller offensive operations, spaced along the broad front, and that major offensives were executed as a series of smaller-scale tactical actions. In 2023, Russian forces restored mass but suffered shell hunger, and they could not establish significant advantages in fires. Ukraine, on the other hand, struggled to establish a localized advantage or, even more importantly, to exploit breaches in order to turn them into breakthroughs. Hence both sides could make incremental gains at high cost, but the tactical situation was often stalemated such that neither side could achieve its objectives in offensive operations during 2023. The lack of relative advantage in mass and fires, combined with a significantly constrained capacity for force employment, offers the better causal explanation for the outcomes observed. This situation will not necessarily continue through 2024, as Russia increasingly holds advantages in manpower, equipment, and ammunition.

Prepared defense remained a major impediment to the successful employment of maneuver warfare. Historically, this is neither a surprising nor an inconsistent finding when reflecting on past conventional wars in which such operations were conducted. Drones, both for reconnaissance and strike, made it even more difficult to mass forces for offensives or to achieve any element of surprise. Land warfare generally favors the defender because it is easier to defend than to attack, but in this context, military technology and tactics further exacerbated this historical tendency. The net effect was an increased cost for offensive action, a reduction in the element of surprise or shock achieved from maneuver-centered operations, and a strong shift toward destruction-based warfare whose leading characteristic is attrition. Both sides struggled with the aforementioned fundamental issues in terms of force quality, being able to organize large-scale operations, and either a deficit of manpower or a deficit of firepower, each of which made it difficult to attain a decisive advantage.

Examining the Initial Invasion The initial Russian campaign proved to be the reconciliation of an unworkable concept of operations, which did not anticipate or plan to engage an organized and sustained Ukrainian defense, pitted against a Ukrainian defensive effort, across several fronts, which also did not anticipate the invasion or its likely vectors of attack. In short, the outcome was highly contingent. Russia’s initial invasion was a heavily leveraged and risky operation, premised on the assumption that a long war could be avoided if its forces executed a coup de main. The underlying political assumption was that the invasion would prove complementary to an extensive subversion campaign and that Russian intelligence had established the necessary conditions for its success.6 Hence, the unconventional warfare component failed first, and subsequently the conventional invasion that hinged on it quickly became unglued.

Russian forces proved vulnerable as they were organized into long columns, tied to roads, and trying to meet tight timetables in an effort to rapidly advance into the country. The overall force was brittle, heavily supplemented by auxiliaries mobilized from the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LDNR) and national guard (Rosgvardia) units and deployed with formations that were at best optimized for a local war of short duration. The plan’s central premise was that Ukrainian leadership could be paralyzed, deployed Ukrainian forces quickly fixed and isolated, and the Russian military would shift to an occupation phase. Much hinged on the ability of the Russian airborne to rapidly insert themselves into the Ukrainian capital, and the eastern and central grouping of forces being able to fully encircle it, thereby removing the Ukrainian government or severing its linkages to the rest of the state. Both the encirclement effort and the rapid insertion effort failed. Similarly, Russian forces tried to bypass major cities in an effort to isolate and blockade them, akin to US “thunder runs” from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but found themselves engaged by Ukrainian brigades and supporting volunteer units. The diffusion of the Russian invasion meant that small leading elements of battalion tactical groups could be outmatched by Ukrainian units that had organized fire support and could make use of the country’s depth to mount an effective mobile defense.

Russian forces advanced rapidly into Ukrainian territory but did not control it, and Moscow was unable to achieve its political objectives at the outset of the war. From an operational perspective, the initial invasion did not reflect how the Russian military trains and organizes to fight in larger-scale combat operations. It featured a very different command-and-control structure, dividing forces into five groupings of forces, with the air support similarly split, and no unity of effort. Spread across different axes, Russian forces were unable to mass, and tied to roads, they did not deploy as combined arms formations in the field. Their support and fires elements often lagged far behind advancing mechanized units. Advancing columns spread into competing directions, increasing the burden on logistics and making it difficult to maintain command and control. Several of the formations were led by the Rosgvardia and riot police, who assumed they would be stabilizing cities rather than facing combat. At this point, a veritable mountain of evidence supports the view that the Russian military was attempting to execute something similar to the seizure of Crimea in 2014, but on a much larger scale, rather than planning for an intense and costly battle with Ukraine’s armed forces.7

That said, Ukraine’s military scrambled from garrisons in the last twenty-four hours before the Russian assault. Ukraine’s intelligence had not assessed the invasion as imminent until the last moments, and the political leadership held firmly to the position that all-out war was unlikely, preventing mobilization until the final week in the run-up to the war.8 Ukraine’s ready formations were largely concentrated in the Donbas, leaving the capital almost completely undefended. An eleventh-hour sortie, ordered by Ukraine’s commander in chief, saved the armed forces from catastrophic losses during the initial Russian strike on February 24, but these units had to hastily meet advancing Russian formations rather than man a prepared defense.9 Ukrainian brigades benefited from an influx of volunteers, auxiliaries, and a mixture of forces that stalled the Russian advance as regular formations mobilized and deployed to mount a defense.

Much of the Ukrainian force was operating independently, defending sectors, and coordinating horizontally between units. This is where Ukraine’s advantage in initiative, junior leadership, and tactical adaptation paid off over the inculcated rigidity of Russian command and control. The Russian invasion sought to make rapid advances, supported by infiltrators, which confused the picture inside Ukraine, making it difficult to manage. Hence there were numerous friendly-fire incidents, as different defending forces lacked rules of engagement and were unsure who controlled what. Western weapons, such as anti-tank guided missiles, proved useful in stalling the Russian advances, but the key factor during this period was Ukraine’s artillery and its ability to concentrate fires against individual Russian units.10 Western intelligence also played a role from the very first hours of the war in providing situational awareness and resilient communications to higher echelons, though it remains unclear how much of a factor this was in aiding the defense nationwide.

The plans and objectives were also kept secret from the Russian troops until the final days, which meant that readiness issues were unresolved, maintenance was unaddressed, and Russian forces were psychologically unprepared for such a campaign. This led to significant losses of armored fighting vehicles during the first days of the invasion due to maintenance issues rather than combat. The problem was particularly acute as the Russian military was based around a partial mobilization model, which meant that readiness and maintenance levels were likely to be padded throughout the force to begin with. Research and fieldwork over the past two years has established that the critical factor in the Russian invasion was less the quality of Russian forces, or intangibles, and more how the force was structured, organized, and employed.11 The latter stemmed from the supremacy of political decision-making over sound military logic or rational force employment.12 When the “special military operation” failed, Russia’s war effort suffered from a strategic misalignment between Russian political objectives and military means. But some of the key battles were quite close, and the invasion could have also gone the other way if Ukraine’s political or military leadership had made a different set of choices during the early days of the war.

The Russian Air Campaign One of the more surprising and confounding areas of performance during the Russian invasion was the weak, or at times seemingly missing, Russian air force.13 The initial strike campaign did not appear to generate the sortie rate or missile expenditure anticipated, while much of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure was left intact because it was not targeted. The overall execution of the Russian strike campaign was also subject to the peculiar political assumptions and constraints that governed the Russian invasion, leading to poor force employment, a divided air force supporting regional groupings of forces, and a campaign that would struggle to provide support if Ukraine’s air defense had managed to disperse and survive the first set of strikes. First, it is important to note that the entire concept behind the Russian operation was incompatible with a prolonged air campaign to attain air superiority. Ukraine was not only the largest country in Europe (not including Russia) but possessed an extensive array of ground-based, radar-guided air defense systems. The overall number of air defense units, much of it legacy capability inherited from the Soviet Union, exceeds that of many countries in Europe combined. Campaigns against much easier targets, such as Iraq or Yugoslavia, suggest that it would have taken several months with the outcome uncertain.

Given Russian assumptions, which drove the military strategy, a prolonged air campaign was not only incompatible in terms of timelines; it was also likely judged to be unnecessary. An air superiority campaign would eliminate the element of surprise for the ground-force invasion, which in turn meant that Ukraine could have months to mobilize resistance or fortify population centers. The United States or other countries would then have time to attempt an intervention or significantly arm Ukrainian forces. Russia’s invasion was premised on being able to catch Ukraine relatively unprepared, and it is difficult to see how that could have been accomplished with weeks or months of preparatory strikes. The central organizing Russian assumption was that Ukraine would collapse quickly and that a demonstrative strike campaign, a cheaper version of “shock and awe,” would be sufficient to achieve this.

The Russian Aerospace Forces focused on suppression of Ukrainian air defense, ground support, offensive counter-air, and massed long-range strikes.14 There was a unified strike campaign integrating missile strikes from a diverse array of platforms (air, land, and sea), and Russian forces did strike many of the known Ukrainian air defense sites. Russian airstrikes were supported by electronic warfare to suppress Ukrainian early warning and fire-control radars during the init)