Ukraine wages three wars. Why fight against Russia not only with weapons in your hands

To win the war, it is not enough to defeat Russia on the battlefield - efforts are also needed in other areas. About how Ukraine has to fight on three fronts, says British international security expert Mark Galeotty.

The Ukrainian offensive began, but if we are going to try to consider its progress, we need to understand that Kiev actually wages three wars in one: kinetic, which is conducted on the battlefield, political within Russia and other political - the struggle for maintaining the support of the Western Alliance.

In all three wars, the time is likely to be in favor of Moscow, even if the short and strange rebellion of the leader of the Wagner mercenaries is also a reminder of how unpredictable events on Earth can be. The Ukrainian forces entered the battle on the broad front, gaining limited territorial conquests. However, this is the least important way to measure success.

The wars will be won by breaking the will or ability of the other party to continue the struggle, and Ukrainians clearly try to do two things: to identify weaknesses in the Russian defensive line and try to force Moscow to expand their reserves so that it has less flexibility in the future. To this end, they began to deploy some of their best strength.

In recent weeks, social networks have appeared images of burned armored vehicles M2A2 Bradley, supplied by the United States, and German tanks Leopard 2. However, at the time of text writing no more Still ready and waiting. Ukrainians have almost 500,000 soldiers, together with a reserve. Some of them have undergone Western training (especially within the British Operation Interflex Program) while others have difficult combat experience.

Although some Ukrainian units are equipped with Western tanks and long -range artillery, approximate figures of attacking and defenders or comparing their equipment are not adequate capacity and capacity. Currently, Ukrainians have demonstrated the ability to overlay enemies and, while maintaining the initiative, can decide where to direct their attacks.

They have the advantage of internal communications: by fighting in their own territory, they can throw forces in hours or days, while for Russians it can take days or even weeks. It seems that two potential southern axes are increasingly decisive: one because of a vital Tokmak transport knot and then Melitopol, the other - towards Mariupol, whose three -month siege of which last year made it a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

If the Russians turn the forces from other fronts to strengthen their defense along these lines, they run the risk of getting one or two blows they suffered last year. In September, Ukrainians began an attack on Kherson in the south, and when the Russians moved their lines to repel it, they hit Kharkiv in the north. Faced only with disparate and skeletal defense, they were able to win over 4,000 square miles of occupied territory.

Lowing against Ukrainians, the Russians have at least 300,000 soldiers - a mixture of dissatisfied mobilized reservists, gun meat from prisoners, mercenaries and experienced regular formations. They were well entrenched: Moscow knew that there would be a counter -offensive, and prepared as she could withstand a storm. Until recently, they did not use this fully, the Russians mostly control the sky and have a significant advantage in artillery systems.

Russia also took out the war lessons, even if it lacks flexibility and initiative from the bottom up, as Ukrainians. Attacks by "human waves" and the willingness to destroy entire cities may seem very medieval, but this tactic has its own cruel logic. For example, Russian commanders used prison recruits to exhaust Bakhmut's defenders and make them open their positions for artillery and aviation strikes.

Supported by heavy artillery and bombers, the tanks of Russian troops can be determined in defense - but will they be? The great unknown is their morality. Many of these troops did not convince the narrative that they were conducting an existential struggle for the survival of the Motherland in the face of Hegemonist America, which uses Ukraine as proxy for their imperialist purposes.

Although information about "detachables" - units deployed in the rear, which is instructed to kill anyone who is trying to escape or retreat - is not currently confirmed, great fear for Russian commands is that individual units can scatter and span, and it will be spread along the entire front line. Obviously, the main Russian military purpose is to keep the front line as far as possible.

Putin, despite all his obvious unwillingness to look in the facts in the eyes, must realize that he can no longer dream that Ukrainian troops run before the triumphant attack of Russia. Instead, his only chance of success is political, to survive the combat capability of Ukrainians and the willingness of the event to continue to provide military and financial assistance for billions of dollars on a monthly basis.

Therefore, he believes that he wins without losing until he retains his position on Ukrainian soil. All wars are, after all, political acts. Therefore, this war can not be won by killing every Russian soldier or even expelled from every square inch of occupied Ukrainian territory. Even such cardinal successes would only move the front line to the state border.

While Putin is determined to fight, he can continue to shoot missiles in Ukrainian cities, to cyberattacks on Ukrainian critically important national infrastructure and to regulate his forces for a new attack in a month, a year or if he has been so long - decades.

Even if Ukraine is admitted to NATO, it will not interfere with non-military aggression, and in any case, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that the NATO NATO Summit in Vilnius in Vilnius Ukraine would not be invited to access. Therefore, for Kiev is the ideal hope for a "spectacular", obvious and striking victory in the offensive this summer.

Most likely, it will be achieved if you go through the occupied Zaporizhzhya region, possibly through Melitopol or Mariupol, to cut the so -called "land bridge", a road and rail connection that connects Crimea with the mainland of Russia, and thus take the peninsula siege. Crimea is connected to Russia by the Kerch Bridge 12 miles, but it was once cut off by a truck explosion, and it will be vulnerable to Ukrainian missiles.

Without the Moscow bridge, she would be entrusted to unreliable ships and aviation to provide Crimea from all - from food to reinforcements. It is believed that this, for its part, will make the long -term Russian defense of Crimea incapable. Crimea is important to the Russians as the rest of the occupied Ukraine, despite the rather surreal annexation of Putin in September, four regions - Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhia, which were not even under the full control of Russia.

Regardless of whether the Russian people will consider the loss of the peninsula as a basis for the Kremlin's storm (there is good reason to doubt it), Putin, as a person who saw the collapse of not one but two authoritarian regimes around him (East Germany and the Soviet Union), It may not want to risk it. Of course, Putin now refuses to accept any assumptions that he may be ready to negotiate on the future Crimea.

Indeed, after the main propagandist Margarita Simonyan suddenly suggested that "it would be so good to stop bloodshed right now, to stay where we are, to freeze it and to carry out referendums" in the occupied territories, putting into question whether Russia is needed "territory where people do not want to live with us, " - Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was forced to warn that" there is no foundation "with Ukraine now," there is no basis, even fragile to build a dialogue.

" However, both in some western capitals and in certain circles of the Ukrainian political elite, there is hope that, according to one optimistic Ukrainian official, "Putin may consider Crimea's departure by negotiation less dangerous to him than his displacement without an agreement. " It should be said that it is premature to think about such terms.

It is still unknown whether Ukraine can punch the Russian front and then direct enough strength to use such a breakthrough, not to mention the attack on Crimea, which would be a very difficult military target. It seems that only serious Ukrainian success in the battlefield can force Putin into any negotiation. Another political war or at least another struggle continues: to stimulate and motivate the Western Alliance to support Ukraine.

Without a constant receipt of not only weapons, but also ammunition and, equally important, financial assistance to support the economy at living standards, it would be much more difficult for Kiev to continue the struggle. Recently, a Ukrainian official told me that "if we had, we would fight Molotov's cocktails or Golloir. " This is really the case, but these weapons will be less effective than Abrams or Himars tanks.

Despite the repeated mantras that support will continue "as much as it will be needed" and the rejection of the concept of "fatigue from Ukraine" is true that there are true differences in the West about how best to cope with the war that is desirable. The ultimate goal and how much can and should continue to write off checks for Ukraine. So far, this was a relatively affordable war for the United States.

Europe's rejection of Russian natural gas has opened new markets for the US LNG, and most of the weapons costs to compensate for supplies to Ukraine is directed to domestic producers. A completely different situation in Europe, which is fighting recession, caused by Germany's economic problems.

There are hawks of nations such as Poland and the Baltic countries; Mediterranean countries that see a greater threat from the Middle East and North Africa; France Emmanuel Macron, who obviously sees in the crisis the opportunity to assert France's leadership on the continent; and Hungary Victor Orban, who wants to stay away from the struggle at all. Again and again, even officials in the Columbia County told me that Ukraine needs to demonstrate a "return of investment".

This sufficiently devoid of the phrase is the realization that the coalition can start pressure, if the conflict looks as if it enters a dead end like an "eternal war" that depletes resources that national governments want to spend on everything from everything, from everything from social security to tax reduction.

Proponents of the case of Ukraine, who were eager to talk about the likelihood of fast, dramatic victories, did not make any service in Kiev, and since then the Ukrainian government has sought to soften the expectations. Despite this, this summer offensive is partly an attempt to demonstrate that Ukraine has a momentum to achieve serious success and thus help its friends in the West to maintain a coalition and expand it to cover both new systems they need- with F- aircraft.

16 on the horizon is now to maintain the existing level of support. *** In all three wars, the faster the successes of Ukraine, the better its prospects. It is close to complete mobilization and cannot replenish its human losses as easily as Russia, whose population is three times higher than the Ukrainian. The exhaustion war is likely to play in favor of the strengths of Russia, not its weaknesses.

In the absence of dramatic changes in the situation, the Russian people are likely to get used to the conditions of war, and despite the early (and too optimistic) expectations of the West on the rapid collapse of the Russian economy under pressure from sanctions, Kremlin will be available to fight for a year or two.