There’s always a worry in war that things will suddenly turn against you; that the enemy will advance and that you will lose. Ask Winston Churchill or George Washington.
Ukraine, like 20th-century Britain and 18th-century revolutionary America, is fighting for its existence against a more heavily armed power. The key battleground is Donbas, in the east around towns like Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar, where its forces are losing ground against relentless Russian attacks. That’s not to say that all is lost; far from it.
Fortified defensive positions and grinding, attritional offensives have become a defining feature of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The mechanized Ukrainian counter-offensives — and faster Russian retreats — that liberated Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022 saw no echoes in 2023, as Ukraine’s summer offensive smashed into the walls of the Prigozhin line.
Since then, Ukraine has tended to be on the defensive (the Kursk incursion notwithstanding), and Russia on the offensive.
Unfortunately, this transition has favored Russian strategy in the last 12 months. With superiority in firepower and manpower and no qualms about expending both in vast quantities (Britain’s military intelligence says Russia is losing as many as 1,200 men a day, dead and wounded), it has inched further into Donetsk oblast, accomplishing at least some battlefield and political objectives. It has drained Kyiv of manpower, and at least in Bakhmut, forced Ukrainian forces into ill-advised and ill-prepared defensive battles. It lost almost 200 square miles of land in August alone.
These Russian gains have caused some in the West some to call for a ceasefire. Fighting on the back foot also hurts Ukraine’s international prestige and drains the morale of defenders.
Of course, Ukraine will not win the victory it wants in a defensive battle, but it must be victorious where it cannot seize the initiative.
Kyiv should consider reformulating its strategy in Donetsk to focus much more sharply on its own fortified defensive lines. Rather than fighting pitched defensive battles where Ukrainian forces try to blunt Russian offensives while shoving back as much as they can, it could consider turning population centers and military hubs into fortresses.
The shift would be subtle but meaningful. Rather than the positional fighting seen in Toretsk, Niu York, and previously in Bahkmut, Ukrainian forces should hunker down where they can find high ground and choke points.
Read the rest at CEPA.
Michael C. DiCianna is a research assistant at the Yorktown Institute
Dyveke Undertun Aarhus is a freelance journalist reporting in Ukraine, where she has worked extensively for one year. She has also reported from Iraq and Lebanon.
