The Donbas Offensive: A Dumb War with Smart Bombs
To picture what’s coming in the Donbas, try to put yourself in the head of the average Russian soldier.
You don’t want to be here. You’ve been sent to a place for reasons you know are false (stop an imaginary genocide, keep the peace). You know what happened to tens of thousands of your fellow soldiers in and around Kiev, and you know who was lost (you don’t need the BBC to do an in-depth analysis and tweet it at you: you’ve heard the whispers along the grapevine that spetsnaz operatives and airborne divisions — the best of the best — were obliterated). You get poor direction, micro-managed really (because leadership doesn’t trust its own soldiers): drive here, bomb that, advance, shoot, etc. etc. If you refuse, you get court-martialed. If you comply, you fear you will be concussed to death and your body cooked inside your own tank.
Russian military leadership instinctively knows all this, even if they don’t want to admit it out loud. What options does that leave?
It leaves terror. Bucha may have been an aberration — the actions of individuals operating without a chain of command; but Mariupol and Kramatorsk were decidedly not. Indiscriminate civilian deaths are clearly on the table for Russia — the cynical use of cluster munitions “For the kids!!” shows how dirty Russia is willing to fight. Terrify the population; break the will to fight. Fortunately / unfortunately, Ukrainians show no sign of preferring subjugation to death from above. Despite that, this tactic will likely be an ongoing part of the Russian offensive.
Kramatorsk reflects another tactic that doesn’t require the ability to execute effective maneuvers with soldiers scared of their own shadows: ballistics. Park a rocket battery far from live action and fire away. Send missiles. If you’re not afraid to venture into Ukrainian airspace, drop bombs from a great height. Scorch the earth, then send in troops when it seems safe to do so.
The fixed lines of the eastern front, then, seem like more of an even match than the logistically complicated reality of seizing Kiev. All Russia has to do is hammer away at the trenches and other fortifications of a less mobile opponent. The fact that this is a “better” war for Russia should be a source of shame to all Russians, but I’m not sure folks like Lavrov or Peskov or Putin or Medvedev would recognize shame if it slapped them in the face.
This is World War One all over again, a brutal stalemate where two sides simply try to bury each other under the weight of hardware dropped from the sky (even if some of that hardware is much more technologically advanced). And stalemate is a good option for Ukraine, sadly enough. If Russia can gain ground steadily — not even quickly, but steadily — it can still “win” the war. If Russia can unite the eastern parts of the country, it will eventually succeed in squeezing the entire country, even if it takes decades to complete. Ukraine has to hold Russian forces in the east long enough to join the EU or NATO or both. Russia has left Ukraine no other viable choice. As long as Ukraine sits in the no man’s land between the nuclear umbrellas, it is at risk of destabilization.
And even NATO membership might not save it, if the US elects a president in 2024 who undermines the treaty alliance. That is all too real a possibility. It is also Russia’s greatest hope for its true aim: undermining US influence in global affairs. If Russia can get cynical authoritarians like Putin elected to the heads of the great democracies, then resentment, spite, and naked power can wash away whatever foundation of international law still exists today. That is the world Putin evidently is comfortable with — one where hit squads are free to roam the globe dispatching anyone who challenges the strongmen plundering the world’s resources. What a lovely vision — a world with no real security, only fear, and a desperate need to hold power and/or get along to get along under threat of death. Global serfdom.
Our best hope against that depressing dystopian dream is the intense resolve of the Ukrainian soldier. His (and her) inner landscape is entirely different: they are 1,000x more motivated than their Russian counterpart. If their Russian counterpart is half-heartedly fighting out of fear, they are fighting with purpose and clarity. They are fighting out of righteous anger and contempt — far better motivators. They are competent — executing precision strike after precision strike, even when firing conventional artillery (don’t take my word for it — the videos are out there and not hard at all to find). They are also clearly getting very good direction from their leadership.
If anyone can find a way around and through the dumb war about to unfold, it’s the Ukrainian military, which I have to admit: I underestimated when this all began. I had the same picture of Ukraine as Russia did: a poor, backwards country.
How wrong we all were is the one silver lining in all of this. Ukraine has shown its colors, and they are bright. Not only are they a cohesive society, they’re also a tolerant one, proudly following a Jewish-Ukrainian President into a war they know they simply can’t lose. They’re organized and disciplined. They are everything Russia is not, and that must rankle Putin to no end. No country can rise to greatness under the boot of a bald-faced hypocrite and his coterie of corrupt, violent, dishonest lackeys. In his attempt to restore Russian glory, he has merely confirmed how badly he has bankrupted whatever spirit Russia ever had. He has destroyed two countries. One can — with great pain and sacrifice — be rebuilt. The other is likely beyond repair for generations.
In that sense, Ukraine has won the spiritual war many times over. Let’s hope they can win the dumb physical war about to begin, and let’s hope we have the resolve ourselves to stay true to the principles they are fighting to uphold.
