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John R. SchindlerHow Ukraine Can WinAs
we are now in a lull in Russia’s war against Ukraine that Vladimir Putin and
his Kremlin began one year ago, it’s time to assess how Kyiv can do better at
war-fighting. Not for want of courage, Ukraine’s efforts to defend its
territory and sovereignty from Russian aggression have been failures, as I’ve
explained many times. I’ve repeatedly counseled Ukraine to emulate how Croatia
in 1991 lost one-third of its territory to Serbian rebels, only to regain
almost all that territory through quick, decisive military operations in 1995.
As a template for strategic success against a more powerful enemy at a
reasonable cost in lives and treasure, Zagreb’s model from the early 1990’s
cannot be improved upon. This
has been met with whining from supporters of failing President Petro Poroshenko
that 1. War is hard, and 2. Russia isn’t Serbia. The latter is true, but it’s
also worth noting that Ukraine is ten times Croatia’s size in population, and
even more so in area. Kyiv has ample resources to conduct defensive war, it
just doesn’t seem to want to. National strength and honor seem lacking to a
worrisome degree. Furthermore, if Poroshenko is not up to the difficult job of
saving his country from Kremlin aggression, he needs to return to the candy
business without delay and make room for a leader who actually wants to fight. Emulating
Croatia today means several specific actions that must be taken, and soon. The
current lull in the Russo-Ukrainian War is temporary. Since people often ask
for specifics, I’m giving them to you. Here is what Ukraine must do if it wants
to not lose even bigger swathes of the country to the Russians, and eventually
regain the land it has already lost to Putin. Think
strategically: This means looking at a map and noting that Ukraine is a very
big country by European standards. Kyiv can certainly trade space for time, and
in the long run time is not on Russia’s side in this war of choice. This means
halting idiotic military moves like “last stands” at places of no strategic
significance like Donetsk airport and Debaltseve, where Kyiv sacrificed
motivated defenders for no reason except Poroshenko, a strategic illiterate,
said so. Any Russian drive to make its Novorossiya fantasy a reality must be
stopped — in practical terms this means turning Mariupol into
Vukovar-on-the-Azov — but this is an achievable strategic goal for Ukraine’s
hard-pressed armed forces. If the Russians can be halted at Mariupol, they can
be halted anywhere. If not, Ukraine is lost. Act accordingly. Zagreb won big in
1995 because it played the long game, both diplomatically and militarily.
Eventually the Kremlin will tire of its noxious proxies in Eastern Ukraine: be
ready to pounce when that happens. Take
intelligence seriously: At present, Kyiv cannot do much of anything in secret.
Moscow’s spies, deeply embedded during the Yanukovych era, when Ukraine’s SBU
was in effect a subset of Russia’s FSB, know all, or nearly so. Operational
security in the Western sense hardly exists. Rigorous counterintelligence is
needed without delay. This task seems daunting but, given patience and
discipline, it can and must be done. In 1991, Yugoslavia’s military
intelligence alone had almost 1,800 agents in Croatia — counting Belgrade’s
civilian security service the true number of Serbian spies easily doubled — but
Zagreb eventually won the all-important SpyWar by taking counterintelligence
seriously. There are other pressing intelligence needs, especially in the area
of electronic warfare, where Moscow’s dominance on the battlefield is almost
total, costing Ukraine’s military many lives, and here Western aid can help
significantly. But there’s not much point in giving Kyiv sensitive gear that
will be passed to the Russians. Ukraine cannot win the war until it bests the
Russians in espionage, and time is wasting. Fight
corruption hard: Ukraine’s fighting troops are already disgruntled by the fact
that their political masters in Kyiv, to include the military’s famously
corrupt generals, are living well while they are dying in misguided operations
that seem doomed to fail. This is recipe for political disaster for Ukraine in
the long run. The situation is so bad that Western charities supporting the
military go around the General Staff and the official chain of command, which
they know steal aid that is intended for the front. Ukraine’s overall
corruption problem is staggering, but institutionalized theft in the defense
sector must be beaten down if Ukraine wants to stop losing lives and territory
to a rapacious Russia. Executions of corrupt generals and politicos, in Beijing
style, pour encourager les autres, would send an indelible message. Rooting
deep corruption of out of the military would have a salutary effect on the
whole country. Spreading the message that corrupt officials are helping Moscow,
and should be dealt with as traitors, is a necessary start. Quantity
has a quality all its own: Ukraine’s military is far too small to defend the
country against Russian aggression, much less win back lost territory. In the
more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s
military devolved into an embarrassing morass of theft and laziness with little
combat capability. This erosion of basic competence in battle has been laid
bare by events around Donbas in recent months. Additionally, Ukraine’s fighting
forces are simply too small to defend the country. Belated efforts to raise the
active military to 250,000 troops, approved in Kyiv this week, are both
unconscionably late and inadequate. Putting anything less than one percent of
the country’s population in uniform, when Ukraine is at war, is frankly a joke
and indicates Poroshenko wants to lose. In the second half of 1991, Croatia
mobilized nearly 200,000 troops from a population of not much more than four
million. That Ukraine is having a hard time coming up with a similar number of
troops from a population that’s ten times Croatia’s speaks volumes about what’s
wrong here. But
quality counts too: Ukraine certainly needs more troops to prevent further
Russian aggression, but it also needs better troops. Some of the volunteer
battalions have shown impressive grit in battle against the Russians, far more
than most regular army units, and properly handled, they might form the core of
Ukraine’s new, improved army. Here the Croatian model again informs. Starting
from basically nothing beyond disarmed Yugoslav-era Territorial Defense
structures, Zagreb built an effective three-tiered army. At the top stood seven
mechanized Guards brigades, staffed with professional soldiers and equipped
with the most modern weaponry the Croats possessed. They were the tip of the
spear in Operation STORM, the biggest European military undertaking since 1945.
At the other end were Home Defense regiments, part-time troops that were
intended for mopping up duties, not high-intensity combat. The bulk of the army
consisted of infantry brigades, a mix of conscripts and reservists, intended
for defense and limited offensive missions. Together, this three-level system
restored Croatian independence and sovereignty, making efficient use of
Zagreb’s limited stocks of modern weaponry. The only thing stopping Ukraine
from doing something similar is a lack of will and imagination. To
sum up, the Russo-Ukrainian War is Kyiv’s to win, if it approaches the future
wisely. The last year has been one of defeat after defeat for Ukraine,
sometimes needlessly. Vladimir Putin has opted for war against Russia’s vast
neighbor, the second biggest country in Europe, and this is now a conflict that
Russia cannot win without a massive invasion and mobilization that would be
politically and economically toxic to average Russians. Therefore the
initiative has passed to Kyiv, if it has the strength and honor to use it. That
will require thinking strategically, turning the espionage tables on Moscow,
and building the right military machine for the war at hand. All this can be
done, but every day that Kyiv does not change course is a further indication
that the Poroshenko government does not really want to win. Kyiv Post, March 8,
2015 |