Russia Can't "Win" In Ukraine Because It's Breakthrough Mobility No Longer Exists

To 'win,' Russia must seize more Ukrainian territory than it currently occupies. To seize more territory, it must be able to advance in ways that enable breakthroughs that drive Ukrainian forces back. To accomplish that, Russia must have fast moving, mechanized mobile units. 

And therein lies Russia's problem: that mechanized mobility no longer exists. It has been squandered in multiple, heedless assaults across a variety of sectors in response to Kremlin demands for 'victories' by unachievable deadlines. The implication is that without those tanks, fighting vehicles, trucks and mobile artillery, Russia has been unable to advance in any meaningful, strategic manner for months, if not a year. And it shows no sign of being able to do so anytime soon. JL 

David Axe reports in Newsweek:

To win, by any rational definition, Russia must capture more of Ukraine than the 20% it currently occupies. At the least, Russia must consolidate control over Donetsk and Luhansk. (But) it's miles away from achieving even this modest aim. Advancing is increasingly difficult for the Russian and North Korean force in Ukraine - and only vanishingly likely. For one main reason. The forces Russia depends on for swift marches deep into Ukraine are an endangered species on this mine-seeded, drone-patrolled front line. Russia's tanks, tracked fighting vehicles, mobile howitzers and supply trucks don't exist anymore. It vexes the Russians because they cannot "win" without gaining ground. Merely containing Russian forces is a significant victory for the Ukrainians and Ukraine is in a much better position to resist Russian attacks today than it was in early 2024. 

As the war in Ukraine grinds through its fourth year, Russian military might is a shadow of what it was on the eve of the invasion. Its mechanized forces, central to its strategies for victory, are bleeding out and now include museum-grade military trucks, civilian cars, vans, all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles ... and even donkeys. This is not a force poised for victory.

To win, by any rational definition of the term "win," Russia must capture more of Ukraine than the 20 percent of the country it currently occupies. At the very least, Russia must consolidate control over the biggest oblasts in eastern Ukraine: Donetsk and Luhansk. It's still tens of miles away from achieving even this modest aim.

Advancing those tens of miles is increasingly difficult for the roughly half-million-strong Russian and North Korean force in Ukraine—and only vanishingly likely as Russia's wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 38th month.

This photograph taken on Aug. 16, 2024, during a media tour organized by Ukraine, shows a destroyed Russian tank outside Ukrainian-controlled Russian town of Sudzha, Kursk region. YAN DOBRONOSOV/AFP via Getty Images

 

And that's for one main reason. The kinds of forces the Russian military traditionally depends on for swift marches deep into enemy territory are becoming an endangered species on the mine-seeded, artillery-pocked, drone-patrolled front line—700 miles or more from north to south—of the terrifically bloody wider war 

Russia's regiments and brigades of tanks, tracked fighting vehicles, mobile howitzers, and lots and lots of supply trucks simply don't exist anymore. For generations of Russian planners, "the aim was to penetrate [the] enemy front line and follow this with a powerful mechanized second echelon that exploited the initial breakthrough," Dutch army officer Randy Noorman wrote for West Point's Modern War Institute.

Those plans may now be completely trampled by the wayside, now.

 

Advancing many miles per day into the lightly defended rear of the enemy's shattered front-line forces requires protected mobility. But that protected mobility may have been rendered largely obsolete by weapons old and new: artillery and mines that haven't changed very much in 100 years, and explosive drones that are being deployed on a scale that practically no one imagined just a few years ago.

Mines, artillery, and especially drones are now so dense along the front line that tanks and other armored vehicles "simply don't reach the line for launching an attack," according to one Russian military blogger. They get blown up miles from enemy positions.

While it's a problem that afflicts both sides, it vexes the Russians more than it does the Ukrainians, because the Russians cannot "win" without gaining ground. By contrast, merely containing Russian and allied forces represents a significant victory for the Ukrainians. Hold the Russians at their current positions and Ukraine's government, economy, and culture—and potential for future military action—would endure.

While it's true the Russians made meaningful gains in eastern Ukraine early last year during an abrupt—and temporary—freezing of U.S. aid that deprived Ukrainian forces of urgently needed ammunition, a year later, the Ukrainians have replenished their ammo stocks, secured new European supply lines and even broken ground for new munitions factories in Ukraine (though there is a recent report that one of them has been destroyed). Even as American intransigence deepens under President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, Ukraine is in a much better position to resist Russian attacks today than it was in early 2024. Every Russian attack meets a avalanche of firepower.

 

The numbers tell the story. As the war lurched into its fourth year, Russian losses of tanks, fighting vehicles and other heavy equipment had exceeded 20,000, according to the analysts at the Oryx intelligence collective, which confirms each loss with imagery from the front line. That's more vehicles than the British military has in its entire inventory.

New production adds just a few hundred fresh vehicles a month. The Russians have recovered thousands of Cold War vehicles from rust-stained storage yards; but even these once-plentiful stocks are running low. In 2022, Russia had 2,700 old MT-LB armored tractors in storage. By now, it's already sent most of them to Ukraine—and written off nearly 1,300 of them, according to Oryx.

As of last year, Russia intended "to initiate further offensive operations to make significant—if slow—gains on the battlefield," according to Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, analysts with the Royal United Services Institute in London. These gains were "intended to be used as leverage against Kyiv to force capitulation on Russian terms."

That didn't happen. And it's even less likely to happen this year or next as Russian losses deepen.