Two and a half years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, a former part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
The reason for the invasion was geostrategic: Moscow legitimately feared that a hostile force might invade from the west through Ukraine and from the south to the north. This was the case with Napoleon's and Hitler's invasions.
Without strategic depth, Russia has no buffers.
For Russia, the fact that no one was planning such an invasion at the time did not mean much. Geopolitics requires preparing to defend against an enemy before the enemy plans an attack. After all, Moscow was painfully aware that pro-Western powers had backed an uprising that had ousted a pro-Russian president a few years earlier. Western support was based on the fear that Russia would attack Ukraine and eventually the rest of Europe. Neither side's fears were irrational. The assumption by many was that Russia would quickly overwhelm the Ukrainian military and that a swift attack would close the door to US intervention and supplies.
If the logic was sound, the execution was not.
The initial offensive in Ukraine consisted of tanks on multiple fronts, a show of force designed to panic the public. That was also a mistake. Pictures from the early days were full of stationary tanks in a 40-kilometer column on the road from the north, headed for Kiev. Apparently, Russia had not prepared enough space for the storage and delivery of provisions and fuel for the tanks.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's method of attack kept the column from moving as it destroyed tanks from either end, blocking Russia's ability to launch its main strike against the capital, Kiev. In short, the tank columns moved, bogged down and were stopped not far from the borders of Ukraine. The sight of immobile armor defined the war. The powerful army turned out to be full of problems, and Ukraine took advantage. Kiev and the US gained confidence to confront the Russians.
To this we can add a number of failures of Russian intelligence. Moscow did not expect Washington to intervene. But Washington has learned from many wars. The US did not send troops, but it did send the equipment needed to sufficiently, if not definitively, block Russia.
The Kremlin has also overestimated Europe's dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. It was wrongly assumed that Europe, especially Germany, would refuse to cooperate with NATO. Instead, Europe tried – relatively successfully – to find other suppliers and prioritized the transition to green energy. Finally, Moscow misunderstood Ukraine's strategy. The Ukrainian army did not mass its troops to try to break the Russian formations; it divided its forces into small, nimble units empowered to strike where opportunity arose, making concentrated attacks more difficult for Russia.
Critically, near the start of the war, a decision was made to deploy the Wagner Group, a private Russian mercenary group. Not only was the Wagner relied upon more than usual for conventional combat, but the group was placed more or less on a par with conventional Russian forces. This created tension with the Russian military command over vital issues such as the allocation of ammunition. President Vladimir Putin appeared to side with Wagner more than his official military command and wanted to use the mercenaries as a reliable force. However, this drama ended with an attempted uprising by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was pardoned but later died in a plane crash. Naturally, the episode of the war weakened the confidence of the military command.
The point of this summary is to remind us that Russia made a series of mistakes during the war that are related to the events of the last few weeks. From the beginning, Moscow prioritized the capture of cities over the destruction of enemy forces. The former is much more difficult than the latter and requires much more resources. This partly explains, though not entirely, Ukraine's astonishing invasion of Russia. Having failed to capture all of Ukraine, Moscow must now change its strategy or risk an even bigger failure. The decisions made so far have made success impossible. | BGNES
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George Friedman, Analysis for "Geopolitical Futures"
