How Ukraine can Win under Constraints
Ukraine’s never ending hunt for incremental policy changes
The two-and-a-half-year war waged by Putin against Ukraine continues to yield mixed results for both sides. It is almost as if we are witnessing a seesaw contest between them.
Ukraine has no logical reason to be in this situation, as Western powers have the strength to bring this war to a swift end, but they refuse to exercise their own power. Similarly, Russia continues to defy all logic, somehow finding a way to stall an economic collapse while discovering new avenues to fund and continue its imperial conquest.
Ukraine’s biggest strength is the support it receives from Western powers, but they are also Ukraine’s biggest weakness as they continue to stifle its progress on the battlefield. They do this either by placing restrictions on how Ukraine can respond in combat or by limiting the types of weapons supplied to Ukraine. These constraints, along with bureaucratic delays, continue to increase the costs that Russia imposes on Ukraine.
So, what are some of the options Ukraine has to win the war under these constraints?
Ukraine needs to look long term and aim to reach a position where it can have more impact on its own future rather than allowing external players to influence its trajectory. They need to generate revenue and invest that money to protect their freedom.
Control of the Black Sea will be of paramount importance. There is no greater obstacle to achieving this objective than Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and Russian control over Crimea.
As long as these two are addressed, the rest of the problems can be managed. It might be painful and long, but it will keep Ukraine on the path to victory. So far, Ukraine has displayed a clear understanding of this requirement. They are demining the western Black Sea while upgrading their drones to mine the eastern end of the Black Sea.
The Russians have started moving their assets spread across Crimea closer and closer to the Kerch Strait. Since they do not have enough air defense strength to protect all of Crimea, they are concentrating their forces in sections near the Kerch Strait. This will provide Ukraine with a clear cluster to target. The enemy is responding to Ukraine’s deep fire strategy. Now it will be incumbent upon Ukraine to respond to this development and continue to reduce the Russian military’s operational footprint in Crimea.
It took Ukraine almost a year to dictate terms in Crimea. The pressure is on the Russians to protect their tenuous hold in Crimea. Ukraine has the right weapons: the American-supplied ATACMS missiles, homemade Neptune missiles and naval drones, and the long-range Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles offered by Britain and France. These can all help Ukraine keep the Russian forces in Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet in check, preventing them from expanding.
By refusing to relent, Ukraine can protect its maritime corridor and continue exporting its products through the sea. As a result, they will continue to generate revenue and strengthen their economy.
The expectation is Russia is going to increase the interest rate further in order to tame inflation. Double digit inflation is a crippling phenomenon. I do expect the Russian central bank to raise the interest rates. They do not have a choice. The sooner they do it the better.
The Russian economy is weakening, while Ukraine’s economy is strengthening. Things have become so dire in Russia that master strategist Vladimir Putin told Yuri Kovalchuk, the personal banker for senior officials of the Russian Federation, including President Putin, and now the head of the Russian Accounts Chamber, that there is not much money to spend and everyone must stay disciplined.
Putin wants the society he turned into a corrupt entity to establish his dictatorship to abandon corruption so that his dictatorship can survive. I am not surprised that Putin allowed this message to be recorded and released to the public. That is how bad things have become. Russians have reached the point where they do not find it uncomfortable to tell everyone that money is tight and they are running from paycheck to paycheck.
Now would be the best time for the Western world to increase pressure on the Russian economy and bring the war to a swift end. Barrel for barrel, they should have flooded the world with an alternative supply of oil to replace Russian oil.
But I have no doubts whatsoever that they will respond with nothing. They will not even make public statements. It has gone way beyond that stage. The Western world had two and a half years to ramp up additional supply and wean the world off consuming Russian oil. They never did, and we have no countermeasures to extract or exploit the advantage that is staring us in the face.
The end result of this inaction is that Russia is still exporting the same amount of oil as it did before the war. They are almost there or slightly above pre-war export levels. The sanctions and other measures enacted by the West have increased the cost of oil exports for Russia and, in some cases, reduced their market price. All the West has done is shave the margins Russians enjoyed in the past. Russia is not on a path of demand reduction, which was and still is the easiest way to stop the war.
Ukraine needs to use its long-range drones to sanction Russian oil exports and storage units. Both sides, Ukraine with its long-range drones and Russia with its long-range missiles, have the ability to inflict punitive damage on each other. However, both sides refuse to unleash the full power of their arsenals due to fear of retaliation. They do not want to escalate the conflict.
It’s like, ‘I know your weakness, you know mine. Let us keep hitting each other under a threshold. If you hit me hard, I will hit you hard.’ It is a tenuous and unsustainable position. Ukraine has long-range drones but has steadfastly refused to create the type of havoc they unleashed on Russian refineries in the last two weeks of March 2024. During that period, Ukraine hit and hurt Russia’s refineries almost every day.
Ukraine still produces hundreds, if not thousands, of drones daily, but they are not sending them towards Russian refineries. Russia has hundreds of missiles but is still not firing them deep inside Ukraine.
Ukraine is most likely holding back as they wait for additional long-range air-defense systems to arrive. Only one out of the promised five units has arrived. It is not a bad decision for Ukraine to wait it out, but they are in this situation because of bureaucratic delays by the West.
On the one hand, the West continues to restrict Ukraine from using the weapons as they see fit, and on the other, they take forever to deliver what they promised. Putin gets his sanctuary and the time to enact his countermeasures. He continues to fight a Ukrainian army that is forced to operate several levels below its optimal capacity.
Ukraine has to reduce its dependency on Western partners for its combat power. They need to adjust their westward posture and add a strong layer of Lookup Policy.
They must tightly integrate their future with the Baltic nations. Together, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia can do a lot. Their combined GDP is around $321 billion. The Baltic states need trained F-16 pilots and crew, as does Ukraine. The Baltic states need a robust training program for their ground forces, as does Ukraine. The Baltic states need to manufacture their own weapons, as does Ukraine.
Why not create a mechanism that taps into their collective strength? Let Ukraine extract as much benefit from this alliance upfront and pay it back with interest in the future. If North Korea has the gall to send non-combat troops to occupied Ukraine, there is a lot of heavy lifting the Baltic nations can do by working closely with Ukraine.
It will help all the nations while creating a strong deterrent for Russia on its western border. It would be ideal if Finland could also join this coalition of nations that share a land border with Russia, but that is for another day. However, the option to add Finland should be explored as well. We need a mini-NATO: Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
This is one area where I feel Ukraine has not done enough. They continue to view the Western world as a monolithic entity. Instead, they need to break it into smaller segments and develop separate strategies to advance their interests.
It’s time for a mini-NATO.
Not only with the Baltic states, but Ukraine should also tell its Western partners that whenever there is an option to place an order for weapons with a European company or a Ukrainian company, priority must be given to Ukrainian firms.
Ukraine’s weapons production capacity must be maximized.
Although Ukraine can invest in various areas, it needs to invest heavily in its long-range missiles. The steady erosion of Russian air-defense capabilities has made Russia extremely vulnerable to long-range attacks
Ukraine needs to match Russia’s missile production, number for number. Reports indicate that Russia is building 100 to 130 missiles per month. This should be the target Ukraine aims for. Currently, Ukraine has one system, their Neptune missiles, but they will need to increase this capacity as well. Long-range attack missiles should receive the utmost attention.
Ukraine does have a missile program; it only needs the funding to accelerate it. They should find a partner willing to support their missile program. Alternatively, they could engage the Finland and Baltic group, ask them to pre-order these missiles, and use that money to invest in production capacity. They could then build the missiles, use them, and export them to clients in the future.
This requires some adjustments in Ukrainian planning.
There is a reasonable chance that Ukraine will continue to face self-imposed Western restrictions on how it conducts the war. They have the ATACMS missiles, but we do not know how many, nor do we know if the United States will continue to supply them in large quantities. What we do know is that Ukraine can use them against targets in occupied territories but not against Russian airfields used by Russian pilots to launch their sorties.
The situation is similar for long-range missiles supplied by Great Britain and France. Both nations have stated that Ukraine is free to use them as it sees fit. However, I am not convinced by their public statements. To this day, not a single Storm Shadow missile has been fired at targets inside Russia. This suggests some form of restriction or refusal.
The worst mistake the West has made — and the reason I started writing this story — is the fact that Ukraine will receive more F-16s but fewer pilots to fly them. Their offensive capacity has been severely restricted by the Western world. There is global capacity to train hundreds of F-16 pilots every year, yet fewer than 50 Ukrainian pilots have been trained in the past year. The Western world has yet to take action to address this issue. Only France has agreed to train around 24 pilots for its Mirage jets.
It seems there is some behind-the-scenes effort to keep Ukraine’s combat power in check and prevent it from growing at an extremely rapid rate. This war could easily be brought to an end within the next six months, but to achieve that, the West needs to provide the right weapons at scale.
To give a hypothetical example, consider what might have happened if the Western world had supplied the following in December 2022:
- 12 long-range air-defense systems with 1,000 air-defense missiles
- 2,000 ATACMS missiles, covering the full range from minimum to maximum.
- Equipment and weapons for ten each of mechanized, infantry, armored, artillery, and air-defense brigades
This would have cost the Western world between $40 billion and $60 billion, depending on the lethality and sophistication of the brigades. Over the past two and a half years, the net cost of military equipment and weapons supplied to Ukraine has exceeded $250 billion.
The reason for this is that the West either supplied the weapons late or provided them at the lower end of Western capability. As a result, the overall cost of weapons supplied to Ukraine continues to rise, but the desired results are not being achieved. The war drags on, and the opportunity for Ukraine to end it keeps slipping from one month to the next.
Ukraine will forever be beholden to the Western world’s incremental policy updates, which appears to be an unfixable problem. The best way forward is to start making adjustments in weapons procurement. Ukraine needs to build more weapons, identify partners willing to supply all types of weaponry, and work closely with them.
They should keep their economy on a growth path by containing the Black Sea Fleet, significantly ramp up the production of long-range missiles, and use them to constrain Russia’s oil revenue. Additionally, Ukraine should continue mobilizing and fill its ranks with as many ground troops as possible.
Victory is still within reach for Ukraine, despite Western reluctance to allow Ukraine’s combat power to reach its full potential. They achieved success in the Black Sea; now they need to apply that success to their deep fire strategy.
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