Ukraine Can Win the War. But the Cost May Be Too High for the West.
Western military officials offer sobering assessment of what would be needed
BUCHAREST—Ukrainian leaders have vowed to retake all territory occupied by Russia, prompting a debate over what would be necessary for Ukraine to win and evict Moscow’s forces.
The answer is primarily military because Russia is only going to abandon its hard-won gains if its troops suffer catastrophic losses, military strategists say. Behind those talks about weapons and ammunition is a deeper political question as Ukraine’s battlefield fortunes rely heavily on the willingness of Western governments to continue their multibillion-dollar military assistance to Kyiv.
And pushing Russian forces out of the entrenched positions they hold in more than 15% of Ukraine’s territory will require an even greater flow of military support—possibly more than the West is willing and able to bear.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told The Wall Street Journal last Monday that the U.S. would support Kyiv in recovering territory Russia has grabbed since launching its large-scale invasion on Feb. 24, suggesting that Washington might not back Ukraine militarily in retaking areas that Russia seized in 2014, including the Crimean Peninsula.
Other Ukraine allies are adamant that Kyiv must win back all its lands.
“Anything less than a Russian defeat in Ukraine will embolden Moscow and other authoritarian powers,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström during a visit to Washington this past week.
Senior officials from Ukraine’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization predict the war likely will end at a negotiating table. But “what happens around that table is absolutely linked to the situation on the battlefield,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a recent meeting of foreign ministers in Bucharest.
“So it may sound like a paradox, but the reality is that the best way to achieve a lasting, durable peace in Ukraine is to provide military support to Ukraine,” he said.
That military support includes urgently needed air-defense systems to protect Ukraine from drones and missiles that Russia is using to demolish Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and threaten to spark a humanitarian crisis as winter sets in. Western governments in Bucharest pledged to deliver more equipment, and faster.
Newsletter Sign-up
What’s News
Catch up on the headlines, understand the news and make better decisions, free in your inbox every day.
On the more traditional battlefield, Ukraine needs ammunition, weapons systems and more training for troops, as well as nonlethal aid such as medical equipment and body armor. Allies are providing all of those things, but not at levels Ukraine says it needs to achieve more success against Russian troops quickly.
Asked what Kyiv would require to prevail, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba declined to give specifics in Bucharest. “You cannot calculate the amount of weapons needed to win a war,” he said. But in the NATO meetings, which he attended, all allies agreed “that Ukraine has to receive everything that is needed to win,” he said.
A more fundamental issue, diplomats involved in the talks say, is what precisely the various parties mean by winning.
“The West has to ask itself a question: What is the end goal?” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said after the meetings.
He said U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan had “a very good formula” when he said during the summer that Washington’s goal was to ensure that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine didn’t become a success for President Vladimir Putin, but a strategic failure instead.
“I don’t see a way for Russia to lose strategically and maintain occupied territories,” said Mr. Landsbergis.
Evicting Russian troops from Ukraine would entail a military assault beyond the current capacity of Kyiv’s forces, military specialists say. Many of Moscow’s troops have had months or years to fortify their positions or are in locations that are difficult to attack without suffering massive casualties.
Taking territory from an entrenched enemy requires what military leaders call combined-arms tactics, mixing big guns, armored vehicles, infantry and air support, all closely coordinated and supported by detailed intelligence. Standard military doctrine holds that to dislodge an enemy, an attacker needs several times as many troops as the defender has, and should be ready to suffer heavy losses.
Ukraine over recent months has repeatedly tipped odds in its own favor by destroying Russian supplies, such as ammunition and fuel, rather than attacking troop positions directly. Kyiv’s forces swept across the eastern Kharkiv region in September and retook the occupied city of Kherson last month by first weakening Russian forces’ ability to defend themselves or carry out a counterattack.
“It’s important to talk about effects, not things,” in terms of military equipment, said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe.
Kherson and the Kharkiv region are small compared with the Ukrainian territory that Russia still controls, said U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently.
“Militarily kicking the Russians physically out of Ukraine is a very difficult task,” Gen. Milley said. “And it’s not going to happen in the next couple of weeks unless the Russian army completely collapses, which is unlikely.”
Mr. Kuleba, Kyiv’s foreign minister, said Ukrainians “are not setting any deadlines for ourselves” to eject Russian forces.
Whether Ukraine’s Western supporters have the military supplies and political fortitude to stick with the fight is an open question. Mr. Putin is counting on Western resolve waning before his forces are depleted, according to Ukraine’s supporters.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you think the West has provided enough support to help Ukraine evict Russian forces? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.
“The Russians know that the center of gravity in this fight is Western support, and they want to undermine that,” Gen. Hodges said.
The mounting cost of furnishing Ukraine with weapons and other supplies is increasingly drawing attention. The U.S. has already provided nearly $32 billion in aid to Ukraine since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February, including almost $20 billion in arms and other security assistance. Funding the even greater quantities of military equipment that would enable Ukraine to evict Russian forces quickly would cost far more, analysts say.
Gen. Milley recently suggested that the war might have a political solution under which Russian forces withdraw. “You want to negotiate from a position of strength,” he said. “Russia right now is on its back.”
The idea of negotiating a settlement that might not return full sovereignty to Ukraine has drawn criticism from Kyiv’s backers. Compelling Kyiv to negotiate a deal with Russia while not helping Ukraine achieve an outright victory and letting the war drag on in places could ultimately prove even more expensive than fighting now, according to some analysts.
If the war were to become a frozen conflict, with fighting continuing in some areas, Ukraine’s economy likely wouldn’t recover, creating new humanitarian crises and necessitating continued international financial support. Ukraine now requires roughly $5 billion a month in nonmilitary support to keep its state administration and vital services running.
If Ukrainians feel that the West has sold them short in a settlement, their currently strong pro-NATO and European Union sentiment could give way to nationalism and demagoguery, analysts warn.
“A premature settlement could be very costly for the West,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a distinguished fellow of the German Marshall Fund think tank in Berlin, who has analyzed what an economic recovery package for Ukraine might look like.
To Ukraine’s most ardent supporters, that means more and better weaponry.
“We have to promote the idea of sending main battle tanks to Ukraine,” said Mr. Landsbergis, the Lithuanian foreign minister. “It’s a political conversation” that has run since the war started, he said. “I think we’re not there yet.”
If no decision is reached on boosting Ukraine’s arms supplies, he said, “what we might see is Ukraine getting stuck.”
Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com