The past six months have been a low ebb for Ukraine as it fights to defeat the Russian military’s efforts to ruin and subjugate it. Beginning with last December’s admission by the Ukrainian President that the 2023 counteroffensive had failed, Ukraine has also endured a shortfall in munitions due to the months-long debate in the US Congress, a significant shortfall in frontline personnel as a partial result of the delayed Ukrainian mobilisation legislation, and a renewed Russian aerial onslaught which is destroying Ukraine’s power generation capacity while also attacking Ukrainian combat units with dozens of glide bombs each day.
Europe has slowly but surely emerged from its strategic slumber.
Yet the Ukrainian military has only yielded ground grudgingly, and it has preserved and reconstituted its military forces while imposing massive casualties on the attacking Russians. Figures released by the Ukrainian government, and confirmed by Western intelligence officials, show that the last six months has seen the highest daily casualty rates for the Russians since February 2022. The brutal calculus of the past six months is this: Russia has suffered over 180,000 casualties for the gain of just over 510 square kilometres. This is about one-tenth the area of Kangaroo Island in South Australia.
Russia has eschewed large-scale attacks for multiple assaults to slowly take small parcels of Ukrainian territory. Putin intends to implement this strategy indefinitely, although whether the Russian people feel the same way as Putin does remains to be seen. Against this setting, Ukrainian planners will have begun thinking about future offensive operations to liberate more of their territory.
These events, transpiring across the past six months, will have a foundational impact on how Ukraine, Russia and NATO consider their strategy for the remainder of this summer, into winter and for the inevitable spring and summer campaigns of 2025. However, there will be several other influences on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine in the coming year.
The first will be the capacity of Europe to support the war. Europe has slowly but surely emerged from its strategic slumber of the past three decades. Scared into action by a convergence of Trumpian coercion and the clarification of the threat from Russia, European defence budgets have begun to rise. Concurrently, investments in defence manufacturing capacity, including equipment and munitions, is seeing increased output as well as increased capacity to support equipment in Ukrainian service. If the current expansion of European defence spending continues, it should be able to provide a larger proportion of Ukrainian military needs from 2025 onwards.
The brutal calculus of the past six months is this: Russia has suffered over 180,000 casualties for the gain of just over 510 square kilometres.
A second influence on the trajectory of war will be the development of a Ukrainian theory of victory. While Ukraine’s defensive strategy worked well in the first year of the war, Russian adaptation of its military strategy, buttressed by the mobilisation of Russian industry and personnel, has driven the need for Ukraine to reassess its theory of victory for this war. What exactly does victory for the Ukrainians look like and how might they achieve it? It is likely that this will have several components, including military, economic, diplomatic and informational, and will probably also need to include the development of new, more effective offensive military doctrine. The development of this Ukrainian theory of victory should be coordinated with NATO and will demand increased military and financial aid for Ukraine.
A third influence will be whether events beyond central Europe intrude to either distract key decision-makers in the United States and other Ukrainian supporters, or to redirect critical resources to other theatres. The obvious one is war on Israel’s northern border. This would likely see a larger requirement for munitions for the Israeli Defence Force than their Gaza operations and would put significant pressure on even the increased production of US and European weapons manufacturers. Beyond Israel, the United States and its Asian allies must also be wary of, and prepared for, an opportunistic China deciding to undertake military action against Taiwan.
A final influence will be the outcome of the US presidential election in November. Putin will be hoping for a victory by the Republican candidate. Recent polling by the Pew Research Centre shows a schism in support for Ukraine between Republican and Democrat voters: 49% of Republicans believe the US is providing too much assistance to Ukraine, as opposed to 16% of Democrats. A Republican win in the presidential race, as well as in Senate and House elections, could favour Russia. But this should not be considered a certainty. If a newly elected President Donald Trump can’t “end the war in 24 hours”, he could well turn on Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine and Russia will already be planning their 2024 winter operations and contemplating their offensive operations for 2025. There are a range of known variables that will impact on this strategic thinking and planning. Additionally, in a rapidly evolving technological and geopolitical environment, strategic surprises may influence the trajectory of the war.
Russia will continue to implement its strategy of subjecting Ukraine and its people to a death by a thousand cuts. And Ukraine, as it has throughout this war, will continue to adapt and seek new ways to not only destroy as much of the Russian military as possible but to also develop new strategic methods to convince Putin that his Ukrainian gamble will never pay off.
