Before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the prevailing view was that Ukrainian resistance would crumble quickly. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency thought so, as did Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reportedly predicted that Kyiv could fall in 72 hours. Yet more than a year later, Ukraine’s army fights on, having achieved remarkable advances on the battlefield. In March, it repelled Russia’s attack on Kyiv and areas north of the city. It had retaken Kharkiv Province by mid-September and has subsequently attacked the main Russian defense line between Svatove and Kreminna in adjacent Luhansk Province. In November, it forced Russia to withdraw from the part of Kherson Province that lies on the Dnieper River’s right bank. Ukraine has now regained about half the land Russia seized after the invasion.
The initial pessimism about Ukraine’s chances was, however, scarcely unreasonable. Russia had overwhelming superiority in the standard measures of military power, such as the number of soldiers and the quantity and quality of major armaments. Moreover, Putin had initiated a megabucks military modernization drive in 2008 that was widely considered by experts to have made the Russian armed forces substantially stronger. For these reasons I, too, believed that Russia would prevail and not end up mired in a protracted war.
In the event, stronger morale, superior generalship, and Russia’s overconfidence (and consequent expectation of a rapid victory) proved of outsize importance. By now Ukraine has amply demonstrated just how significant these and other, often intangible elements can be. And Russia’s many military shortcomings have become evident to the point that even ardent pro-war Russian nationalists openly acknowledge them, recognizing that the winter offensive has failed to push the frontline forward substantially, and questioning the prospects for success. Yet many Western assessments of the war’s likely course and outcome still assume that none of this will matter very much and that Russia will prevail because it will learn from its mistakes and has material resources that far exceed Ukraine’s.
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