Today, Explained - Is the war in Ukraine unwinnable?

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

One month in, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t going according to plan. Historian and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich explains how it might end. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, some high-ranking members of the U.S. intelligence community made a prediction. Speaking anonymously, they told reporters that Kiev, Ukraine's capital, would fall within a few days. 96 hours, to be precise. It did not happen. I think from a Russian perspective, what we have here is a war that has gone off the rails. Russian troops are stuck in the mud. They're frostbit. They're sending panic texts to their parents back home. From the Ukrainian perspective, what we have is vindication, a demonstration of how a resolute population rises to the occasion and, frankly frankly overturns all the expectations of the experts

who said that this was going to be a very short war that the Russians were going to win very quickly. On Today Explained, a retired U.S. Army colonel tells us what happens when it seems like neither side can win a war. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Andrew Bacevich, retired U.S. Army colonel, now the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank in D.C. I remember before the invasion when Russia was surrounding Ukraine, satellite imagery suggested there were 150,000 soldiers. And the thinking was those numbers were so great, there was no way Ukraine could win. Why hasn't the Russian invasion been successful?

Well, I think that, you know, the numbers have not really been all that overwhelming. I think I've seen numbers between 120,000 and 150,000, But they were not all massed in one point. There was not some single point of attack. When they first invaded nearly a month ago, the Russian forces came in broadly on three fronts, from the north, from the south, and from the east. And at each one of those locations, it was not 150,000 Russian troops gathered.

It was probably more in the order of 20,000 or 30,000. 30,000 Russian troops now stationed in Belarus for joint military exercises, stoking fears of an invasion of neighboring Ukraine. So the Russian plan had the effect of dispersing the mass that might have worked to their advantage. That's one thing that reflects defective planning on the part of the Russian military. Because the Russians are bogged down in so many places, the Ukrainians have been able to carry out those ambushes, those counterattacks. But that's only the first problem.

I think what caught me by surprise, and many others, was the ineptitude of the Russian offensive. They haven't been able to maneuver their armor effectively. At the end of the Second World War, they were as good as that as anybody else. But these guys don't seem to have remembered that. And this was nowhere more evident than in logistics. If you're going to drive and operate a main battle tank, then you are thinking all the time about fueling that beast. If you're not thinking about fueling that beast, then you're behind.

And they appear to have not taken those basic logistical considerations and train as they move forward. This is a relatively modern heavy force. Heavy means lots of armored vehicles that consume lots of fuel. And the evidence appears to be quite clear that the Russian invaders have clearly had major problems with sustaining the force. In other words, providing the fuel, the rations, the resupply of ammunition that are required for a long or lengthy campaign. I want to ask you about a tiny detail, one that seems very absurd and also very telling. We're hearing reports that Russian troops are suffering from frostbite. Now, presumably, smart enough military minds understand what the weather is like in Eastern Europe. How on earth would a fighting force not have things like gloves and boots to prevent frostbite?

Well, I guess the Russian commanders assumed the whole thing was going to be over in like three days. And when the campaign became lengthy, I think the Russians have turned out to be totally unprepared. So you say, how could something like that happen? Here's a comparison. Summer of 1941, the Wehrmacht invades the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht at that point was the biggest, baddest military in the world. And so the German plan for Operation Barbarossa assumed that the Wehrmacht was going to make short work of the Red Army. Bad assumption.

The weather was bad, with heavy rain and snow that turned the roads into mud. German tanks, with their narrow tracks, struggled to cope. So what we ended up with on the Eastern Front was a long war between the Germans and the Soviets, in which, guess what, the German army turned out not to have anywhere near the equipment they needed to continue to wage war in the middle of a Russian winter. Something of the same thing is going on now, I think. Again, they didn't anticipate a lengthy campaign, and the assumptions turned out to be radically mistaken. The assumptions turned out to be radically mistaken in large part because of the way that the Ukrainians have resisted this invasion.

What role is the passionate Ukrainian resistance playing in all of this? It's key. It's crucial. We are ready to fight. We are ready to fight for our people, for our nation, for our territory, for our country, for our territory, for our country. Till the end, till the victory. And again, you would say, well, you know, not a particularly well-trained force. We don't think of the Ukrainian military as a global power, but certainly they have fought well.

Ukrainian forces have taken the shrewd approach of retreating to the cities, conserving their weaponry and focusing on defending their positions that have attacking. They've blown up bridges. They've lined the roads into the city with obstacles while still managing to keep corridors open for fleeing civilians. And they say they are ready for any Russian advance that comes their way. And to the vast credit of Ukraine's political leadership and credit to the Ukrainian people, they basically have rallied a people's resistance. So, you know, great credit to the Ukrainians. Again, this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened.

Let's think about the American war in Iraq that began in 2003. You know, we assumed that it was going to be a conventional war against a conventional adversary. I do want to say that our military is going at this with an extraordinary combination of information technology, telecommunications skill, intelligence, and of course the most skilled fighting men and women in the history of the world. So we've got a lot going for us. I'm proud and just grateful that we have the kind of fighting force that we have over there. We're going to win this. We assumed that because of our superiority in weapons, our superiority in basic competence and training,

that we would make short work of that army. At the present time, there are U.S., British, Australian, and Polish forces that are on the ground. There are some 46 nations that are publicly, politically supporting this coalition effort. There is nothing that can happen that will change the ultimate outcome. The outcome is certain. And on the one hand, we did. You know, we got to Baghdad in a matter of a few weeks with relatively few U.S. casualties. And then the whole thing fell apart. It fell apart because of resistance from Iraqis.

The Marines have been told to comb the mosque for weapons. And as they do, the firing starts. It turns into a firefight. The armored vehicle arrives with more ammunition because the houses around the mosque are full of fighters. But a resistance of entities that were determined to eject from Iraq an army that they viewed as foreign occupiers. And so it looked like Iraq was going to be a short war ending in an easy victory. Turned out to be a very long war that didn't end particularly well for our team. Can you tell us a little bit about the foreign weapons that are in Ukraine, that are entering into Ukraine?

What role they are playing? I think the first point I would emphasize is the anti-tank weapons have apparently been very, very effective against Russian armored vehicles. Those javelins are American-made anti-tank missiles. The javelin and others like it, such as Stinger missiles, MANPADS, and the British NLAW, have become a vital piece of military aid sent to the Ukrainian army. And some of this stuff, even though it's modern, it's actually simple. These shoulder mounted or handheld anti-tank weapons, they're actually weapons that you and I could learn how to use probably in a half an hour. They're tremendously capable, but they're not complicated. I am speculating here, but I'm guessing that that

plays a key role in being able to take an untrained people's army and impart to the people's army capabilities where they can hold their own. Based on everything you're seeing now, can Russia win this war? The answer is absolutely yes. Okay. But that's not an answer that has any particular value. What I mean by that is predicting outcomes in wartime. It's kind of a fool's errand because in virtually any war, there is this element of uncertainty that I think makes that kind of forecasting very, very difficult.

I mean, this war illustrates that. All the smart people would have said, oh yeah, the Russians are going to make short work of the Ukrainians. Well, guess what? Wrong. So what we see now, I think, is a Russian army that no longer makes any pretense in fighting the way a modern army fights. What we now have is a Russian army that fights the way the Russian army of World War II did. And the American army of World War II. It's not just the Russians. Relying on brute force to try to crush resistance. Enough force can enable you to crush the resistance. And whether this war is going to go on that long,

whether the Russians can muster enough force to have that crushing effect, I think is very difficult for us to say. So the answer, I think, really is, yeah, they might win, but who knows? Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Thank you. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained.

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I see the word stalemate being used a lot. Russia gains some territory, Ukraine makes gains back. What is your best characterization of what's happening right now? I have to say, I think the best characterization is who the heck knows. You know, so much of the information flow, some of it official, you know, from the Pentagon, it's frankly biased. You know, we know who we're rooting for. And so I think there is a tendency to accept reporting from the Ukrainian side, perhaps too willingly. We see the Ukrainian side. We don't particularly see what's going on the other side. So I think we have to be very wary about claiming to really understand what's going on. I suppose stalemate is as good a term as any in the sense that

the conflict has lasted much longer than most people thought. But I would emphasize, on the other hand, the thing could end tomorrow. The war continues because both sides wish the war to continue, because neither side has achieved its objectives. At the beginning of this invasion, Vladimir Putin said he would not target civilians. Ukrainian reporters have pointed out to us on this show that, in fact, from the beginning, the Russian military was targeting civilians. But over time, as the Russian military has failed to win, they are targeting civilians more often. Is that something that you expect when you have

a kind of stalemate in conflict, that civilians bear the brunt of it? Yeah, I think so. First of all, and this is by no means to apologize for Russians murdering civilians. But we should not assume, I think we would be absolutely wrong to assume, that every time a missile or a bomb hits a target that we would call a civilian target, an apartment building, a shopping mall, we would be wrong to assume that that was intentional. In any war, there are all kinds of mistakes made. We make mistakes. In Afghanistan, the number of wedding parties that we killed with airstrikes because the people identifying targets failed to realize that it was a wedding party. They thought it was some kind of Taliban convoy. So to some degree, some degree, these things happen. Now, I think in this particular case, the longer it goes on, the more frustrated the Russians become, the less concerned they become about who the heck it is

they're killing. And in many respects, the logic of the campaign shifts so that at the outset, the logic of the campaign, I'm speculating now, probably was a vigorous attack will unhinge Ukrainian resistance, and we will be able to drive into Kiev in no time flat. Well, that didn't work out, to put it mildly. And so as time goes by, I suspect, among Russian military planners, they're now saying, unhinging the adversary isn't going to work. We're going to have to pummel the adversary into submission. And we might note that there is a rich Russian tradition of approaching war that way. And so we're now in the pummeling stage of this war. And I suspect it's going to continue.

Now, back there in the Russian staffs, do they think that pummeling is actually getting them closer to achieving their purposes? I have no idea. Once the modern approach to war, this notion of unhinging the enemy, once that fails, pummeling is kind of an inevitable response. You know, I wonder, is there any threat for Vladimir Putin here that his military realizes they have been sent to do a very difficult thing that they were unprepared for? Some of them appear to be sending messages back home to parents and friends saying they were earnestly lied to. They did not know the reason they were going into Ukraine. And I ask you this as somebody who served in the military. What happens when soldiers begin to lose faith in their leader? Do you think there are troops fighting in Ukraine right now

who are thinking, I don't believe in Vladimir Putin anymore. I'm done with this. This is pure speculation. And I would say almost definitely. More immediately, I suspect they're losing faith in their own military leaders, in their battalion commanders, in their regimental commanders, the people who are supposed to be overseeing the campaign and taking care of them, making sure that they do have cold weather gear that somehow has not materialized. So again, the reporting is coming mostly from our side, but there does seem to be evidence of morale slipping significantly among Russian committed forces. Now, where does that lead? Does that ultimately pose a threat to Putin's hold on

power? I certainly don't know, but I would say this one thing, Putin comes from the KGB. He is a KGB professional officer. And therefore, he is likely to have an acute awareness of the possibility antenna up trying to identify if there is anybody among the generals, anybody in Russian politics, anybody among the oligarchs who is thinking of turning against him, because he will certainly attempt to strike first. You make this very good point that I jumped from your average man serving on the ground all the way up to Vladimir Putin. And you said, wait, hang on a second. There are commanders standing between that man and Putin. What is the immediate danger of the ordinary troop fighting losing faith in his immediate commander?

What have we seen happen in the past when that goes on? The force disintegrates. I'm very sorry to say, since it was the war I participated in, the illustrative example is the American war in Vietnam, where things went badly and good order and discipline within the ranks eroded seriously. and we experienced a lot of attacks by American soldiers directed at their own leaders. That's what happens, I think, can happen to an army. Whether that's going to happen to the Russian army in Ukraine, I don't know. But if I were today a Russian commander, battalion commander, regimental commander, I would certainly

try to be acutely aware of that kind of problem propping up in the ranks. What would you be looking for? Combat refusals. We had that in Vietnam. Desertions. Attacks on leaders. In Vietnam, we call them fraggings, basically assassination attempts by ordinary soldiers directed against sergeants or lieutenants or captains. All of that would be, from a Russian perspective, worrisome indicators of a military that is beginning to come apart. We hear about talks between Russia and Ukraine that have not made much progress so far. We know that the Western world is increasingly concerned by the deaths of civilians. We know that Russia is not retreating, nor are they winning.

In your mind, how does this end? I think there's no question that it's possible. This war is going to end with both sides being able to claim half a loaf. And what I suspect they're arguing about is how big is that half? I believe the Ukrainian president has offered to promise that Ukraine will not join NATO. I don't know for sure that that offer is being made, but I'll tell you what, if it is being made, he's conceding one of the things that Putin was most concerned about. That could be the basis for a deal. We'll see. So I don't believe this is likely to end in one side or the other being able to have victory parades through downtown. I suspect it's going to have a more ambiguous ending

in which each side will be able to claim some amount of success. Sadly, I would say the death and destruction on a massive scale will greatly outweigh what either side is able to claim as a benefit. Andrew Bacevich, retired U.S. Army Colonel, he's now the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank in Washington, D.C. It's Today Explained.