Ukraine: A Guide For The Perplexed

Part One, anyway. More next week.

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If you have been a reasonably conscientious observer of the crisis in Ukraine since 2021, you will have found it harder and harder recently to make sense of what’s happening, or supposed to be happening, in and around that country. Even when it looks as though government statements and authoritative-sounding pundit pronouncements are actually accurate, they don’t necessarily seem to make much sense. Given the often conflicting claims of different governments, the special pleading of different pundits, and the complete failure of alleged “experts” of different types even to understand what they are seeing, getting a sense of what is actually happening, and what might happen next, sometimes seems impossible.

This essay is a modest attempt to dispel a bit of that confusion: not by entering into arguments about particular past events or future possibilities, still less polemicising about the origins and progress of the war, but by applying some simple common-sense analysis based on the logic of how political and military crises have historically unfolded, and are eventually resolved. Some of what follows has been covered in earlier essays, but I thought nonetheless it was useful to try to bring everything together now. Given the complexity of the situation, though, I’ve split this account into two. This week I deal just with the short-term issues to do with bringing an end to the fighting, which are themselves a bit more complex than you might at first think.

I believe it’s particularly important to write this now, because there has probably never been a time during the crisis with such a fundamental difference between how things are presented in the media and by the western political leadership, and how things are known to be on the ground. This is at least as much a result of ignorance and sheer intellectual incapacity as it is of deliberate mendacity, but the result is a kind of groupthink where only the bravest pundits or politicians are prepared to say through gritted teeth that “Ukraine will not be able to recover all of the territory it lost.” So it’s particularly important now to concentrate on how things are, and how they are likely to develop.

Thus, here you will find neither stories of panicking Russian soldiers throwing away their shovels and deserting in droves, nor accounts of top-secret biological warfare research establishments commanded by Canadian generals under Mariupol. Russia is not about to collapse, nor is World War III about to break out. Let’s take a deep breath, and go logically through possible sequences of events, starting with where we are, based on things that could actually happen, and inspired by what did happen in the past and what is politically and militarily possible today. Logically enough, then, we begin with where we are now—which is where, exactly? As often, it’s helpful to break such questions down into smaller pieces first.

What’s the situation on the ground? The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) have been comprehensively defeated, by which I mean not simply that they cannot now “win” (as some of the braver western commentators have now begun to admit) but that they will soon cease to exist as a coherent fighting force. Let’s unpack that. “Winning” can mean many things. Because the Russians are fighting an attrition war, and because their territorial objectives are modest, it is highly unlikely that Russian troops will want to penetrate throughout the whole of Ukraine, except in token numbers. Thus, by pretending that the war actually was a war of territorial conquest, Ukraine and its western backers will be able to claim that the Russians “lost,” and by (dubious) extension, that they “won”. This is likely to be the western political response to defeat, as I argued recently.

But in this case, “winning” for the Russians means achieving their announced victory criteria, which include the destruction of the UAF as a fighting force. Now, it is important to understand that we are talking here about the destruction of a capability: Kiev will no longer have organised forces at its disposal which can carry out tasks that might affect the course of the war. This does not mean the killing of every UAF soldier, or the destruction of every last piece of equipment (and in history that seldom if ever happens anyway.) It means that by continued attrition, the Russians will destroy the UAF as a centrally-directed, functioning military institution. Detachments of troops and equipment will remain, and some may even be described as “Brigades”, but they will no longer be able to act as a coherent whole. So far, it looks as if the UAF has preserved the capability to conduct operations involving a number of Brigades, and retain some form of central command. Quite soon they will lose this capability, and we can expect two things to happen. One is that the forces remaining (and for political reasons even formations of a few hundred men will probably still be called “Brigades”) will simply be too weak and poorly-equipped to stop the Russians doing what they want. The other is that the command structure of the UAF will start to fall apart, and that it will no longer be possible for higher echelons to coordinate operations At that point it’s all over.

But notice that this has nothing to do with control of territory. Indeed, from the Russian perspective, the more UAF units are sent to support the front line to defend territory, the faster they will be destroyed, and the quicker the Russians will achieve their objectives. The most helpful analogy (and the best way to answer the persistent question “why haven’t the Russians won yet, if they are so strong?”) is to think of the last stages of a chess match. Imagine that the weaker player has perhaps their King and two Pawns left, whereas the stronger player has two or three times as many pieces including the Queen and both Bishops. At that point, like the UAF, the weaker player literally cannot win, and it’s probably time to surrender. Otherwise, the game will go on for a variable length of time, depending on the strategy adopted and skill of the weaker player, but the result will not be in doubt.

So can the Ukrainians do anything to prevent this? Not really. Theoretically, the UAF could stage a fighting retreat, abandoning the East of the country and trying at least to form a screen around the major cities in the West. Military experts doubt that this is now possible, and of course any retreat would be mercilessly harried by Russian airpower. What about hundreds of thousands of new conscripts then? Well, what about them? Unless they can be integrated into functioning units,  under capable commanders, equipped with weapons that make a difference and respond to orders from higher echelons, they are primarily a nuisance. This is not an infantry war: it’s a war in which infantry die very quickly. Already, it’s clear that the Russians are manoeuvring much more freely with armoured vehicles, because they know that the UAF is pretty much out of weapons to attack them with. And what about attacking bridges and using drones? This is to misunderstand the level at which the war is being conducted, and the size and power of the Russian forces. These are just nuisances as well, relatively speaking.

So can the West do anything to prevent this? Not really. Recall that the whole strategy of the West from the beginning was based on the idea that Russia was weak, that the military campaign would rapidly fall apart, and that there would soon be a new government in Moscow. A Ukrainian military victory, though no doubt welcome to many (and fantasised about by some) was never the point. It was only necessary for Ukraine to continue to fight until Russia collapsed. But what that meant was that from the beginning, arms and ammunition deliveries and training of conscripts were only ever intended to prolong the war, not to win it. So now, even if the West transferred every piece of its remaining equipment and all its ammunition to Ukraine, and trained every conscript, that would not be enough military power to do more than slow the Russians down. (I am talking, obviously, about the next year, not some hypothetical future in which Europe reconstitutes an armoured warfare capability and sends thousands of tanks to Ukraine.) There was a brief delusional period last year in which it was suggested that the mere appearance of western equipment with western-trained crews would be enough to cause the Russians to run away. No-one believes that now, of course, so in fact the West has pretty much given up. It’s therefore best to interpret claims and counter-claims that “not enough” equipment was sent as the opening round of the Blame Game that will be pursued with vicious ferocity after the fighting is over, rather than serious comments on the current situation. In any case, a few more artillery pieces or a bit more ammunition at this stage is essentially symbolic. To give you an idea of why, this Wikipedia article describes some of the different organisations of an artillery battery (typically 6-8 guns), its personnel (100-200, often highly trained) and all the ancillary technical equipment, as well, of course, as a constant supply of ammunition. And if by some miracle you could provide all that, you would have, to repeat, a single battery.

But what about western personnel? This is a question that falls into several parts, but it also reflects the inability of the West to comprehend the size and violence of the conflict under way. No plausible number of forces that the West could actually send, in any guise, would make a difference, in a situation where the Russians have perhaps 600,000 troops directly engaged in the operation (some back in Russia itself) as well as hundreds of thousands more in reserve. Moreover, the West no longer has a capability for serious armoured warfare, so any western intervention would resemble the improvised western-trained light mechanised Brigades that failed so spectacularly last year. Now, there are almost certainly western forces in Ukraine at the moment, although I have seen no evidence that they are in formed units. There will be advisors, trainers, planners and staff officers at HQs, and there probably have been for some time. There’s nothing unusual about this in history: training and liaison teams are employed extensively by many countries even in peacetime, and in the Cold War Soviet “advisers” were systematically deployed to support the side the Soviets were currently backing. It doesn’t make any of the sending states co-belligerents, and it doesn’t amount to a declaration of war. On the other hand, casualties among such personnel don’t amount to a declaration of war by the Russians, either. In addition, I should not be surprised to find both liaison officers deployed forward with Brigades, and reconnaissance or Special Forces troops moving discreetly around the front, trying to work out what is really going on, since it’s unlikely that the West believes everything the Ukrainians tell them. Another possibility, no more, is that there are specialist western technical intelligence gathering units deployed in Ukraine itself. Manifestly, none of this is helping very much. So what else could be done?

The first option would be to increase the number of “advisers,” perhaps including equipment operators and maintainers, to enable the UAF to make proper use of the equipment it still has. There are rumours (but no hard evidence) that this is already happening. But of course the number  of equipments is small and diminishing, and the amount of ammunition is diminishing too, so even if such an option were used, the effect on the fighting would be marginal at best.

The second option, less discussed now, is some kind of “mercenary” force drawn from former NATO soldiers. There’s no indication that this option is being seriously pursued, because it would have little if any practical effect. Mercenaries (“mercs” in the vocabulary of those who like to pose as military experts) are not that numerous anyway, as western armies reduce radically in size, and it looks as though many have probably been to Ukraine already, even if somewhat fewer have come back in one piece. But these days there are many more attractive and better-paid jobs for experienced ex-soldiers, providing things like VIP protection and escort for governments, and international organisations like the UN. But in any event, we’re not in the Africa of the 1970s and 80s, where small forces of well-trained soldiers could rout militia groups in low-level infantry encounters. Look again at the article on an artillery battery. Where are you going to get a hundred or more mercenaries ranging from Private to Major with the right specialisations, familiar with the equipment and all speaking the same language? Come to that, where are you going to get mercenary tank crews and maintenance specialists? But even if you could, the potential numbers are a rounding error in a war of this size.

Finally, what about the deployment of actual western combat units? First, the idea that they could be deployed operationally on the front line and would make a difference to the outcome, is fantasy. I’ve pointed out before the practical problems of deploying western forces over such enormous distances. Likewise, it’s well known that most western armies are under-strength, have very limited logistic support, limited ammunition, and grave problems with equipment availability. But in many ways the problems go deeper. Senior commanders in western armies, at Brigade and Division level, have never fought a conventional war, and at best have studied such wars at Staff College. Their careers have been made in Afghanistan, on UN missions, and in low-intensity operations. Western armies as a whole have no tradition of mass armoured warfare since the end of World War II, and no tradition of studying and training for it for the last thirty-five years. In most western armies, “Brigades” and even more “Divisions” are essentially administrative organisations, that seldom if ever train together, and require reservists and perhaps units borrowed from elsewhere to enable them to operate as a formation.

There is thus no institutional experience in large-scale high-intensity combat, nor even any institutional folk-memory of it. We also tend to forget just how violent and deadly such combat is: everybody remembers the horrific casualties of World War I, but in fact 1939-45 was just as deadly, even on the Western Front. Many years ago, during the Cold War, I recall talking to a young Major fresh out of Staff College who had been on a visit to the battlefields of Normandy, and been guided around one by a veteran. This individual recounted, to the stunned disbelief of the young officers, how his battalion had lost twenty officers and two hundred men in a few hours of combat one morning. Such a rate of losses has been unthinkable in modern times, and effectively means that the unit has been destroyed and will need to be pulled out of the line.

But it gets worse. Of course it gets worse, because this is not World War II, or even one of the Gulf Wars. It is the first war fought with genuinely modern weapons of unparalleled destructive power, and real-time visibility of the whole battlefield. To some extent the Ukrainians had begun to learn about this kind of warfare after 2014, and the Russians had to learn very quickly in 2022. But there is no indication that the West really understands the tactical and operational lessons of Ukraine—that the military principle of concentration of forces rapidly becomes dangerous, for example—except as vague theoretical ideas. There is no doctrine, and no planning for this kind of warfare. Those more expert than me give a western Brigade perhaps half-an-hour in combat with Russian forces before it is wiped out, probably by opposing forces it cannot even detect. A missile strike on a Brigade HQ would be enough by itself to do a good part of the damage.

So what’s all this talk of “escalation?” I have no idea, really. As I have said repeatedly, you need something to escalate with, and somewhere to escalate to. The West has neither. It’s now clear I trust, why the idea of NATO becoming “directly involved” is essentially meaningless, and certainly nothing to keep the Russian General Staff awake at night. Of course, it would be possible to contrive an apparent conflict. As I discussed recently, it would be possible to send some kind of politically demonstrative blocking force, perhaps to Odessa, to form a human barrier to Russian occupation. I strongly suspect this isn’t a real proposal so much as a political fantasy, but for what it’s worth we can briefly see what might be involved. For example, there’s been some talk of sending a detachment of the French Foreign Legion, perhaps 1,500 strong, somewhere in Ukraine. However, the Legion is an overwhelmingly infantry-based force, with only one regiment equipped with wheeled light combat vehicles. In other words, it is probably the force the least suited to actual combat with the Russians that could be imagined. The assumption, however, appears to be that, confronted with such a force the Russians would hesitate, for fear of … well, they’re still working that one out. In practice, any forces deployed like that could simply be surrounded and ignored by the Russians, until they ran out of food and supplies.

So we’re not heading for World War III? Political stupidity being what it is, it’s probably wise not to exclude anything definitively. But as I’ve pointed out, the West has effectively nothing to fight World War III with. For their part, the Russians have been quite careful so far to avoid deliberately targeting NATO forces, and as long as those forces stay out of direct combat, that will probably still be their policy. After all, as the UAF become weaker and weaker, NATO assistance to them becomes correspondingly less effective. And no, we are not headed for the use of nuclear weapons either, barring some utterly unforeseeable piece of lunacy. As I argued soon after the beginning of the crisis, It’s important to let go of cultural stereotypes of mad generals and automatic escalation dating from the 1950s and 60s, and breathless histories of the Cuban Missile Crisis. States don’t threaten each other with nuclear weapons these days, or really at any time since the late 1960s when the first ballistic missile submarines were deployed. Nor are we helplessly trapped in some 1914-style process of mechanical escalation. Indeed, the situation couldn’t be more different: in 1914, complicated and detailed plans were already drawn up, and states knew who they were fighting and where. Mobilisation and deployment then occurred pretty much as anticipated.

So what happens at the end of the fighting? That’s a good question, and one that has not really been discussed except at the level of competitive propaganda. A lot depends on what you mean by “end" and “fighting” in a war like this. We can list the possibilities as follows, in increasing order of complexity and importance, bearing in mind Clausewitz’s dictum that in war everything is simple, but even the simplest thing is difficult. In order, therefore:

• Locally arranged cease-fires.

• Cease-fires along parts or the whole of the front.

• Surrender by individuals and small groups.

• Surrender by complete formed units.

• A general armistice.

• A bilateral treaty with Ukraine.

• A multilateral treaty with NATO nations.

Now there is little or no evidence that the West is thinking about any of the items on this list, apart from an almost hilariously fantastic version of the last, involving concessions by the Russians to NATO. Let’s go through the first five in order, remembering that the differences are important, and that it’s critical to keep them in mind over the next few months, as the options, or variants and misunderstandings of them, get flung around in the media. The last two I’ll discuss next week.

Cease-fires are no more than the name suggests: temporary pauses in the fighting, usually to enable evacuation, the supply of humanitarian aid or something similar. We could reach a point where Ukraine, supported probably by the West, will ask for cease-fires as a way of staving off the inevitable end, and in the hope that something (a coup in Moscow,  a meteorite strike, who knows?) will turn up. But cease-fires tend to be very short in duration (days, or weeks at most) and are generally agreed for a specific purpose. Whilst it’s not impossible there might be a specific case, such as the evacuation of Odessa, where this could work, it’s hard to see why the Russians should be enthusiastic about the idea, and it takes two to agree.

Some surrenders by individuals and small groups have already taken place. As UAF casualties increase and surviving units become increasingly separated from each other, the opportunities for such surrenders will become greater. But there are problems attached as well. Much of the fighting is between small groups of section or platoon size with a few vehicles, and it’s quite possible that the side taking the surrender could fear a trick, just as the troops surrendering could fear walking into an ambush. There’s some evidence that the Russians have established and broadcast procedures for surrender, but whether these have been received and understood by the UAF is not clear. Basic psychology tells us that in conditions of great stress, when their life is in danger, people see things that are not there, and fear and mutual suspicion will often do the rest. It’s virtually certain that some UAF units, including the extreme nationalists, will try to use fake surrenders as a tactic, either to escape or to attack. In turn, this means that Russian units may get trigger-happy, and open fire on those who genuinely want to surrender. This is probably why surrenders have not been more common so far.

A more likely option is a Russian request for those interested in surrendering to gather at a particular time and place, without personal weapons, probably in a recently captured village or small town. Whilst this would require a degree of trust from both sides, the greater the numbers involved, the more senior the officers present and the more organised the whole process is, the more it is likely to work. Since such preparations cannot be kept a secret, there may be UAF attempts to prevent surrender, by targeting their own troops. This might work for small numbers, but the larger the grouping the less easy it would be to pass off an artillery attack, for example, as an accident.

The surrender of a complete unit, say a Brigade, is simpler in principle, because it would be negotiated between senior commanders. However, neither the negotiations nor the orders to subordinate units that might be necessary could be kept a secret, so the higher echelons of the UAF would be aware of the plan, and might try to prevent it. Such surrenders would be most likely, therefore where a Brigade was relatively concentrated (in a town, for example) and cut off and surrounded. Because of the attritional nature of the war, though, it’s unlikely that there will be mass surrenders of surrounded troops, as you would expect in a war of movement and manoeuvre, and indeed it’s not even clear that the Russians are trying to achieve that. Whilst they would obviously prefer the UAF to surrender, rather than fight with casualties on both sides, taking large numbers of prisoners doesn’t seem to be part of their concept at the moment. However, it’s worth pointing out that, at the end of the fighting, having a significant number of UAF prisoners could be a very valuable negotiating lever for Moscow, so it’s possible the Russians will put more emphasis on this as time goes on.

Which leads us to the question of an armistice. Unlike a cease-fire, an armistice is a formal agreement, which sets out the conditions and modalities for the end of the conflict between the parties. Now note that, just as an armistice is not a cease-fire, it is not a peace treaty either, and the content would be largely or even exclusively military. A good example is the Armistice Agreement of 1918 (you can see the text which was effectively imposed on the Germans here). The usual intention is that an armistice will be followed by a peace treaty but this isn’t always the case: the Korean example is the best-known exception, but the same was in fact true of all the countries the Germans overran in 1939-41. Until the negotiation of a peace-treaty there is technically still an armed conflict, and the armistice text may give the parties the right to suspend the agreement and go back to war under certain circumstances.

As in the 1918 agreement, with its 34 clauses, the armistice agreement will have to cover a lot of ground. But before going into just a little detail it’s worth making a couple of general points. First, although an armistice is binding, it’s not a treaty. In many ways, it’s best understood as a writing down of power relations as they stand at the end of the fighting. It is a temporary document, largely technical in nature, designed to structure the end of the war and its immediate aftermath. Its provisions in Ukraine will reflect (as they did in 1918) a very unequal balance of power. Moreover, it’s a military document, one that has to be agreed by the political leadership, certainly, but does not involve ratification by parliament. Ukraine cannot take Russia to the ICJ, arguing that it has violated some provision or other.

However, and this is a big however, the decision to seek an armistice in the first place is a political decision, and the war could, in theory, continue pointlessly for months, even if the UAF is by that stage completely exhausted. Armistices don’t just happen, and victory is, as Clausewitz keeps reminding us, the result of a political decision, as we force an enemy to “do our will.” But supposing Kiev can’t do Moscow’s will because the government is too disorganised and divided, because different western countries are pushing in different directions, and the Army (or some of it) isn’t obeying orders? That kind of chaos would be the most serious potential development I can think of.

In any event, it is also a document negotiated between belligerents only. This may come as a rude surprise to NATO, which no doubt imagines itself hosting negotiations and largely dictating the outcome. Unless any NATO nation is prepared to declare itself a co-belligerent (and none have, or seem likely to), the best they can hope for is to influence the outcome through pressure on Ukraine, for all the good that that might do. Because it’s just an agreement between the combatants to end the fighting, there wouldn’t be scope, for example, for international guarantees. That said, given that there were already OSCE observers in the Donbas for years before the Russian intervention, it’s not unlikely that there would be a separate arrangement by which the OSCE or some similar body would observe the implementation process of the armistice. But if the Russians object, or propose a Chinese team instead, there won’t be much the Ukrainians can do.

A combination of these two factors means that the Russians will probably try to use the armistice negotiations to squeeze every possible concession out of the Ukrainians, including some things which should really be part of a peace treaty, or which will have the effect of pre-judging peace negotiations: they will never be as strong again, and the West will never have less influence. Moreover, Russian forces will be as powerful as ever, and Ukrainian forces will never have been weaker, so the Russians will be well-placed to enforce their understanding of the agreement, with the threat of force to back up their demands.

So, what might be in the armistice agreement? That’s hard to say, but one necessary provision would be the separation of forces. On the one hand, all Ukrainian units on the line of contact with Russian units might be obliged to surrender within, say, 48 hours. On the other, remaining units would have to withdraw West and North of a line which I imagine the Russians are busy drawing now and would, among other things, give them control of Odessa. Ukrainian forces would then be prohibited from moving East or South of the demarcation line, though whether Russian units would be subject to reciprocal limits is doubtful. At a minimum, the Russians would insist on the right to aircraft and drone overflights to verify Ukrainian compliance.

Surrendering forces would obviously have to give up their weapons, but forces withdrawing from West of the current line of contact might also have to leave heavy weapons in place, as well as stocks of ammunition and missiles, and any remaining aircraft and helicopters. The Ukrainians would probably be obliged to hand over Russian prisoners immediately, although whether the Russians would do the same depends on a lot of political and practical factors. All foreign military personnel would have to be expelled immediately. It’s quite possible the Russians would demand that undamaged aircraft in the West of the country should be handed over or destroyed. There would probably be a joint commission to oversee the detail, and to deal with complaints that arose. And no, the US would not be a member.

This may seem harsh and even unreasonable (though inevitably the details of any such regime are very unclear at this stage) but the reality is that, unless Ukraine agrees to these terms, or something similar, the war will go on until they do.

That’s not to say there will be no practical problems. We have very little idea where the real power lies in Kiev at the moment, and even less how that distribution of power would change if it became necessary to agree an armistice that was essentially a surrender. In such a situation, we can’t be sure that units in the East of the country (assuming they were still in contact with Kiev) would receive orders to surrender or move West, let alone obey them. We can expect mutinies, counter-mutinies and complete disorganisation at many levels. Indeed, it’s not clear that there will be a government in Kiev which is able to exert enough control over the military to get them to implement the armistice terms. (This is quite a different question from the existence of a government that can negotiate a peace treaty.)

The risk is of a chaotic situation, perhaps involving different and conflicting chains of command, with different orders going to different units. There will certainly be bitter-enders who refuse to surrender or to demobilise, because there always are. If this is simply a question of UAF forces trying to break contact and flee to avoid being taken prisoner, that’s containable: some will succeed, others will be recaptured or killed, and I doubt if the Russians will be too worried. But widespread disorganisation in the East, perhaps with nationalist movements on the rampage, terrorism and assassination between different groups and factions could actually make any organised conclusion to the fighting impossible.

In such circumstances, the Russians would be very reluctant to involve themselves in such chaos: on the other hand, they need at least a reasonably coherent Ukrainian regime to agree the armistice, and of course what follows. This may be why they have left at least parts of the UAF command system in place. The problem is likely to be more acute for the West, and especially the Europeans, who will suffer the practical consequences of the breakdown of the Ukrainian state, particularly in the form of refugees and migration. For the first time, the West may find itself having to choose between factions, and for that, agreement between different states with very different interests will be needed first. It’s not inconceivable that, in one of the final twists of this surreal story, such western military forces as are left could be engaged in Ukraine, not against the Russians, but on behalf of one faction in Kiev against another.

But if it’s any consolation, what I’ve described so far is the easy bit. Come back next week and we’ll talk about the much more difficult questions that would follow any armistice.