Ukraine is about to lose the Battle of Donbass – and with it the war. That would have put an end to the grandiose declarations by European politicians that Putin shouldn’t be allowed to win this war. How can the recent development of the war be explained – and what does it mean for Germany and the West?
The Ukraine war is a war of surprising turns. In the first phase of the war, the stubborn and successful resistance of the Ukrainian army in the Kyiv and Kharkiv areas surprised experts, who initially expected a quick victory for Russian troops. In the meantime, the situation in the second phase of the war looks very different again.
The temporary optimism, especially from British and American observers, that the Ukrainians could throw back the Russians in Donbass has evaporated. The war of attrition, which has been waged here for weeks on a front several hundred kilometers long, is obviously consuming Ukrainian resources much more quickly than is the case on the Russian side. Ukraine is about to lose the Battle of Donbass – and with it the war.
That would have put an end to the grandiose declarations by European politicians that Putin shouldn’t be allowed to win this war. Control of the Donbass, Azov and Black Seas would be a Russian victory that no amount of sophistry can argue away.
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How can the recent development of the war be explained after the Ukrainian troops have put up such fierce resistance for so long?
There are two mutually complementary explanations for this: one points to the hesitancy, indecision and, ultimately, disagreement of the West to support Ukraine effectively and sustainably; the other highlights the asymmetry in the fighting that existed from the beginning but only became decisively noticeable in the course of the second phase of the war.
Mind you: Asymmetry does not mean that one side is overwhelmingly superior to the other in terms of people and material, but rather describes constellations in which one side has strategic options that are fundamentally unavailable to the other side. This is the case in Ukraine.
The fundamental asymmetry of this war is that Russia is attacking the infrastructure and in particular the transport links in Ukraine, and in this way it does not prevent the supply of weapons and ammunition for the front in the Donbass, but makes it considerably more difficult and restricts it. Ukraine does not have a similar possibility: it cannot attack and destroy the Russian transport and supply infrastructure behind the front.
This was not particularly important in the street and house-to-house fighting in the suburbs of Kyiv and Kharkiv, but it is now making itself felt in the battle of attrition for the Donbass: The material superiority of the Russian side is additionally increased considerably, so that they are decisive for the war should.
Herfried Münkler, born in 1951, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Berlin’s Humboldt University. Many of his books are considered standard works, such as “The Great War” (2013), “The New Germans” (2016) or “The Thirty Years’ War” (2017). Herfried Münkler has received numerous awards, including the Science Prize of the Aby Warburg Foundation and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship.
But actually, why can’t the Ukrainian side symmetrize the war by attacking the Russian transport lines, destroying bridges and railroad tracks, and thus restricting the flow of arms and ammunition to the Russian troops? And if the Ukrainian military doesn’t have the weapons systems to do it, why doesn’t the West provide them with the equipment needed to achieve approximate symmetry?
It is the nuclear escalation threat, sometimes more or less clearly expressed, that Putin and those around him use to establish Russia’s asymmetric superiority over Ukraine. Attacks on Russian territory, the Kremlin has repeatedly heard, would be met with counterattacks on the perpetrators of these attacks that would exceed anything hitherto.
This is deliberately vague, but immediately makes one think of the use of nuclear weapons. In other words, the unspoken threat of nuclear escalation ensures that the asymmetry in the use of conventional weapons that favors Russia is maintained – either because Ukraine itself fears the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the Russians on the Donbass front, or because they are under the impression because of the Russian threats, its Western supporters are forcing it not to attack the Russian lines of communication, or, ultimately, that it simply cannot get the necessary weapon systems from the West.
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The strategic reorientation that took place on the Russian side after the defeats in Kyiv and Kharkiv was aimed at creating constellations in which Ukraine, despite all the bravery and combat readiness of its military, will probably ultimately lose this war – unless the West decides against all escalation risks to a massive increase in its arms deliveries and, with suitable defense systems, ensures that these arms, together with a steady flow of ammunition, also reach the front in the Donbass. However, that is rather unlikely. Therefore, everything indicates that Russia will win this war in the end.
That is not the end of the matter, however, as Russia’s success could ensure that the combination of logistical asymmetry and nuclear escalation threat is the script for the next Russian attack, wherever it takes place. The result would be that Putin or his successor will win war after war of this type, despite all the shortcomings of the Russian military now observed.
There were many good reasons why Olaf Scholz, among others, declared that Putin must not win the war against Ukraine. This was aimed at the risk of repeating a successful war against Ukraine, which would then take place elsewhere. The problem is that the West has not yet found a strategic answer to this challenge. For now, it looks like Ukraine will lose out.
