Battles, campaigns and strategy: The next 90 days in Ukraine

Absent a diplomatic breakthrough, the war in Ukraine is about to enter a dangerous new phase. Keeping Ukraine in the fight requires assessing how the war will evolve at the tactical, operational and strategic level. Looking across the levels of war, the West can help Ukraine by expanding weapons transfers, increasing intelligence sharing and cyber operations, and making diplomatic concessions to keep Moscow isolated.   

At the tactical level, the balance of human will and technology will continue to shape battles across Ukraine. At present, Ukrainian forces have a tactical advantage in close combat based on will to fight, knowledge of the terrain and key weapons transfers such as anti-tank and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Despite losing the war, Russia retains an advantage in fires, using aircraft and artillery to wear down Ukrainian forces.

{mosads}These advantages shape how each side fights. Russians are digging in across the country and relying on sieges and indiscriminate bombing. Ukrainian forces are hitting vulnerable Russian supply lines. The longer each side fights, the more opportunities each side has to adapt — what J.F.C. Fuller called the “constant tactical factor.” The Russians have yet to adapt to Ukraine’s use of ambushes and drone strikes. Ukraine has not found a solution to reducing Russian fires.

The West can help by providing Kyiv the means to counter Russian artillery and missile fires by expanding the number and types of loitering munitions transferred to Ukraine. As seen in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, suicide drones can wreak havoc on artillery firing positions. In Ukraine, this would make it difficult for Russia to siege cities and coordinate larger attacks.

At the operational level — which focuses on synchronizing resources and battles to achieve military objectives — victory pivots on logistics and campaign design. Russian forces are adopting a defensive position around Kyiv and even in the south, outside efforts to seize Mariupol. They are renewing their offense in the east and doing a better job of integrating air power, conducting 300 combat sorties per day. Ukraine is counter-attacking around the capital and in the south to relieve pressure on sieged cities. 

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As the war enters its second month, it will become a logistical race for resources to see which side can generate combat power and replenish its force faster. Can Ukraine distribute foreign weapons, especially anti-air assets, and new troops faster than Russia can reallocate aircraft and armor from other military districts to the war in Ukraine?   

In the next 90 days, the central campaign decision for Ukraine will be whether to sustain limited counter-attacks and ambushes against Russian supply lines or seek a decisive battle that makes it difficult for Moscow to sustain ground operations. What is the best way to crack a demoralized Russian army: constant pressure on the front and rear areas that causes a slow collapse, or encircling and annihilating large Russian combat formations? 

What the West can do is increase intelligence sharing and provide support that tips the balance of logistics. Ensuring Ukrainian leaders have an understanding of Russian troop movements and campaign debates in the Kremlin will help Kyiv adapt its operational plan. Expanding weapons transfers to include moving fuel and transport vehicles will help the Ukrainian military retain its mobility and become increasingly important as Russia starts to hit strategic resource reserves. 

Second, cyber operations could play a limited role by disrupting the ability of Russia to move resources and combat forces forward. Rather than the war-winning weapons imagined by many pundits, these operations would be narrow and focus more on creating logistical bottlenecks by duplicating email traffic, changing freight schedules, and other minor acts of digital sabotage that complicate moving mass armies.

At the strategic level — where politics, alliances and competing theories of victory collide — the central challenge for the West will be maintaining alliance cohesion in the face of cracks to domestic political support and escalation risks. Over the coming months, the degree of domestic support will wane as concerns about energy prices and inflation mount. Gas prices tend to move from lows in February to peak on Memorial Day. There are global economic dimensions. Saudi Arabian efforts to price oil in other currencies such as the yuan could change energy markets and help Russia find outlets for financing a long war of attrition without reducing prices at the pump. Elections will start to push economic questions to the forefront of the news cycle across the coalition of democracies supporting Ukraine. The Kremlin isn’t worried about reelection but faces a different set of domestic challenges. Will Russian protesters and elite dissent dent Putin’s resolve before international support for Ukraine starts to decline?

{mossecondads}The war is currently confined to Ukraine, but that could rapidly change over the coming months. The longer the war lasts, the more likely Putin is to do something audacious to re-establish coercive leverage and create a stark dichotomy for the Russian population. His only play is fear, making his own population and the world afraid of his next move. This strategic reality increases escalation risks.

These challenges put a premium on finding long-term solutions to energy security and making diplomatic concessions that keep Moscow isolated but ease economic pain. Beyond new transatlantic energy deals, Washington may need to revisit Iranian sanctions and even find a compromise with China, including trading Trump-era tariffs to incentivize Beijing to keep Russia isolated. Strategy starts with prioritizing threats and aligning ends, ways and means. Russia proved it is the clear and present danger by invading its neighbors three times in the past 15 years while serving as the arms dealer and savior to authoritarians across the world. While China has more relative power, it may not present the same danger to the international order that Moscow does.

Ukraine has won the opening battles of the war, but requires more help to translate tactical success into operational objectives and strategic ends. Absent additional weapons transfers, logistics and intelligence support, and diplomatic efforts the war could still be lost.

Benjamin Jensen, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Research assistants Catherine Nzuki and Adrian Bogart at CSIS contributed to this article.