New tactics and a NATO assist can help Ukraine defeat Russia

U.S. allies will converge in Washington next month for this year’s NATO summit, which also marks the 75th anniversary of the most successful collective security pact in modern times.

Amid the prosaic business of managing a 32-nation alliance, one urgent question will hover over the gathering: Are the transatlantic partners doing enough to prevent Russia from snuffing out Ukraine’s sovereignty?

If they fail, it won’t just be a tragedy for Ukraine. Its defeat or dismemberment would reward Vladimir Putin’s aggression and whet his appetite for regaining control over other former Soviet possessions, such as Armenia, Moldova and the Baltic states.

In addition to endangering Europe, a Putin victory would provide fodder to NATO skeptics like Donald Trump, who sees the alliance as a feckless anachronism preventing Washington from putting “America First.”

After nearly 19 months of fighting, the military momentum in Ukraine has shifted in Moscow’s favor. Drawing on deeper manpower reserves and a larger defense industrial base, Russian forces have taken the offensive and are threatening Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. 

However, an outright Russian victory isn’t any more inevitable than the Russian defeat that Ukraine’s leaders were predicting early last year. Although Kyiv likely can’t win a toe-to-toe slugfest with Russia, a change in the way it fights could open a more favorable third phase of the war.

The first phase began with Putin’s botched invasion in February 2022. Almost nothing went right for the poorly led and equipped invaders. Ukraine’s smaller but more motivated forces improvised brilliantly, decimating storied Russian units, sinking warships and driving the invaders eastward.

Outside Ukraine, Putin’s “special military operation” was a strategic debacle for Moscow. It sparked international condemnation and rallied Europe and America solidly behind Ukraine. They rushed arms and aid to Kyiv while clamping stringent sanctions on Russia’s economy.  

Longtime neutrals Sweden and Finland joined NATO, giving Putin a new 800-mile northern border with the alliance he claims threatens Russia. And Putin got another rude surprise when most European countries moved swiftly to end their dependence on cheap Russian natural gas and start sourcing energy from America and the Middle East. 

But a ballyhooed Ukrainian counteroffensive fizzled last year when Russian forces dug in and regrouped as Kyiv waited for Western arms.  

Thus began the war’s second phase. Russia drafted convicts to beef up its conscript army and reportedly has about 600,000 troops in Ukraine, compared to its original invasion force of around 190,000.

Moscow has spent heavily on retooling its defense industries, effectively putting its economy on a war footing. It has also worked with its allies in the axis of autocrats — North Korea, Iran, Syria and China — to skirt economic sanctions and replenish its stock of missiles, artillery shells and drones.  

Russian forces won control of Bakhmut last year after some of the fiercest fights of the war. This February, they took the eastern town of Avdiivka after Ukrainian troops withdrew and more recently they’ve been creeping forward across the northern border toward Kharkiv. 

All this has quieted heady talk in Kyiv about prying every inch of occupied Ukraine, including Crimea, from Russia’s grip.  

Writing in Foreign Affairs, national security analysts Keith L. Carter, Jennifer Spindel and Matthew McClary make a compelling case that Ukraine should change its strategy and war aims.  

“Ukraine must now find a way to do more with less. It must avoid attritional battles, conserving manpower and material to be able to respond to changing conditions. Defeating Russia will require organizing Ukrainian forces to fight a longer war of exhaustion using asymmetric guerrilla tactics.”

America’s war of independence offers an apt precedent and model for the anti-colonial insurgency Kyiv needs to wage today. Avoiding set-piece battles against superior British forces, George Washington’s rag-tag Continental Army used hit-and-run tactics to harass the Redcoats and disrupt their long supply lines. Washington understood victory meant avoiding decisive defeats while draining Britain of men and treasure.   

The U.S. insurgents also needed help from French warships and troops to wear the British down and convince the crown that the cost of holding the U.S. colonies had become prohibitive. By the same token, Ukraine will need a steady infusion of outside military and economic aid to offset Moscow’s advantages in men and materiel.   

U.S. weapons are finally pouring into Ukraine after House Republicans had held them up them for more than half a year. And last week, the White House finally agreed to lift some restrictions on using those weapons to strike staging areas, depots, headquarters and airfields inside Russia. 

Washington had been reluctant to do this out of fear of provoking Putin. But as Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis recently noted, “Avoidance of escalation is not a winning strategy.”

If Kyiv now adopts classic insurgency tactics, the war’s third phase could turn into a marathon. Putin is all in; Russian glide bombs, missiles, and artillery are demolishing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and killing civilians in apartment buildings and stores.  

Ukrainians are war-weary, but they aren’t giving up. The open question is whether Europe and America can muster the will and stamina to keep Ukraine in the fight.

If Trump wins in November, all bets are off. But next month’s summit gives NATO a chance to dramatically rebalance the military equation in Ukraine. The allies should agree to use $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to build what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading for: A replica of the multilayered air defense system that shielded Israel from Iran’s missile and drone attack in April.  

That would show the world that the NATO allies are as committed to Ukraine’s survival as Putin is to its extinction.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.