Ukraine war’s outlook in 2023: Harder fighting against a tougher Russian army

All sides’ strategic incentives in the Ukraine War point toward continued conflict in 2023. The war’s settlement will emerge from the battlefield, not primarily from negotiations. Russia, meanwhile, is planning another offensive to solidify its territorial position and prepare for another year of war.

Every weapon that the West refrains from sending to Ukraine in the next two months will be regretted in the next six.

In addition, the notion of Russia’s absolute incompetence must be eliminated. No military is perfect, and Russian forces have their problems — but Western analysts are far too optimistic about Russia’s initial failures.

Russian military improvements

Despite coordination and competence issues plaguing Russia’s military, its assault on Kyiv very nearly worked. Russia achieved operational shock, overloading Ukraine’s command-and-control system and converting a coherent military force into disaggregated units. It fixed around half of Ukraine’s military in the eastern Donbas region while achieving strategic surprise with a lightning dash on Kyiv — a shock purchased at the cost of effective planning and coordination at lower command echelons, but surprise nonetheless — and met its key objectives in Ukraine’s south in the first week.

Yet Russia’s trade of surprise over planning coherence proved decisive. Russian troops, lacking a clear picture of the overall campaign, encountered unexpected resistance and could not formulate reasonable tactical plans. Ukraine’s military, which had exercised for years and had extensive plans for a Russian war, was resilient enough to survive the war’s first days without coherent command-and-control. After Feb. 27, Ukraine re-established control over the operational space; Russia took another two weeks to do so, by which point the Kyiv offensive stalled and Russian forces were at risk of encirclement.

Russia’s effort since withdrawing from Kyiv has been marked by an attempt to regain operational control; its commanding officer in Ukraine, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, appears to have done so — as Ukraine’s military commander, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, implied in a recent interview.

War commonly reveals the limitations of peacetime officers; Zaluzhnyi cashiered ten Ukrainian commanders and lost one to suicide. At this point, Zaluzhnyi knows his theater and brigade commanders and their staffs exceedingly well — an exceptional advantage in high-end war, where operational control is crucial. Surovikin, however, has made far more progress than any of his predecessors toward creating a coherent Russian command; Russia’s retreat from Kherson was reasonably well-executed and took significant planning.

Russia’s current operational plan includes three aspects, two of which are well known; the other will be revealed in the next three months.

Russia’s strategic campaign is designed to cripple Ukraine’s power infrastructure. The goal is threefold. First, by doing so, Russia can sap Ukraine’s morale and perhaps trigger more refugees. Second, Ukraine must choose between employing its limited anti-air capabilities to protect critical infrastructure or the military; the longer Russia’s strategic strike campaign continues, the longer it can delay a Ukrainian offensive. Third, by degrading Ukraine’s power infrastructure, Russia can disrupt Ukrainian logistics and facilitate its own renewed offensives.

Russia’s continuous pressure along the front-line also is a delaying action. Russian pressure in the east, particularly against Bakhmut, is nowhere near as overwhelming as it was in the summer’s Donbas offensive. But Ukraine must defend the current contact line or risk providing Russia a staging ground.

Yet static defense, even when conducted with great skill, requires men and materiel; Ukraine may not be taking excruciating losses as it allegedly did during the battle of Severodonetsk, where Russia possessed a 60:1 artillery advantage. Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut are well-entrenched and Russia’s artillery advantage is closer to 3:1, a figure belied by the far greater accuracy of Ukraine’s Western-supplied weapons.

Nevertheless, every unit committed to defending the new line is a unit unavailable for a major offensive. By compelling Ukraine to defend everywhere, Russia complicates Ukrainian force concentration, thereby buying more time.

A future Russian offensive

Russia’s future offensive plans are a “known unknown.” Gen. Surovikin likely has, at minimum, the political objective to conquer all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. However, recrossing the Dnipro River will be exceptionally difficult. At a maximum, Surovikin may be charged with again subjugating Ukraine entirely.

Surovikin will have learned from Russia’s mistakes. He will deploy more effectively than his predecessors, with some 200,000 fresh troops along the front. He will time his assault with the most punishing — and, given the high rate of Russian missile attacks, perhaps the final — strategic bombardment of the war, perhaps destroying Ukraine’s power system and adding another factor to Ukrainian planning.

Russia’s most dangerous course of action is an assault from Belarus across the Pinsk Marshes that cuts Ukraine’s supply lines to the West. This is possible, albeit relatively unlikely. The marshes are only passable at scale if they freeze. Thus far, temperatures are slightly too high to guarantee frozen ground. Even if the ground freezes, Russian advances will remain rail-bound and many major lines running north-south to Belarus are single-tracked — rich targets for a Ukrainian counterattack.

Russia’s more likely course may be another assault on Kyiv. Russia has massed significant equipment in Belarus and is training its 200,000 soldiers; those men will not be nearly as competent as Ukrainian troops, who have fought for ten months — but they will greatly outnumber the force that initially assaulted Kyiv.

If Russia can move quickly enough — a major “if,” considering the war’s course — it can force Ukraine into the operational dilemma it has sought to create since February: Hold the Donbas and lose the northeast, or leave the Donbas and potentially hold the northeast.

Surovikin almost certainly will design this campaign to provide long-term breathing room for Russia, first consolidating control around major settlements en route to Kyiv and pummeling them into submission before finally assaulting Kyiv.

Ukraine’s responses

Ukraine is bound by similar considerations as Russia. The weather is now near-freezing but, along the front lines, the ground remains intermittently cold and wet rather than developing a hard winter pack. Hence, Ukraine may need to wait until spring to attack in the south, giving Russia — with a bit of luck and a cold snap in January — the ability to push from the north.

Ukraine has not stood idle, however. Although Russia keeps Ukrainian forces engaged along the front line, Ukraine has taken three critical steps.

First, it has kept around half of its brigades out of contact. Front-line strength is difficult to gauge, but Ukraine looks to have mitigated the mass it deployed across the front, leveraging its defensive depth, better artillery ratio and better-trained manpower to rotate units more effectively, preserving some degree of reserve for an attack.

Second, Ukraine has begun to demonstrate its ability to attack within Russia, hitting launch sites for Russia’s long-range strike campaign. This will be critical to any long-term peace settlement.

Third, Ukraine has improved its position on the ground at a lower cost than Russia. Yes, the fighting along the Svatove-Kreminna line is brutal, but Ukraine has been more judicious than Russia in Bakhmut and has begun to close the noose around Kreminna. In the long-term, Ukraine is collecting marginal tactical and operational improvements that will enable a major strategic-level offensive.

The question for Ukraine is whether to push in the south, the most strategically consequential area, or the east, potentially the most fruitful area. Breaking the Zaporizhzhia line and pushing to Melitopol would jeopardize Russian supply routes to Crimea. But Russia has created multiple defensive lines there and would fight hard; casualties would be high, and Ukraine has yet to overextend itself and invite a counterattack. Alternatively, a breakthrough along the Svatove-Kreminna line could unravel Russia’s position in the east, squeezing its logistics into Donetsk and Luhansk and forcing thousands of Russian troops into a small pocket. It may also expose Ukrainian forces to a Russian counterstroke, given the ground in the Donbas’ north.

Regardless, another counteroffensive is entirely feasible in coming months.

Western policy

Western planners are in the unenviable position of planning without an articulated set of political goals. From now until May 2023, the West’s objective should be to give Ukraine the tools it needs to mitigate any strategic dilemma Russia might impose.

The foremost strategic dilemma is bombardment — hence, the relevance of air defenses. The more air-defense systems Ukraine receives, the more it can move to the front line without sacrificing coverage of critical infrastructure. Patriot PAC-3s will greatly improve Ukraine’s defense of its infrastructure, as would additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and, ideally, mobile point-defense systems alongside Ukraine’s German-supplied Gepard anti-air vehicles.

But far more is needed.

Ukraine requires a significant amount of ammunition; the West has significant ammunition reserves, but it must place production facilities far closer to Ukraine — ideally, in Poland — and scale up production by a factor of at least three to five to meet monthly Ukrainian needs. It also must deliver more armored vehicles, specifically German Leopard-2 Tanks; the U.S. must twist Germany’s arm until those tanks reach Ukraine. But keeping the Russians at bay will not win the war. Ukraine should be given the offensive capability to take the war to Russia: a defensive war risks repeating the stalemates and slaughter that characterized World War I.

Finally, the U.S. should quietly broker a variety of co-production and design contact between Ukraine and Eastern European NATO to expand the production of long-range weapons like the Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship cruise missile. Ukraine already has caused significant psychological damage with its deep strikes and disrupted Russian operational cohesion. Adding a cruise missile force capable of hitting Russian ships throughout the Black Sea would break Russia’s stranglehold on Crimea, while producing weapons with a land-attack option would erode Russia’s long-term position.

In 1942, the U.S. increased its production of munitions by over 400 percent, far more than any of that war’s combatants. There is no bar to repeating this achievement except the continued sporadic delivery of critical war supplies to Ukraine. A resolute articulation of Western war goals, along with appropriate funding, can drive Russia from Ukraine. If the U.S. wants Ukraine to win, it should act like it.

Seth Cropsey is founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of “Mayday: The Decline of American Naval Supremacy” (2013) and “Seablindness: How Political Neglect Is Choking American Seapower and What to Do About It” (2017).