(MENAFN- Asia Times)
After more than 26 months of devastating combat, earlier expectations of a decisive Russian victory have given way to the reality of a grinding war of attrition in Ukraine.
“Putin's theory of victory is to make creeping advances in Ukraine indefinitely,”
wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a private US military think tank. The strategy is designed to“protract the war” with the aim of“destroying Ukrainian statehood,” ISW concluded.
Putin's original goal, to block Ukraine's integration with the West, remains the same as it was when he first launched his so-called“special military operation” in February 2022. Meanwhile, Kiev still hopes to join the European Union and NATO amid the growing risk of annexation and a full loss of sovereignty.
Both sides are thus girding for an open-ended, long-haul conflict, analysts say. Ukraine's Western allies believe Kiev can outlast Moscow's assaults on civilian and military targets, so long as it receives enough weapons.
To make this allied objective a reality, Ukraine and the West must fashion a concise“grand strategy...aimed at inflicting unacceptable damage on Russia,” suggested the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think tank based in London. The goals must include bringing“Russia to a state of inability/unwillingness to continue the war,” RUSI said.
Early in the war, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin proposed just such an objective.“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said.
US President Joe Biden later rejected the idea of bringing Russia to its knees, for fear that Putin would make good on his threat to use nuclear weapons, or that, in the face of defeat, Russia would descend into chaos.
In any case, Austin has not repeated the goal of an all-out victory. And, in terms of helping Ukraine defend itself, the US moderated its supplies of weaponry to Kiev, producing arms in reaction to Russian actions rather than seeking to deter escalation in advance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky resists the idea that a war of attrition is acceptable. He wants to launch a decisive counteroffensive this year, even though an effort to dislodge Russia from eastern Ukraine failed last year.“Yes, we have a counteroffensive plan. We will definitely win. We have no alternative,” he said back in April.
Zelensky and critics of the West's response have heaped scorn on what they called a“drip-drip” policy of arms supplies.
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