Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine

More than any other modern war, the fight between Russia and Ukraine has been a tough testing ground for modern weapons and operational concepts.

Drawing on extensive research into the conduct of the war during its first year, Sir Lawrence Freedman assesses the contrasting strategies of the two sides. Ukraine has fought along classical lines, seeking victory through battle. Russia has adopted a more total approach, combining conventional battles with attacks on Ukraine’s socio-economic structure.

Freedman explains why the apparently superior Russian force has been unable to defeat and subjugate Ukraine.

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Introduction

Russia’s war on Ukraine began in March 2014 when Crimea was seized and annexed. This was followed by violence in eastern Ukraine involving Russian-sponsored militias and eventually the regular Russian army, as the militias were unable to cope with the Ukrainian army. The violence never quite went away. Agreements were reached at Minsk in Belarus in September 2014 and February 2015 on ceasefires and peace settlements, but they were never fully implemented.

Then came the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, leading to intense fighting between two substantial industrial states. This fighting is a great human tragedy and has triggered a major international crisis. At the same time, it is also viewed as a learning opportunity for other armed forces.

It illustrates in vivid and often distressing ways the lethality of modern weapons and the variety of operations they can support through the seasons of the year in a large country with varying terrain. It has shown how whole populations can suddenly face desperate situations that they must either flee or endure.

It is always dangerous to generalise from specific cases. The unique circumstances of this war are unlikely to be replicated. The conditions would be quite different in future Middle Eastern or Indo-Pacific wars. In the latter case, maritime considerations would be to the fore. Moreover, this war has been through its own transformations. Conclusions drawn from its early stages already look questionable. Yet it is also important to reflect on what we have seen. In this short book, my reflections, inevitably preliminary because the war is not yet over and there is much more to learn about its conduct, concentrate on strategic choices. I consider the factors that influenced those making the key political and military decisions on war aims and the use of available capabilities to meet them. Both sides have fought using their own theories of war.

I describe these distinctive approaches as ‘classical’ for the Ukrainians, in which they try to confine the fighting to battles, and ‘total’ for the Russians, in that in addition to the battles, they are prepared to target civil society. The war provides an opportunity to compare these two approaches, both in terms of the realism of their assumptions and their effectiveness. This is not a full history of the war and there are certain aspects, such as maritime operations, that are not covered. My focus is on routes to victory – one that concentrates on control of territory and the other that adds coercive attacks on civil society.

My sympathies in this war are entirely with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for war was flimsy and fabricated. Russia was the aggressor, and it has behaved cruelly and criminally. Right, however, does not always triumph in war. Might usually makes the difference. The fact that Ukrainian forces have been able to defeat much more substantial Russian forces in some important battles does not ensure eventual victory, but it does highlight the importance of strategic choices and distinctive ideas about the conduct of war.

At first, many governments and pundits assumed that Russia would win the conventional stage of this war without too much difficulty. Problems were considered more likely to develop as it became necessary to pacify a hostile population and deal with an insurgency. In the event, the Russian army failed in its most important early battle, to take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and within weeks had to retreat, concentrating thereafter on seeking to hold territory seized in the south and east of Ukraine early in the war, and taking more territory to align the occupation with President Putin’s objectives (which have varied in ambition during the course of the war). Ukraine’s objective, from which it has not deviated, is to push the Russians out.

This has resulted in a series of battles of great intensity, with much of the fighting in urban areas and leading to high casualties. There are no recent precedents that could provide guidance on how this war would be conducted. Analyses of conflicts involving one or more of the major military powers are of little value. Some of those conflicts were limited and scrappy; others were deadly and significant. All, however, were asymmetrical, in that they were fought between entities with quite different capabilities, especially when it came to air power. Western armies defeated much weaker opponents in the conventional stages of their Middle Eastern wars before getting bogged down in insurgencies, which might have provided some warning to Russia. Russia also defeated weaker opponents – in Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and then in support of the Syrian government – but none of these operations came close to the sort of major war for which the great powers continued to prepare. Prior to Ukraine, the most recent example of a conventional war with relatively modern equipment was the short Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict of September 2020.

The scale and ferocity of the Russo-Ukrainian war is unique in recent times in providing insights into the possible character of a great power war. This is why it is already being examined for what it reveals about issues such as whether defence remains the strongest form of warfare, the importance of combined arms, the demands of logistics, and the challenges of command, as well as the roles of individual weapons systems, from tanks to drones. There have been opportunities to assess how advanced military systems and innovative tactics perform in combat as commanders on both sides have had to search for solutions to novel military problems.

At the time of writing (early August 2023), the Russo-Ukrainian war has been going for a year and a half. Whatever the skill with which past operations have been planned and executed, what matters is the situation when (and if) a ceasefire comes, whether a win for one side or some sort of draw. That will depend not only on how coming battles are fought, but also the ability of both sides to keep their armies supplied with troops, equipment, and ammunition, and how well their societies and economies cope with the stresses and strains of war. This in turn may depend on the quality of their international support.

The rush to draw lessons must therefore be tempered by an appreciation of the wider context in which this war has taken place. Wars are not set up as deep educational experiences. They do not follow standard patterns, and each one has unique features that mean what happens in one may not be the best guide to what might happen in the next. The best lessons to be drawn tend to be about the inevitable pitfalls that accompany any military operation – the danger of neglecting logistics, and the folly of underestimating opponents.

Another reason for caution is that the elements of symmetry and asymmetry in the respective force structures, and therefore the nature of their interactions, have changed over the course of the conflict. When it began, Russia had the advantage in most departments but as it was unable to make them count, its advantages began to slip away. As it used up its best equipment and took casualties among its most experienced troops, it struggled to find adequate replacements. This meant that its weapons systems became older, and its troops greener. Until mass mobilisation was ordered in late September 2022, personnel shortages grew in severity. With Russian air power having less impact than anticipated, advances have depended largely on artillery barrages and costly infantry assaults backed by armoured vehicles. By contrast, over time, Ukraine has received more advanced systems from the West, at first largely for defence, but then to support more offensive operations, although it has lost many of its most experienced troops.

But it is the strategic asymmetry that has been most marked. Each side is fighting in quite distinctive ways, reflecting their circumstances – one is invading and the other defending – and national predispositions, influenced on the Ukrainian side by its Western partners and on the Russian side by the weight of history and its other recent wars. Because the war is being fought on Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian forces have every incentive to avoid harming civilians. Russia, by contrast, has made no effort to spare civilians and has deliberately targeted the critical infrastructure necessary to keep Ukraine’s economy and society functioning.

This war also allows us to explore the meaning of warfare in the digital age. New information technologies have transformed the practice of warfare by improving the efficiency with which the traditional instruments of war can be used. They also open possibilities for new forms of warfare, such as targeted information campaigns and attacks against the networks upon which states depend, not only to conduct military operations, but for the effective functioning of the economy and society.

About the author

Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. Among his books are Strategy: A History (2013) and Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine (2022).