There is bad, but not disastrous, news for Ukraine from the eastern front. After more than two and a half years and several failed major attacks, Russia is making significant progress near Vuhledar for the first time. The town lies on the hinge between the eastern front and the southern front.
Its impending loss worsens the situation in southern Donbas and deprives Ukraine of the opportunity to disrupt Russian logistics on the land route to occupied Southern Ukraine. The logistical importance of Crimea is diminishing as a result.
Even though the situation near Kupiansk, Kupiansk, and Vuhledar is developing negatively for Ukraine, Russia is falling well short of the goals it has set itself — recapturing the Kursk region by October 1 and taking the entire Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts by the end of 2024.
And it is suffering very high losses of 800-1,000 soldiers a day, although it is recruiting around 1,000 soldiers a day by paying astronomically high salaries. Russian men are often pressured by their families to report to the front to collect these high sums, albeit at the cost of life and limb. It has additionally lost many more than 600 armored vehicles, during the early assaults alone.
Major Russian breakthroughs at the front, large-scale operations by the Russian armed forces or a collapse of the Ukrainian front are not to be expected in the foreseeable future. Russia will continue its slow-rolling destruction of enemy positions using enormous glide bombs and artillery fire followed by infantry attacks, albeit (again) with heavy losses.
Ukraine needs long-range precision weapons and glide bombs with no restrictions on their use. The successful attacks on large Russian arms dump deep inside the country on September 18 and September 21 show the potential for weakening its offensive abilities.
Ukraine needs investment in the Ukrainian defense industry. 25% of all military aid should be used for procurement directly inside — for everything from howitzers and ammunition to drones and vehicles.
Ukraine needs maintenance and repairs closer to the front, opening construction plans, and the ability to manufacture spare parts itself and exchange them directly on-site.
It needs more modern air defense systems with plenty of ammunition and cheap drone defenses. Air defense support over Western Ukraine from NATO territory is possible and necessary.
Ukraine’s partners should finally define unmistakable consequences for Russia if it continues to terrorize marketplaces, civilian homes, and infrastructure with glide bombs, missiles, and artillery.
The West should finally define its war aims. The goals should be to use military strength to push Russia quickly to the negotiating table and back to peace, to enable Euro-Atlantic development in Ukraine, and to deter future Russian attacks.
Also, the hesitancy and slowness of Ukraine’s partners potentially put the war on a path toward years of gradual destruction of Ukraine starting from the east. The West’s current strategy is the most protracted and expensive imaginable.
Politicians should not succumb to the illusion that pandering to peace populists and Kremlin mouthpieces will bring the conflict closer to a solution. This will only encourage Putin to wage further war and make further demands.
The situation for Ukraine is difficult but could be turned around by strong partners with manageable means. If the US and the major European states spoke and acted like Mette Frederiksen, Petr Pavel, Kaja Kallas or Gabrielius Landsbergis, an end to the war could be achieved quickly.
Nico Lange is a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is also a Senior Fellow at the Munich Security Conference in Berlin and Munich and teaches military history at the University of Potsdam. Lange served as Chief of Staff at the German Ministry of Defense from 2019-2022.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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