Unable to conduct either effective offensives or organized retreats, Russia has resorted to pounding Ukrainian cities and the country’s utilities infrastructure.
But with his forces pushed away from many of Ukraine’s major cities, President Vladimir Putin is forced to rely upon finite numbers of missiles and Iranian suicide drones. Putin hopes to deny Ukraine’s population safe drinking water and heating as Ukraine’s always-brutal winter approaches. The Russian president thus hopes to weaken Ukraine’s morale and force a presently emboldened President Volodymyr Zelensky into concessionary negotiations.
But Putin’s new strategy faces two intractable problems.
WHAT SHOULD THE US STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES IN UKRAINE ACTUALLY BE?
First, Ukraine retains the battlefield initiative and a greater will to fight. Second, Russia’s missile/drone portfolio has limits. When Putin runs out of munitions, the smoke born of his destruction will unveil both Ukraine’s continued strength and his unresolved battlefield weakness. That hard reality will force Putin back to a fundamental choice between retreat or strategic escalation.
Putin seeks to delay this inevitable difficulty through the expansion of his military draft and the procurement of more weapons from Iran. Predictably, the conscription drive is not going well. Conscripts are being killed by their own comrades before even reaching their deployment sectors. Nor can Iran save Russia’s war effort. As Kylie Atwood reports, Iran is preparing to send around 1,000 more weapons systems to Russian forces in Ukraine. This allotment may include ballistic missiles, significantly increasing pressure on Israel to provide greater support to Ukraine. Again, however, Russia is rapidly depleting its precision munition stocks. Supplies of other munitions are also running short. But due to input material and spare part shortages, endemic corruption, and poor infrastructure, Russia’s military supply chain is incapable of redressing these deficits in the short term.
Iran’s Hail Mary effort faces its own challenges. Ukraine claims to have shot down approximately 300 Iranian drones already. But facing continued domestic protests, Iran’s leaders are desperate to scare the West into a more concessionary stance. Unfortunately for him, Ayatollah Khamenei’s brutal repression of protesters and simultaneous support for Russia is only hardening Western attitudes toward Tehran. Indeed, Western powers are likely to exert new pressure on India and China to reduce their Iranian oil imports in response to Tehran’s Ukraine escalation. (China wants to woo rather than alienate Europe.) Similarly negative for Iran, its new threats to U.S. and Saudi interests will only improve the strained relationship between Riyadh and Washington.
The top line is thus clear. Where Ukraine retains the dominant means of combined arms offensive power and defensive resilience, Russian forces are running short on munitions, morale, and the means of helping Putin escape the quagmire he created for himself.
