This week, NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg has said that Ukraine can win the war. According to Lieutenant Colonel Joakim Paasikivi, a teacher of military strategy at the Swedish National Defense College, the statement is not just a wild gamble.
– I think the answer is yes, but it will take a very long time, he says.
He bases his analysis on the two countries’ access to combat soldiers and munitions.
As the situation is now the Russian army has difficulty compensating for losses in both areas. It was speculated that President Putin would declare war on Ukraine on Victory Day, May 9, the anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, but this did not happen. Without a declaration of war, he has not legislated support for a mass mobilization.
– There is a sneak mobilization in Russia where reservists are called in to the equivalent of our recruitment offices and offered to sign contracts. They can be exposed to pressure linked to their jobs or get paid fairly well, but those you manage to recruit are still fewer than the losses you have suffered.
Given the sanctions of the West, it is also difficult to compensate for the losses of munitions.
– Now a load of T-90 tanks, the latest model of tanks, is coming to Ukraine. It is possible that Russia has succeeded in producing new tanks, but given the large losses, they have presumably lost three years of tank production in two months and they are difficult to replace.
In the short term the Russians may have tactical success in eastern Ukraine, but then they must concentrate all their forces there and use their artillery extensively. At the same time, the strength of the Ukrainian army is on the rise.
– They have previously said that they will mobilize one million men and that they have the ability to do so. Equipment is constantly being added from the west so that there is a capacity growth. We will probably see more of what we have seen around Kharkiv, over time the Ukrainian army will take back more small towns and cut off Russian maintenance lines. In this way, they erode the Russian ability to wage war.
The question is also how a Ukrainian profit is defined. Is it about preventing Russia from achieving its war goals? Or is it about Ukraine regaining its internationally recognized borders that applied before the invasion of Crimea in 2014?
It is also difficult to say how quickly Ukraine can win the war.
– The Ukrainian intelligence chief has said that there will be a turning point in August and that they will be ready by the end of the year, but I dare not say about it. The Russian army may collapse or it may continue as it has done since 2014 with civil war, but overall, the conditions for Ukraine to retake its entire territory are better than between 2014 and 2022.
What speaks for a Russian victory?
– Virtually nothing. If Russia does not make a radical change and make a major attack with a mobilized army or deploy weapons of mass destruction, but with both of those alternatives, they risk a major war. I do not think the West would allow Russia to beat Ukraine, they have invested too much.
Men Oscar Jonsson, doctor of military science at the Swedish National Defense College, is more cautious. He assumes that Jens Stoltenberg with victory aims for Ukraine to take back the territory the country had control over before 24 February.
– It is not impossible but difficult. If the Russian units decide to consolidate their positions in eastern Ukraine, it will be significantly more difficult and then a collapse among the Russian armed forces is required.
What speaks for a Ukrainian victory is, above all, the enormous exhaustion of the Russian units. Russia has used virtually all of its peacetime force and has been active since December or January. However, the Russians have a big advantage in terms of firepower, he says.
– This is actually an artillery war, where Russia has much greater capability and ammunition.
But morally, he believes that Ukraine has already won because it has defied all odds and managed to resist such a great power for so long.
– There can be no scenario where a little extra territory in eastern Ukraine and a bombed-out Mariupol make it worth the sanctions, the enormous political isolation and Russia’s economic collapse. In that way, it can be said that a Russian loss is in any case guaranteed.
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