The Hostomel Decisive Battle/Counterfactual and (mis)understanding war

Battles usually reveal, not cause

Hello All, I thought I would write the midweek update this week on a subject close to my heart—the relative importance of a ‘Battle’ mixed in with the value (or really complete lack of value) of counterfactual discussions at battles. Its motivated by a fascinating counterfactual scenario that has erupted regularly since the Russian full-scale invasion. That is a discussion about the importance of the Russian assault on Hostomel Airport, the attempt of which failed quite spectacularly at the very start of the full-scale invasion. Almost immediately afterwards there were stories describing this as a decisive moment early in the war, and wondering if the whole war would have been different if the Russians held Hostomel.¹ More recently it received a new dose of excitement in this War in the Rocks piece.² We might call this the Hostomel Decisive Battle/Counterfactual.

Wreckage of the Antonov 225 (largest cargo plane in the world) after the fighting at Hostomel

In the Hostomel decisive battle/counterfactual (dbc), the results of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could have been very different—indeed Kyiv could have fallen and Russia might have triumphed! If only the Russians had successfully seized Hostomel at the start of the full-scale invasion, so the reasoning went, they then would have successfully been able to get into Kyiv, presumably take over the Ukrainian government and (one imagines) have their victory parade.

The Hostomel dbc builds around the idea that Ukrainians just seized the airport back from the Russians by the thinnest of margins. The Ukrainians were not prepared, the airport was only defended by conscripts (all true) while the Russians were sending in some of the best soldiers and most advanced equipment. As such, so the premise of the Hostomel dbc goes, the Russians could very well have taken the airfield—indeed they came very close. However the Ukrainians reacted just quickly enough, and got lucky because of the flaws in the Russian battle plan, and so were able to get reinforcements there and hold the airfield in the end. Still it was a close run thing—and had it been different, the whole war would have changed (or so the argument goes). As such, Hostomel becomes a decisive battle in the war. The authors of the last piece call it the ‘most critical’ battle of the war so far, and later refer to it as ‘pivotal’ in the outcome of the war.