Weekend Update #114: The Year that Confirmed Russia Can Be Beaten

And My Failings and Successes for the Year

Hi All,

The first weekend update of 2025 is the perfect time to give a summation of the most important lessons of the last year. However before that I want to do something I’ve done the past few years—a session of self criticism, where I go through what I got wrong in 2024 (and a little what I got right). Its important to do—to realize what you got wrong. And actually, I’ve already started to learn from it.

After that—there is a summation of why 2024 shows Ukraine can win (if we want it to).

What I got Wrong (with examples)

note—all italics are quotes from earlier pieces.

There are a number of things I really did not expect or which I did not give enough attention to this last year—starting from the very first day of 2024 (which was the day that new US aid for Ukraine theoretically ceased to be approved). While the Biden Administration could still have sent some earlier approved aid, from that day onwards, because of the unwillingness of Congress to approve new aid (which was entirely down to Trump’s influence over Republicans in Congress), new US aid ceased.

I simply did not think this would happen like this. I got a little worried in late 2023, but still thought because there were strong majorities in both houses of Congress that wanted to aid Ukraine, that a deal would get done pretty quickly.

Weekend Update #64: Crunch Time in Washington

However, I was wrong—I underestimated Trump’s influence (I still had doubts that he could ever win another election) and assumed a deal would get done.

Weekend Update #65 Crunch time gets Crunchier

The one sliver of hope is that Trump did not perform as well as many people expected in New Hampshire. Had he dominated the primary, I do think Ukraine aid might be dead. However, Haley survived, started casting doubts on Trump’s mental fitness, and the Trumpite wing of the party seems a little confused about how to respond. Trump is actually weaker than he was after Iowa—and the South Carolina Primary is still almost four weeks away.

If Haley can chip away at the vision of Trump’s mental fitness—its all good for Ukraine and Ukraine aid. And so far she’s trying, calling him “unhinged” yesterday on Fox.⁴ Oddly, Nicki Haley might be helping Ukraine now more than any other US political figure.

So, this fight is still far from over. I’m not so worried about the Senate—but the House is a different matter, and the fear of Trump will be the determining influence.

Needless to say my hope was misplaced and I was depressed as hell when it took until late April for a bill to pass—and of course much longer for US aid to flow.

Its a general problem I have had in the war in not getting US politics and policies right. The mistake was one that reared its head in 2022 and 2023, when I kept hoping that the Biden Administration was about to see the light strategically and aid Ukraine in the way it needed. I even thought once aid was approved in April 2024, that the administration might have seen the light and would arm Ukraine to win.

The Administration Seems to Have Learned a Very Hard Lesson About War

Overall this is a hopeful sign that the Administration has learned some very hard lessons. They seem to have understood, finally, that their earlier way of aiding Ukraine, to fight “the hard way”, had not prevented escalation.

Boy, was I wrong.

I have failed to understand just how entrenched their strategic vision was. By the early summer of 2024 I practically gave up on them—but its still a failing that I didn’t see this coming or at least one that I was desperately hoping would be corrected. I was wrong.

While I was making mistakes about American political leadership, I also got Europe’s leadership wrong. I had been hoping/pressing since the summer of 2023 for European leaders to start preparing for a possible Trump presidency and to do everything possible to help Ukraine. When President Macron started using the right language about this in February 2024, I really thought an important corner was turning.

European Troops in Ukraine--Dont Rule it Out

So Macron was only speaking the truth. This war is becoming existential for Europe. The longer it goes on, the more slaughter the Russians inflict on themselves and the Ukrainians, the more likely it becomes that Europeans become willing to intervene for Ukraine.

I was wrong—it only became apparent to me later just how crippled European strategic thinking really is and just how difficult it is for European leaders to think of the continent’s security without the USA. I think the reaction to this Foreign Affairs piece made that clear.

So basically, I have sucked at the high politics developments in 2024. I did not imagine the US or Europe would be capable to doing what seemed to me such self-weakening steps (though obviously did not to US/European politicians). Certainly, my writings about the political decision makers we became pretty dark in the second half of 2024.

The Hubris of Politicians

So, in 2025 I will make sure to have no hope and decidedly err on the side of misery and doom!

What I got Right

I actually got much of the battlefield right in 2024. All the stories of a Ukrainian defensive collapse and Russian breakthroughs leading to large advances seemed to be drastically overblown—even when the Ukrainians were suffering greatly because of the the US arms cut off.

Can either side actually advance faster than a human can walk?

The combination of UAVs (which provide very rapid detection of enemy forces let alone attacking options) with artillery/MLRS, mines, MANPADs, etc means that its very hard to see one side being able to mass the vehicles needed to make and exploit a breakthrough, even leaving aside the fact that the Russian side has very few soldiers left over with long-term training in combined arms maneuver warfare, and we dont know if they have the truck lift to support an advance.

We have to remember that the Russian struggled supplying vehicle advances in 2022, when their forces were far better equipped. They have not had the opportunity to try again in almost 20 months. We don’t want to make the same weak assumptions that people made about Russian logistics before the full-scale invasion (that they would just find a way to get things done). That’s a fools way of thinking.

This was for two reasons. The Russian military seemed to me, as I said constantly, a seriously limited organization with poor training, little combined arms capabilities, logistical shortcomings, and suffering from such high losses in men and equipment that it was difficult to see them having the ability to actually coordinate an advance. Moreover, the balance of defensive firepower was such, that massing forces for an advance would be extremely difficult.

In June 2024 I even coined a phrase (which I think has held up very well) to describe what we were seeing—a Russian “micro-advance” strategy.

Weekend Update #87: The Russian Micro-Advance Strategy and How Ukraine might Take Advantage.

In July, I summarized Russian strategy in this way—which I think has held up very well—it was we did see for the rest of the year.

Weekend Update #90: Strategic Update for Ukraine and Russia

So in a nutshell, Russian strategy is take whatever you can now, no matter how small an area and no matter how much it costs, on the assumption Trump wins, and you get to keep it. You then have four years to basically recover and come again when you are ready. The strategy is based around the longer term degradation of Ukraine as a power, the friendship of Trump, and the weakness of Europe.

My general understanding of Russian limitations also led me, I would say, to make the right calls about both the Russian Kharkiv Offensive and Ukrainian Kursk Offensive.

When the Russians attacked towards Kharkiv in May 2024, I tried to tell people not to panic, that the Russians were actually playing to Ukrainian strengths in interior lines and that there was little evidence that the Russians could breakthrough. I was probably the first person to call it what it was—a Russian strategic failure and I would argue that I was spot on.

Weekend Update 83: The Kharkiv Offensive is a Russian Strategic Failure for Now

Interestingly, when many people reacted completely differently to the Ukrainian Kursk Offensive in August, saying unlike the Russian attack that it was a major risk, or would only be a raid, or would go wrong quickly—I think I summarized quite well what we were seeing. This would be a Ukrainian attempt to set up a defensive area and force the Russians to attack it. This is what I wrote less than two weeks after the offensive started.

Weekend Update #94: The Kursk Offensive Initial Goals

So the offensive is progressing well. Ukraine is carving out a large amount of Russian territory on its border which it can hold and supply, its destroying Russia’s ability to get logistics to much of the same area, and Ukraine is taking a large number of prisoners—including conscripts which pose a particular dilemma to Putin. Moreover, the Russian response remains slow and disjointed.

So overall, I think I had a far better idea than most about how the war was developing in 2024, about how technology and warfare are evolving and about the state of the Russian military (which is actually really poorly reported upon in the west). I would argue that you would have learned far more from my weekend updates on these issues that the mainstream media.

Just dont read me for trying to understand what political leaders were going to do!

Why the Year Proves Russia Can be Beaten (If We Actually Want to Beat Them)

We know have pretty solid data on what Russia “achieved” in the areas of their supposed greatest success in 2024. There was a good sum-up in Ukrainian Pravda on January 4—which on the surface (if you didn’t understand the quantities involved) might seem worrying.

What the article calculated was that Russia has seized 3,600 square kilometres of Ukraine in the past year—almost all of it in the Donbas. Again, that might seem large, but as a part of Ukraine—it is a miniscule amount. Ukraine is a country of over 600,000 square kilometres. So Russia seized just over half of one percent of Ukraine in 2024 (.0059 a percent to be exact) and this doesn’t include the amount of Russia which Ukraine has seized—which would reduce it to below half a percent. To seize this tiny slice of Ukraine, which has almost no strategic value in that it doesn’t effect Ukrainian force generation in any meaningful way. Russia has lost over 420,000 soldiers, many thousands of AFVs, APCs, trucks etc.

By any historic understanding of a military campaign—this would be considered a strategic failure.

The one success Russia has had is to inflict serious men and material losses on Ukraine. This is the great problem with how Ukraine is being forced to fight. We are allowing Russia to get away with the best strategy that their limited military can undertake to damage Ukraine—by forcing the Ukraine to fight a limited-range front line war. In that sense we have taken a year that could have been extremely damaging for the Russians and given them some success.

Of course if you expand the war out of the Donbas, and look where Ukraine can take the initiative, the Ukrainians have shown what they can do even with the limited means that they have.

1. The Ukrainians launched, sustained and are still holding a slice of Russia through the Kursk Offensive. This is causing Putin fits as he is doing everything possible to try and take this back, has resorted to bringing in North Korean troops to help him—and is now suffering massive losses in the area.

2. The Russian attack on Kharkiv, which was prepared with huge advantages, has become a strategic drag on the Russian military and not advanced in the last 7 months.

3. The Ukrainians have used air-sea power far more effectively and innovatively than the Russians. They have basically cleared the surface vessels of the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of the Black Sea. At the same time, they are developing new platforms to take advantage of this. Just in the last week the Ukrainians used new Magura V5 naval strike drones to shoot down two very expensive Russian helicopters (at least one of which was an MI-8).

   

   A Ukrainian image of the Russian MI-8 being shot down last week

Its amazing to think that the Ukrainians are the ones extending their areas of control over the Black Sea.

4. Outside of Europe, the Russian military is clearly being withdrawn and denuded with real strategic damage done to Russia. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria, for instance, has led to what now looks more and more like the loss of not only an ally, but also at best a degraded Russian presence at the two most important Russian military facilities outside of the country—including the Tartus naval base.

Overall, therefore, it is only in the area of the war where Russia is being allowed to play to its areas of strength that it is having anything that can be termed a success—and only a very limited one at that. When it come to the Donbas, Russia can fight relying on its superior glide bombs, air power, and heavy fire power, all of which can be prepared in Russia in protected sanctuaries courtesy of the US and leading European states (ahem, Germany).

In every other area of the war, where Russia does not have such inbuilt and foolishly protected advantages, Ukraine has shown greater initiative, adaptability and success. If only we allowed them to use the advantages in the whole Donbas region, we might be better able to put what is happening there in perspective—instead of pronouncing gloom because Russia was 8 kilometres from Pokrovsk in August and was 6 kilometres away in December.

So 2025 is in the balance. Its clearer than ever what needs to happen to help Ukraine to win—its just not clear that Ukraine’s supporters are at all interested in doing this. If not, there will be mass amounts of blood on both sides, and maybe a bad deal imposed on Ukraine. Remember though, if that happens, it was a choice, not an inevitability.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

PS. I was going to have a third section on the Biden administration’s huge PR push this week to try and defend its reputation on Ukraine. However, what Ive written is too long as it is—so that will be a midweek piece. Apologies!