STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. Over the course of those two years, the optimism and outpouring of international support resulting from Ukraine’s emphatic victory in the battle for Kyiv and its September 2022 counterattack to reclaim Kharkiv Oblast has waned, even among once staunch allies like Slovakia. Ukraine’s disappointing progress during its summer counteroffensive highlighted the difficulties of coordinating foreign assistance to support complex offensive operations against an entrenched enemy.
In recent months, international assistance has failed to keep pace with battlefield requirements in Ukraine, resulting in Russian advances along frontlines that had largely been static since the initial invasion in 2014. On February 17, Ukrainian forces completed a hasty withdrawal from Avdiivka, a fortified city in eastern Ukraine that had been used as a base of operations for the past ten years. Although attempts to seize the city began in September, the pace of the Russian advance accelerated in January as a result of overwhelming Russian artillery fire and the use of glide bombs as close air support to infantry. Several Ukrainian soldiers were captured during the rushed withdrawal, fueling criticism over the timing of the decision to withdraw. Despite the rapid nature of the retreat, Russian forces were unable to turn the victory into a rout and only managed to capture a handful of hamlets west of Avdiivka in their pursuit of Ukrainian forces, indicating a potential inability to exploit successes on the battlefield immediately. This stands to reason, given how costly the tactical victory was for Russia.
The war has inflicted a heavy toll on Russian and Ukrainian combatants as well as civilians, with many Ukrainian civilians either caught in the crossfire or deliberately targeted by Russian attacks. In February, Russian opposition outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that 66,000 to 88,000 Russian service members had been killed between February 2022 and December 2023. To sustain combat forces without fomenting popular unrest, Russian officials have avoided enacting a new round of forced mobilization. Instead, recruiters have offered enticing salaries to recruit volunteers from economically depressed rural areas and are alleged to be pursuing a shadow campaign of forced mobilization in occupied parts of Ukraine, pressing Ukrainian citizens into service on the frontline. External observers have described Russian recruitment efforts in 2023 as exceeding expectations despite not having achieved their official annual goal. Ukraine has also struggled to replace battlefield losses, but politicians in Kyiv are wary of lowering the draft age from 27 to 25, fearing political and economic backlashes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent public acknowledgment that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed so far in the war and his increasingly forceful demands for Western support underscore growing concerns over manpower and equipment shortages.
With U.S. military aid held up due to electioneering and partisan politics in Washington D.C., several of Ukraine’s foreign partners marked the two-year anniversary by reaffirming their commitment to supporting the Ukrainian war effort. On the following Monday, twenty heads of state, most representing European Union (EU) countries, attended a meeting in Paris where they committed to boost ammunition deliveries to Ukraine. Fifteen leaders reportedly agreed to a Czech-led initiative to lift a requirement that EU military assistance be purchased from within the single market. The demands for munitions and equipment precipitated by the war in Ukraine have so far outstripped the EU’s production capacity. Furthermore, the new requirements have highlighted the lack of European integration on defense matters. The bloc’s defense industrial base is largely fragmented along national lines, complicating production and coordination of aid amongst the 27-member union. Despite these constraints in the defense sector, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed the EU would send the first allotment (€4.5 billion) of a planned €50 billion general Ukraine aid package for 2024-2027 in March. President Von der Leyen also announced that a framework for negotiations for Ukrainian accession to the EU would be published in mid-March. Both Canada and Italy signed security cooperation agreements with Ukraine at the bilateral level, committing both countries to supporting Ukraine for the next ten years. Spain and the UK also outlined plans to deliver aid over the course of 2024.
The U.S. marked the two-year anniversary by imposing more than 500 new sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and in response to the death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. The EU, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan also introduced hundreds of new sanctions of their own. These new restrictions stand out for targeting entities in third-party countries, such as India and China – a deliberate attempt to counter sanctions evasion. Days later, Bloomberg reported that Russia managed to import 488 million dollars’ worth of sanctioned goods from the EU in the first three quarters of 2023, highlighting the challenges of restricting Russian access to critical technologies.
The third year of the war begins with the strategic initiative firmly in Moscow’s hands. Russian President Vladimir Putin will be reelected to a fifth term as president in what can only be described as a sham election on March 17. Though the result of the election is a foregone conclusion, the renewed mandate will allow President Putin to enact policies that might have been too risky ahead of the election, such as a new round of forced mobilization. Either way, with Western support failing to meet muster, Putin will likely be feeling bullish about the prospects for renewed Russian offensives in 2024. Zelensky and his military leadership, on the other hand, will have to defend an extensive frontline without the security of a second robust line of defense in place. This will inflate the importance of each defensive action and incentivize committing to costly engagements like those at Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Ukraine’s leadership will also have to strike a perilous balance between manning the frontline to limit Russian advances and training new combat groups eventually to reseize the initiative in a future Ukrainian offensive.
