Success and Failure in Ukraine’s Campaigns

Image: @MilitaryLand.net Twitter/x

Back in April this year, I described in my Futura Doctrina post on this topic seven key measures of success for Ukraine’s 2023 campaign. I did this because it was obvious then that many offering comment on the war did not possess a clear view of what success in Ukraine’s coming offensive might consist of other than ‘advance to the sea’ in southern Ukraine. We can do better than that, particularly as reporting on progress is difficult without consistent and well-defined measures of success. 

As such, in this article I offer another update on Ukraine’s progress in its current operations as assessed against my seven key measures of progress.

However, as I have written previously, additional context for these measures is required. The measures of success must be applied to the overall Ukrainian conduct of operations, not just the southern offensive. Ukrainian progress this year must be measured against all of its endeavours, not just a single front. Therefore, my assessments against the measures of success consider all of Ukraine’s campaigns (which I described in the previous article), and not just the south.

At the same time, it is worth considering what failure looks like. Back in my original article on measuring the success of Ukraine’s 2023 offensives, I also explored possible failure mechanisms for Ukraine’s 2023 operations. As such, at the conclusion of this article, I also offer an update on these measures of failure as well.

Ukraine’s 2023 Campaigns: Measuring Success

Measure 1: Ukraine achieves surprise. Generating tactical and operational surprise is designed to lead to individual and collective shock. This shock, at tactical and operational levels of the Russian military, should lead to slower decision making and responses to Ukrainian operations, while also breaking down the tactical and operational cohesion of the Russian plan for defending occupied Ukraine. While relatively easy to assess on the ground, limitations on sharing information with news organisations may make this harder to assess in the short term. It is, however, a key component for the success of the Ukrainian offensives.

Assessment: The conduct of Ukrainian offensives was no surprise after months of telegraphing that it was coming. Recently, the Ukrainian operations to cross and lodge forces on the eastern back on the Dnipro River may have generated tactical surprise. It has undertaken subsequent crossings but has been unable to significantly exploit this lodgement (not yet anyway).  Additionally, the seizure of the Black Sea drilling rigs in the past couple of days will have surprised the Russians.

An area where Ukraine continues to generate surprise is in its program of operational and strategic strikes.  Ukrainian intelligence appears to be continuing its outstanding targeting efforts.  Recent attacks on the Russian S-400 site in Crimea, the Russian airbase hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine and Black Sea drilling rigs are all examples of this.  These strikes have been accompanied by efforts to develop indigenous strike weapons and secure more foreign strike missiles such as the German Taurus and American ATACMS. Overall, this measure would receive an assessment of ‘partially achieved’.

Measure 2: Ukraine destroys or degrades Russian tactical and operational reserves, C2 and logistics. The Ukrainians will want to limit the Russian’s ability to respond to their attacks, particularly if they are able to achieve a breakthrough in Russian positions. Therefore, finding and neutralising mobile Russian reserves before - and at the beginning of - the offensives will be important. And just as the identification and neutralisation of reserves is important, so too is the identification of Russian headquarters. Their destruction or degradation in effectiveness helps break down the cohesion of the Russian response to Ukrainian attacks. Concurrently, identification of Russian logistics – especially artillery ammunition stocks – will be vital in Ukraine generating a firepower advantage.

Assessment: The Russians have demonstrated the ability to adapt as a result of these strikes, particularly in the wake of the arrival of HIMARS in mid 2022. This RUSI report is an excellent review of Russian adaptation which has seen enhancements to the survivability of Russian command and control as well as their logistics networks. Notwithstanding these Russian changes, these operational strikes remain a crucial mission for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Strikes on Russian large ammunition supply locations, key transportation nodes and Russian senior leadership – particularly in southern Ukraine and Crimea – will remain part of Ukraine’s ‘deep battle’. This is an ongoing and only partially achieved measure of success for the 2023 Ukrainian offensives.

Measure 3: Ukraine takes back its territory. Underpinned by tactical and operational battlefield successes, recapturing large parts of its territory and liberating Ukrainian citizens from the predations of the Russians is a key measure of success for the offensives. Part of this will be Ukraine’s capacity to reduce and fight through the various obstacle zones created by the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine. I don’t propose a certain percentage of territory that should be recaptured, but if most of Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are recaptured, this would be a very successful outcome. And it would be good foundation for subsequent operations against Crimea and Donetsk in the future.

Assessment: Ukraine is making progress liberating its territory. However, as I have described in previous assessments, few people with the exception of the Ukrainian President, military high command and government officials, know the real Ukrainian objectives for this phase of the war. Therefore, we cannot say with any certainty whether this is behind or on schedule.

That said, Ukraine is steadily recovering its territory.  Recent reports from both the Institute for the Study of War and MilitaryLand.net have covered Ukrainian gains in the east and the south of Ukraine. Both have great maps showing this progress. Another good resource on this topic is War Mapper, whose latest assessment finds that Ukraine has liberated 35 square kilometres during August 2023. Therefore, this measure of success can be assessed as ‘partially achieved and ongoing’.

Measure 4: Ukraine is well placed for actions to return Crimea at the end of the offensives. In an earlier article, I proposed that the last campaign of the Ukraine war may be Ukraine liberating Crimea. President Zelensky has been clear on this as one of Ukraine’s war termination conditions. Therefore, the coming offensives will be successful if the Ukrainian armed forces are well placed for follow on operations to take back Crimea – either through making it untenable for the Russians to stay, or an actual military operation to seize it.

Assessment: This measure of success is directly linked to progress in Measures 2 and 3. Ukraine must liberate large parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to have a chance of placing at risk Russian forces, and the Russian occupation, in Crimea. It is working towards this goal with its attacks in the south. Ukraine is steadily attacking operational targets in Crimea including ammunition storage locations, air defence locations, and the routes that connect Crimea to Russia or occupied Ukraine. This measure of success can only be assessed as ‘not yet achieved’ and will remain dependent on progress achieved in the preceding measures 2 and 3. However, the recent strikes against Crimea, including the attack in the naval dry dock, is an indication that making Russia’s presence in Crimea untenable will be a key part of Ukraine’s overall strategy.

Image: @UAWeapons Twitter/x

Measure 5: Ukraine captures or destroys Russian forces. Related to the recapture of its territory is the capture or destruction of Russian forces. A successful Ukrainian offensive will reduce the quantity of Russian forces that the Ukrainians have to fight, and it will also force the Russian commander Gerasimov to make hard decisions about pulling forces from other areas to replace those destroyed. This leads to other opportunities for the Ukrainians. And, it should go without saying, it will have an impact of Putin’s calculus. A successful Ukrainian offensive will also ensure sufficient Russian combat power is destroyed to prevent Russia conducting any follow-on offensives for the remainder of 2023. Clearly it will also aim to degrade Russia’s military capacity in the short term, but it could have a significant impact on politicians in nations friendly, and not so friendly, towards Ukraine.

Assessment: The Ukrainians are achieving attrition of Russian combat power in the south and the east, but at the same time, have taken significant casualties to their own forces. Russian artillery appears to have suffered significant casualties, but Russia has also learned and adapted its conduct of fire support to its troops. The recent RUSI report on this topic is highly recommended. The current correlation of forces remains uncertain, but, both sides have committed large proportions of their reserve forces during their respective offensives in the north and the south of Ukraine.

The campaign in the south will ultimately be decided by which side culminates first. The culminating point from a military perspective is the point at which a military force is no longer able to perform its operations. On the offensive, the culminating point is the time when an attacking force can no longer continue its advance.  As such, we are likely to continuing observing a race to generate a relative advantage in forces by Ukraine and the Russians in the lead up to Winter. The assessment of Measure 5 for Ukraine is ‘some progress but ongoing.’

Measure 6: Ukraine preserves sufficient combat power to continue defending some areas and conduct subsequent offensives in others. While the Ukrainians will invest a significant part of their air and land combat power in this offensive, they will want to do so in a way where they don’t sustain massive casualties. The degree to which Ukraine can inflict disproportionate casualties and destruction on the Russians in the coming offensives will be an important measure of success.

Assessment: The Russian Western Grouping of Forces has been conducting a series of attacks in north-eastern Ukraine.  This has been ongoing for some time, and the Russians have advanced beyond the lines they held in early June. It is consuming Ukrainian combat power but not a significant proportion (yet).

The Ukrainians are also probably already thinking about the campaigns that will be needed in 2024 to continue liberating their territory. While preserving forces now for 2024 is less of a concern for them (they need to them to exploit a breakthrough), Ukraine will be thinking about refitting and training its brigades over winter for 2024 operations. In their recent RUSI report, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds note that:

A limiting factor in Ukrainian tactical operations is staff capacity at battalion and brigade level. Training of staff would significantly assist Ukrainian forces. This will only be helpful, however, if training is built around the tools and structure that Ukraine employs, rather than teaching NATO methods that are designed for differently configured forces.

Preparations for 2024 must address these factors. As such, the assessment of Measure 6 remains as it was in my previous campaign assessment: ‘partially achieved.’

Measure 7: Ukraine’s supporters believe the offensives have been a success. Not only must Ukraine achieve considerable tactical and operational success in its operations, the Ukrainian people, foreign leaders and populations will need to think they have succeeded. One does not automatically follow the other. Therefore, ongoing strategic communication from the Ukrainian government will be essential to tell the story and achievements of the offensives. This can be challenging at times, given the imperatives of operational security. But news of success is essential to Ukrainian morale, as well as ongoing support for Ukraine and pushing back on Chinese and Russian ‘peace’ overtures that would essentially freeze the conflict to Russia’s benefit.

Assessment: The perception of success for Ukraine’s campaigns in 2023 is almost as important as success on the ground. There has been a wide range of views expressed in the West, in Russia, in China and beyond on how the Ukrainian offensives are progressing. Sentiment has turned more positive in recent weeks after the August leaks about U..S concerns over Ukraine’s battlefield tactics.

Perceptions about success are going to inform further commitments of western assistance to Ukraine. Currently, assistance could be described as ‘helping Ukraine tread water’. What we need to do is ‘help Ukraine swim and win the race’. As such, additional equipment, individual and collective training will be required, and I have discussed this in detail elsewhere, including my recent Foreign Affairs article. As such, the assessment of Measure 7 is ‘not yet achieved’.

A Focus on Failure Helps

It is difficult to succeed in any endeavour without some appreciation of success as well as failure. Defining failure is an important part of how many complex organisations ensure that they remain safe and successful. Failure can be anticipated and the process of considering different forms of failure can inform robust military planning. In his book, The Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dorner notes that:

Failure does not strike like a bolt from the blue; it develops gradually according to its own logic…We can learn, however. People court failure in predictable ways.

In their book Managing the Unexpected, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe propose that it is:

Failure to articulate important mistakes that must not occur, and to organise in order to detect them, that allows unexpected events to spin out of control.

Military operations are no different from any other human endeavour; human agency decides on their success and failure. As such, earlier this year I sought to define what failure might look like in the 2023 Ukrainian offensives so that it might be detected and avoided. These measures of failure were as follows:

Measure 1. Failure to recapture territory. If the coming offensives don’t re-capture large swathes of Ukraine (which is what has occurred in the Russian offensive of 2023), the coming offensives are likely to be seen as a failure. Not only will large amounts of Ukraine remain illegally occupied by Russia, but many Ukrainian citizens will continue to be terrorised by their Russian overlords. This would be a military, political and humanitarian failure.

Measure 2. Failure to destroy large parts of the Russian Army. Destroying, or forcing the withdrawal, of large parts of the Russian Army in Ukraine is an essential part of the offensives. Not only does this underpin liberating Ukrainian territory, it deprives the Russians of combat forces for short and medium term offensive activities in 2023. It also makes their retention of other parts of Ukraine harder where offensives don’t take place. A failure to destroy significant parts of the Russian Army would probably result in a stalemate in the war for at least several months, and potentially longer.

Measure 3. Failure to learn. If the Ukrainian military does not demonstrate significant learning, especially about combined arms operations, during the offensives, they are less likely to generate tactical and operational battlefield success. More broadly, it will force a reappreciation of the kinds of aid provided to Ukraine by foreign countries. While the Ukrainians have demonstrated a significant learning capacity during the war, this is always a risk that needs to be monitored and mitigated.

Measure 4. Failure to anticipate or adapt. The inability to anticipate threats or adapt to them when they eventuate is a constate threat to combat forces. For the Ukrainians, this failure to anticipate could take the form of under-estimating Russian combat power, reserves or will, generally or in specific parts of the country. At the same time, even if it generates initial successes, Ukrainian forces have to be able to exploit opportunities and adapt on the move to get inside Russian decision-making cycles and destroy as much of the Russian Army as possible. Suboptimal anticipation or adaptation can pose a threat to battlefield outcomes, which would then have a significant impact on Ukrainian political objectives and relationships with its supporters.

Measure 5. Failure to project success. Even if Ukraine does generate significant tactical and operational success, it still needs to project its success to its people and to foreign audiences. Russian (and Chinese) misinformation will clearly be focussed on these efforts to degrade trust in news that reports Russian losses. That the offensives are successful, and seen to be successful, will be essential for Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and defeat Russia as quickly as possible.

What might an assessment of Ukrainian operations in 2023 look like when measured against these?

In short, none of these measures of failure have been ‘achieved’. Across its multiple campaigns, Ukraine is clearly liberating territory, although not at the same rate as the Kharkiv offensive last year. At the same time, the Ukrainians have been destroying large parts of the Russian Army, both elite formations and mobilised units. There are a variety of articles and analyses that describe how Ukraine (and Russia), have learned and adapted over the past few months.

The one area that concerns me is the final measure. This is less a criticism of the Ukrainian authorities than it is of western polities. Citizens in democracies are, by and large, an impatient lot. They love backing underdogs and winners. But, even so, Western elites have been distracted from their focus on Ukraine in the past, and the 2024 US elections offer a massive potential distraction. And, as this new article at Foreign Affairs describes:

In 2015…the cardinal error of the West was to lose interest. Somehow the crisis was supposed to take care of itself. From this, Putin learned what he took to be an essential truth about the fickleness of Western leaders.

Russia (as well as China) will be doing all they can to project Ukrainian failure in key supporting nations in Europe over the coming months.  Countering misinformation is an area where all Western nations must step up their game.

Image: @DefenceU Twitter/x

Progress, but a Long Way to Go

That concludes my two articles this week that assess the status of the Ukrainian air, land and sea campaigns, and whether they have made progress. Admittedly, these are measures of success and failure that I have developed; the Ukrainian government may have very different measures by which it evaluates progress. But, at least having consistent measures and updating them periodically provides an understanding about the trajectory of the war, and for us to gain insights into where more or different support for Ukraine is needed.

Overall, Ukraine has the strategic initiative in this war. Their ground operations, strategic strike activities and global diplomacy see them receiving physical and moral support, and they are making progress on the battlefield. But, as we saw at the end of 2022, the initiative can easily change. This may occur if there are slowdowns in the provision of equipment and munitions, or if there is a significant change in strategy from the Russians. Only time will tell.