- For Ukraine to survive, it must keep Russia's larger forces off-balance.
- Ukraine must seize back initiative and shift to a new strategy or it risks defeat, an expert warns.
- "Ukraine has to go on the offensive," ISW's Russia expert George Barros said.
Victory in the Ukraine war may come down to a simple question: which side has the initiative?
If Russia can retain the initiative, it can launch constant offensives with its larger forces that will drive Ukrainian defenders to the breaking point. For Ukraine, gaining the initiative has become existential: it has to keep Russia off balance, or its forces will be worn down responding to Russian offensives.
"We've been trying to really communicate the importance of the initiative," George Barros, an influential Russian military expert for the U.S-based Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider. "It's not big, decisive operations, but smaller- and medium-sized operations done in conjunction with each other that deprive the enemy of the initiative so that you can set the conditions for a strategic victory."
Russia has seized the momentum despite taking a huge toll as the war nears what could be a decisive moment. The top US general in Europe said that within weeks Russia will be outfiring Ukraine's artillery by a factor of 10 to 1, a dire situation that could lead to Ukraine's defeat.
Seizing the initiative has always been recognized as a key principle of war. Better to have the enemy dance to your tune, than dance to his. Initiative is especially important to the weaker side. Great commanders like Napoleon, or nations like Israel in the 1967 War, compensated for numerical inferiority by striking first, hard and continuously to keep the enemy off balance.
This is exactly the aggressive approach that Ukraine will need to defeat a Russian invasion force superior in numbers and firepower, but clumsy in tactics and command. "Ukraine has to go on the offensive," Barros said. "They want to give the Russian high command a jolt to the system. This forces the Russians to think about where to preposition their reserves, and where to allocate certain kinds of resources. It gets them worrying about what the real Ukrainian objective is. Is this a feint? Or are the Ukrainians actually trying to develop some sort of movement here?"
Yet hamstrung by ammunition shortages from stalled US aid and dismayed by the failure of its summer counteroffensive, Ukraine has switched to a strategy of "active defense." Exactly what this strategy entails isn't clear, but it appears to involve remaining on the strategic defensive while conducting local attacks to try to hold every inch of territory and decimate Russian assault troops.
The problem is stark. Ukraine simply cannot afford to go on the defensive and expect this will stop Russia, Barros said. Even if Ukrainian troops achieve some tactical victories, the longer-term strategic picture will remain grim. This was exactly the outcome when Nazi Germany used a mobile defense strategy in Ukraine in 1943-1944: counterattacks by German armor repeatedly smashed Soviet penetrations, but the Germans were ultimately worn down as their elite panzer divisions rushed from crisis to crisis.
What's interesting is that top Russian and Ukrainian commanders are operating from the same playbook. Both were trained in Soviet military academies, which emphasized seizing the initiative. "It's the same Soviet military science that Gerasimov [Russia's chief of the General Staff] and Zaluzhny [former Ukrainian commander-in-chef] can recite to you chapter and verse," said Barros. "The initiative is extremely important to them."
Ukraine and its Western allies talk of remaining on the defensive in 2024 while mustering troops, weapons and ammunition for a decisive counteroffensive in 2025. Russia likely won't allow Ukraine the luxury of time and preparation.
"The Russians have been smart about the way that they have been putting pressure on the Ukrainians in 2024," Barros said. "They are whittling away the forces that that the Ukrainians theoretically would be building for 2025. And then we get to a point in 2025 where everyone is pressuring Ukraine to conduct a big new counteroffensive to prove that Ukraine can still do this. And then that effort is probably under-resourced."
"It's too optimistic," Barros added. "It's banked on the idea of a single decisive operation. But the Russians will anticipate where this operation will likely be, and more or less effectively defeat it."
A better strategy would be for Ukraine to conduct smaller operations aimed not at crippling the Russian army in Ukraine, but to keep it off balance and reacting to Ukrainian attacks rather than conducting its own, Barros argued. This could set the stage for a decisive counteroffensive later on, or at least improve Ukraine's position in any peace negotiations.
"These smaller operations, over the course of time and done skillfully, will set the conditions for a major success," said Barros. Other experts have suggested that the quest for decisive battle has become futile, and that future conflicts will be long-term wars of attrition.
But for Ukraine to gain the initiative, there are two must-haves, said Barros. One is that Ukraine must become more proficient in maneuver warfare, and avoid the clumsy operations that hampered its 2023 counteroffensive. But simply mimicking NATO — such as those for breaching minefields and fortified lines — won't work: either Ukraine lacks the resources, or because drones and long-range artillery have rendered those Western tactics obsolete.
Which means Ukraine will have to devise its own approach. "I do think the Ukrainians can conduct maneuver warfare if they're trained and resourced properly," said Barros.
The second precondition is even more difficult. To seize the initiative, Ukraine needs to know that it will receive a steady and reliable stream of Western aid, rather than sporadic deliveries. A handful of Western weapons here and there — such as getting a mere 14 British Challenger 2 tanks — isn't good enough. "The Ukrainian General Staff has no guarantee that any more will ever come in the future, and that forces them to treat these unremarkable tactical systems as strategic resources," Barros said. "You can't plan to conduct a normal breaching operation where it's okay to assume that you might lose 30 percent or more of your tanks if you're not sure if there will replacements."
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.