Европа – це Україна. I am Ukrainian. - Europe is Ukraine. I am Ukrainian.
This is a victory for Ukraine. This is a victory for Europe. A victory that motivates, inspires, and strengthens.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, December 14, 2023,
that membership negotiations with the EU should begin [1]
On December 14, for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Putin held what used to be an annual, well-choreographed spectacle: Putin’s news conference, or “Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin.”[2]
During the conference, Putin was asked when there would be peace after the “special military operation.” The answer – “when we have achieved our goals.”[3]
Max Seddon, bureau chief at the Financial Times, noted that the goals, according to Putin himself, still include Ukraine being “denazified” and demilitarized. In other words, Ukraine’s complete surrender to Russia.[4] Putin also said that he would like to see Russia annex more parts of Ukraine – “Crimea, and the entire Black Sea region has nothing to do with Ukraine. Odessa is a Russian city. We know this. Everyone knows this. But no, they are making up all kinds of historical nonsense.[5]
This apparent and rather confident threat to Ukraine comes at a time when support for Ukraine appears to be faltering. The Ukrainian offensive has not achieved the successes hoped for. Oleksandr Tarnavsky, in charge of the counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, told CNN in late September that the minimum goal of the offensive was to capture the occupied city of Tokmak.[6] This failed. Nor did Ukraine succeed in cutting off Crimea from the rest of occupied Ukraine.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) described Putin as “remarkably confident” during the news conference, although he did not describe how Russia will win the war.[7]
At the same time, the German newspaper was able BILD report on unspecified intelligence reports that hinted at Russia's plans for the war in Ukraine in 2024 – 2026. The Russian plans for 2024 are said to include capturing all of Donetsk, Luhansk, and parts of Kharkiv oblast. In 2025 – 2026, Russia intends to occupy parts of Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv oblast, including the city of Kharkiv. The Russian plan is thus to occupy virtually all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper and split Ukraine in two. According to the report, the plan is supposed to be based on three additional factors – that Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine fail to cut off Crimea from the rest of the occupied territories; that the losses of Russian forces amount to about 100 annually, and that the United States elects a President who dramatically reduces or completely stops aid to Ukraine.[8]
On the same day as Putin's conference, December 14, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that "If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is a real risk that his aggression will not stop there."[9]
We must therefore ask ourselves, over 650 days into the Russian “special military operation”, what the situation really looks like in Ukraine and what is required for Ukraine to win the war. It is worth noting here that ISW continues its assessment that Russia does not intend to engage in sincere negotiations with Ukraine.[10]
The situation today
At the beginning of December, the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) released an issue of its regular publication Technical Department informsBased on open sources, it is described how the Russian economy is currently in “a kind of intermediate position” between recession and boom.[11] In the budget presented for 2024, defense spending increases by a factor of 1.7 compared to 2023, which according to FMV demonstrates that "the illusion of a quick special operation is gone. Today they are planning for a long-term and full-scale war that requires large resources and extensive new production of military equipment."[12]
According to FMV, Russian new production of military equipment has increased since the outbreak of the war, but it is less than what is being lost in Ukraine.[13] There is a risk that Russia may face material shortages, but it will come "significantly later than we in the West have previously assumed."[14] One analysis claims that due to the war in Ukraine, Russia needs to produce 560 tanks per year to maintain the number at a constant level. However, according to FOI, Russia’s only tank factory currently produces 480 tanks per year, and it is common for “modified tanks to leave UVZ [the tank factory] without some of the modern sensors that are actually supposed to be included in the new version.”[15]
Regarding artillery shells, according to one analyst, Russia fired about 2022-10 million artillery shells in 11, an average of about thirty-four thousand a day for 310 days. In 2023, Russian shelling has decreased, according to one source, by up to seventy-five percent compared to the summer of 2022.[16] Estimates of Russia's ability to produce new grenades vary, with figures ranging between 2000 – 4700 per day.[17] Regarding the artillery pieces themselves, FMV states that if "the information about the Russians' total artillery fire effort is correct, a simple rough estimate suggests that they have worn out at least 7 barrels by now."[18] In addition to this, there are the losses incurred by Ukraine, which together make it "difficult to say anything about how many functioning guns the Russians actually have at their disposal today. It is conceivable that their reduced use of barrel artillery in 2023, compared to the previous year, is due to a shortage of guns rather than a shortage of ammunition."[19]
While Russia's material situation is gradually pointing in the wrong direction, a declassified US report has estimated that Russia has suffered upwards of 315 dead and wounded in Ukraine, or almost ninety percent of the force that invaded Ukraine on February 000, 24. The same report claims that the losses in men and equipment have rolled back Russian rearmament by 2022 years.[20] The report also claims that the Russian army has lost two-thirds of its available tanks.[21] The website Oryx, which documents losses in the war, has so far managed to identify 2571 Russian tanks.[22]
Ukrainian authorities estimated in mid-December that since Russia began a major operation to capture the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, Russia has lost almost 57 men.[23] In late November, a British intelligence report described the fighting around the city as having led to “some of the highest Russian casualties of the war.”[24] They have also reportedly lost at least 221 vehicles since November 11. In the time since the offensive began, Russia has managed to occupy just over XNUMX square kilometers, according to George Barros, an analyst at ISW.[25]
Putin himself, during the December 14 news conference, may have inadvertently revealed that Russian losses are as high as 363 men.[26] By comparison, the Soviet Union's casualties were around 70 over ten years in Afghanistan. So Russia may have suffered five times as many casualties in one-fifth of the time. That's more than the US's combined losses since 000.[27]
Those are breathtaking numbers.
In addition, Ukraine has managed to cripple the Russian Black Sea Fleet. In early October, the Atlantic Council described how “Ukraine is winning the battle for the Black Sea.”[28] During the autumn, Ukraine has managed to attack targets in Crimea, making the situation untenable for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, even though Ukraine does not have its own fleet to speak of.
In early October, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russian ships, including “three Kilo-class submarines, two frigates, and a patrol boat, have all hastily regrouped from their home base in Sevastopol in Crimea and moved to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the eastern side of the Black Sea.”[29] Since August of this year, Ukraine has managed to “undermine Russian air defenses in Crimea and inflict serious damage on the fleet, with losses including a number of major warships and a submarine. On September 22, Ukraine managed to bomb and partially destroy the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in the heart of Sevastopol.”[30] Overall, these attacks on the Black Sea Fleet have rendered it incapable of “aggressive” operations in the western Black Sea, allowing Ukraine to continue to deliver grain via commercial shipping.[31]
Even though the Ukrainian ground offensive did not achieve the stated goals and the front appears relatively static, Ukraine has nevertheless managed to damage the Russian military, its men, equipment and fleet during the autumn.
Russian investments
Justin Bronk, of the UK-based RUSI, believes that Europe must urgently prepare to deter Russia without US help. Russia, Bronk states, has now transitioned to a war economy. At the same time, current US production is not sufficient to replace its own stockpiles while supporting Ukraine, and Europe is trying to deal with the situation with an “unsustainable peacetime defense and industrial orientation.”[32] Russia has announced that it intends to increase defense spending by 68 percent, to approximately 6,5 percent of GDP.[33] In the 2024 budget presented by Russia, defense spending accounts for almost a third of total costs.[34] According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the budget indicates that Russia is determined to continue the war until it achieves its goals, and accepts that it will put pressure on social and other spending.[35]
Russia has now set a course that means the country's "production of weapons, ammunition and new units will increase significantly over the next 2-3 years."[36]
The contrast with European countries is striking. European countries have “failed to make the necessary investments in increased industrial capacity and defense spending;” Of the €100 billion Germany allocated in 2023 to increase the Bundeswehr’s capabilities, only €1,5 billion had been spent by mid-year, and defense spending was overall lower than in 2022.[37]
What is required
Looking ahead to 2024, the West, and especially the EU, must review what can be done to further support Ukraine in its fight to liberate its country.
It is worth considering that American intelligence has assessed that the Russian offensive operations that have taken place during the autumn and winter have been mainly aimed at reducing Western support for Ukraine.[38] Although they have achieved no gains on the battlefield and suffered enormous losses, they can be considered to have succeeded in part. Nearly 1100 trillion kronor that was supposed to support Ukraine has been stuck in political deadlocks in the US and the EU.[39]
Together with the EU, we in Sweden must prepare for the possibility that the US may increasingly begin to prioritize Asia, and especially Taiwan, over Europe. It is therefore vital that Sweden is an even stronger voice for Ukraine within the framework of EU cooperation.
Hungary, which in mid-December blocked over €50 billion in European aid to Ukraine[40] which would be distributed over a four-year period, represents only two percent of the EU population.[41] This is, of course, a completely unreasonable situation. It is therefore not surprising that the EU is considering activating a so-called Article 7 procedure against the country. In practice, this means that if Hungary is deemed to have “seriously breached” the Union’s fundamental values, they could lose their voting rights in the Council of the European Union. This would mean that Orbán would lose his veto over Ukraine.
With Poland’s recent change of government, Orbán has lost his most important ally within the EU, making the process possible. A senior EU official told the Financial Times that “Hungary may be able to create more problems. Maybe they can make us use other tools. But ultimately Hungary cannot stop us from supporting Ukraine.”[42]
Another tool to support Ukraine that is being discussed is giving Ukraine access to Russian assets frozen in the West, totaling around $300 billion. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, proposed this during the Aspen Security Forum.[43] Olena Halushka has suggested the same thing in The Guardian, arguing that confiscation would be legal under international law. Further clarification of the criteria used could be built into the legal mechanisms to create transparency and show that confiscation is not arbitrary.[44]
Two processes
Even if EU money and frozen Russian assets can be given to Ukraine, it remains vital that Europe credibly implements two parallel processes. One is to continue to support Ukraine here and now, with as much as it can. The other is to build up a credible and deterrent military capability with the associated industrial capacity. With Ukraine's invitation by the EU to formally begin membership negotiations, the Union is something that Ukraine should be part of in the longer term.
The first process should be partly resolved when the EU can release the €50 billion. While this is being negotiated, however, a number of countries in Europe have already continued to support Ukraine. Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Finland and Poland (under the new government) are some of the European countries that have recently provided more equipment to the country.[45] In early December, Japan also pledged $4,5 billion to Ukraine.[46] As David Cameron pointed out in his speech in Aspen in early December, the countries supporting Ukraine have thirty times the GDP of Russia. We must give Ukraine, Cameron said, “weapons, the economic support, the moral support, the diplomatic support, but crucially it is the military support that can make a difference.”[47]
To build a credible and deterrent military capability within the EU, Justin Bronk has suggested that the EU, and the UK, must immediately invest in major increases in defense production capacity, particularly in “artillery ammunition, spare parts, air defense missiles to keep Ukraine in the fight, while replenishing our own, dangerously low, stocks.”[48] He also suggests that European air forces must invest in advanced SEAD/DEAD[49] ability. This will require, writes Bronk, substantial political leadership. It will cost, and a public not used to war, and with the memory of the Cold War increasingly distant, the investments in Ukraine and its own defense industry must be able to be explained.
The alternative is unthinkable.
Exactly one month after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I wrote for KKrVA that "If the West fails in Ukraine, the entire Western civilization and the European security order risk being at stake. The West, through institutions like the EU, should take an even more active role in defending our interests, and act as the economic and political superpower it de facto is. The West has a historic chance here to ensure, once and for all, that Ukraine belongs to Western civilization. Because right now, Ukraine's defense forces and its civilian population are dying for the idea of the West."[50]
These are words that ring true even today, and Peter Dickinson described it well in the Atlantic Council when he recently wrote that “too many people in the West seem more afraid of defeating Putin than of stopping him. They live in denial about the scale of the civilizational challenge that Russia poses, and continue to live in the comfortable delusion that some kind of compromise can restore the world to the status quo that prevailed before the war. In effect, a confrontation with Putin’s Russia cannot be avoided; it can only be won or lost. The Ukrainians are more than capable of delivering victory, but they need the tools to succeed. If Western leaders choose not to adequately support Ukraine, future generations will see their decision as one of the great geopolitical turning points of the twenty-first century.”[51]
Supporting Ukraine in the future may prove costly. The alternative seems unthinkable.