The Changing Nature of Warfare for Ukraine

It is an interesting political and moral conundrum when Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is compelled to explain his government’s actions via an almost tacit apology for defending their nation, their people, and their way of life. This month has seen the Ukrainian military execute offensive operations once believed impossible – counterattacks on both militarily significant targets and symbolic targets in the Kursk region of Russia. This represents a change in the character of war for the Ukrainians. With the size and scope of Russian losses impacting all facets of Russian society, these Ukrainian counterpunches have hit the psyche of Russian commanders and the Russian people while also hitting the ego of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The war to conquer Ukraine is lost, and it is now up to Russia to remind Putin that his legacy will be another needless sacrifice of a generation – another failed Stalinist approach to foreign policy.   

The average reign of a military dictatorship is about five years. Vladimir Putin has extended his personalist dictatorship to twenty years. Still, we can expect him to cling to power until at least 2036 through multiple manipulations of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is a constitution in name alone, with Putin pulling all diplomatic, economic, military, and juridical levers from his bunker in the Kremlin. Even with a complete consolidation of power, Putin’s unconstrained use of force in Ukraine will be his demise. He continues to strike at known civilian targets and recently targeted the home of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified a total of 35,160 civilian casualties during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – July 31, 2024

The ever-poker-faced Putin, with hubris long morphing to arrogance, continues to ignore the realities that anyone with an iPhone and an internet connection can see – a failed military campaign, open charges of war crimes from the International Criminal Court, a crumbling Russian economy, and a tightening NATO noose around a faltering and desperate Russian Federation. The loss of more than six hundred thousand Russian troops, eight thousand tanks, sixteen thousand armored vehicles, twenty-five ships, and a staggering seven hundred airplanes and helicopters far exceeds the losses of the Soviet Union’s ten-year war in Afghanistan.

Destroyed Russian Tank
A Ukrainian soldier looks over the remains of a destroyed Russian tank in Lukyanivka, Ukraine.

The sustained loss of equipment and personnel has been mirrored by a growing political and economic isolation from the West and Russia’s more traditional trading partners. Economic sanctions have ranged from the seizure of oligarch super yachts to the freezing of assets held in international financial institutions. Those financial losses, estimated at seventy billion dollars, only compound the economic issues in Russia – Russians are being transported fifty years into the economic past.  

Economic and Social Impact on Russia

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the advent of “Perestroika,” or economic restructuring, in 1989, Russia paved the way for the economic boom that would follow. By the early 2000s, Russia had major foreign investment. This included Boeing factories, eight hundred and fifty McDonald’s restaurants, the largest PepsiCo factory in the world, eight billion in Citigroup investments, thirteen hundred Phillip Morris employees, and the list goes on. United States and European companies believed investing in both the Russian economy and the Russian people was a balanced approach and worth the risks.

That all changed in February of 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s “special military operations“ in Ukraine began. Since then, one thousand foreign companies have left Russia with no plans to return. The same people who clamored for Levi jeans during the Cold War are left with hyperinflation, unemployment, and an economy that shows all the signs of a meltdown. Any real growth reported in the Russian economy is artificially inflated by gas & oil sales along with required military spending to support the war in Ukraine.

Outside the financial costs, the cost to the Russian psyche cannot be underestimated. This war has stripped from them any sense of modernity. Russian citizens have no real vote, no voice – just another “election“ victory by Putin earlier this year to show them how unimportant they are. Russians have lost more than buying power. Since 1989, the last two generations of Russians have enjoyed the advantages of a free market, but that has been replaced with price controls, supply shortages, and conscription. The lingering ideologies and values of Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin continue to crush the dreams of generations.