Yigal Levin, Ukrainian military expert:
The situation on the front of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2023 and today - the strategic level.There is a certain method, one of the first we were taught: for an objective analysis, put yourself in the shoes of a completely external (but competent) observer.For example, if 50 years from now a Japanese historian — or even better, a Chilean one (Japan, after all, was on Ukraine’s side) — sees this map, a knowledgeable and competent historian, and also sees the figures showing what Russia spent and lost for such “gains,” he will unequivocally call it a military failure, a collapse, an act of glaring incompetence, and national impotence.Yes, for Ukrainian soldiers who lost their friends, their health, and their nerves in those endless tree lines and villages, this offers no comfort. But the strategic level is not about the soldier; in fact, it is not about people at all.Strategy and politics are always about big numbers, capacities, processes, potential, and capabilities.A person, in strategy, is only the sum of sets — a resource. And in military language that is exactly what it is called: human resources.And yes, attention: I am not going to write disclaimers here with caveats that Ukraine also has everything going badly or even worse. Any Ukrainian already knows and understands this better than you or I do; I show this map to point to something entirely different.These virtually zero gains, achieved despite more than one million total Russian Armed Forces casualties — several hundred thousand of them killed (these are already documented facts) — along with thousands of destroyed pieces of military equipment, a wrecked Russian economy and finances, and other losses Moscow has suffered, all while Ukraine has: hundreds of thousands of deserters, “teaspoon-per-day” aid from partners, mobilization failures, organizational problems in the army, and so on.This is what Moscow managed to achieve while fighting the Ukrainian Defense Forces in such conditions.And what would the picture look like if the situation were improved even slightly: boosted a bit, shut down Russian information-ops, replaced the “help” from partners (especially the Americans) with actual assistance, and fixed at least 20% of the problems with desertion, mobilization, and organization?Do you think the United States doesn’t understand this (and Europeans as well, though that’s its own story)? They absolutely do. Right now, with the situation exactly as you see it on the map, they are pressuring Ukraine into an agreement that is close in form and substance to a capitulation.They pressure not because Ukraine is weak. If it were weak, you would be looking at a completely different map. They pressure because Russia is catastrophically weak and incompetent.That is the essence of this pressure: at Ukraine’s expense, so that Ukrainians pay for Russian stupidity and bloody idiocy.It seems to me that this is precisely what Kyiv’s diplomats will need to point out this week in their negotiations with the US and Europe.Not in the sense of “look, Russia is weak, let’s finish it off” — no one planned or plans to finish Russia off (on the contrary). But in the sense of: we understand everything, thank you, but do not take us for fools.That is the core. Everything else is dust.
