Ukraine Battle Update (and What It Tells Us About Iran)

Let’s start with the Will to Fight. Wars are won by breaking the enemy’s Will to fight. When that doesn’t happen, the war will continue. Oh, sure, the fighting might subside for periods of time…weeks, months, even decades or generations, as history shows us, but if the costs imposed on an enemy do NOT exceed the value he attributes to the issue in dispute, then his Will to fight has not been broken.

So, the moment he regains opportunity and capability, he resumes fighting. And it may even be in novel and innovative ways heretofore unseen or unexpected, or in areas previously considered “off-limits,” or by actors once thought innocuous. Because necessity is the mother of invention on the battlefield. Because nothing stimulates the effort to gain a fresh advantage like having your back against the wall. Desperation is where people summon the Will to do the impossible.

And here’s something else about the Will to Fight…a People fight most tenaciously when fighting to defend their own soil. Ask the Brits what they learned about that in 1776. Or ask the Brits of WWII during the Battle of Britain. The Nazis bombed London to break the British will to fight. It had just the opposite effect…it INCREASED the British will to fight. Ask the Roman legionnaires of the 2nd Century AD, struggling to subdue Germanic tribes in the forests outside modern day Vienna. Recall the scene in the masterpiece movie, Gladiator, when an exhausted Quintus turns to an equally exhausted General Maximus, and says….“A people should know when they’re conquered.”

And ask the Russians struggling against tenacious Ukrainian defenders today. Four years ago, 23 February 2022, the day before Putin launched his large-scale invasion of Ukraine, he sat in his air-conditioned office in the Kremlin CERTAIN the war he was about to start would end (with him victorious) in a week. He had the weapons, the soldiers, the industrial might, he had a larger economy, he had prepped the Donbas with proxies BEHIND Ukrainian lines, he had every obvious advantage….but yet, here he is 4 years later, getting his ass handed to him.

Consider how he arrayed his forces for the initial invasion. He committed 600,000 Russian troops to the initial invasion. The problem is…he had only 700,000 total active troops available at the time. Committing 86% of your ENTIRE national force, leaves you with no practical, national reserve. That’s not simply a risk. A risk is something you can recover from. No, it was an outright GAMBLE, where, if you fail, meaningful recovery is highly unlikely, if not impossible. The ONLY way committing 600k out of his 700k troops to the invasion can make any sense is if Putin felt CERTAIN that he would win this thing in a week. Period.

Putin should’ve learned from Moscow’s invasion of Chechnya. Russia invaded for the first time in 1994, and they got their faces bloodied by a tenacious Chechen resistance. So, Moscow tried a second time in 1999, and AGAIN got embarrassed by the Chechen defenders. It took another 10 years, until 2009, before Moscow could claim victory. Here’s an important point – this was against a Chechnya whose population was 1.3M. Ukraine is a country of 43M people! That’s 43M Molotov cocktails. So, 600k Russian troops amidst a hostile population of 43M. No way this would’ve ended in a week. And that’s not hindsight. Some of us were saying this in the first week of the invasion.

Nevertheless, Putin expected a sharp, swift & successful operation in Ukraine, but he got a chronic knife-fight that is bleeding him white. Look at the current numbers (per CSIS): Over 1.3 million Russian casualties, to date…and climbing (vs 520k for Ukraine). More than 330k Russian KIA (vs 165k Ukrainian KIA). That’s roughly 25k-35k Russian casualties per month. As CSIS points out, these Russian losses in Ukraine are the highest, by far, of any major power since WWII!

Of course, no army can consistently incur losses of this magnitude without corresponding effect on its operations, and the Russians are no different. Their daily progress is now frequently measured in METERS. Coordinated, mounted maneuver is now rarely seen at levels above platoon. Dismounted maneuver predominates and is now largely infiltration masquerading as maneuver. Russians are now incurring over 200 casualties per sq km gained (compared to less than 70 per sq km 4 years ago). And they’re now losing more ground than they’re seizing. Last month the Russians gained 40 sq kms, but they lost 280 sq km.

But there’s more, and it involves logistics. Russian forces have become largely immobilized by logistics that cannot keep them fueled, fed, armed and supplied. Forward deployed troops consequently have few options other than to dig in or withdraw. The Russian military logistics capability was, at best, characterized by gross inefficiencies and corruption, and long ago reached its limit. Now, under brilliant, innovative, precise and sustained deep operations by Ukrainian forces, frontline Russian units are being cut off and effectively starving on the vine. Take Russian-occupied Crimea as an example…traffic to/from is now reduced by 71%. That’s not by Russian choice. It’s by Ukrainian Will to target and interdict all routes of access to the peninsula. Ukraine is imposing compelling military realities on a Vladimir Putin.

So, what might this all tell us about our operations in Iran? Despite our overwhelming military successes in Iran to date, and despite our massive combat power advantage, we cannot translate that to victory at the political level, in the absence of a clear Will to Fight at the political level. On the contrary, our unilaterally ceasing fire two months ago, our endless supplications and proffers to negotiate, our repeated requests for a deal, do NOT communicate a Will to fight. They communicate fear, they make us appear scared and weak. THAT only emboldens our adversary. Diplomacy without Military reality is Fantasy. THAT is why the terms of this so-called “deal” announced yesterday are inherently voluntary. They were not imposed, and as such, the terms ultimately remain under control of our adversary. We chose not to force open the Straits of Hormuz, but somehow, we can achieve that with a signature? We chose not to physically end Iran’s nuclear weapons ambition, but somehow, they no longer want such a weapon, because we asked them politely? We chose not to continue destroying their entire missile/drone production capability, but somehow, we think they will do it for us AND end their support to Hezbollah, because we offer to pay them? Our next show will explore this “deal” in much deeper detail, and we’ll do it with a guest with relevant, clandestine, on-the-ground experience. You don’t want to miss him. Stay tuned.

THIS week our guest was old friend and Navy vet, Bert Watson, fresh back from his EIGHTH trip to Ukraine. Bert gave us a report on the current situation, as he experienced it. He met with military and civilians, with units and HQs, conventional forces and SF. Direct from the horse’s mouth. Click on the link to hear our chat: https://frontlinesoffreedom.com/show-964/