Ukraine Military History Institute
The war keeps being planned in weeks
Rob Lee opens with a criticism he applies to the whole war rather than to any one decision. The approach has been week by week, month by month, without asking what has to be done to stop Russia advancing six months or a year from now.
His examples are concrete. Mobilise people sooner, so they have more time to train and arrive better prepared. Do not let units become too undermanned. Be willing to fall back from a village once the conditions no longer make sense to hold it, or once the attrition ratio gets bad, rather than going all out for a very small place.
The same problem shows up at the political level. Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a 40-day operation to compel Russia toward peace. Lee notes that a little over 40 days later Zelenskyy called it successful, but Russia is not compelled to make peace anytime soon. Short timelines like that, in his view, are just not doable.
Another winter is coming, and Putin is betting on endurance
Lee says it plainly: it is pretty clear there will be another winter of this war, and it will be difficult.
Last winter was very difficult in Kyiv. He suspects a lot of people will leave once they know another one is coming, because they know the energy grid will be hit. There is limited protection against ballistic missiles, and the jet-powered Geran is a bigger problem too.
Underneath it is a judgement about Vladimir Putin's theory of the war. Lee thinks Putin believes he can out-sustain the pain better than Ukraine can. Samuel Cook adds the second half: better than the West can, too.
Western support held up better than Putin hoped
Under Donald Trump, he grants, the United States is not providing financial support the way it did under Joe Biden, and it is not providing as many weapons. But intelligence sharing has gotten stronger, if anything. American intelligence is playing a role in both deep strike and middle strike, which Lee calls the big successes Ukraine has had this year.
His reading of Putin's expectations follows from that. Putin, he thinks, was hoping Trump would coerce Zelenskyy into concessions, and that did not happen. Lee does not think Putin is happy with how things have developed since Trump took office.
In Europe, Viktor Orbán was replaced a few months ago, and the European Union passed what Lee calls a huge loan deal that will sustain Ukraine's defence spending and defence industry. Looking at NATO overall, he thinks Putin would have to conclude it has held together quite well. There was the Greenland episode, and Lee allows it may come up again. But support has been sufficient to prevent a breakthrough.
So the question becomes how to convince Putin that time is not on his side. Lee's answer is that nothing in Western behaviour has yet given Putin a reason to believe a break in support is coming soon.
Putin is making decisions on reports that are not true
The sharpest point Lee makes is about what reaches Putin's desk.
Lee states that Putin is getting false reports. His example is specific. Kovalyov, commander of the West Group of Forces, told Putin almost a year ago that Kupiansk was encircled, and then told him it had been taken. Neither was true. Kovalyov is still in charge.
Lee's conclusion is about the institution, not the man. Whatever else is happening in the Russian military, it is not firing commanders for significant failures, even when the failures are very clear. Cook suggests the same commanders are probably telling Putin that Ukrainian announcements of liberated villages are false as well. Who knows, Cook says, what his perception of that is.
Lee points to evidence that the distortion is visible. There have been videos of the Minister of Defence and others visiting command posts, with the wall maps on display. Overlaid on a regular map set, and even compared with open-source mappers, those maps claim significantly more ground. That is before counting infiltration, which Lee calls a big gray area. There is a lot of misinformation travelling up the chain of command.
He does allow that at some point Putin must have some inkling. Russia said it took Kupiansk last year, which is obviously not true. But the system he built is still feeding him what he wants to hear, as Cook puts it, and Lee agrees.
Ukraine is lucky the Russian system is not reforming
If the Russian military were adapting faster, punishing failure and punishing dishonesty, it would be much more effective and a much bigger problem. In his words, Ukraine is lucky that Putin is still enabling a very flawed system, and that Valery Gerasimov is still overseeing it.
He goes further. He hopes Gerasimov stays in charge, because a better commander could make things worse. He calls one of the best developments of the war the moment Sergey Surovikin was replaced by Gerasimov, and says the Russian military has not performed nearly as well since.
What works now may not work in October
Ukraine has figured out how to deal with infiltration, not perfectly, but well enough to stop it being catastrophic. Holding the line with few infantry and a front held by drones has worked against the approach Russia is using now.
If Russia changes its approach, through North Korea, a significant injection of new manpower, or getting better at combined arms, the current answer may not be sufficient and Ukraine may have to adjust. What works now may not work in October and November, when the weather gets worse.
He frames the year carefully. The situation has been better than last year overall. But in the last two months Russia has increased its rate of advance. It is not as fast as last year, but it is faster than earlier this year, and he expects the coming months to become more difficult.
What to watch
- Kovalyov's position. Lee named him as a commander who reported Kupiansk taken when it was not and kept his post. If commanders like him start being removed for false reporting, the flawed system Lee describes is beginning to reform.
- Russia's rate of advance through October and November. Lee said it rose over the last two months and named those months as his concern. A further rise in bad weather would confirm it.
- American intelligence support for deep and middle strike. Lee rests much of this year's success on it. Any reduction would be the kind of break in Western support that Lee says Putin has so far seen no sign of.