The pattern of delivery of Western aid has powerfully shaped the pattern of this conflict. The latest ISW report focuses on the impact of delays in sending high-end weapons systems to Ukraine on Ukraine’s ability to take advantage of windows of opportunity throughout this war.🧵
2/ The war has unfolded so far in three major periods. The Russians had the initiative and were on the offensive from February 24 through July 3, 2022, whereupon their attacks culminated.
3/ The Ukrainians seized the initiative and began large-scale counteroffensives in August, continuing through the liberation of western Kherson Oblast on November 11.
4/ Ukraine has been unable to initiate a new major counter-offensive since then, allowing the conflict to settle into positional warfare and allowing the Russians the opportunity to regain the initiative if they choose and to raise the bar for future Ukrainian counteroffensives.
5/ Western reluctance to begin supplying Ukraine with higher-end Western weapons systems, particularly tanks, long-range strike systems, and air-defense systems, has limited Ukraine’s ability to initiate and continue large-scale counter-offensive operations.
6/ Sound counter-offensive campaign design calls for stopping the enemy’s offensive as rapidly as possible, initiating decisive counter-offensives rapidly after the enemy’s offensive culminates to take advantage of the enemy’s disorganization...
7/ ...and unpreparedness for subsequent major operations, and then continuing counter-offensive operations with the briefest possible pauses between them to prevent the enemy from reconstituting its forces and possibly regaining the initiative.
8/ The Russian invasion began on February 24, 2022. The only major phase of Russian offensive operations continued through the capture of Lysychansk on July 3. Russian offensive operations then culminated, and Russia lost the initiative in July.
9/ Indicators that the Russian offensives would culminate and that Western weapons would be needed at scale emerged clearly in late May and June.
10/ If the West’s aim had been to shorten the war by speeding Ukraine’s liberation of occupied territory, the assessment that stocks of Soviet-era weapons held by friendly states were running low should have triggered a fundamental change in the provision of Western aid in June.
11/ The Russians have instead taken advantage of these delays and failures to benefit from the windows of vulnerability their own defeats and incompetence produced by mobilizing manpower and equipment and starting to rationalize their own forces.
12/ The incorporation of Western weapons systems such as tanks and aircraft takes a long time. Many Ukrainian soldiers must be trained to use them. Logistics systems must be established to supply them. Spare parts must be assembled and depots equipped to repair them.
13/ The inevitable delay between the pledge to send such systems and the Ukrainians’ ability to use them means that Western leaders must commit them when the earliest indicators that they will be required appear, not when the situation becomes dire.
14/ Had Western leaders started setting conditions for Ukraine to use Western tanks in June 2022, when the first clear indicators appeared that Western tanks would be needed, Ukrainian forces would have been able to start using them in November or December.
15/ The continual delays in providing Western materiel when it became apparent that it is or will soon be needed have thus contributed to the protraction of the conflict.
16/ The Western delays are not the only reason for that protraction, to be sure, but the West must recognize the contributions these delays have made to hindering Ukraine’s ability to liberate more of its territory faster.
17/ The West will need to avoid drawing the erroneous conclusion that future Ukrainian counter-offensives are impossible based on a timeline imposed by the West’s own delays in providing necessary material and meteorological conditions.
18/ Current and planned Russian offensives will very likely culminate without achieving operationally decisive gains and in ways that could very well create propitious conditions for Ukrainian counter-offensives, especially once Ukraine has ingested the incoming Western tanks.
19/ ISW continues to assess that Ukraine can liberate critical terrain with the current and promised levels of Western support and that it is a matter of vital national interest for the United States and its Western partners that Ukraine do so. isw.pub/UkrWar012923
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