Russia’s strategy has remained basically unchanged despite losing almost 500,000 soldiers in its four-year war with Ukraine, a former commander of U.S. Army troops in Europe said.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, calling war a test of will and logistics, sees Ukraine as coming out ahead in both, he said Thursday at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center in Washington.
He said Kyiv’s fleet of drones is making it dangerous for any Russian convoy or train moving in the southern or eastern parts of Ukraine.
“The Russians have never changed their approach to what they’re doing. What they’re doing today is almost the same thing that they were doing four years ago — just trying to overwhelm Ukrainian defenders,” Gen. Hodges said. “The Ukrainians have figured out their theory of victory: the destruction of Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure, so they can’t raise the financial resources they need to continue the war.”
The Atlantic Council discussion came the same day Ukrainian drones set a Moscow refinery ablaze.
Another retired Army officer, Gen. Wesley Clark, urged that the refinery attack not be a one-off event.
“It’s necessary that Ukraine continues to strike the same oil and gas pipelines. They [Russia] get it repaired, so this has to go on and on and on,” the former NATO supreme commander said. “Can they [Ukraine] sustain it? It looks like they can.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who, after leaving the Army, became the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Russia’s inherent military vulnerabilities, like low morale and abusive leadership, along with logistics challenges, will continue to be an issue as the war continues.
“Those logistics are meant to supply a relatively low-grade, low-quality armed force,” he said. “Cutting off the logistics and depriving a low-quality army of the means of subsistence could end up producing a tipping point in the occupied areas.”
The Trump administration’s antagonism toward Europe is letting Russian President Vladimir Putin capitalize on the growing divide between Washington and its NATO allies, Gen. Lute said.
“These are golden opportunities that we’re presenting to Putin to widen those divides and achieve something that Russia, all the way back to the Soviet era, has aimed to achieve: to break the trans-Atlantic link,” he said.
Ukraine’s strategy of targeting Moscow’s rear-area logistics infrastructure could cause a morale hit on the home front and soldiers on the front line.
“The fact that this is happening in the rear area will cause concerns for average soldiers not getting supplies,” Gen. Hodges said. “That will cause real problems, just like the population in Moscow and St. Petersburg seeing those refieries on fire.”
Gen. Clark said that while the average Russian soldier is poorly trained and receives inadequate logistical support, the Kremlin continues to churn out personnel who will meekly walk into the meat grinder of a Ukrainian battlefield.
“They know that if they get captured, they’re likely to get shot when they get home,” Gen. Clark said. “There’s a fear factor that motivates these Russian soldiers that’s really hard to penetrate.”
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