This year, however, is a different year. And with a new year comes new predictions about where the war may be going, how it will end and what the consequences will be. Some seasoned military observers are extremely confident about Ukraine’s ability to not only persist, but to end the conflict on its terms by the end of the year. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, thinks the Ukrainian army can retake all Russian-occupied territory, including Crimea, in 2023, if U.S. military support continues. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believe time isn’t on Ukraine’s side; if Kyiv is to have a legitimate chance to win the war, the U.S. and its European allies must provide Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with the weapons systems he’s requesting.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that 2023 “could prove a dramatic year for Russia,” its leadership, and Vladimir Putin personally. The 70-year-old autocrat will have to decide sooner or later if he wants to “run” in the 2024 presidential elections. If he defers, the Russian political elite will have to coalesce behind a successor candidate—or alternatively, fight among itself for whatever power remains of a state in decline. Meanwhile, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s senior military officer, is anticipating a second Russian offensive this winter in the direction of Kyiv.
Predictions, however, are like opinions: everybody has one. The funny thing about predictions is that reality often proves them wrong. Who, after all, would have predicted that Ukraine would not only have the strength, determination and skill to prevent Russia from meeting its war-time goals but the ability to recapture about 50 percent of the territory the Russian army first captured? Certainly not the U.S. intelligence community or chair of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, who assessed Ukraine’s capitulation would occur within 72 hours of a Russian invasion. Your humble columnist severely underestimated the sorry state of the Russian armed forces.
Better, therefore, to take all prognostications with a glacier-like grain of salt. There are simply too many possibilities one can conjure up to make a definitive conclusion. And if this war has shown us anything over the last 11 months, it’s that humbleness is a virtue.
On one end of the spectrum is what Retired General Hodges envisions. The Russian army, unable to adequately re-supply its forces with the ammunition required to sustain operations, is gradually atrophied by the Ukrainians, who have access to stockpiles of ever-sophisticated U.S. weapons crucial for armored warfare. On Jan. 6, the Biden administration sent a first batch of 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, a short step away from the Abrams tanks Zelensky wants. Over time, Ukrainian offensive operations simply overwhelm or exhaust the Russian army, which is forced to abandon their positions further east until the war culminates a final battle for Crimea, the strategic peninsula Russia annexed eight years ago.
On the other side of the ledger is a shift in fortunes for the Russians. As time goes on, the West grows skeptical of authorizing military assistance packages to the Ukrainians billions of dollars at a time. Conservatives, ascendant in the House, put additional aid for Kyiv on the chopping block as they try to reduce federal spending. The Europeans, facing a recession or slower economic projections than previously envisioned, promise Kyiv financial aid but are slow to actually deliver it. Putin orders a second mass mobilization campaign to buttress his numbers on the battlefield—and while the mobilization generates more questions in the Kremlin’s elite circles about the strongman’s capacity as a leader, the additional bodies strengthen their defensive lines and ruin whatever offensives the Ukrainians hoped to launch. With Ukrainian manpower suffering, Putin tries his luck at an offensive of his own.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine a scenario between these two extremes: the combat wears out both sides and compels Ukrainian and Russian forces to stay in place, if only to rest, refit and recuperate for an offensive later on. Zelensky, still keen to reclaim every inch of Ukrainian soil, continues to stick with this goal but is more supportive of staying-in-place for the time being. Putin, still keen on subjugating Ukraine and dictating its foreign policy choices, is nonetheless cognizant of the Russian army’s significant limitations and therefore chooses to consolidate rather than expand.
Or perhaps none of these scenarios play out. Perhaps Zelensky and Putin both come to the realization that their objectives are simply unachievable and that the only way they can escape ruin is by authorizing their negotiators to make a face-saving agreement everybody could live with? This sounds fantastical, as neither of these men are willing to concede anything right now. But it’s certainly a possibility worth exploring; research shows that most wars end in some form of negotiated settlement.
The only prediction worth making is we don’t know what’s going to happen.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
