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According to strategist Mick Ryan, Russia has squandered a key opportunity for victory on the battlefield.
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Despite recent momentum, Russia is making little progress and the gains have come at a high price.
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Ukraine’s improving military position and strategic prospects pose a challenge to Russian attrition tactics.
Russia missed an opportunity to overwhelm Ukraine and make significant gains on the battlefield, former Australian Major General Mick Ryan said on Tuesday.
“Russia has built strategic momentum with its attacks on Ukraine over the past six months. However, it has largely failed to capitalize on its opportunities,” Ryan, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on X. “Russia appears to have squandered its last chance to deliver a decisive blow to Ukraine in this war,” he said.
The former general said Russia missed an opportunity to make gains that arose in late 2023 when Ukraine ended its failed counteroffensive and was left short of ammunition and manpower.
Ryan said that “the Russians have failed to capitalize on this confluence of opportunities over the past six months.”
This situation, he said, “was probably Russia’s best opportunity to make significant gains on the battlefield, which it could then translate into significantly increased political and diplomatic pressure on Ukraine to enter into peace negotiations.”
He pointed to Russia’s limited progress, noting that the Russians have paid hundreds of lives for every kilometer of territory captured. That’s a “poor return on investment — in any war,” Ryan said. And the casualties are mounting.
Russia has largely deployed its forces in small, costly operations, a war of attrition strategy that President Vladimir Putin openly discussed last month. Ryan said the tactic is counterproductive and prevents Russia from actually building a larger, better-quality force, a “large force that could conduct larger-scale offensive operations.”
After visiting Ukraine earlier this year, Ryan predicted that Russia’s efforts to influence Ukraine’s supporters could pose a problem, as it had already led some Americans to downplay the critical situation in Ukraine and back away from supporting U.S. aid efforts.
In his closing remarks, he said the Russian campaign has proven remarkably unconvincing to Ukraine’s top backers.
While Russia may have time to step up its offensive attacks, Ukraine is steadily trying to improve its own military position.
“The question now is whether Ukraine, which wants to liberate more of Russia-occupied territory, can build up all the various physical, moral and intellectual elements of offensive force to outperform Russia later this year or in 2025,” Ryan concluded.
Read the original article on Business Insider
