Despite the increasing gains in the East
The Russian military faces the possibility of failure to win the Ukraine war
Putin possesses a large and diverse nuclear arsenal that he often promotes.
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Western leaders may make a difference in the war to their advantage if they continue to support Ukraine.
EPA
Despite the successes achieved by Russia in eastern Ukraine, it suffered great losses.
EPA
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No one knows for sure how the war in Ukraine will end. The situation on the battlefield is still precarious, and Ukraine can be conciliated, or against it, so the West should prepare carefully for a Ukrainian success, or a less positive outcome.
In a report published by the American Research and Development Corporation (RAND), Peter A. Wilson, a senior assistant researcher in international and military affairs at the institution, and William Courtney, a senior fellow at RAND, who served as the US ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, said that a few weeks ago, the prevailing prevailed A wave of jubilation as Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attempts to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa, Ukraine's three largest cities.
Now, pessimism is growing, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken of "extremely fierce" fighting in eastern Ukraine, with heavy casualties.
The Ukrainians may run out of some ammunition.
fighting continues
As long as neither side is willing to compromise, the fighting is likely to continue, but the battlefield gains can continue to rise and fall, and Ukraine's fate remains uncertain.
The researchers added that Ukraine is fighting "for every inch" in Severodonetsk and launching counterattacks in the southern Kherson region.
Ukraine's army benefits from a state of general mobilization, has a strong will to fight, and Western support for Ukraine exceeds all expectations.
The West supplies Ukraine with a wide range of weapons and combat support systems, including artillery, missiles, anti-battery radars, and armed drones.
Ukraine makes the best use of these weapons, but Kyiv is seeking to acquire more heavy weapons, to be used in counterattacks.
gap
The two American researchers said that Ukraine's main weakness is the firepower gap in the face of Russian artillery forces, which is helping to achieve Russia's increasing successes in eastern Ukraine.
But the Russian army has severe shortcomings, and many soldiers lack the will to fight.
Strong Ukrainian resistance and other factors prevented a lightning Russian attack from succeeding in overthrowing Zelensky.
Russia has spread its first conquest force on too many axes.
It appears that the Russian forces are powerless to confront the Ukrainian air-drones and Javelin anti-armor missiles, as well as the Stinger anti-air attacks.
Russian supplies were liable to be prevented from reaching their destination.
Some Russian formations lost discipline and carried out acts of rape, looting and looting, as Russian forces stole Ukrainian goods and shipped them to Russia.
Russian forces resorted to World War II tactics of indiscriminate mass attacks using tube artillery and rockets to eliminate the Ukrainian defenses.
But the heavy losses weakened the morale of the Russian infantry, as well as weakened the armored units.
This, in addition to the danger of opposing any military recruitment, may have been behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's reversal of his May 9 D-Day speech calling for large-scale mobilization for war.
Instead, the Russian army is striving to reconstitute combat units that have suffered heavy casualties.
Some units are supplied with old T-62 tanks.
Despite increasing gains in eastern Ukraine, a Russian military collapse could occur, and Russian forces could suffer a catastrophic defeat.
Defeat is possible
The question may be raised: “Is such a defeat possible?”
The answer to that is that military history is replete with breakdowns.
Last summer, the Afghan armed forces collapsed amid weak governance and widespread corruption.
It also happened to other large or well-equipped armies: the frustrated Russian army in 1917, the defeated French army in 1940, the British army in Singapore in 1942, the exhausted South Vietnamese army in 1975, and the Iraqi army in Mosul in 2014.
Key to these failures is the lack of cohesion in the military, mismanagement, corruption, and popular unwillingness to defend the state.
Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz's emphasis on the importance of healthy relations between the military, government, and society seems logical.
And any collapse of the Russian army may have several repercussions.
First, it might encourage Western countries to enhance training and equipment programs in other countries close to Russia.
In Ukraine, this effort appears to have helped it adopt more flexible and successful tactics similar to NATO's.
Second, the collapse might prompt Western intelligence analysts to reassess the vulnerability of the Baltic states and Eastern Europe to Russian aggression.
And third, Western militaries may dramatically increase their stockpile of weapons, which have done so well in Ukraine, such as portable anti-armor weapons and air strikes, that have been consumed in greater numbers than anticipated.
It is worth noting that Putin possesses a large and diverse nuclear arsenal that he often promotes, and he has vaguely threatened to use it in the Ukraine war if Russia's "existential" interests are threatened, but this has not deterred Ukraine or the West from opposing the Russian invasion.
In the conclusion of the report, the researchers say that any Russian military failure in Ukraine may give the West greater confidence to stand up to any aggression elsewhere, despite Russian nuclear weapons.
And it wouldn't be the first time, as the United States confronted the nuclear-armed Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia may well know, better than the West, that its weak conventional forces may not be able to effectively exploit any opportunities in Ukraine that any nuclear attack.
The West, in any scenarios that are conventional or involve an unlikely nuclear escalation, must take into account the delay in carrying out any negotiation until the military and sanctions results are well known.
A Russian military failure in Ukraine would give the West more confidence to stand up to aggression elsewhere, despite Russia's nuclear weapons.
As long as neither side is willing to compromise, the fighting is likely to continue. But the battlefield gains could continue to rise and fall, and Ukraine's fate remains uncertain.
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