(Reuters) - Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because Western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday.
Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack.
Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped.
So honest question, with Zelenskiy himself saying that they are critically low on artillery, artillery shells, and armored vehicles, what strategic advantage is afforded by the long range missiles that have been in the news so much lately? What benefit does striking some random target hundreds of miles within Russia accomplish for Ukraine, who is slowly losing the ability to hold ground?
Long range attacks are about knocking out supplies, the ability to produce new supplies, and the ability to get supplies to the front line.
Say Russia is getting more newly made artillery shells to the front line. The best way to fix this is to blow up the factories.
If you can’t take out the factories directly, take out components that the factories need to operate: ore processing, fuel refineries, electricity grid, etc.
The problem is all the critical targets are a long ways from the front line and Ukraine currently has limited capacity to hit them.
Meanwhile Russia is targeting all of Ukraine’s internal infrastructure constantly.
Long wars are won by the production capabilities of the groups involved as much as the front line troops.
But Ukraine no longer has a meaningful domestic productive capacity. This war is entirely the result of foreign countries funneling weapons into the Ukraine and using it as a proxy against Russia.
That’s not a conflict Ukrainians can truly win, as Zelensky is no longer in control of the military assets he needs to guard his borders. At best, they can bleed Russia hard enough so that both countries lose (the tragic consequence of every long running war).
How would a Russian military respond in turn, if the targets in Ukraine have been exhausted. How long will the diplomatic shield of NATO protect supply lines passing through Poland or Romania?
If they were random targets, sure. But the messaging clearly included the wish to strike military targets at long range. Don’t have to lose people to a aerial bomb if the plane carrying it has been destroyed by a long range strike.
The goal of the Ukraine conflict is to create a Pyrrhic victory for Russia so costly that it collapses from within. Long range missiles capable of destroying key domestic infrastructure and material reserves will (hypothetically) hasten that economic collapse.
If you can start hitting major financial centers, administrative offices, and social meeting spaces, you might even be able to decapitate some of the senior leadership and kick off a succession crisis in Putin’s government. Alternatively, you push these leaders so far down into hiding that they can no longer effectively govern the country and foreign-sponsored insurgents can take over.
That’s the theory of the war, at least. In practice, NATO leadership is still unsettled by the prospect of a Total War with a nuclear armed state. So they’re not quite ready to drop a long range cruise missile on the Frunzenskaya Embankment, for fear of what a retaliatory strike would look like.
They’re not random but attempts to make more strategic difference, and to expand the war beyond just the front
Think of the Russian Black Sea fleet. The surviving ships are so far away that they’re not making any contribution to the war. Now, imagine making the Russian Air Force ineffective, Russian Command ineffective, and the supply situation ever worse
It slowed the progress by necessitating the movement of invading troops back to defend. Ukraine also had a major propaganda win from the Kursk offensive.
Everyone talked about tanks as ww1 winners. But people don’t quite realise the stupendous artillery advantage the allies had. 2 or 3 to 1 by the end of the war in places. And significantly more shells. There’s a reason we are still digging then up today