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Aug. 29, 2024

A Long, Hard Year: Russia-Ukraine War Lessons Learned 2023

Michael T. Hackett and John A. Nagl

ABSTRACT: This special commentary summarizes the major findings and lessons taken from the Russia-Ukraine War integrated research project conducted by members of the US Army War College class of 2024— all subject matter experts on their topics. It outlines seven lessons covering doctrinal, operational, technological, strategic, and political issues related to the second year of the war, including Russia’s use of mercenaries; the need to create a culture of mission command; ways to deal with a transparent battlefield because of persistent, ubiquitous surveillance; air superiority as a prerequisite for successful combined arms ground offensives; and changes to the intelligence and information domains.

Keywords: Russia, Ukraine, Russia-Ukraine War, Winston Churchill

 

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in his famous “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” inauguration speech, prepared his nation for the long and difficult fight ahead, one which would bring victory over the Axis powers, but only after arduous sacrifice and suffering by the British people. His words resound through the ages:

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.1

The second year of the Russia-Ukraine War saw Churchill’s words come to life on the battlefields of eastern and southern Ukraine, with high-casualty battles around Avdiivka and Bakhmut spreading misery and neither side achieving significant gains in territory despite a highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. Consequently, despite dramatic moments such as the failed Wagner mutiny, the second year (February 2023–February 2024) resulted in an apparent stalemate characterized by portions of the line of contact hardening into the entrenched “Surovikin Line” composed of 81 miles of deep trenches around Crimea that are visible from space.

Despite the static nature of the conflict, one exacerbated by delays in the delivery of weapons systems to Ukraine by international partners, Ukraine has demonstrated remarkable resolve and continues to fight. Students and faculty from the US Army War College previously examined the first year of the Russia-Ukraine War from different angles to understand what the conflict means for the changing character of war and draw lessons that could strengthen US forces. The findings and recommendations from that study are detailed in A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force. Highlights are available in an introductory chapter of the same name and a Parameters article by Katie Crombe and John A. Nagl.2

A new team assembled at the US Army War College in fall 2023 examined the second year of the war. While the second year did not provide the same cause for optimism as the first, the battlefield’s blend of conventional warfare and innovative technology in protracted combat revealed new lessons. This special commentary highlights the team’s top findings and analysis, which can inform the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to equip and train the future force better following the devastating war that continues into a third year.

Mercenaries:
The Double-Edged Sword that Reshaped the Russian Force

Russia’s increased use of mercenaries, a combat group described by Niccolo Machiavelli as “at once useless and dangerous” and exemplified by the Wagner private military company (PMC), became one of the most visible features of the second year of the war. For Russia, the use of these companies meets several objectives:

  • they can claim deniability and do not strain Russian national resolve,
  • they allow for aggressive assault tactics with little to no consideration of casualty costs,
  • and they permit Russian units to employ tactics unconstrained by internationally accepted ethical norms.

On the national resolve front, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin summed it up to skeptical audiences in Russia by stating that “those who do not want PMCs or prisoners to fight, who talk about this topic, who do not want to do anything and who, as matter of principle, do not like this topic, send your children to the front. Either PMCs and prisoners, or your children—decide for yourself.”3

From a battlefield perspective, the Wagner forces, supplemented by a massive infusion of prisoners, turned to assault units and tactics that featured prominently in the battle for Bakhmut and influenced Russian forces to establish “Storm-Z” units employed later in the battle of Avdiivka. These operations divided prisoner frontline troops (zeki) from founding members of Wagner (osvovy), with continuous assaults that resulted in 60 percent casualty rates among zeki units but eventually led to Russia’s capture of Bakhmut in July 2023. Wagner absorbed those casualties because of its force structure. As one of the Ukraine team’s researchers observed, “Losses did not reduce the combat readiness of Wagner units because commanders, operators of heavy and specialized weapons, reconnaissance, and command remained a constant element, not participating in the assaults.” The ease with which private military companies adopt flexibility with the Law of Armed Combat, including assaulting local civilians and the high-casualty assault tactics disseminated into the regular Russian army, has left a legacy that has outlasted Prigozhin’s failed mutiny in July 2023. These changes in force structure and tactics suggest that the United States and its allies must prepare for the unique challenges of fighting “stateless” proxy forces like Wagner in future conflicts.4

The Future of Effective Combat: Distributed, Decentralized, and Adaptive

Wagner could push changes in force structure that the Russian military was slow to adopt. With the incorporation of PMC elements into the regular Russian army following Prigozhin’s mutiny and subsequent death, the “Storm-Z” structure and assault tactics became normalized in the Russian military. Russia continued to centralize its command and control over units on the battlefield, which gave Ukraine an advantage. In the second year of the war, Russia maintained a high level of control over forces with minimal subordinate initiative (mission command), unsurprising given the low level of unit training provided to Russian soldiers and the lack of trust that undermined unit cohesion. While Russian centralized command and control was effective in defensive positions, it proved catastrophic during offensive operations.

Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, adopted Western-style mission control in theory. In practice, however, they struggled to scale up mission control operations, given poorly trained staff at the battalion and brigade levels—a structural and cultural problem yet to be unwound. Developing this level of trust is woven into training at every echelon through TRADOC and, given the expected challenges of communication and isolation in the future battlefield, the military should redouble those efforts.5

This form of distributed operations was critical in fires direction / clearance and public information operations. Fires, long the “King of Battle,” have proven pivotal to Ukraine’s asymmetric response to Russia’s numerically superior force, with Western systems like the high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) allowing Ukraine to strike deep behind Russian lines. Beyond the weapons systems, the decentralization of fire direction and clearance processes with technologies like the Ukrainian software Kropyva have enabled faster response times, as have the greater dispersion of artillery assets for survivability against counter-battery fire and loitering munitions.6

Likewise, Ukraine’s decentralization of public information operations has been pivotal to shoring up resolve in Ukraine and among Western partners and countering Russian disinformation and misinformation. Ukraine’s decision to afford more flexibility to its officials to speak openly and authentically has resonated with audiences and built crucial national support for difficult demands like mobilization. The Department of Defense—and the US government more broadly—would benefit from a similar approach of structured advocacy and investment in new information technologies.7

Finally, a new focus on the US Joint Force as an adaptive learning organization must join these distributed operations. As Russia and Ukraine grapple with the harsh realities of modern war, the margin for error has become increasingly narrow, making the ability to innovate and adapt swiftly a strategic advantage and necessity. The accelerating pace of technological change presents a unique challenge for military organizations—including our own—that are hierarchical and resistant to change. The highly volatile and fluid environment of the Russia-Ukraine War underscores this challenge. It demonstrates the value of increased investment in social capital and a federated approach to innovation and adaptation, flexibility that helped Ukraine adapt quickly to a swiftly changing operating environment.8

In the past, the US Army adopted this approach. Dedicating units to adaptability (such as Global War on Terror–era organizations like the Rapid Equipping Force and the Asymmetric Warfare Group) enabled rapid adaptation and fostered the capability to develop bottom-up solutions to counter asymmetric threats. The US military should reconstitute both organizations and others like them that were discontinued to enable the flow of knowledge across the enterprise and accelerate the learning process. As our research team’s innovation and adaptation expert observes, truly embracing innovation and adaptation requires leadership, dedicated resources, formal and informal networks, and a Department of Defense culture that prioritizes continuous innovation and creativity supported by policies encouraging personnel to question, observe, network, and experiment at all leadership levels.9

Back to the Trenches

As the war ground to a stalemate in the past year, trench warfare—not seen at this scale in Europe since World War I—presented new challenges to maneuver and protection and reinforced the critical role fires will play in future wars. Entrenched fortifications around Crimea, and those protecting the “land bridge” occupied territories of southern Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, and Donetsk oblasts along the Sea of Azov, offer lessons in continuity and change should the United States return to conventional large-scale combat operations after years of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.

The conflict has offered several lessons in the field of maneuver. First, combined arms operations at echelon remain the most effective means of seizing terrain and destroying opposing forces in land combat. They are complex, and planners cannot assume their success. Good combined arms doctrine exists and must remain central to leader development and training. Second, the utility of unmanned systems in land combat is nascent; their full potential is unrealized, and they could fundamentally change the logic of tactical risk. Unmanned systems are proving effective at augmenting current defensive practices for stationary armies but have not yet proven their worth in large maneuvers or reached full value as offensive tools with unique functions. Finally, battlefield transparency is deadly. The Russian and Ukrainian armies are adjusting to account for the probability of being seen by threat technology that reduces an organization’s ability to mass offensively or to survive while massed defensively. Counterintuitively, techniques that enable survival on a transparent battlefield also undermine combined arms fundamentals; to preserve combined arms’ value, the enterprise must develop technological solutions that negate transparency.10

Russian defensive fortifications have brought Joseph Stalin’s famous line “quantity has a quality all of its own” to the modern battlefield. Russia’s use of mass when employing thousands of antipersonnel and anti-tank land mines to reinforce well-constructed defensive obstacles foreshadows challenges US Army forces will face in ground combat. As our protection research team concludes:

As techniques for clearing obstacles have not evolved in the past half-century, the U.S. Army should explore other ways to overcome the challenges of deep, reinforced obstacles. This approach should be mirrored in electronic warfare (EW) protection, merging offensive and counter-drone efforts and co-locating activities where possible. Machine vision technology also stands to dramatically change survivability operations, driving a need for more and better decoys and incentivizing tactics that confuse algorithms, not just suppress signatures. In this area, the Army should establish more formal programs that can better judge decoy technology against the latest threats and accelerate experimentation at its training centers. By tackling these challenges now, the Army might save in future conflict the year that Ukraine lost in mounting an effective counteroffensive.11

Additionally, fires are pivotal to countering conventional and EW trench warfare. The US Army should integrate these capabilities into strike packages to counter enemy jamming of precision munitions and drones, revive the use of camouflage netting and decoys, and limit electronic signatures when static to avoid detection. Based on ground experience in Ukraine, the US Army should develop a “suppression of enemy electronic warfare” approach like the one used to suppress enemy air defenses.12

By Air, by Sea

As they had in the first year of the war, multidomain operations were a crucial element in the second year of the war. By land, air, and sea, Ukraine brought the fight to Russia in asymmetrical ways that will shape combat for years to come. Perhaps the single most significant lesson learned from the Russia-Ukraine War is that air superiority is still an essential prerequisite to enable combined-arms maneuver. In the air domain, offense is the dominant form of warfare and vital to gaining air superiority. Two years into the war, however, neither Russia nor Ukraine gained air superiority and instead focused on defensive tactics of air denial. These air-denial strategies create air parity, where the air domain is either neutral or contested, and neither side controls it. Air parity creates trench warfare in the sky and, subsequently, trench warfare on the ground. We conclude that defensive air-denial strategies are not winning strategies, nor will they gain air superiority. They should only be used out of necessity until returning to the offense.

In a contested air defense environment, the United States can no longer take air superiority for granted. This shift is important for the US military; after years of fighting with air supremacy, the Joint Force has forgotten many of its capabilities and doctrines learned from previous air campaigns. Our research team’s review of air operations in Ukraine in 2023 offers lessons for the Joint Force, including the need for training to air parity conditions, convergence and synchronization of Joint Forces to conduct multidomain offensive counter-air operations, improving passive and active defensive counter-air tactics, executing rapid and survivable kill chains at scale, exploring unmanned technologies, and ensuring adequate stockpiles of war materiel. These lessons should be reemphasized and codified into service doctrine and the Joint Warfighting Concept to ensure US capabilities to gain and maintain air superiority in future conflicts.13

These airpower lessons also apply to NATO, which must enhance its offensive and defensive counter-air operations by improving its situational awareness, resilience, interoperability, and innovation. Ukraine has demonstrated that robust air and missile defenses can impact an overall campaign and that air denial can be an effective interim solution—specifically for NATO members that lack offensive air capabilities—before NATO can bring its full offensive airpower to bear.14

Ukrainian operations in the maritime domain also provided important lessons. In the second year of the war, the rise of alliance capabilities (such as Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the Ukrainian Marine Corps separation from the Ukrainian Navy) significantly influenced the conflict in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov region. Likewise, 2023 maritime operations illustrated the need for the US Army, the US Marine Corps, and the US Navy to update doctrine to address warfare in deep blue, brown, and green water zones. Ukraine’s effective use of smaller, more agile vessels and integration of fires and unmanned aerial systems to target and strike large Russian warships offers valuable insights into the types of vessels and technology worth US research and investment.15

The Battle for Information Advantage

The Russia-Ukraine War affords vital insights into how future conflicts will be influenced by the abundance of digital information and the maturation of artificial intelligence. For US Army Intelligence, a key aspect of the conflict is the emergence of an ecosystem of intelligence-like commercial services. Companies like Palantir, Planet Labs, BlackSky Technology, and Clearview AI are driving this ecosystem forward. Ukraine embraces these actors and harnesses the potential of their services to make sense of ever-increasing amounts of information. Artificial intelligence is a critical development area, evident in applications such as targeting and battle tracking, facial recognition, voice recognition and translation, data management, autonomous flight, counter-disinformation efforts, and cybersecurity. Our intelligence team suggests four implications for US forces:

  • First, the Russia-Ukraine War demonstrates the military significance of technological trends shaping the operational environment; even if the US Army intelligence enterprise chooses not to adopt them, they are available to allies, partners, and adversaries.
  • Second, it shows how low-cost sensors and nodes can be integrated at the tactical and operational levels as part of a persistent and resilient collection network.
  • Third, it shows how the US Army can leverage unclassified information sources to foster integration with allies and partners.
  • Fourth, it reveals the versatility of unclassified information sources in terms of improving intelligence analysis, stimulating innovation, and forging connections with domestic and foreign audiences.16

The cyber domain has proven to be another critical battlefield for information advantage. The offensive cyber capabilities by Russia and Ukraine have demonstrated that cyber operations in armed conflict are becoming more destructive, emphasizing the need for robust cyber defense. As with fires, protection, and intelligence operations, AI-enabled cloud infrastructures have proven critical to cyberspace defense and cybersecurity—and, as with intelligence operations, are best achieved through the collaborative efforts of government with industry and international partnerships. Our cybersecurity team observes:

Ukraine’s cyber defense effort would not have been nearly as successful had it not been for the voluntary intervention of large US-based technology firms such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX, and several other technology companies. These corporations, however, intervened in the Russia-Ukraine War at a high cost to those organizations. This national collaboration can be improved and repeated with proper planning, funding, and policy development. Future cybersecurity strategies need to formalize private and commercial-sector contributions.17

The Future of Warfare—and Collective Security in Europe

Beyond the lessons learned outlined in this special commentary, how the war continues—and eventually ends—will be pivotal to European security and US national interests overseas. Continued security assistance from the United States and its allies—and unambiguous signaling on allied resolve—will be critical to bolster Ukrainian military efforts to roll Russia back and give it a stronger hand at the bargaining table as the war moves toward termination. Reaching war termination while Ukraine maintains maximalist war aims (recovering all territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea) would require a significant setback to Russian resolve. While Russia currently maintains an advantage in that regard, its resources are not absolute. As one of our researchers notes, its “artificially inflated economy, high inflation, shrinking population, growing discontent, and propensity to take significant losses for marginal gain” may eventually force Russia to negotiate. From Ukraine’s perspective, any war termination agreement must consider a post-war Ukraine that has improved its security capacity, economic health, and political stability and be anchored firmly into transatlantic institutions such as NATO and regional associations in Eastern and Central Europe.18

As it has been since the war began in February 2022, continued military and diplomatic support by Ukraine’s partners is critical. Some of the territory regained by Ukraine can be attributed to the battlefield effects of US- and NATO-provided systems (such as HIMARS and Leopards tanks) that showed support may tip the balance in Ukraine’s favor. Providing weapons systems from many donor countries posed logistical challenges. As our research team’s sustainment expert observes, the challenges faced by Russia and Ukraine have reiterated the need for the United States to “work across the whole of government and industrial base to build resiliency in the production of equipment and munitions to ensure the ability to increase production to the scale and in time required, maintaining a competitive advantage and ensuring secure supply chains in the future.” Nearly as important as the weapons themselves, unified, unambiguous messaging on the systems as an enduring commitment to Ukraine is crucial to challenging Russia’s resolve. Where tentative US signaling has so far managed escalation with Russia, it runs the risk of undermining the credibility of US threats, commitments, and assurances in the long run.19

Finally, this grueling year of the war reinforced the role that genuine leadership plays for morale and direction. As our research team’s resiliency expert concludes, Ukraine remained resilient against Russia’s onslaught through its fabric of national identity, one knit together, at least partially, through its long history of generational trauma inflicted by its neighbor. Volodymyr Zelensky “leveraged that national identity and trauma to mobilize not only his military and fellow Ukrainians to resist . . . but also the western world to provide much needed training, funding, weapons, and equipment.”20

The future Joint Force will require the sophisticated weapons, doctrine, training that TRADOC affords, and national will and resolve to fight and win the next war—one that may be as prolonged and arduous as the second year of this conflict has been for Ukraine. By studying the lessons observed, the US Armed Forces will be better prepared to deter and, if necessary, win that fight.

 

Michael T. Hackett
Michael T. Hackett is a foreign service officer at the US Department of State and served as the chief of staff for the integrated research project that studied the second year of the Russia-Ukraine War. He is a distinguished graduate of the US Army War College class of 2024.

John A. Nagl
John A. Nagl, the director of the Russia-Ukraine War integrated research project, is a retired Army officer and a professor of war-fighting studies at the US Army War College.

 

Endnotes

  1. Winston Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” (speech, House of Commons, London, May 13, 1940), https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/blood-toil-tears-sweat/. Return to text.
  2. John A. Nagl and Katie Crombe, A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College [USAWC] Press, 2024), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/968/; and Katie Crombe and John A. Nagl, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force,” Parameters 53, no. 3 (Autumn 2023), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/10/. Return to text.
  3. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Dover 1992), 31; and Kateryna Tyshchenko, “Either Prisoners or Your Children – Yevgeny Prigozhin on Recruiting Prisoners for the War in Ukraine,” Ukrainska Pravda (website), September 15, 2022, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/15/7367677/. Return to text.
  4. Rasmus Solaas, “Wagner’s Way of War and Putin’s Ephialtes” (Strategic Research Paper [SRP], USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024), 16. Return to text.
  5. Joe Junguzza, “Mission Command as a Key Operational Advantage in the Russo-Ukraine War” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024); and Joe Junguzza and Kelly Lelito, “What National Culture Teaches Us about Mission Command,” Small Wars Journal (website), March 4, 2024, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/what-national-culture-teaches-us-about-mission-command. Return to text.
  6. James “Jay” Johnson, Michael Tumlin, and Elijah Ward, “Russia-Ukraine War: Fires Lessons Learned” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  7. Alex Tignor, “Public Affairs and Information Warfare Lessons Learned from the Russia-Ukraine War” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  8. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Return to text.
  9. Michael C. Haith, “Innovation and Adaptation: Assessing the ‘Adaptive Space’ of the Russian and Ukrainian Militaries” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  10. Chris Brawley, John Gabriel, and Aaron Morrison, “Russia, Ukraine, and Biddle’s Modern System” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  11. Sean Shields and Matthew Schmunk, “Protection: Lessons Learned from the Russia-Ukraine War in 2023” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  12. Johnson, Tumlin, and Ward, “Russia-Ukraine War.” Return to text.
  13. Marcus Antonini, “The Russia-Ukraine Air War: Old Vodka in a New Bottle” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  14. Hardi Lammergas, “Ukraine’s Air Power Strategy in Russia-Ukraine War: A Model of Success for NATO?” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  15. E. Saúl Manzanet, “Maritime Lessons for the U.S. Army” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  16. Benjamin Iverson and Michael Cookey, “New Frontiers in Intelligence: Ukraine’s Commercial Intelligence Ecosystem” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  17. Alex Peake and Marcus Jones, “Ukraine IRP AY24 – Cyberspace” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  18. Brian Scicluna, “The Russia-Ukraine War: Closer to Peace or More War” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024), 20–21; and Andranyk Hasparian and Marko Nikituk, “Ukraine’s Postwar Future” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  19. Troy A. Wacaser, “Lessons from Russia-Ukraine War: Sustainment to Supply and Sustain the Fighting Force of the Future” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024), 26–27; and Michael T. Hackett, “Lessons from Ukraine: Coercive Diplomacy and the Reluctant Provider Approach” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
  20. Kyle R. Yates, “Ukrainian Resilience in the Russia-Ukraine War” (SRP, USAWC, Carlisle, PA, 2024). Return to text.
 

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