What Russia and Ukraine each think happens next in the war
Windows into each side’s strategies make one thing clear: The fighting is probably far from over.
What lies ahead, then, in military terms, in Europe’s biggest war in nearly a century? For answers, I turned to commentary by top military strategists on both sides, who offered surprisingly detailed accounts of what they’re planning. The simple summary is that we’re likely to see more death and destruction without a decisive breakthrough by either side.
To live with this reality, Ukraine is quietly embracing a new doctrine described as “strategic neutralization” by Andriy Zagorodnyuk, the country’s former minister of defense. The concept, as he explained it in a Zoom call Friday from Kyiv, is to paralyze Russia’s forces on the ground and in the air, just as Ukraine has done in the Black Sea. Russia might keep fighting, but if this model holds, it won’t win.
We recently got a window into how Russia sees the war from Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of staff. On Aug. 30, Gerasimov gathered his top commanders to “sum up the results of hostilities for the spring-summer period and clarify the tasks for the future.” His comments, published in Russia last week, were translated for me by Brig. Gen Kevin Ryan, a retired U.S. Army officer who teaches at the Kyiv School of Economics.
“Today the strategic initiative is completely with the Russian forces,” Gerasimov told his commanders. He congratulated them for establishing buffer zones this summer in Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast and pushing west in Dnipropetrovsk. He urged them to continue “offensive operations” in all areas.
But even by Gerasimov’s account, Russia’s vaunted summer offensive has made only marginal advances. It hasn’t even conquered the four Ukrainian regions claimed by Russia in 2022, when the war began. Three years later, by Gerasimov’s calculation, Russia holds 79 percent of Donetsk, 74 percent of Zaporizhzhia, 76 percent of Kherson and 99.7 percent of Luhansk.
Russia’s modest gains have come at the immense cost of more than 1 million Russian dead and wounded, U.S. officials estimate. According to one U.S. assessment, Russia is suffering at least five casualties for every Ukrainian. In some battles, the ratio is said to be as high as 12 to 1.
Gerasimov knows that Ukraine’s most potent threat is missile and drone attacks against the Russian homeland. He reported “massive airstrikes” against facilities that make Ukrainian missiles, as well as factories that produce engines, warheads and fuel for these missiles. Russia also targeted control systems for drones, he said.
The Telegram post that reported Gerasimov’s briefing didn’t provide specifics about future operations. But a map visible behind him showed a dark boundary line that included all of Odesa in the south, together with all districts east of the Dnieper River, which he evidently sees as part of Russia’s future occupied territories.
How will Ukraine halt this slow but persistent advance? Zagorodnyuk described the strategy in Friday’s call, which expanded on an article he published recently. “The objective should not be to defeat Russia outright … but to systematically deny it the ability to achieve its military goals,” he argued. Victory means learning to thrive “under constant military pressure.”
The model is Ukraine’s success in neutering Russia’s mighty Black Sea fleet with drones and missile strikes. Zagorodnyuk told me that Ukraine can so the same thing on land by expanding the “kill zone” for Russian forces from the current 12 miles behind the front line to between 80 and 100 miles. He said Ukraine is producing “mid-strike” weapons to do just this — at some of the plants Russia is trying to destroy.
The hardest part of a neutralization strategy is air defense, Zagorodnyuk said. Ukraine is striking Russian airfields and using electronic warfare to disable Russian glide bombs. To defeat big Shahed drones, it has developed an interceptor drone that detonates near the attacker. The biggest danger is Russian ballistic missiles. The only good defense now is U.S. Patriot missiles, but they’re too expensive and in short supply. Ukraine is developing alternatives, he said.
Ukraine, heroically, is embracing what might be described as “strategic pessimism.” The cavalry isn’t coming. Trump isn’t going to end the war in a day, or a year, or ever. Europe is commendably filling the gap as Trump retreats. But Europe is unlikely to provide any “security guarantees” until after there’s a ceasefire — which won’t happen anytime soon.
“If it is impossible to dissuade Putin,” writes Zagorodnyuk, “then the question is how to systematically obstruct his efforts. Ukraine’s strategy must now shift from trying to deter attacks to actively preventing Russian operational success, no matter how long the war continues.”
Ukraine may not win this war, Zagorodnyuk concedes, but neither will Russia. And for the defenders, that’s a kind of victory.