By Markus Lehner
INTO THE third year of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine the slaughter continues unabated, having turned into a war of attrition. Reports suggest half a million military casualties and at least 150,000 deaths on both sides, despite Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim of 31,000 Ukrainian dead. In addition, according to the UN High Commissioner for Civilian Casualties, over 10,000 civilians too have fallen victim to missiles, drones and artillery bombardments.
The success Western commentors predicted for the Ukrainian ‘summer offensive’ of 2023 failed to materialise. In an interview in the Economist the recently dismissed Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhnyi said: ‘Similar to the First World War, we have reached a situation of war technology that forces us to engage in trench warfare.’
According to the Nato textbooks, the Ukrainian offensive should have reached Crimea within four months. In fact Zaluzhnyi admits that after a short time there was only minimal movement on all fronts. Initially he attributed this to poor leadership or insufficient training but, when personnel changes and troop regroupings failed to break the impasse, he consulted old Soviet military manuals’ descriptions of the failure of repeated offensives during the First World War.
Just as then waves of attacks by both Russian and Ukrainian forces, revealed that the defending side had enormous technological advantage. Drones and other high-tech electronic devices enabled both sides to observe the massing of tanks and heavy artillery and thus enabled the defenders to turn any attack into a massacre.
Therefore the Ukrainian leadership moved away from its widely advertised offensive strategy in favour of ‘strategic defence’. Zaluzhnyi claimed only a leap in military technology—like the deployment of tanks during the First World War could change this. But even experience shows that such new technologies take longer to fully integrate and usually only become decisive in succeeding wars.
Economic attrition
In a war of attrition, the question of the war economy and the quantitative supply of military materiel to the troops becomes more and more crucial. The war is thus increasingly decided by economics, as it was the First World War. And here Russia is gaining more and more ground. As one US banker recently noted, forecasts that the its economy would collapse in a matter of months, due to Western sanctions and pressures from the war economy, have turned out wrong. This has provided extra proof for those on the left who needed it that Russia is an imperialist power.
Not only have the shortfalls in imports of capital and goods been overcome, after only slight dips, but Russian arms production has now increased by 68%, or 6.5% of GDP. After a recession in 2022, the Russian economy grew by 2.8% in 2023. Of course, both rising import prices and the war economy have boosted inflation to around 7% and, as with military casualties, the principal sufferers have been workers struggling with an ever-increasing cost of living and more restricted consumption. Nevertheless no one expects a change of power in the presidential elections in March, especially after the murder or fatal torture of Alexei Navalny.
However, it is increasingly clear in recent months that Ukraine has major problems with the war of attrition: at the height of its offensive, Ukrainian artillery fired about 7,000 projectiles a day—significantly more than Russian artillery. But currently it has to limit itself to 2,000 per day, while Russian artillery fires five times as much.
The reason for this is not only faltering aid from the West (e.g. the military aid withheld by US Congress), but much more fundamental problems of the Western arms industry. In recent decades, this has focused on high-tech and specialised weapons, while war of attrition is primarily based on mass production of conventional ‘hardware’.
Initially supplies came from the existing stocks of Nato armies, but now it is more and more important to produce new materiel. Ukraine itself can hardly produce the necessary quantities, owing to the infrastructure problems caused by the war, including the occupation or destruction of former areas of heavy industry and the loss of half of the country’s electricity supply.
Limits of Western support
In addition the overpowering strength Western imperialism is not as great as many portrayed it. Ammunition production requires vast quantities of steel. If you look at the 15 largest steel companies in the world, there is not a single US company among them, but there are nine Chinese ones. The U.S. has gone from being one of the world’s most important steel producers to one of the largest importers today. The US and its Nato Allies in Europe now have to increase their ammunition production many times over, with high costs of supplies, in order to keep pace with Russia and China.
However, many such promises can hardly be implemented in the short term due to supply bottlenecks and technical conversion problems. While US munitions production, which is under state control, can be ramped up on the basis of political decisions, the European arms companies (especially the German Rheinmetall, the British BAE Systems, the French Nexter S.A., the Norwegian-Finnish Nammo AS) as private companies are only willing to expand their production after concrete financial commitments.
Their order books are now three times as full as they were before the war. Rheinmetall is currently covering the continent with new production facilities. Nevertheless, this production will lag behind the Russian one in terms of quantity at least until the beginning of 2026.
Finally, in recent months, there have been growing recruitment problems, especially in Ukraine. Even if the motivation of the Ukrainian defenders is many times higher, many soldiers are simply burnt out after months of fighting and witnessing the death of their comrades. This is reflected in the growing movement of relatives who are fighting for their husbands or sons to be replaced. But new recruits are becoming fewer and fewer and, above all, less militarily suitable. Therefore the recruitment efforts of the Ukrainian military are also becoming more and more brutal and less ‘voluntary’.
Internal conflicts
The failure of the offensive and then the loss of Bakhmut have been compounded by the Russian capture of Avdiivka after a long and punishing defence by Ukrainian forces. This has been taken as a sign the war may have turned in Putin’s favour. More and more conflicts are surfacing within the political and military leadership of Ukraine. The Economist interview with Zaluzhnyi fuelled angry exchanges with Zelensky, who replaced him on 8 February with his ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.
With Ukraine struggling to overhaul its mobilisation system, the sacking of Zaluzhnyi could deal a blow to troop morale along the 1,000-kilometre front. Syrskyi’s appointment was met with dismay among soldiers, as he is considered less concerned about high military casualties. Unless there is a rapid change of fortunes on the battlefield, Zelensky himself could fall before Putin, especially if the West is looking for a face-saving end to hostilities without achieving any of Ukraine’s war goals.
Many on the Left who see the Ukraine war as simply a proxy war between the imperialist powers, USA/EU and Russia, fail to recognise that it is it is also a national defensive war against the centuries-old oppression of imperial Russia, which justifies its self-defence and explains the massive support of the poorer population in Ukraine for the fight against the Russian invaders.
But Western support is not absolute or unconditional—despite all the warm words about ‘our freedom’ being defended here. Biden & Co. made it clear from the outset that they would only provide as much military aid as was necessary for defence, and did not want to deliver anything that would make them direct participants in a war – or even bring them directly into military confrontation with Russia.
These limits to the support from the US, UK and EU also make it clear that the current shortages in military supplies may mark the beginning of a (conscious or unconscious) exit strategy. In other words, in the hope that the war of attrition will weaken both Ukraine and Russia militarily to such an extent that both are more and more willing to compromise. Such a deal would cost Ukraine significant territories, and in turn would bring Russia the final loss of most of Ukraine from its sphere of influence. This will hardly be possible with the current leadership of Ukraine—but alternatives are already in waiting.
Millions of Ukrainian workers and peasants, who have gone to fight for their country’s independence and democratic self-determination, will see this as an enormous betrayal. But a deadlocked, prolonged war of position will also fuel resentment over the war policy of the capitalist regime in Kiev, indeed over the meaningfulness of the war itself, and its leadership, especially since it has deepened the exploitation of wage earners during the war and massively restricted the trade union and political rights of the working class.
The internal contradictions in Ukraine are further fuelled by the fact that the regime stands for unbridled conditions of exploitation and the sell-off of agricultural wealth to Western investors. We therefore warn against any trust in any of these alleged leaders of national defence. Rather, it is necessary to fight for the working class to withdraw all political support from the various nationalist leadership groups and to organise against the sell-out of Ukraine, either to the Russian or the Nato-EU imperialists, in order to prepare and embark on the struggle for an independent socialist Ukraine.
Russian imperialism was able to stabilise itself after initial unexpected setbacks. The pseudo-opposition of Prigozhin and the Wagner ‘mutiny’ has served its purpose of channelling protest against ‘those at the top’, but was swiftly liquidated by Putin. However, price increases, shortages of certain goods and a massive wave of emigration, especially of well-educated young people, will lead to new shocks in the longer term.
Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded for small territorial gains in Ukraine will raise questions for the leadership. The recent massive protests in the republic of Bashkortostan on the Volga show that the calm in the vast empire is only apparent. The courageous stance of environmental activist Fayil Alsynov against the war in Ukraine and the excessive state repression against him have been enough to throw a hitherto passive province into turmoil. The longer and bloodier the current war of attrition in Ukraine continues, the more the call for ‘bread and peace’ will once again shake the Russian regime. It is important for Russian socialists to prepare this moment for a new Russian October.
Revolutionary Marxists should advocate ending the Ukraine war on a just and democratic basis: all Russian troops out of Ukraine, no to the inter-imperialist Cold War, and self-determination for Crimea and the Donbas ‘republics’ after their former inhabitants are allowed to return. This must be linked to the longer-term perspective of an independent socialist Ukraine.
