The Kremlin’s gamble – why the Russians did not underestimate the Ukrainians in February 2022
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, shocked the world. The insufficient size of the invasion force compared to the size of Ukraine and the Russian approach in the initial phase of the invasions led many to believe that the Russian political leadership had made an erroneous calculation. Arguably, the widely accepted view today is that the Kremlin believed the Ukrainians would put up little to no resistance, and that Russian forces expected to march, largely unopposed, into Kyiv. However, the Russian political leadership did not underestimate the Ukrainian ability and will to defend against the Russian invasion, and the decision to invade must be seen as a gamble rather than an intelligence failure.
There are three reasons for this: Firstly, the Russian approach in 2022 was following a standard Russian blueprint for invasions, largely used in previous Russian and Soviet invasions. Thus, this approach would likely have been used whether if the Russians underestimated the Ukrainians or not. Secondly, the timeline in the initial five weeks of the invasion does not support the hypothesis of an intelligence failure and that no “bad news” was relayed to Putin. The Kremlin’s ability to recognize the failure of the initial phase and subsequently withdraw from large parts of Northern Ukraine largely rules that out. Finally, Russian military academic literature, published immediately before the full-scale invasion, does not indicate an underestimation; on the contrary, it shows great concern about the increasingly powerful Ukrainian Armed Forces and its ties to NATO.
Most Soviet and Russian invasions have followed a certain pattern and usually takes the form as a strategic surprise attack. An emphasis on pre-emption and strategic surprise is supported by combat readiness, high strategic mobility, secrecy and deception (maskirovka), often in the shape as large-scale exercises and readiness inspections immediately prior to the launch of the invasion. Subsequently, the initial period of war is aggressively exploited, allowing the seizing and retaining of the strategic initiative, in order to reach decisive objectives before the defender is able to mount an effective defense. This was the case in the 1956 invasion of Hungary, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, the 1994 attack on Chechnya, the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the 2014 invasion of Crimea, and the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, the planned invasion of Poland in the early 1980s would likely have transpired in a similar fashion, and the leaked invasion plans of a Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine from 2015, involving a draft order of the Western Military District, showed a conceptually identical approach as the actual 2022 invasion.
The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example, has a striking resemblance with the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The prelude of the 1968 invasion involved liberal movements within Czechoslovakia prompting the Soviet Politburo to act to ensure loyalty within the Communist bloc. The invasion, launched August 20, was largely conducted by forces deployed as part of a series of large-scale exercises throughout the summer of 1968. These exercises were designed to mask the force build-up in order achieve strategic surprise. Additionally, the Soviet Politburo indicated that they would de-escalate the crisis in the weeks leading up to the launch of the invasion, most likely to strengthen maskirovka.
The invasion started with a commercial flight from Moscow asking to conduct an emergency landing at Prague International Airport. As the aircraft landed, spetsnaz forces in civilian clothing disembarked and started to take control of the airport. After the airport was seized, the area around the airport was filled with electromagnetic noise and transport aircraft with Soviet airborne troops started to arrive. Simultaneously, Soviet mechanized forces in road march columns, moving at high speeds along main roads, crossed the border at multiple points and raced for objectives deep into the interior of the country. The invasion started in the evening and the next morning the country was seized and further resistance was futile.
Thus, the similarities to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine are striking, down to the white stripes painted on the Soviet vehicles, distinguishing them from the very similar Czechoslovakian vehicles. Importantly, the invasion was conducted by a fairly moderate force: 250,000 Bulgarian, Polish, Hungarian, but mostly Soviet, soldiers participated in the initial part of the invasion. As the Czechoslovakian Army was approximately the same size, this would not be sufficient considering the traditional view that an attacker would need a force superiority of 3 to 1. However, in the Soviet military tradition, strategic surprise is the chief force multiplier, and if surprise is achieved, this is seen as sufficient to compensate for insufficient force ratios. This Soviet and Russian operational design, consistently used in invasions, had failed only once before 2022, in the 1994 attack on Chechnya.
Consequently, the Russian approach in February 2022, relying on high-risk and rapid maneuvers and seemingly without the sufficient force ratios to invade such a country as Ukraine, is not an obvious case of underestimation and intelligence failure – whether the Russians underestimated the Ukrainians or not, the invasion would have been conducted in the same way regardless. Finally, as strategic surprise does not necessarily imply an attack “out of the blue”, but rather to attack before a defender is fully prepared, the Russians did actually achieve surprise. As there are examples of Russian forces advancing unopposed to the outskirts of Kyiv and deep into the southern part of the country, the Ukrainian defenders were arguably not fully prepared for war.
The timeline of the initial phase of the invasion indicates a gamble even more strongly. On March 25, the Chief of the Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Colonel-General S. F. Rudskoy, proclaimed that the special military operation was going according to plan, which it was clearly not, and that the Russian forces now would change their focus from Kyiv and the northern parts of Ukraine to Donbas. This statement is a lot more significant than what perhaps is commonly understood. From the start of the invasion on February 24, until the statement was made on March 25, only four weeks had passed.
In these four hectic weeks, the following steps had to have happened: Firstly, the invasion had to be launched. While it is an obvious fact, the introduction of all elements planned for the invasion would take some time. Secondly, some time would have to pass for the invasion to factually fail. As the tide of war ebbed and flowed in the initial phase of the invasion, at some theoretical point on the timeline, the invasion would actually have failed. This could not have been at the outset of the operation. Thirdly, the Russian forces in Ukraine had to realize that the invasion, as it was envisioned, was failing. It is difficult to comprehend and accept that a military endeavor is failing, both mentally and cognitively for any military organization, let alone the Russian. Fourthly, the realization of failure had to be transferred upwards the chain of command to the only person that could sanction a withdrawal from large swaths of conquered territory, the Commander in Chief, President Putin. A withdrawal from all of Northern Ukraine, included the area around the capital, would unlikely be a decision of anyone else than him. Fifthly, then Putin’s decision had to be transferred back down the chain of command, and, finally, the withdrawal had to be planned and partly prepared before Rudskoy would make his statement. If not, the Russian forces could not withdraw six days later, in good order and using only five days, without becoming very vulnerable to Ukrainian exploitations.
Consequently, this indicates strongly two things: First of all, Putin was not isolated in the Kremlin, and he took decisions based on sound intelligence and strategic realities. Secondly, there was a mental preparedness for failure in the whole Russian chain of command, included by Putin. If not, the timeline seems completely unrealistic. Thus, to the Kremlin, the initial period of the invasion was seen as a gamble, and the risk of failure was largely accepted beforehand. This could also explain why so few Russian military leaders, included the Minister of Defense, Shoygu, the Chief of the General Staff, General Gerasimov, and the director of the FSB, Bortnikov, were not dismissed following the failure.
Finally, does a Russian underestimation of the Ukrainian will and ability to defend itself really make common sense? In 2022, Russian forces had, directly and indirectly, already been in combat with the Ukrainian Armed Forces for 8 years in Donbas. Included in this fighting was several large battles, lasting for months, in which both separatist forces from Donbas and even Russian regular forces were fighting the Ukrainians. Most notably were perhaps the battles of Donetsk Airport and Debal’tseve, each involving hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces and producing hundreds of casualties on both sides. While most of the large-scale fighting in Donbas occurred in 2014 and 2015, the belligerents had been facing each other in sporadic fighting across fortified frontlines afterwards. In other words, the Russian Armed Forces had experienced first-hand the Ukrainian resilience and combat power. Consequently, there were little grounds for an underestimation of their resolve in an existential fight.
Additionally, in January 2022, two months before the launch of the full-scale invasion, an article was published in the military journal “Military Thought” describing Ukraine and its armed forces as increasingly more potent and more interoperable with NATO-forces. “Military Thought” is the most revered military journal in Russia and is published by the Russian General Staff, in which Chief of the General Staff, General V. V. Gerasimov, is one of the editors. The author of the article, Colonel-General V. P. Baranov, warns that: “Today, Ukraine is a key regional strategic partner of the United States, which is making huge efforts to reform its armed forces and improve the operational and combat interoperability with armed forces of NATO countries.” The article continues to describe the Minsk II agreement as a failure in achieving a negotiated settlement and several factors that made Ukraine a powerful adversary. For example, according to Baranov, the Ukrainian Armed Forces consisted of 246,000 soldiers, with 20,000 to 40,000 soldiers in reserve, and a land force of 36 maneuver brigades, 25 territorial brigades, 9 national guard brigades, and 13 artillery brigades of different types. Additionally, military aid and training support from NATO, combined with a range of joint exercises between Ukraine and NATO countries conducted in 2021, significantly increased the Ukrainian capabilities. According to Baranov, this strengthening of Ukrainian capabilities, combined with increasingly anti-Russian rhetoric in Ukraine and the West, indicated that Ukraine might be preparing to re-take the Russian occupied areas by force with consent and support from NATO-countries. While this notion of an impending Ukrainian attack was not necessarily shared by the whole Russian security elite, there seems to be little doubt about the Ukrainians will and ability to defend themselves. Thus, as an example, Baranov’s article, which was published in the most prestigious Russian military journal, shows that there were few misconceptions about the prospect of heavy Ukrainian resistance in early winter 2022.
Consequently, the Russian understanding prior to the invasion was that the Ukrainian Armed Forces would pose a substantial challenge and could only be quickly beaten by the aid of strategic surprise. Thus, they devised a high-risk, high-gain approach, based on standard Soviet and Russian military art. In other words, the initial phase was a gamble, and when it failed, Russian forces reverted to a traditional fires-centric approach, trying to encircle and destroy the large Ukrainian forces deployed in Donbas.
Consequently, the Russian approach and timeline in the initial phase of the invasion demands a re-assessment of the drivers behind the Russian full-scale invasion. If they launched the invasion as a gamble, being aware of the significant risks of failure, territorial expansion as a driver is less probable. Additionally, the costs the Russian leadership and society are willing to accept points to a driver that is closer to necessity rather than opportunity. A detailed conceptualization of why the Russians launched the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine is beyond this paper; however, a failure to sufficiently understand the Russian perspective will have grave consequences in the months and years to come.
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