What to expect in year five of Russia's invasion?

In this video, I discuss some things to expect in year five of the war. I'd love to hear your opinions about the format. I hired an editor for this video as an experiment, and it's a lot different from what I usually do. I have for a long time thought about outsourcing that part of the workflow because it takes a lot of time, and frankly I don't particularly enjoy it. But do you think this format works for my content?

You can watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

We've now entered year five of the full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia. In this video, I want to share some thoughts about what we can expect in the coming year and what to look out for. Obviously, we can't predict the future, but it can still be useful to reflect on where we are.

I want to start with the broad picture of where the war is and where it's going. The big picture is still that this is a war of attrition and the two sides are wearing each other down until the point where one of them is likely to gain the other hand. Wars of attrition tend to take a very long time because the determination on both sides to find solutions and to keep the war going is very strong.

Wars of attrition are characterized by a very long attritional phase where the fighting continues and there is a lot of destruction but both sides are still able to make things work and sustain the fight. The last couple of years of this war has been this kind of middle phase where the fighting just continues and the two sides are wearing each other down.

At the beginning of year five of the war, we are approaching the end of this middle phase. We're getting closer to the point where this current level of attrition becomes unsustainable. And the deciding factor is going to be the economy. It's the economy that decides which of the two sides, Ukraine or Russia, that can continue the longest.

When Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did not result in a quick victory, then Vladimir Putin essentially had two choices. Either he could go for this war of attrition, or he could find some way to end the war early by declaring victory and going home. He chose the war of attrition. And he did that knowing that the countries that supported Ukraine at the time had a vastly greater economic potential than Russia did.

So essentially, his bet was that Russia would win through determination, and that Ukraine supporters would lose interest in the war and give up. And he was right about the United States. The United States has stopped supporting Ukraine and is no longer providing military aid. But he was wrong about Europe. The consequences of Ukraine losing the war would be really bad for the rest of the European countries.

So it's not really an option for the Western European countries to let Ukraine lose. And therefore we've seen European support remain high. We can always discuss whether they should provide even more help to help Ukraine and the war faster. But the basic level of support is quite robust.

But on the Russian side, it's quite clear that the economy is now struggling. Pretty much everything about the Russian economy is bad. The war economy had a boom at the beginning of the war. That's quite normal. There's a lot of money being pumped into society. And that boom lasted for about three years. But in the fourth year of the war that has now ended, it became clear that this type of war economy is unsustainable and that Putin's war effort is essentially on a countdown until the economy can't sustain it anymore.

The Russians are going to do whatever they can to ensure that the defense industry will get the resources that it needs to continue the war for as long as possible, while other parts of society, they will just then have to suffer to support the military effort. But it's not possible to do this indefinitely, and eventually this will lead to a decline in Russian military capacity.

So what I'm saying here is that the big picture is that Russia is losing this war of attrition and that year five of the war is going to be the year when this becomes obvious. And this also means that the things that I will highlight as important to watch for in the coming year will be those that move in that direction. It's always important to think about alternative outcomes and how your assumptions might be wrong, but that's not really what this video is about. What I want to do here is to name some of the things that are most likely to happen and not all the other things that I think are less likely to happen.

So that was really the first thing that I think we should expect in year five of the war, that it will become obvious that Russia's war economy is unsustainable. And that will create a dilemma for Putin because to save the economy, he would have to end the war. But if he ends the war, then Russia will not achieve its war aims, which from a Russian perspective is the same as losing the war.

The big question is whether we will suddenly see Russia beginning to engage in the peace negotiations with a more realistic approach and a willingness to find solutions. So far, we've seen nothing of that. But I will not rule out the possibility that it will happen over the coming year as the Russian economy deteriorates.

Ultimately, the big question is whether Putin believes that the war economy poses such an existential threat to his regime that he must address it, even if that means ending the war and at least postponing his imperial ambitions. Personally, I doubt it. I think there is a greater chance that he will insist on continuing the war, but I won't entirely rule out the possibility that he could reach the opposite conclusion and that suddenly over the coming year we may see Russia becoming more interested in a negotiated solution. Importantly, that of course does not automatically mean that the war between Ukraine and Russia will end or that they will achieve a peace deal. It just means that Russia will engage in the negotiations in better faith.

The next thing to watch out for is whether there will be another large wave of forced mobilization in Russia. It's becoming increasingly difficult for the Russian military to replace its losses. Over the last couple of months, it appears that the Russian military has actually lost more soldiers than they've been able to recruit, meaning that the Russian military is actually declining in size.

One reason for this is that the Russian military has relied on voluntary mobilization, and this means that people are signing up for military service in exchange for some very large salaries and substantial bonuses. There are essentially two problems with this way of manning the Russian military. The first one is that there is a limit to how many people even in Russia are willing to sign up for a bloody war for large bonuses. And the other problem is that it's really expensive. You end up paying a lot of money to people that you will need to replace in a couple of weeks because they died in the meantime. And in a time when the Russian economy is under stress, then there's just not going to be enough money to keep doing that.

So I think it's likely that we will see Russia move towards more forced mobilization over the coming year. They will do that in an effort to try to make the war both more sustainable and also more affordable. I also think it's likely that over the coming year we will see more protests inside Russia. It will not be anti-war protests about how it's a mistake to wage war on Ukraine or something like that, but it would be about all kinds of other issues, such as protests about the bad economy and the cost of living, or protests about forced mobilization, or protests about how those who were mobilized in 2022 have not been allowed to return home or protests from the pro-war community about how the Putin government has been unable to achieve its stated war aims and how the general staff is incompetent.

So many different avenues of protest and the response from the Putin government will be more repression. We've already seen how they are cracking down on social media platforms such as Telegram and this is something that they do in anticipation of protests and trouble that lies ahead. It's a way of making repression possible.

On the front line, I think it's fair to say that there is already a deadlock. That's been the case for a long time. But that deadlock will get even worse over the coming year. It will become even more difficult for the Russians to make progress. The key aspect to watch for is whether Ukrainian counterattacks will actually become so successful that they reverse the overall trend. So far, the picture has been that every month Russia has been gaining territory.

I think it's likely that over the coming year, we will see at least some months where the Ukrainians gain more territory than they lose. This does not mean that the Ukrainians will suddenly expel the Russians from all the occupied territories. That would require a complete collapse on the Russian side. But it does mean that when Putin looks at the Russian gains over the last 30 days at the end of the month, then he will see a negative number. And that is something that would seriously challenge Putin's narrative about the war and the story that they're trying to tell in the Russian media about how Russia is winning.

The air war is going to intensify. Both sides will increase the production of long-range missiles and drones, and we will see new record-breaking airstrikes. This winter, which is now about to end, has been the worst for Ukrainian civilians in the war so far. And unfortunately, I think there's a chance that next winter might be even worse. So it's worth starting to think about how to prepare for next winter. This includes both making sure that the necessary air defense assets are in place, but also finding ways to better address the problems that arise.

The last thing I will mention is that I think we should expect over the coming year that Russia's hyper war against Western Europe will intensify. As I had mentioned in the beginning of this video, the reason Russia is losing the war is that Europe keeps supporting Ukraine and that this determination to ensuring that Ukraine prevails has been stronger than Putin expected. This means that what stands between Putin and victory is Western Europe. And if he can persuade the Western Europeans to stop supporting Ukraine, he will win the war.

In the military, we have this idea of the center of gravity. If I were to conduct a center of gravity analysis of Russia's war effort, I would probably identify Western European support for Ukraine as the center of gravity that Russia needs to target in order to create the changes that are necessary to win the war.

So I think it's very likely that they are going to increase the pressure on Western Europe through their hybrid campaign. I would not rule out even the possibility that they might escalate this to a level of open conflict, which is sort of higher than what is usually termed hybrid warfare and more into the realm of actual military confrontation. And that's because this is necessary. If Putin wants to win the war, he really does not have any alternative but to intensify the direct attacks on Western Europe. So I think the Western Europeans better need to be prepared for that.

So those were some of the things that I think we should look out for and expect in the fifth year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This will be the year when it becomes obvious that Russia's war economy cannot sustain the current level of intensity in the conflict. It's likely that we will see another wave of forced mobilization in Russia to prolong the war and to make it more sustainable.

It is also possible, maybe not likely, but at least possible that we will see the Russians begin to engage in more realistic peace negotiations because it becomes obvious to them that they need to find a way to decrease the intensity of the war. I also think it will be the year when it becomes even more difficult for the Russians to make progress on the front line. We are likely to see months when the Russians actually lose territory rather than gaining it. And we will see the air war intensify on both sides. And with that, there will be even worse consequences for the civilian population. Finally, we are also likely to see an intensification of Russia's hybrid war on Western Europe.

There are many other things that one could point to, but those are the things that I decided to include in this video. Before I end, I'm going to say something I thought I'd never hear myself saying, but here's a word from the sponsor of this video, which is Proton.

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