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Although Ukrainian forces are being slowly pushed back in some places along the front, the country’s overall military strategy is a good one, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s top general, said during the Aspen Security Forum.
“The Ukrainians right now for these past few months have been focused on defending what they have in the east, denying Russia the free use of Crimea and southern Ukraine to attack the rest of Ukraine, preserving their access to the Black Sea and generating force,” the U.S. general said.
“I think that they’ve got a great strategy. It is just a matter of prosecuting it. The key part is the force generation,” Cavoli added in a speech on Thursday at the U.S. security and foreign policy conference.
To win, a country has to be able to generate force — figuring out how best to use men, training and weapons. Ukraine has those building blocks in place, he said.
“You have to have weapons; you have to have people, you have to train them altogether. The equipment depends largely on us, and I think that proceeds well,” the general said, referring to the $61 billion U.S. military aid package approved in April after months of delay; Ukrainian forces are now seeing increased deliveries of arms and ammunition.
Ukraine is responsible for manpower, and the situation there is improving after the parliament adopted a mobilization law in April. The new legislation obliged Ukrainian men of 25-60 years of age to register with conscription offices in Ukraine and abroad.
“Ukraine has challenges in how it uses its manpower. There’s a pool of people, who need to work in factories, fields, and in military fighting. It is the job of the Ukrainian government to figure out what that balance is. They’ve recently extended the age of conscription, they’re bringing people in at a pretty good clip right now,” Cavoli said.
The government is even recruiting convicts, although those serving sentences for sexual offenses, murdering two or more people or crimes against Ukraine’s national security aren’t eligible.
More than 4 million Ukrainians are now registered as being potentially willing to serve, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said in an online speech at Aspen on Thursday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv has 14 new brigades ready, but not yet fully armed, as the new weapons are still arriving slowly and training takes time.
Frontline fighting
While Ukraine is accumulating forces, its exhausted frontline troops are fighting off determined Russian attacks on a 1,000-kilometer front in the east and south of the country.
Umerov said the Ukrainian army faces more than 500,000 Russian troops, and that in the next months, the Kremlin plans to increase the number by 300,000, in part by actively recruiting mercenaries.
Russia is paying a fearsome price in men and destroyed equipment, but it is succeeding in making incremental advances.
Recently Ukrainian forces had to withdraw from the village of Ocheretyne in the Donetsk region.
They also pulled back from Krynky, the only village Ukraine held on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, said Dmytro Lykhoviy, a Ukrainian army spokesperson.
“Most of the main positions of the Ukrainian troops in the village of Krynky were completely destroyed as a result of the intense, combined, and long-term hostile fire of the enemy. The village itself was also almost destroyed by enemy shelling,” Lykhoviy said. He added that Ukrainians will continue to maintain a presence on the left bank of the river.
At the same time, Ukrainian forces managed to stop the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region and decrease the number of Russian glide bombs after the U.S. and other allies permitted Ukraine to use donated weapons to make limited strikes against Russian territory.
Ukraine also continues to pound Russian positions in Crimea. Russia withdrew the last elements of its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, a victory for Ukraine’s long-running drone campaign.
While the situation on the ground is broadly static, and could eventually swing in Ukraine’s favor, the politics are more complex. Polling shows that Donald Trump is favored to win the U.S. presidential election in November. He’s called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, which would cement Russia’s advantage.
Germany, Ukraine’s largest European military donor, looks like it will slash its aid in half due to budget problems.
Cavoli stressed that that the stakes in continuing to support Ukraine are very high.
“The outcome on the ground in Ukraine is vital to future European and global security. Supporting Ukraine is vital for our security,” he said.
No matter what happens on the ground, the threat from the Kremlin won’t go away, the general said.
“We’re going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, it is located at the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we’re the adversary and is very angry. So, we have a big Russia problem looming. So you have to do both — help Ukraine and rearm,” the general said.
