Fascinating. Basically, without trying to be glib, everyone - to varying degrees - got bits right and bits wrong. As a former Defence Correspondent and NATO official I was, with some relevant background at least, playing the same game in the run-up. The bit I got right was that Russia was definitely going to attack, the bit I got wrong was that they were going to try to take the whole country - I thought they would aim to connect the land bridge between Donetsk and Crimea.
The reason for my conclusion was actually reasonable if wrong, and one I still think hasn't received enough recognition, which is that the invasion force was simply far, far too small to conquer a country the size of Ukraine. To use the old Soviet term, looking at the correlation of forces, the military planners must surely have thought the force was too small.
So, why on earth did they try? Simply put, they assumed the Ukrainians would fold rather than fight. This isn't just the belief in some 'coup de main' but Putin and the ruling clique's underestimation of Ukrainians. This isn't just a failure to see the growth of Ukrainian identity, much fuelled by Russia's aggression, but also their cultural prejudice where they see Ukrainians as peasants, Khokhols, who once the current leadership was decapitated, would soon return to the Russkiy Mir. Putin really believes this narrative and that Ukraine is part of Russia, and I think that drove his assumption Ukraine was a ripe apple ready to fall.
That underestimation of Ukraine is widely held in Russia, making if easy to believe the FSB's exaggerations about Ukrainian subversion, and who would challenge Putin anyway? So my conclusion was, however they arrived at them, that the Russian military strategy was built upon fatally mistaken assumptions. They bit off more than they could chew with the forces they put into the fight.
The question I do ask, is if the Russians had just gone for the land bridge, would they have succeeded, thereby readying themselves for a 3rd invasion further down the track?
Good question Mark. I think they probably but not certainly would have succeeded militarily- but it would have been politically unstable. That is why Putin wanted Kyiv.
The problem with thinking the Russian aim was only to connect the land bridge between Donetsk and Crimea was their pre-invasion disposition of forces. They had way to much military power in the north to be just a faint, especially since they had been fighting the Ukranians in Donesk since 2014 and had an idea of their capabilities in that area. FWIW, I got it wrong also. I assumed the Russian military had a basic level of competence in both tactical and intelligence operations, which proved untrue.
Fair points, but my conclusion that the aim would be to connect the land bridge was based on the total number of forces we knew they had. Regardless of where they were, it was too small to take a country bigger than France, so I concluded they had more ltd aims. Relying purely on open source I didn't have a clear idea of the number up north, just what was revealed about the overall force total. Interestingly, from later contacts in Ukraine I was told that the Ukrainians themselves also were more worried about the Donbass, hence the fact they kept their best forces in that area, and it was perilously late before they tried to change their disposition, hence the small force left to defend Hostomel and the fact the Russians advanced quite successfully west out of Crimea facing ltd resistance.
Perhaps it would be worth considering a Russian perspective on cultural shifts within Ukraine since 2005 or 2010 - when many people within Ukraine and Russia used to tell me that cultural differences between the two countries were smaller than between England and Scotland.
This perspective suggests that the political, linguistic and cultural divergence between the two countries that has accelerated since Zelensky came to office was seen as a top down imposition without deep roots, supported by the Ukrainian ultranationalist community and tolerated at best by the majority.
This view reflects Russian understandings of cultural and political management.
One of the topics that it will be impossible to debate while the war is ongoing is the size of the relative factions favouring reintegration with the Russian Mir, continued Ukrainianization or passive detachment from it all - as well as regional variations between the Donbas and the centre/east (Orthodox, pre-1914 Russia) and the Catholic West (pre-1914 non-Russia).
This approach understates Ukrainian agency, but does also take into account particular Ukrainian factors such as the local importance of oligarchs in determining local attitudes - if not in the current hostilities, certainly in the green man round in 2014.
A stimulating contribution to what is a necessary debate. Highlights also both the need for a greater role of military historians in such debates but equally the need to draw upon multi disciplinary teams to contribute a variety of perspectives.
I find it so irronic that Putin's failure to understand and credit the Ukranian national will and character contributed to the Russian failure, remembering how Hitler's dismisssal of the Russian people before Barbarossa led to a similiar disaster. History rhymes again!
I’ve followed and learnt a lot from all three of the individuals mentioned since the full scale invasion began.
O’Brien and Cohen make some valid criticisms of the analytic community but I’m also struck by how the likes of Kofman and Rob Lee have been right about a lot of the fundamentals in the war, particularly the significance of manpower and prepared defences.
Likewise, I’m also not convinced by O’Brien’s argument that there are no decisive battles which he uses to critique Kofman’s analysis of the Battle of Hostomel. Whilst that may be the case once a war has been ongoing for sometime it’s not necessarily so in the early stages of a conflict. For instance, Israel’s attack on the Egyptian Air Force in the opening phases of the Six Day War I would suggest was decisive.
Most importantly, I think we need get away from using failure in one area as basis for wholesale condemnation of an analyst’s work.
I have great faith in MK as well. His own analysis was a good self critique of the limitations of the ‘craft’. Personally l think the biggest lesson of history is under appreciation of the aggressors view and that includes their recklessness and naivety. I also think history shows there are decisive battles which turn on very narrow margins right down to individual actions and are impossible to predict
Great as usual. Yes, they give short shrift to alternative outcomes. O’Brien, like many historians, has an aversion to counterfactuals. This, from a piece on the Hostomel counterfactual is logically flawed:
“Have all the fun you want reimagining decisive battles and counter factual histories—just don’t ever use them to try and justify an analytical position (especially an analytical failure). There is a reason that the counter factual did not occur and something else did—because what happened was what was far more likely to happen. So to see the reality, try to understand and think about that. And dont add extra drama where there does not need to be any.”
No! Unlikely things do happen. If something has a 10 percent chance of happening, it will happen 10 percent of the time.
They cite Tetlock on forecasting, but not the necessity of counterfactual reasoning. Tetlock: “Counterfactual reasoning is a prerequisite to any learning from history. To paraphrase [Robert Fogel], everyone does it and the alternative to an open counterfactual is a concealed one.”
“Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical Methodological and Psychological Perspectives,” (Princeton 1996)
This article and some of the commentary, often based on much more than I know about the situation, seems to imply that somehow Russia has failed. Yes, they failed to take over Ukraine within the few days they initially assumed, but this conflict is far from over, and bit by bit they are gaining ground - perhaps at a horrendous cost, but it's not over till it's over. My concern is that just in terms of sheer numbers and material, as well as their ability to evade sanctions and buy more from complicit countries, they have a substantial store of staying power. And the big wild card is who wins the US election. That could be the most decisive determinant of the ultimate outcome.
Touché. Russia, with its allies China, North Korea and Iran, is set to win in the long run, as the post-heroic mollycoddled West remains resolved to throw Ukraine under the bus to annihilation in piecemeal fashion. I go to Ukraine near where it hurts, and rest assured, the mood is Vantablack.
The following statement from Prof. Freedman should be engraved on the desks and screen-saver of every minister and senior decision-maker.
" Those with policy responsibility need to appreciate why their analysts may not always give them the certainty they crave or may mislead them if they try to do so. This can be frustrating for those who need to take decisions based on expectations about what might happen next, and might even hope to influence what happens next by taking the right policy decisions."
Writing this on a train that passes near to the “Fulda Gap”
I seem to remember post-Cold War re-assessments of the Soviet and East Germans’ capabilities were often at odds with what was assumed at the height of the conflict.
My wife & I visited St Petersburg in the Gorbachev era. At a ballet my wife sat next to a visiting American expert advisor in some field or other who was amazed by the incompetence displayed by the Russians. He told my wife jokingly that, if the Russians had ever fired their nuclear missiles, they would probably collided with each other!
I think starting your critique of the critique with "We now know at the heart of Russian planning was an FSB-operation to take out the Ukrainian leadership" is profound. And this FSB operation seems to strongly reflect Putin's long-standing contempt for Ukraine and Ukraine's leadership--perhaps to include the belief that creatures like Viktor Medvedchuk were eager to assist in the coup-de-main itself rather than to simply wait for the outcome.
Fascinating. Basically, without trying to be glib, everyone - to varying degrees - got bits right and bits wrong. As a former Defence Correspondent and NATO official I was, with some relevant background at least, playing the same game in the run-up. The bit I got right was that Russia was definitely going to attack, the bit I got wrong was that they were going to try to take the whole country - I thought they would aim to connect the land bridge between Donetsk and Crimea.
The reason for my conclusion was actually reasonable if wrong, and one I still think hasn't received enough recognition, which is that the invasion force was simply far, far too small to conquer a country the size of Ukraine. To use the old Soviet term, looking at the correlation of forces, the military planners must surely have thought the force was too small.
So, why on earth did they try? Simply put, they assumed the Ukrainians would fold rather than fight. This isn't just the belief in some 'coup de main' but Putin and the ruling clique's underestimation of Ukrainians. This isn't just a failure to see the growth of Ukrainian identity, much fuelled by Russia's aggression, but also their cultural prejudice where they see Ukrainians as peasants, Khokhols, who once the current leadership was decapitated, would soon return to the Russkiy Mir. Putin really believes this narrative and that Ukraine is part of Russia, and I think that drove his assumption Ukraine was a ripe apple ready to fall.
That underestimation of Ukraine is widely held in Russia, making if easy to believe the FSB's exaggerations about Ukrainian subversion, and who would challenge Putin anyway? So my conclusion was, however they arrived at them, that the Russian military strategy was built upon fatally mistaken assumptions. They bit off more than they could chew with the forces they put into the fight.
The question I do ask, is if the Russians had just gone for the land bridge, would they have succeeded, thereby readying themselves for a 3rd invasion further down the track?
Good question Mark. I think they probably but not certainly would have succeeded militarily- but it would have been politically unstable. That is why Putin wanted Kyiv.
The problem with thinking the Russian aim was only to connect the land bridge between Donetsk and Crimea was their pre-invasion disposition of forces. They had way to much military power in the north to be just a faint, especially since they had been fighting the Ukranians in Donesk since 2014 and had an idea of their capabilities in that area. FWIW, I got it wrong also. I assumed the Russian military had a basic level of competence in both tactical and intelligence operations, which proved untrue.
Fair points, but my conclusion that the aim would be to connect the land bridge was based on the total number of forces we knew they had. Regardless of where they were, it was too small to take a country bigger than France, so I concluded they had more ltd aims. Relying purely on open source I didn't have a clear idea of the number up north, just what was revealed about the overall force total. Interestingly, from later contacts in Ukraine I was told that the Ukrainians themselves also were more worried about the Donbass, hence the fact they kept their best forces in that area, and it was perilously late before they tried to change their disposition, hence the small force left to defend Hostomel and the fact the Russians advanced quite successfully west out of Crimea facing ltd resistance.
Perhaps it would be worth considering a Russian perspective on cultural shifts within Ukraine since 2005 or 2010 - when many people within Ukraine and Russia used to tell me that cultural differences between the two countries were smaller than between England and Scotland.
This perspective suggests that the political, linguistic and cultural divergence between the two countries that has accelerated since Zelensky came to office was seen as a top down imposition without deep roots, supported by the Ukrainian ultranationalist community and tolerated at best by the majority.
This view reflects Russian understandings of cultural and political management.
One of the topics that it will be impossible to debate while the war is ongoing is the size of the relative factions favouring reintegration with the Russian Mir, continued Ukrainianization or passive detachment from it all - as well as regional variations between the Donbas and the centre/east (Orthodox, pre-1914 Russia) and the Catholic West (pre-1914 non-Russia).
This approach understates Ukrainian agency, but does also take into account particular Ukrainian factors such as the local importance of oligarchs in determining local attitudes - if not in the current hostilities, certainly in the green man round in 2014.
A stimulating contribution to what is a necessary debate. Highlights also both the need for a greater role of military historians in such debates but equally the need to draw upon multi disciplinary teams to contribute a variety of perspectives.
I find it so irronic that Putin's failure to understand and credit the Ukranian national will and character contributed to the Russian failure, remembering how Hitler's dismisssal of the Russian people before Barbarossa led to a similiar disaster. History rhymes again!
I’ve followed and learnt a lot from all three of the individuals mentioned since the full scale invasion began.
O’Brien and Cohen make some valid criticisms of the analytic community but I’m also struck by how the likes of Kofman and Rob Lee have been right about a lot of the fundamentals in the war, particularly the significance of manpower and prepared defences.
Likewise, I’m also not convinced by O’Brien’s argument that there are no decisive battles which he uses to critique Kofman’s analysis of the Battle of Hostomel. Whilst that may be the case once a war has been ongoing for sometime it’s not necessarily so in the early stages of a conflict. For instance, Israel’s attack on the Egyptian Air Force in the opening phases of the Six Day War I would suggest was decisive.
Most importantly, I think we need get away from using failure in one area as basis for wholesale condemnation of an analyst’s work.
I have great faith in MK as well. His own analysis was a good self critique of the limitations of the ‘craft’. Personally l think the biggest lesson of history is under appreciation of the aggressors view and that includes their recklessness and naivety. I also think history shows there are decisive battles which turn on very narrow margins right down to individual actions and are impossible to predict
Great as usual. Yes, they give short shrift to alternative outcomes. O’Brien, like many historians, has an aversion to counterfactuals. This, from a piece on the Hostomel counterfactual is logically flawed:
“Have all the fun you want reimagining decisive battles and counter factual histories—just don’t ever use them to try and justify an analytical position (especially an analytical failure). There is a reason that the counter factual did not occur and something else did—because what happened was what was far more likely to happen. So to see the reality, try to understand and think about that. And dont add extra drama where there does not need to be any.”
No! Unlikely things do happen. If something has a 10 percent chance of happening, it will happen 10 percent of the time.
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-hostomel-decisive-battlecounterfactual?r=yxvd&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
They cite Tetlock on forecasting, but not the necessity of counterfactual reasoning. Tetlock: “Counterfactual reasoning is a prerequisite to any learning from history. To paraphrase [Robert Fogel], everyone does it and the alternative to an open counterfactual is a concealed one.”
“Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical Methodological and Psychological Perspectives,” (Princeton 1996)
This article and some of the commentary, often based on much more than I know about the situation, seems to imply that somehow Russia has failed. Yes, they failed to take over Ukraine within the few days they initially assumed, but this conflict is far from over, and bit by bit they are gaining ground - perhaps at a horrendous cost, but it's not over till it's over. My concern is that just in terms of sheer numbers and material, as well as their ability to evade sanctions and buy more from complicit countries, they have a substantial store of staying power. And the big wild card is who wins the US election. That could be the most decisive determinant of the ultimate outcome.
They have failed in terms of their original objectives. But they have not lost. So the war continues.
Touché. Russia, with its allies China, North Korea and Iran, is set to win in the long run, as the post-heroic mollycoddled West remains resolved to throw Ukraine under the bus to annihilation in piecemeal fashion. I go to Ukraine near where it hurts, and rest assured, the mood is Vantablack.
The following statement from Prof. Freedman should be engraved on the desks and screen-saver of every minister and senior decision-maker.
" Those with policy responsibility need to appreciate why their analysts may not always give them the certainty they crave or may mislead them if they try to do so. This can be frustrating for those who need to take decisions based on expectations about what might happen next, and might even hope to influence what happens next by taking the right policy decisions."
Writing this on a train that passes near to the “Fulda Gap”
I seem to remember post-Cold War re-assessments of the Soviet and East Germans’ capabilities were often at odds with what was assumed at the height of the conflict.
In a nutshell: Beware of Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns ; )
Mr. O’Brien, ever the optimist, expected liberation of Crimea at some point in 2023, so there’s that.
My wife & I visited St Petersburg in the Gorbachev era. At a ballet my wife sat next to a visiting American expert advisor in some field or other who was amazed by the incompetence displayed by the Russians. He told my wife jokingly that, if the Russians had ever fired their nuclear missiles, they would probably collided with each other!
L
This is really an excellent piece.
I think starting your critique of the critique with "We now know at the heart of Russian planning was an FSB-operation to take out the Ukrainian leadership" is profound. And this FSB operation seems to strongly reflect Putin's long-standing contempt for Ukraine and Ukraine's leadership--perhaps to include the belief that creatures like Viktor Medvedchuk were eager to assist in the coup-de-main itself rather than to simply wait for the outcome.