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101 Foreign Aff. 10 (2022)
Why War Fails: Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and the Limits of Military Power

handle is hein.journals/fora101 and id is 672 raw text is: 10  FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Why War Fails
Russia's Invasion of
Ukraine and the Limits
of Military Power
Lawrence Freedman
On February 27, a few days after
Russia invaded Ukraine,
Russian forces launched an
operation to seize the Chornobaivka
airfield near Kherson on the Black Sea
coast. Kherson was the first Ukrainian
city the Russians managed to occupy,
and since it was also close to Russia's
Crimean stronghold, the airfield would
be important for the next stage of the
offensive. But things did not go accord-
ing to plan. The same day the Russians
took over the airfield, Ukrainian forces
began counterattacking with armed
drones and soon struck the helicopters
that were flying in supplies from
Crimea. In early March, according to
Ukrainian defense sources, Ukrainian
soldiers made a devastating night raid
on the airstrip, destroying a fleet of 30
Russian military helicopters. About a
week later, Ukrainian forces destroyed
another seven. By May 2, Ukraine had
made 18 separate attacks on the airfield,
which, according to Kyiv, had elimi-
nated not only dozens of helicopters
but also ammunition depots, two
Russian generals, and nearly an entire
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN is Emeritus
Professor of War Studies at King's College
London and the author of the forthcoming book
Command: The Politics of Military Operations
From Korea to Ukraine.

Russian battalion. Yet throughout these
attacks, Russian forces continued to
move in equipment and materiel with
helicopters. Lacking both a coherent
strategy for defending the airstrip and a
viable alternative base, the Russians
simply stuck to their original orders,
with disastrous results.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky has described the Chorno-
baivka battle as a symbol of the incom-
petence of Russia's commanders, who
were driving their people to slaughter.
In fact, there were numerous similar
examples from the first weeks of the
invasion. Although Ukrainian forces
were consistently outgunned, they used
their initiative to great advantage, as
Russian forces repeated the same
mistakes and failed to change their
tactics. From the start, the war has
provided a remarkable contrast in
approaches to command. And these
contrasts may go a long way toward
explaining why the Russian military has
so underperformed expectations.
In the weeks leading up to the
February 24 invasion, Western leaders
and analysts and the international press
were naturally fixated on the over-
whelming forces that Russian President
Vladimir Putin was amassing on
Ukraine's borders. As many as 190,000
Russian troops were poised to invade
the country. Organized into as many as
120 battalion tactical groups, each had
armor and artillery and was backed by
superior air support. Few imagined that
Ukrainian forces could hold out for very
long against the Russian steamroller.
The main question about the Russian
plans was whether they included suffi-
cient forces to occupy such a large
country after the battle was won. But
PACKAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN STAUFFER

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