It’s Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better in Ukraine

“The initial Russian military campaign was premised on terrible delusions and assumptions, so it was a big miscalculation both politically but also militarily,” said Kofman, research program director for the Russian Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses. Kofman said the military assumed it could quickly overtake Kyiv; most civilians would flee or surrender; and Russian troops could avoid significant contact with Ukrainian forces. “That was all proven wrong,” he said, noting the Russians were plagued by logistical problems, poor communication, and low morale.

Kofman said that Russian forces have since reorganized and are moving to “pinch away slowly at the territory,” and he reminded that they also still have potent weapons that they’ve yet to fully deploy. “It’s important for folks to understand that Russian air power has hardly been used.”

Serhii Plokhii, director of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, said Putin drastically underestimated the sense of national pride, identity, and loyalty that has been building in Ukraine for almost 20 years.

In 2014 Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had the support of Russia, was ousted after rejecting a trade deal with the European Union, sparking a series of fierce protests. “The concept of taking up arms in defending your home and your homeland …  in 2014 and 2015 [that] became the foundation for the modus operandi of the Ukrainian Army and Ukrainian population at large,” said Plokhii. “This is a major, major change” for the former Soviet republic, which gained its independence in 1991.

But in warfare, national pride is typically not enough, suggested Kevin Ryan, retired brigadier general and current senior fellow at the Belfer Center, who previously served as Senior Regional Director for Slavic States in the Defense Department and as Defense Attaché to Russia.

According to Ryan, having 190,000 Russian soldiers present and plenty of advanced weaponry will matter more. “As bravely as they fight and as persistent their attempts at thwarting these advances are, I don’t think we can expect that they will be successful in that without intervention from the West.”

Panelists said they feared the worst of the fighting is still ahead and agreed that some form of division of the country might be a likely outcome. They also agreed that a nuclear attack was unlikely, but not impossible. Ryan offered up a scenario in which Putin could choose to explode a small tactical nuclear weapon to make “the nuclear deterrent real.”

Plokhii said his nuclear fears stem from the threat of contamination from a reactor being hit during the fighting. There are 15 of them in Ukraine, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has expressed concern about the security of the facilities amid the fighting. Russian forces have reportedly taken control of some nuclear sites, including Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 meltdown.

Kofman predicted an end to Putin’s presidency, pointing to the crushing sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy. “I don’t understand how that person is long term going to hold onto power after this … not necessarily because of what’s happening in Ukraine, just because of what this gambit has done to Russia,” he said.

Kofman also expects an aggressive Russian attack on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

“I am deeply skeptical that a deal is going to be made here,” he said, “and I think there is going to be an assault on Kyiv. And only after that, will we actually see more serious discussions.

Alvin Powell and Colleen Walsh are Harvard staff writers.This article is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University’s official newspaper.