Analysis | Putin Will Carpet-Bomb Ukraine Unless the West Acts - The Washington Post

On land, the accomplishment of a wet, rainy autumn and a harsh wintertime volition pb to a alteration successful operations.  Both Russia and Ukraine request to remainder and reenforce their troops, arsenic good arsenic repair equipment. A instrumentality to full-blown combat operations isn’t apt until precocious wintertime erstwhile the crushed freezes, presenting a amended accidental for the heaviest equipment.

Russia volition peculiarly conflict to capable the holes successful its guardant combat operations, acknowledgment to debased information and a failing draft. As 200,000-300,000 young men — under menace of conscription — have departed Russia for sanctuary successful bordering nations, Russian president Vladimir Putin has resorted to conscripting criminals, the homeless, and drunks rounded up successful bars. Ukraine faces challenges too, but not of information — its citizens, warring an existential war, are mighty motivated. The Ukrainian situation stems from having a acold smaller colonisation — lone astir a 3rd of Russia’s.

Ukraine volition besides person a large vantage successful supplies. The West volition proceed to supply not lone the high-tech weapons that person astir of the publicity but besides the breadstuff and food of infantry operations: guns, mortars, ammunition, fuel, trucks, night-vision devices, acold upwind gear, portable stoves, point-to-point communications equipment. In contrast, Russian conscripts person been told to find their ain sleeping bags and improvise bandages from tampons.

But the situation successful the onshore warfare volition beryllium a classical subject information of the battlefield: Advantage successful crushed warfare accrues to the antiaircraft side. Military mentation says you request a 3:1 vantage connected discourtesy to conquer a well-dug successful defense. Ironically, arsenic the Ukrainians win successful taking backmost large chunks of antecedently conquered territory, the Russian antiaircraft positions compress and go harder to overrun. But fixed Ukrainian advantages successful materiel and motivation, I’d alternatively person their manus of cards.

So the onshore warfare vantage goes to the Ukrainians, though the warring volition beryllium hard. But what astir the different war, the 1 successful the sky?

In the aerial warfare implicit Ukraine, the vantage accrues to the Russians. First and foremost, they person a vastly larger aerial force, 1 that has seen important combat acquisition successful Syria. Russian aerial forces routinely pounded Syrian cities into dust, dropping indiscriminate “dumb bombs” by the thousands, seeking to simply destruct immoderate enactment for the rebels warring Putin’s state Bashar al-Assad. 

Sadly, this carpet bombing proved precise effective, and Putin seems inclined to effort and transcript it successful Ukraine. The caller wide appointed to oversee the Ukraine warfare is the person of Russia’s aerial force, a antheral known for his Syrian atrocities. The strategy is simple: Grind down the Ukrainian electrical grid and h2o organisation strategy to interruption the public’s morale by virtually freezing them retired of their progressively uninhabitable homes.

While Putin’s stocks of precision-guided missiles are rapidly depleting (witness his turning to Iran for high-tech weapons), helium inactive has plentifulness of dumb bombs, stockpiled for decades going backmost to the Cold War. Because helium doesn’t attraction astir collateral harm oregon civilian deaths, helium volition effort to termination arsenic galore arsenic helium tin from the skies.

As the world of his attack sinks in, the West indispensable summation its enactment to Ukrainian air-defense efforts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, of course, desires a NATO no-fly portion supra each else. He often implores the West to “close the skies” of his nation. More likely, helium volition person accrued numbers of high-end air-to-surface missiles systems similar the superb Iron Dome (developed jointly by the US and Israel), NATO Patriot batteries (that are besides going on the Polish border), and perchance tactical fighters.

Leaders successful NATO capitals are besides revisiting an thought that was discarded successful the aboriginal days of the war: providing either MiG-29 Soviet-era fighters (the Poles person offered to transportation them to the Ukrainians) oregon adjacent US surplus F-16s, a simple-to-learn multi-role fighter. Without specified measures, the aerial warfare volition proceed to spell successful favour of Putin.

With a onshore warfare favoring Ukraine and a brutal aerial warfare favoring Russia, the West’s champion enactment volition beryllium to importantly summation its assistance to Ukraine connected the aerial warfare broadside of the conflict. Giving the Ukrainians much tools to adjacent their ain skies whitethorn beryllium the cardinal to forcing the Russians to yet negotiate, possibly arsenic soon arsenic aboriginal spring, fixed the occurrence Zelenskiy and his subject person achieved connected the ground.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• As Ukraine War Drags On, Expect More Cruelty to POWs: Leonid Bershidsky

• What Could Putin Throw astatine Ukraine? Look astatine What He Did to Syria: Ruth Pollard

• Russia’s Mass Abductions Are Genocide: Andreas Kluth

This file does not needfully bespeak the sentiment of the editorial committee oregon Bloomberg LP and its owners.

James Stavridis is simply a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A retired U.S. Navy admiral, erstwhile ultimate allied commandant of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy astatine Tufts University, helium is vice president of planetary affairs astatine the Carlyle Group. He is the writer astir precocious of “To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision.”

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