The Ukrainian way of war is a coherent, intelligent, and well-conceived strategy to fight the Russians, one well calibrated to take advantage of specific Russian weaknesses. It has allowed the Ukrainians to maintain mobility, helped force the Russians into static positions for long periods by fouling up their logistics, opened up the Russians to high losses from attrition, and, in the Battle of Kyiv, led to a victory that has completely recast the political endgame of the Russian invasion. The original maximalist Russian attempt to seize all of Ukraine has been drastically scaled back to a far more limited effort aimed at seizing territory in the east and south of the country.
The Ukrainian way of war has a few foundational elements that we have seen in operation around Kyiv and across the country. They are:
- Contesting air supremacy over the area of battle;
- Denying Russia control of cities, complicating the Russian military s communications and logistics;
- Allowing Russian forces to get strung out along roads in difficult-to-support columns; and
- Attacking those columns from all sides.
Denying the Russians air superiority is the foundation of Ukrainian success. Contesting control of the skies allows Ukrainian forces to maneuver while making Russian forces nervous that they could be subject to Ukrainian air assault. The Ukrainians were never going to take air supremacy for themselves the Russian air force is too large and Russian forces are well provided with antiair systems but the Ukrainian plan has made it difficult for Russian airpower to patrol over areas of battle. Ukrainian forces prevented Russia from winning control of Ukraine s airspace by combining a range of systems, including a small number of highly effective MiG fixed-wing aircraft, advanced antiair systems, and a plethora of handheld antiair weapons, such as Stinger missiles. Russian aircraft can and do bomb Ukrainian positions, but these missions seem very much to be of the in-and-out variety, and don t involve the continual exercise of airpower.