| Salt because retired General Wesley Clark is the author |
Ukraine has been on the front lines of a new generation of warfare where Russia blurs the lines between peace and war. Moscow’s aggression began with the seizure and then annexation of Crimea in February and March, and then the not so-covert war in Donbas in April.
While the Kremlin has claimed that this was an uprising of Donbas’ ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers against the government in Kyiv, the truth is that this has been a war led, financed and armed from Moscow. Thousands of regular Russian troops stopped Kyiv from retaking the entire Donbas in the late summer of 2014 and thousands of Russian troops remain in the occupied territories today. Moscow controls the military activity of the so-called separatist forces.
We have watched carefully the evolution of Ukraine’s armed forces since the war began and it is impressive.
We were in Kyiv in the first half of December at the invitation of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation for discussions with senior politicians, military representatives and representatives of civil society. We were impressed by their competence, dedication and energy.
Ukraine’s army has largely fought Kremlin forces to a stalemate. The old, static, Soviet-style army that Ukraine had in 2014 has been transformed into a capable fighting force. Part of that is due to the training provided by NATO members and especially the U.S. But most of this is due to the exigencies of wartime and Ukraine’s creative response.
Ukrainian officers have adapted well to battlefield developments and proved ingenious at countering Moscow’s clear advantages in tanks, artillery, cyber and electronic warfare.
For instance, reluctance on the part of Western countries and Israel to provide state-of-the-art drones prompted Ukrainian engineers to create their own, less complicated versions that have proved quite serviceable; and Ukraine’s own formidable cyber community has done a stalwart job shutting done Russian attacks on electricity grids and other infrastructure. Ukrainian hackers also got into the files of senior Putin-aide Vladislav Surkov and revealed embarrassing details about Kremlin operations in Ukraine.
In short, the Russian campaign in Ukraine is the face of future, hybrid war; and Ukraine has gained valuable experience that NATO and the U.S. are currently absorbing. This knowledge is critical for our own defense against an aggressive Kremlin.