Interview: Russia Bets It Can 'Outlast The Attention Span Of The West' To Defeat Ukraine

Professor Peter Roberts is a senior associate fellow at the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute, a think tank focused on defense and security. His research centers around contemporary conflict and the way wars are fought. In an interview with RFE/RL's Georgian Service, Roberts says the West's preferred way of fighting today -- massive overwhelming force meant to achieve a quick victory -- is not working in Ukraine where Kyiv's military is bogged down in a war of attrition with invading Russian forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is betting on a conflict that could drag on for years, Roberts says, and "outlast the attention span of the West." For Ukraine, whose fighters are more "adept," according to Roberts, much will depend on the country's ability to step up its own military production, with its Western partners playing a role.

RFE/RL: How much has the Western way of war evolved since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022? What has been learned?

Peter Roberts: It's an interesting question. The Western way of war is a concept that many people have held to be fixed, that it was about maneuver, that it was about expeditionary warfare, about high technology, that it was about speed and tempo, air power, [and] precision. And I think that's an idea that held sway through most of the Western powers since probably the 1980s.

But if we look back to 2003, 2004, that was probably the high point and the end of that concept. Thereafter came a series of very difficult engagements for the West, a series of lessons which they could, should have, perhaps some of them did learn, about the idea that maneuver, time, and speed didn't necessarily work that way, particularly with the enduring campaigns they experienced over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And one thing I think that Ukraine has brought out very strongly is the return to conventional high-end warfare that, in a sense, was largely forgotten after Korea and Vietnam: long, protracted, grizzly fighting.

The idea that it could be fast was a very selective approach from the West that said: Hey, we can make wars happen swiftly, quickly, and with good ends. And Ukraine has [prompted] many Western allies and indeed, their militaries to say: Oh, we need to go back to an industrialized scale of readiness and preparation, of training of manpower, of capabilities. And not forget some of those conventional arms that many in the West wanted to sacrifice, so that they could invest in cyberspace and all that new technology that was thought to be battle-winning but really hasn't delivered.

RFE/RL: So, the old saying that the boys will be home by Christmas is now further from the truth than ever?

Roberts: It is. And I think there's a real dilemma in Western militaries because they are geared and prepared to fight short, sharp wars, high technology wars. And they're also facing this dilemma that that's not how the enemies are fighting. And I think the fact that the enemy gets a vote has largely been forgotten in Western military mindsets.

RFE/RL: Was it because the odds were so much in the West's favor?

Roberts: Absolutely. And although the odds were always in the West's favor, you could see these lessons coming out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You had in Afghanistan an alliance that was unmatched across history in terms of military capability, that had more computing power than the rest of the world, that had intelligence and analysis, that owned the air and had the most sophisticated technology [in] generations…and yet they were beaten. And they were beaten by a force of 5,000-10,000 fighters, who were riding around on horseback, building bombs in mud huts, and fighting with World War II weapons.

So, this idea that the Western way of war, as they envisaged it for 30 years, could endure and would still succeed was deeply flawed and problematic. And yet very few people accepted that. There were huge amounts of denial, and there still is denial.

For all the announcements after Ukraine that Germany would rearm, that the U.K. would invest more money, you see very few states living up to it. Poland perhaps; Sweden; a few of the Nordic states, certainly the Baltic states; but very few [of] the big [European military] powerhouses -- the U.K., France, and Germany -- have lived up to the political rhetoric straight after Ukraine.

And I think that therein lies one of the key problems: They can't seem to convince their populations or themselves that they're at a moment where they need to really invest.

RFE/RL: The vaunted combined arms maneuver -- the West's go-to in the later wars -- prior to the counteroffensive was widely advocated and it was thought that Ukraine should have been able to achieve that on the battlefield. If it could, then success would follow. We saw little of this and, in fact, Ukraine's commander in chief of its armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, pointed that out in a recent interview with The Economist and admitted the war is at a stalemate. Why?

Roberts: The combined arms maneuver is only a way of fighting, right? So, it puts together -- instead of fighting as dismounted infantry or just an artillery battle -- you fight with all the arms together: engineering, artillery, infantry, plus airpower, plus long-range strike initiatives. The difference, I think, is that the West expected to use maneuver far more; to move forces around the battlefield to attack an enemy's will and cohesion to fight. And Ukraine did that on several occasions. The Ukrainian general staff did a brilliant job of attacking Russian command and control. They did an excellent job of severing supply lines and of attacking their deep areas. And that's where we saw success in the counteroffensive late last year.

But -- and this is the reality -- the problem is that it requires…a very good understanding of [its] adversary -- which Ukraine has -- but I'm not sure the rest of the West does. And secondly, the geometry, the geography of a country that allows you to be able to do so. Now, while the battle lines in Ukraine are enormous -- you know, hundreds, thousands of kilometers long -- the reality is that it is not the [type of] ground that allows you to use that kind of maneuver warfare to punch through with an armored fist and then to make huge gains

The mountains, the rivers, the lay of the land, the weather, the farmland, the fields, hedgerows, all prevent that kind of maneuver. And then there's the fact that Russia has done a very good job -- and you can't deny this -- has done a very good job of building defensive arrangements that prevent a breakthrough, which means that you are now fighting for ground as General Zaluzhniy said, 100 yards (91 meters) at a time. It's back to the World War I sort of movements going to and fro.

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That's not to say that advances can't be made, that you can't defeat the adversary. It just means that we go back to a timeline the West doesn't like, which is a long, slow, grinding, unpleasant time frame full of death and destruction with bloody battlefields that really make unpleasant fighting conditions, if fighting conditions can ever be pleasant, right? But it's a really difficult thing conceptually for many Westerners to get their heads round. They want a single punch with an armored fist to break through fences, break out the other side, and then spread out and defeat the Russians. And that's a very traditional Western approach. I just don't see that there is a way to bring that to fruition, to make that happen right now.

RFE/RL: I've seen that described as Hollywood-like warfare. How fair is that in the description?

Roberts: Well, Hollywood popularized it, I think there's a romanticized notion that this is what can happen on every battlefield. The reality is it can happen and has happened on battlefields. The Germans used it very well in the blitzkrieg ("lighting war" during World War II); they used it in the Ardennes Forest. And the same way the Americans have used it very successfully in World War II, [and] indeed going through to 2003. I mean, there's lots of examples where it works, but it depends on having a number of things in place to make it work. And the Ukrainian battlefields don't have that geography, that topography, that geometry, that allows it, that kind of warfare, to happen.

So, I think, in a sense, there was an expectation for a Hollywood war: a fast, quick win using this methodology. I just don't think that the context of the war has allowed it to happen for a whole variety of reasons. But the number one [reason ]… is geography…. [The] Ukrainian General Staff have been pretty clear about this. They have been under huge pressure, not just from their own politicians and society, which one would expect, but also from Western generals and Western governments to make some kind of amazing breakthrough, as if this was suddenly possible.

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The key is that context differs for every single fight that you go into. No two are the same, no battle is the same. And because the enemy is also adapting, battles themselves are dynamic. Day five is not the same as day one when you're fighting a battle. They are very different because both sides are adapting to the adversity, the ground around them, the battlefield is changing.

So, the doctrine should be an overarching set of ideas that gives you the flexibility to outthink your opponent in many of these ways.

At times, however, you come to a stalemate; both sides are fighting at their best with the equipment they have; there is nothing that's going to change it in the short term. And that's where you end up with a protracted struggle and a protracted fight and indeed with frozen conflicts if they go on for a long time.

So, if you look at Georgia from 2008, [it is] largely a frozen conflict. Russia invaded, annexed, took a piece of their sovereign territory in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and has held on to them in a frozen conflict. It is not going to give them back, it is building military bases, it is reinforcing and resupplying. And we have to be very careful that we don't allow this sort of position to harden in Ukraine.

RFE/RL: Speaking of Russia, let's speak about what can be said about the Russian way or rather, the [Russian] culture of war? And what are some of the biggest differences between it and the West in that respect?

Roberts: Essentially, the Russian General Staff was as seduced by a Western…shock-and-awe approach, that Western way of war that we talked about. And indeed, their lightning raid -- or attempted raid on Kyiv at the start of the war -- was exactly that. It was a lightly armored special forces convoy, supported by air power and armor, that was to take key areas, decapitate the government, and effectively sever the snake and [replace the] regime. This is hugely familiar to anyone who's lived in the West. So, they tried desperately to make that happen. And Ukraine put in superb reactions…to hold them off and defeat them.

What I think saved the Russian offensive in many ways was the fact that…part of that plan was to fix in place and hold in position the majority of Ukrainian military in the east of the country with artillery and large-scale Russian military and arms deployment. That ended up in an artillery war, a very Russian way of war: long, slow, monotonous, very attritional, uncaring, less reliant on command and control, less reliant on thinking, more reliant on sheer weight of firepower on mass, on destruction, and no thought to the consequences. And that, in many ways, symbolizes the Russian way of war, as it has been successful but enormously wasteful.

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But listen, war is never efficient, but the Russian way of doing it is enormously wasteful, firing 60,000 rounds a day. It held in place the Ukrainian military that was there, and then made those huge incursions into Ukraine, taking enormous amounts of land, but then being held off by Ukraine's dogged defense and brilliantly executed. It's hard to think in history of a better executed way that any nation has lost ground slowly to an adversary and wore them down to hold up at that line that they got before the first counteroffensive took place.

So, the Russian way of war is a long-term game. It's [over] five [or] 10 years, very successful historically, [an] attritional fight to exhaust the enemy. It's not about beating them. It's not successful when it tried to do regime change -- perhaps the West hasn't been either. It's more about how it's been able to take them down, being able to exhaust the enemy to the point at which they want to give up. And this is exactly where Russia is working now. It's working at the infrastructure. It's hitting the centers of population; it's hitting the electricity supply; it's hitting water; it's hitting gas -- all these things that make life acceptable during wartime, the Russians are now eroding away. That's where they're attacking whilst holding the line. This is how they hope to bring Ukraine to its knees.

RFE/RL: Combined with attempts to outlast the West and Western resilience, I suppose?

Roberts: This is why Russian and perhaps Chinese ways of conducting war have been more successful than the West's because they have a longer-term view. We know that there is a real problem with the next U.S. presidential election, particularly if [former U.S. President Donald] Trump retakes office again. His relations with the Russians probably mean much less support for the Ukrainians. The Europeans don't have enough firepower, support arms, war stocks, or production capability to match what the U.S. has been giving.

Professor Peter Roberts (file photo)

And so, there's a real timeline problem here. And the West has a short attention span. The support from February until November in 2022 has died away. And we see very little of that continued support going on now. We see the Poles, once the hardest of allies for Ukraine, holding up supplies with trucker strikes on the Ukrainian border, preventing hundreds of lorries of supplies of ammunition of food and water, of all the things that Ukraine needs to sustain its fight, those being denied and delayed access back in their homeland.

So, there are enormous problems. Time is really on the Russian side, as it is for the Chinese. And that's one of the things that Russia understands. It's willing to throw away lives, it's willing to throw away money, it's willing to throw away lots and lots of things. But it knows that if it can outlast the attention span of the West in political terms, in societal terms, then it will eventually be able to take Ukraine, and Georgia, and the rest of the Caucasus.

RFE/RL: You mean in its entirety?

Roberts: Indeed, I think if Putin and the Russian people are successful in Ukraine, I think we will see them push further in Georgia. And whether they actually annex [territory] or just become the major power broker across the Caucasus, I wouldn't be surprised by any of those moves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (file photo)

RFE/RL: Being Georgian, I would be surprised if there was another incursion of Russia into Georgia. I was a bit surprised when you said Russia might be able to take the whole of Ukraine.

Roberts: I think it's going to be a really close-run thing. If the West wasn't as distracted, I think it might be impossible. But I think there are a variety of things that are playing against Ukraine that make this a really difficult fight.

First, is the potential election of Trump and the end of U.S. support for Ukraine -- that might happen sooner than we wish.

Second…the political timeline for the West and their loss of interest [in Ukraine] is coming.

Thirdly, I think that the sanctions against Russia have not been effective. And I don't think that there has been an uprising of the global community, toward Ukraine.

So, you look at those who are applying sanctions on Russia, and those who are supplying arms to Ukraine, they're effectively the same group of countries; that's less than 15 percent of the world's population. So, none of the global south, none of South America, very few in Asia, are providing Ukraine with those arms.

So only one-fifth of the world stands behind Ukraine. Now that's not by [gross domestic product], that's by population, I accept that. But I think with that, without the support of the global south and the wider international community, Russia is seeing itself as having pretty much a free rein.

And [Moscow], in its own mind, sees itself as a place where it is pitted once again [as] a Russian Federation of some kind, versus NATO. And I think Putin certainly understands that the arrival of Trump back in power -- which I'm sure he'll be doing everything he can to assist -- does not bode well for Ukraine and plays directly into Putin's hands in the longer term.

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On the other hand, you've got to look at Ukraine. They are better fighters. They are more technologically adept. They have plans in hand to use their technological capabilities in a far more sophisticated way. They are continuing to make gains, they are not just accepting a line of control, and they are continuing to push. They now outnumber the Russians by seven to one in some places. They've taken huge losses. But they've started not only rebuilding, but they've started mass manufacturing, and have arrangements now with Western Arms suppliers to start producing inside Ukraine. And I think this is probably going to be the secret: Who can outproduce themselves fastest? And we know from the history of Ukraine's military industrial complex that once they get geared up, they will be unstoppable.

And so, it's a question of Ukraine in the longer term against Russia and what they can produce. And I very much hope that we will see a slow but gradually increasing pace of Ukraine's military advances to kick the Russians out…The best Ukraine can do at the moment is to do exactly as it's doing and keep fighting and fighting hard. The gains made [with] the crossing of the River Dnieper were superb and a great time just to show the world the fight [had] not ended here. It might not have grabbed headlines but has been really important.