The fall of Avdiivka, in the same week as the death of Alexei Navalny, demonstrates the political and military realities of the Ukraine war. The West faces a clear strategic and moral choice: support Ukraine through to victory or accept a major European war in the next five years.
As aid stalls in Congress and the Biden administration scrambles to contain multiple crises, the White House’s best strategic bet is to ensure the Europeans retain policy cohesion. If that succeeds, Ukraine can win with or without Washington over the long haul.
Navalny was an imperfect standard-bearer for the Russian opposition, a function of his historical position as a citizen of a post-imperial Russian state. This explains, despite his unrelenting opposition to Vladimir Putin, his 2012 view that Russia should pursue integration with Ukraine and the formalization of the Russian World as a matter of policy.
It explains his statement that Crimea, unlike “a sandwich,” cannot be passed around – a remarkable statement from a Russian liberal concerning another state’s sovereign territory. Most notably, in 2008, Navalny supported Russia’s war against Georgia, which in retrospect was both a grave political misstep and a moral red flag.
Navalny undeniably retained the chauvinistic impulses of his urban Russian education. Yet Putin’s regime murdered Navalny. It’s irrelevant whether he was poisoned, tortured or simply executed – or he simply expired after months of deprivation and years of imprisonment.
Putin’s fear of him stemmed from Navalny’s understanding of the Russian system and his alternative vision for it. Indeed, despite his flaws and political mistakes, Navalny offered an alternative to the kleptocratic decayed imperial model of Putin, Patrushev and their coterie of security force members – the siloviki – and oligarchs.
Navalny’s model would have had growing pains, not in the least over Ukraine. But it pointed to a different political end-state, one in which Russia might join the community of nations absent pretensions to special status, and without commitment to a messianic historical mission.
This idea has some popularity in Russia, albeit perhaps not enough to succeed in the absence of supreme political skill. After all, while Boris Yeltsin sought a similar end-state, he ultimately supported the idea of Russia’s special rights in European security.
As Yeltsin saw it, even the threat of a changed political culture in Russia must be eliminated, despite its low chances of success.
Navalny, therefore, died as he lived – as a Russian who provided a small degree of hope against the darkness of his country’s amoral past, present and (unraveling) future. That future is being decided today on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is a contest for nothing less than the future of Europe and, in turn, of Eurasia.
Russia invaded Ukraine in an attempt to solidify supposedly extant bridges between two parts of the mystic Russian World. Russian soldiers quickly discovered that no such thing exists.
In response, the Kremlin has decided to impose “Russian-ness” on Ukraine, thereby reconsolidating Russia’s privileged sphere of influence in Europe, adding another 44 million subjects to the Kremlin’s rule and generating a political unit that, alongside Belarus and likely Moldova and most of the Caucasus, can legitimately confront the West.
Ukraine is not losing this war, at least not yet. But its task is all the more difficult absent sufficient Western aid.
The capture of Avdiivka came at a staggering human and materiel cost to the Russian military. Ukraine had defended Avdiivka since 2014, repulsing a large assault in 2017 to maintain control of a crucial foothold on the outskirts of Donetsk City. It took 18 months of intermittent fighting, along with six months of heavy combat, for Russia to take the city.
Ukraine defended Avdiivka predominately with a single brigade at a time, supporting it with detached battalions and leveraging the city’s well-built defenses to maintain its positions.
It took a dozen Russian line brigades and regiments, alongside so-called territorial brigades from the Donbas pseudo-statelets and Storm-Z penal units, to take Avdiivka, with the loss of some 30,000 or more soldiers and hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces.
During the last week of the fight, Ukraine’s crack 3 Assault Brigade, sent in to extract the battered 110 Mechanized Brigade, mauled two Russian brigades and battered several more.
Avdiivka’s fall is therefore not a crucial turning point in the war. Russia will press elsewhere, likely against Ukrainian lines in Kharkiv Oblast and in the south, but it simply lacks the patience to accumulate reserves for a major operational breakthrough.
Rather, much like after the fall of Severodonetsk in the summer of 2022 or Bakhmut in March-May 2023, Ukraine will reset on new lines and the war will continue.
Yet Avdiivka need not have fallen had Ukraine received sufficient support from the West. Ukraine needs shells desperately – its daily expenditure rates have dropped from around 5,000-8,000 per day during the summer offensive to 1,000-3,000 per day since October, as the Ukraine military, or ZSU, remains acutely aware of its supply shortages.
The result in Avdiivka was the engagement’s degeneration into a brutal urban fight, in which Russian artillery could engage targets at close range with less fear of lethal Ukrainian counter-battery fire. Another 120,000 shells provided in December could have sustained the ZSU’s defense and perhaps even broken the Russian attack.
Time is a precious commodity for Ukraine. It must accrue as much of it as possible. For it must mobilize several hundred thousand new soldiers, train and equip them, and echelon them properly. This will occur, albeit with some social dislocation. Nevertheless, that makes 2024 a year of strategic defense, which the highest echelons of Ukrainian policy have signaled.
Russia will not stop its war, at least not fully. Moscow’s predicament is less solvable than Kiev’s. Ukraine faces a thorny public policy problem: how to mobilize several hundred thousand working-age men without destroying an economy already on life support from the West.
Russia, for its part, must mobilize somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 more soldiers to sustain pressure on Ukrainian positions. This pressure is crucial since – while Russia is unlikely to win on the battlefield – it cannot accept a ceasefire along current lines.
Russia lacks the depth to defend conquered territory in southern or eastern Ukraine from a renewed fight, especially if Ukraine can solidify its defense relationships with Europe or – even worse for Moscow – join NATO. Hence the Russian war machine hungers for meat and must constantly be fed more.
The issue, of course, is that the Kremlin understands the dangers of more aggressive mobilization. Moscow and St Petersburg are largely untouched by the war, at least compared with the rest of the country. But these two cities are the Russian policy’s center of gravity.
Another conscription wave will contract an already tight Russian labor market, accelerate inflation, depreciate the ruble even further and thereby stress Russia’s ability to purchase crucial military and industrial products from China, Iran, and other third parties.
The Kremlin grasps the lessons of Yeltsin’s and Khrushchev’s weaknesses, as a consequence of which both buckled and were tossed out. But the Russian regime’s highest echelons also grasp the lessons of the February Revolution: A war that spirals out of control and overstresses the country’s economy will lead to societal unrest.
Thus Russia wants a ceasefire in the next year, if it can get one, not because it seeks a legitimate peace but because it hopes to gain room to manipulate Ukrainian and European public opinion against each other, leaving Ukraine more isolated for another war that will, ultimately, be carried into Europe.
Kiev’s victory therefore requires inflicting catastrophic casualties on the Russian army. Ukraine has proved eminently capable of doing so thus far and, given some tactical competence and a bit of luck, is likely to continue its success.
Nevertheless, far more is needed. Ukraine needs a legitimately rational support network of Western countries that can meet its equipment demands in the long term alongside an immediate transfer of more shells, which Czech President Petr Pavel has sourced and can provide with proper funding.
The American role in all of this is somewhat obscured. The Biden administration has succeeded in some respects. Ukraine was not overrun nor was it abandoned in 2022 or 2023. Absent American materiel support, the European powers never would have joined the war effort.
Moreover, US intelligence assistance has been invaluable throughout the war while military-to-military interactions with the ZSU have undeniably amplified Ukrainian combat power.
However, although the crisis over Ukraine aid in Congress stems principally from House Republican fecklessness, some of the blame lies with the White House. President Biden has never articulated the rationale for supporting Ukraine to the American people, nor presented a long-term strategic roadmap toward any particular American objective.
The White House and congressional Democrats refused to fold under Republican pressure on the border issue, almost certainly calculating that either the Republicans would break first or, even if not, voters would blame Republicans for adverse foreign policy results.
The reality is somewhat different given Donald Trump’s small but noticeable polling lead both nationally and in multiple swing states.
At this point, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are largely incapable of resolving the situation. It is down to rational Republicans, who still comprise the majority of the party in Congress, to pressure Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to bring the defense supplemental bill to the floor or, failing this, to use a discharge petition to force a vote that will almost certainly pass.
Yet the Biden administration can, quietly and quickly, encourage more coherent European support for Ukraine. It can arrange individual contracts with American ammunition producers, currently begging for clarity over future defense spending.
It can facilitate licensing agreements with Ukraine and other Eastern European nations for critical military supplies. And it can diplomatically shepherd a coherent long-term European sustainment system for Ukraine, building off Kiev’s recent agreements with London, Paris and Berlin.
This would require strategic and moral clarity from the Biden administration. Navalny’s murder and Avdiivka’s fall provide yet more incontrovertible evidence of the stakes.
Seth Cropsey is president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a US naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.