OPINION: Ukraine Just Redefined Warfare, and Gave Zelensky a Full Deck of Cards

The world woke up Sunday morning to the news of a simply stunning Ukrainian drone raid deep into Russia, which produced extraordinary results. Ukraine is claiming the destruction of several scores of Russian long-range aircraft, constituting perhaps one third of Russia’s long-range strategic bomber fleet.

It is worth thinking through some of the implications of this, both for Russia and Ukraine, and the state of the war and peace process, but also global powers, and warfare in general.

For Russia, the attack is just another humiliating blow in the war with Ukraine, which was supposed to have been over in a matter of weeks, but has now dragged on for over three years. It’s another blow to Russian prestige. How can Russia claim to be a global superpower when it is not able to enforce a speedy defeat on a neighboring mid-level power, but actually now even fails to defend itself against attack by Ukraine?

It also comes after other ignominies, including the loss of its Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva, and actually the bulk of its Black Sea Fleet itself – and at the hands of a country which effectively lacks a navy.

The financial cost to Russia from this latest drone strike is put at something close to $7 billion, but more critically it will be difficult for Russia to replace the lost long-range strike aircraft easily or quickly – and importantly, the aircraft form a major component in its nuclear strike capability. The loss of these aircraft, meanwhile, will limit Russia’s ability to launch long-range, airborne at least, missile strikes on Ukraine. The Ukrainian attack was genius, as facing shortages of air defense missiles, it removed the danger of Russian missile strikes at source.

Other Topics of Interest

Lukashenko: ‘No Military Action Should Be Expected From Belarus’

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said Belarus will not enter Russia’s war against Ukraine, citing Belarus’ military vulnerability, the risk of widening the front line and drawing in NATO, as well as underlining deep family ties across the Belarus-Ukraine border as key reasons. Lukashenko has issued a rare apology to President Volodymyr Zelensky, admitting he “maybe went too far” in earlier criticism.

Presumably Putin will want revenge, and Ukraine should expect retaliatory strikes, albeit Putin’s options are somewhat limited now, given the loss of these planes and the facts that the ground war has become something of a stalemate.

For Ukraine the strikes represent an enormous PR win, which will do much to solidify support both at home and abroad. With the Trump peace effort seemingly going nowhere, and after the despicable ambush of Zelensky in the White House, Ukrainians were gearing for the long war. This strike will help cement Ukrainian society behind Zelensky to take a tough line in negotiations currently being conducted in Istanbul.

Much was made of Trump’s contemptuous put down of Zelensky in that Oval Office meeting, for having no cards. Zelensky, through this attack, just proved that he and Ukraine are more than able to pull aces out of their combat fatigue sleeves.

Imagine: Ukraine has done what the US has failed to do in 70-odd years of the Cold War – to take out of service a huge part of Russia’s nuclear strike force. The Ukrainians have proven that they understand Russians better than anyone, understand their weaknesses and can cause devastating losses to Russia’s military capability. Ukraine has proven it can punch well about its weight, by the use of better motivation, intelligence and innovation (MII). It has proven that it brings things to the table, in terms of the West, and Europe’s defense against Russia, and further out potentially China.

Indeed, in combat against Russia, using even second and third generation NATO kit, it is learning and technologically advancing NATO’s capability at a faster pace than at any time over the period of the Cold War. Ukraine is proving to be an asset to NATO, and a huge liability to Russia.

In terms of peace talks, Ukraine now has more leverage or agency – it can fight on – a factor which both Putin and Trump will have to take into account. And that for Russia Ukraine fighting on involves risks – risks of more embarrassing strikes on high-value Russian targets.

Trump might now have also to realize that Ukraine is no pushover here, and does not have to accept whatever peace deal Trump cooks up with Putin. Putin and Trump might actually have to think about shaping a peace deal which is more acceptable to Ukraine if they really want this war to end sooner rather than later.

But whatever the impact that Ukraine’s drone attack on Russia has on the war and peace in Ukraine specifically, the shear ingenuity and success of the attack has sent shock waves through the global defense establishment. That cheap drones have been used to such a devastating effect on conventional military kit and defenses will force a total rethink about the use and advantage of drones in warfare. Drones bring huge, and multiples of bang for buck. Indeed, we had already seen this in Ukraine’s conduct of naval warfare in the Black Sea – how $100,000 naval drones have created no-go zones there for conventional warships costing hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s possible to imagine multiple billion dollar conventional aircraft carriers being made obsolete by the same cheap naval drones.

Drones can no longer be seen as experimental defense gimmicks but they are surely now mainstream or frontline defense. No military can afford to ignore the central role that drones will play in warfare going forward. Drones just graduated, through this attack, into the first division of warfare, on par with or ahead of tanks, planes and ships. And the protagonists in this war – Russia and Ukraine – are now by necessity leaders in drone warfare.

NATO needs to quickly assimilate Ukrainian drone knowledge into its military DNA, or risk losing the battle for military superiority with Russia and China, going forward. Some, including Türkiye, through its Baykar drone company, appear to understand all this. NATO seems to be focusing on all the wrong debates–- stalling Ukrainian NATO membership, when actually we need to be integrating Ukrainian drone and military innovation into NATO as soon as possible.

In a way it is not about NATO extending a protecting umbrella over Ukraine, but Ukrainian defense innovation providing that same defensive umbrella to NATO.

See the original on the author’s @tashecon blog here.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.