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The Four Failures of Zelensky

An overview of what has gone wrong in 2023, and where to go from there

Last week, Ukrainian Armed Forces performed a strike on a theater in the occupied Donetsk region where, according to reports, a large number of military personnel have gathered for an award ceremony. Online commenters mocked Russians for repeating the same mistake Ukraine did a few weeks ago, where a Russian rocket strike hit Ukrainian awards ceremony held near the front line, but the payback is bittersweet at best. All it does is goes to show that our commanders can be criminally stupid too.

And that incident wasn’t the first time, by far, that either Ukraine or Russia hit a bunch of important people with a precise missile strike.

Just off the bat of my head:

There are stupid people both in Ukraine and Russia. Some of them get to be in charge.

Because Ukraine has better tactics, better motivated soldiers, and in some cases better equipment (whenever Western partners actually supply it), plenty of Russian idiots paid for their idiocy with their lives.

This led to a natural selection at work. Russia got smarter. At an immense cost – that Putin is willing to pay, and the population accepts.

Ukraine simply can’t afford to pay a price like that to weed, let’s put it mildly, ineffective (or outright treasonous) people out. And it’s not just a matter of who has more people. Putin is OK with expending millions of lives to achieve a strategic objective, as Russians will grumble, but praise the glorious leader (those of them who survive, that is). Ukraine, on the other hand, isn’t OK with this possibility at all.

Decisions that lead to slaughter will cause another Maidan in Ukraine. How we do things matters more than the result we’re trying to achieve in this country; there’s a reason the 2014 Maidan was called the Revolution of Dignity.

The means justify the ends: as long as we value human life, individual freedom, and dignity in our actions, where we are is where we need to be.

This is what makes us different from Russia – and organizations like HAMAS.

But this is why Ukraine is in a serious crisis right now. Zelensky’s administration has failed to enact the direly needed reforms in 2023; and costly mistakes like the ones above are just a few of the many indicators of that.

We can’t let natural-selection-by-Russian-airstrike solve that problem for us. And sure, in that isolated incident Ukraine can investigate the commanders who ordered the gathering of soldiers; but that does nothing about the pattern of repeating Russia’s mistakes while not having Russia’s resources to commit those mistakes, nor having a population that accepts that.

These mistakes are ultimately a systemic failure. Zelensky could – and should – have made it abundantly clear that anyone who organizes a gathering in a frontline city will be penalized regardless of how it goes, and will be further personally responsible if Russians strike it.

That would have prevented Hroza, Chernyhiv convention strike, as well as others that didn’t make the international press. But Ukraine, in many ways, continues to live as if the war isn’t there once you get a few dozen kilometers away from the frontline.

The perception of imminent victory is something that Zelensky implicitly (if not explicitly) encourages; feeling that way is something that is seen as patriotic. Anyone who is calling out the mistakes and says that Ukraine needs to stop pretending it can get by without changing a lot of things gets smacked down from the top.

That includes commander Zaluzhny – the 2nd-in-command – whom Zelensky both criticized publicly and retaliated against privately by firing a special ops commander without notifying either the commander or Zaluzhny and having them finding out about it from newspapers.

This is unsustainable.

There’s a lot of built-up internal pressure in Ukraine. Either Zelensky steps up his game, listens to the qualified people and enacts a lot of changes, or he’ll be replaced in 2024, when Ukrainians catch up with the dire reality of the situation after yet another wave of winter blackouts – whether he makes elections possible or not.

Both Ukraine and Russia know how being stupid feels. But Russia can afford it.

Of course, everyone makes mistakes. Better people learn from them.  Presently, we’re at a bifurcation point where we’re about to see whether Zelensky can, indeed, learn.

Currently, people do have faith in him. He still has social capital. But that capital is starting to decline. He’s on a countdown timer before it runs out.

Zelensky has all the cards to keep the capital and justify the faith people have in him. But he’s made enough mistakes that at this point, he’s running on borrowed faith.

The mistakes include:

  • Not building defensive lines, the way Surovikin did in occupied parts (that Ukraine still can’t break through). It’s not something Zaluzhny could’ve done; the civilian government must allocate budgets, hand out permits, negotiate with land owners if needs be, and so on.
    • The result is that Avdiivka is held at a higher price than otherwise warranted. The same goes for any point on the Eastern front – including Bakhmut.
    • This is a strategic failure, where Ukraine has been fighting a fast war in 2023, long after the war dragged on, and long after Russia moved on to a protracted war. What Ukraine did in 2022 worked; Russia tried to win a lighting war – and failed. Russia then tried to fight a short war – and lost that one, too. However, since losing Kherson, Russia made a change in strategic direction for a long war, and Ukraine has not.
    • Summary: the “offense is the best defense” remnant of the Soviet Military Doctrine that Ukraine inherited works only to an extent, and failure to adapt and build defensive lines – as Russia did do – is costing Ukraine dearly. 
  • Continuing offensives in Bakhmut direction, instead of using it as an opportunity to retreat to prepared positions, and hold the line from there, while eliminating Russian attackers at favorable kill-to-death ratios.
    • This was an example where we repeated Russians’ mistake: holding a city at all costs because it looks good politically.
    • This was also another example where Surovikin’s strategic planning was superior to Zelensky’s: Surovikin withdrew Russian troops from Kherson city; he lost the city, but saved the troops. That loss enables Russia to hold the Southern front now.
    • Frankly, the best thing that came out of Prigozhin’s March on Moscow was the sacking of Surovikin. He was way more effective than anyone gave him credit for. But we’ve lost the time where we could capitalize on that: no significant changes to the way Ukraine fights the war have happened since August, when it’s become abundantly clear that Surovikin’s construction of defense lines paid for Russians on a grand scale, as was the decision to give up a city to have resources for a long war.
    • The Bakhmut quagmire is another consequence of the failure to build up defensive lines (which, again, Surovikin did do). I expected UAF to retreat to Chasiv Yar and continue shooting fish in the barrel from well-prepared positions. That did not happen.
    • Re-taking Bakhmut is not an important military goal. There is no strategic advantage in holding it. We all knew that, and laughed at Russians who were wasting tens of thousands to take it. Now we’ve been doing the same insane thing, except unlike Russians, we don’t have disposable conscripts from prisons. In fact, we don’t have disposable people, period.
    • Summary: there is no justification for pushing forward in Bakhmut – a city of no strategic value – long after the kill-to-death ratio stopped being overwhelmingly in Ukraine’s favor. By pushing for a goal of political, rather than military importance, Ukraine’s entire war effort was put at risk.
  • In 2022, the mobilized people were all highly motivated, with many volunteers. We have run out of volunteers, and have failed to make UAF a place which people would be eager to join. People are afraid of draft notices, and many are evading draft.
    • Russia has reoriented itself for a long war after failing to win a quick one. Ukraine has not. Things like vacations for people serving in the military, good salaries, and incentives to enlist beyond patriotic duty are of vital necessity to keep a vital fighting force. Those things were absent by fall of 2023. Fighters couldn’t even visit their wives and children who found refuge in other countries. That attitude is simply unacceptable.
    • There have been incidents where people were forcefully mobilized. Again, Russia can afford to do this shit, we can’t. The result is that, having run out of people who want to fight, we’ve been ensuring that we don’t get any more of them.
    • What’s even worse is that we’ve been sending freshly mobilized people to Bakhmut. By “freshly”, I mean that this would be their first combat assignment (and, often, the last one). It doesn’t matter how many months of training they got. The prospects of getting a draft notice and being sent into the meatgrinder were absolutely devastating for the morale of both fresh and potential recruits.
    • Yes, there is the patriotic duty. But Western armies where human lives are valued rely on more than that. The Armed Forces give people an opportunity to gain useful skills, social status, prospects for advanced education, employment, benefits, and much more. Even Russian armed forces present such an opportunity – if only by making army service the only opportunity otherwise available to an impoverished population away from the capital. Ukraine has failed here. Nobody can expect anything good for themselves from joining UAF – unless they engage in corruption, that is (which happens alarmingly often). Honest service remains a sacrifice that fewer and fewer people are finding themselves capable of making.
    • The situation has become so dire, the state rewrote the laws to allow people with disabilities to be mobilized in September.
    • Disabled veterans increasingly often find themselves being denied their disability status. This is not a problem unique to Ukraine, but Ukraine’s VLK makes VA in the US look good. And that’s in a country where healthcare was considered a strength. These veterans are facing a horrible dilemma of choosing whether to return to service to put their combat experience to good use in spite of their failing health post-rehabilitation, knowing that their friends are wounded and killed every day, and there’s nobody to replace them.
    • Needless to say, scared, unmotivated (and, in some cases, literally disabled) people are of little use to commanders even when they don’t find a way to escape draft by either bribes (the amounts for which are well known) or legal means. We’ve had a huge uptick in university enrollment, which grants an exemption; single mothers with 3+ children now have amazing marriage prospects; etc. Increased reliance on people drafted against their will has deteriorated our fighting capability.
    • Most importantly, there is no option to be mobilized specifically for NON-COMBAT duty. This would address so many needs, and alleviate so many fears. We’d have people lining up to build the defensive lines, knowing this allows them to contribute to the defense effort without being engaged in warfare directly.
    • Summary: The failure to make UAF a desirable place resulted in decline of UAF’s fighting capability and decline in morale, since the best and most motivated fighters have been wounded, killed, or simply worn out by the war. The state has failed to create non-combat options for the mobilized. Mobilization became something people fear, rather than eager to be a part of.
  • Two years into the war, Ukraine has failed to re-orient its economy to make it into a war machine that produces the weapons that are needed for Ukraine’s survival.
    • What should’ve happened is a decisive and vast application of Ukraine’s equivalent of the Defense Production Act to streamline research, development, and manufacturing of critical technologies. This did not happen. I don’t even know if we even have an equivalent Act. Ukraine’s economic management hasn’t changed much since the war started.
    • Ukraine can and does manufacture high-tech weapons. Between marine drones, 1000 km drones, Tochka ballistic missiles, Hrim-2 ballistic missiles, Neptune missiles, and so on, Ukraine has demonstrated the capability to change the battlefield with technological progress. We have Antonov, we have Pivdenne, we have Yuzhmash, we have the talent. What we don’t have is turning that capability into capacity. These developments have potential to become another instance of  “too little, too late”.
    • Yet again, this is where Russia outplayed Ukraine, and we didn’t learn. The latest example: Russia has converted its unguided bombs into a JDAM equivalent with a cheap kit. These are devastatingly effective. Ukraine had a similar development, “Адрос” БАУ-01К, in 2018 – and failed to productionalize it. 
    • Read that again. We developed a Ukrainian JDAM in 2018, and…. didn’t do anything with it for four years until Russia invaded. Two years into the invasion, and we still don’t have it. Russia deploys their own – and we still don’t have ours. This is, in my eyes, criminal.
    • Since the USSR days, the defense industry has been state-owned. We haven’t changed. In theory, it’s possible for a private defense firm to thrive. In practice, red tape and corruption prevents that from happening – and the state has doubled down on adding more red tape. It is impossible for a private defense company to cooperate directly with the units that are fighting in the very same areas the companies are based at. Adron, the company that developed the Ukrainian JDAM equivalent, is one of several private defense contractors whose critically important projects have not gained traction with the state.
    • Ukrainian Armed Forces still rely on volunteer supply efforts for the most basic things, ranging from socks to bulletproof vests, helmets, construction supplies, and so on. Not only this shows the failure of the state to fix the supply issues two years in, what’s worse is that technically, these efforts have only been semi-legal.
      • To give an example: bringing in a Mavic drone from Poland to help a unit out has been a violation of multiple laws, such as “importing surveillance equipment without a license”. The laws that criminalized help of this sort have lasted until February 2023,  an entire year into the war.
      • Example: I personally drove a dozen of digitally encrypted Hytera radios from Poland to Odessa in July ’22, because we couldn’t figure out a way to mail them without running afoul of those stupid regulations. Technically, I smuggled them. My friend who gave them to the army unit had the right papers, but we didn’t know who to show them to, nor whether they would be accepted. Paying customs fees on them would leave a few soldiers without encrypted comms. I thought that by 2023, this idiocy will be fixed. Instead, by 2024, we have more of it.
      • Needless to say, these volunteers – many of whom now have PTSD or combat wounds (as Russian bullets and shells don’t discriminate) – have been pretty much ignored by the state. A proposal for a law that would make people addressing critical needs of the fighters exempt from military service has been introduced…. two weeks ago. I don’t have high hopes that it will be passed fast, if at all.
      • In another week, Rada will enact a law that will outlaw the activity of many volunteer orgs altogether. Instead of streamlining the paperwork needed for grassroot supply efforts, our government is adding more red tape in the name of “transparency”.
        • To be more specific: buying a Mavic drone in Poland and bringing it into Ukraine for fighters that needed it will require extensive paperwork after Dec 1st, 2023. People like you and me simply don’t have the capability to maintain that paperwork. Nobody wanted or needed this law, yet here we are.
    • Summary: over the year of 2023, Zelensky’s admin has failed to galvanize domestic industry and stifled volunteer and small enterprise efforts to supply the army – all while the Western support for Ukraine has been waning.

The above four failures (failure to re-orient the economy, to restructure draft, to build defensive lines, and to concentrate offensives in the South direction) have resulted in the failure of the summer counter-offensive. The consequences of that are catastrophic.

  • The success of the Summer counter-offensive – whose primary goal was severing the land-bridge to Crimea – would have either ended the war altogether, or brought Ukraine to a strong negotiating position where vast territories could’ve been returned by non-military means. We have not reached that goal. Instead, we’re effectively at the same spot we have been a year ago – but without Bakhmut, and soon, without Avdiivka, by the looks of it. As commander of armed forces in Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhny, wrote: we’re at a stalemate.
  • Even a partial success, like reaching Tokmak, where the Zaporizhya Nuclear Power Plant is held by Russians and presents a constant threat, would have been great. From Tokmak, Ukraine would’ve had an effective fire control of all Russian supply lines to the South, which are still reliant on two railroad branches. This would have prevented the now-imminent Russian winter offensive. We have not reached Tokmak either, nor do we have a shot at it in 2023.
  • While the failure of the counter-offensive should also be blamed on Western critical weapons, like tanks and long-range missiles, being supplied too late (and jets not being supplied at all in 2023), Ukraine had a chance to succeed in that offensive. That opportunity has been largely wasted.
  • We are now at a position to lose much more than we have before in a war of attrition with a larger, stronger adversary, with waning support from the West, growing domestic tensions, leadership without a clear plan, and another winter without heat and electricity.

Whereas the failure of the Summer counteroffensive was merely an outcome of the four failures outlined above, those failures, in turn, seem to be a consequence of just one flaw. The now-infamous Times article quoted Zelensky saying “Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do”. It is increasingly apparent that this line of thinking continues into “Nobody Knows How To Fight The War Like I Do”, in spite of better advice and judgment. 

The already-mentioned firing of Khorenko, as well as last week’s dismissal of Tarasovsky (given without comment) and the rumored dismissal of commanders close to Zaluzhny – not to mention the public spat between Zelensky and Zaluzhny in English-language media – signals of erosion of trust between the President and the people under his command. The mere fact that this discourse took place on the pages of foreign media, rather than as a debate addressed to Ukrainians, indicates a rift that didn’t appear overnight.

It appears, therefore, that the decision to slog it out in Bakhmut can be attributed to Zelensky clinging to the PR value of the Bakhmut-as-a-fortress-city project in spite of voices urging him to quit, and long after kill-to-death ratio stopped being extremely favorable to Ukraine – a mistake likely to be repeated in Avdiivka, another “fortress city”. 

As in Bakhmut, Russia appears to use the “meat wave” tactics – that’s to say, an unreasonable amount of Russian troops get killed in action. But Russia has an unreasonable amount of soldiers. The high number of them dying is of little solace if their objectives are achieved – after all, the goal for Ukraine in the war is not to kill as many Russians as possible, it’s to preserve the country, which includes both land and people. And there is an extent to which people can be sacrificed to defend land before both people and land is lost to the occupier. Now, Ukraine has shown the world that it can win battles – in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson the successes are undeniable. Whether Ukraine has learned the lesson of losing a battle to win the war remains to be seen.

The prevailing moods among the people in Ukraine who pay attention to the situation is uncertainty with a tinge of hopelessness. Come winter, that reality will reach the majority of the population. That cold shower (in both figurative and literal sense) could be the last straw in a country where unity has been brought about by the war, but where old divides have not been forgotten.

The consequences of Zelensky running out of social capital in 2024 in the middle of the war – and the inevitable Maidan that would follow that – are something I really don’t want to think about, but we’re heading that way currently.

The Western partners who see this a mile coming (and understand full well the consequences of the counter-offensive failing) are pressing for Ukraine to have elections in 2024, which would be one way to relieve these tensions and avoid a loss of control amid the war. Even when the elections are more than likely to result in Zelensky’s re-election, the mere fact of them being conducted would reinforce the legitimacy of the tough decision the current administration is facing. After all, the forced conscriptions are a sharp contrast to someone who won on a platform of making peace with Russia, and while the absolute majority of Ukrainians support fighting until victory now, those likely to get a draft notice increasingly don’t want to be a part of that.

To hold elections, however, would require a constitutional amendment, and Zelensky has firmly rejected the possibility of elections – a decision that makes sense if he is to maintain the astonishing popular support he currently has into 2024, but would result in a catastrophe if the popular support swings another way. “Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do” is not the best attitude to have while making one mistake after another that delays the said victory, all while the mechanisms for people to disagree with that attitude are frozen.

Personally, I just really, really, really hope that Zelensky will get his scruples together and start listening to the advice of the people who know their craft well – instead of rebuking them and trying to wing it the way he did in 2023. 

Zelensky’s role in saving the country in 2022 has been undeniable. Having done more than anyone expected to be possible, and rightfully deserving to be Time’s Person of The Year, Zelensky’s candor, bravery, and resolve – in spite of numerous assassination attempts on him – has united both Ukrainians and the Western world in a near-unanimous support of Ukraine’s fight for survival against Russian aggression. The resulting wave of patriotism and influx of military and economic aid made the current “stalemate” situation, where Russia cannot advance further, possible in the first place – a huge leap from the pessimistic estimates that Kyiv would fall in 72 hours. Zelensky did the right things in 2022, and continues to exhibit the same candor and resolve in 2023.

But in 2023, this isn’t enough. The war, contrary to a popular meme, has changed, at least in the specific case of how Russia wages it against Ukraine – but Ukraine has not. 

Not yet, at least. Ukraine will change, because it has to. Whether that will happen under Zelensky’s direction or not is something we all will find out come spring time. 

And right now, as another popular cliche says – the winter is coming.

May we all stay warm.

Roman Kogan, 2023/11/23, Hayward, California, US – Kyiv, Ukraine

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