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Huge networks have to be built before a soldier can fight at the front. It needs engineers and logistics workers, factories and depots, roads and rails; trains and trucks. After all, there are entire economies behind every soldier.

All this is on the hidden side of war, in the shadow of the great battles. But it determines the outcome long before the first shot is fired.

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So theorizes Phillips O’Brien, a military historian at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Before the war started, he claimed that Russia was overrated – when most pundits expected a quick victory. Today he says: “Ukraine will win.”

His theory is “very boring in many ways,” he says, calling it “boring wars.” You can learn a lot from research about management and organizations. Because complex logistics networks have to be set up, maintained and controlled. If you can’t do this, you lose.

He does not care much for the bravery or cowardice of soldiers, nor the outcome of individual battles. That can be good for compelling dramas. “But it says nothing of value about why wars are won and lost.”

Not a logistical superpower

Before the war, Russia had a huge number of soldiers, tanks, armored vehicles and aircraft. And on top of that many “flashy” and glamorous weapon systems.

But Russia is not a superpower in logistics, O’Brien judged before the war. It has too few trucks to take its weapons to the front.

It soon became clear that Russia lacked decent ties – it had cheap goods that it couldn’t store properly. It lost some of its most expensive weapons in the Ukrainian mud.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has succumbed to the same temptation as many autocrats: to buy cool guns to impress at parades. But they neglect the logistics – too little grandiose.

There was a good example of Russian logistical failure: the famous long train of vehicles that rolled down a single road to take Kiev.

The Ukrainian soldiers had only to blow up the front and rear wagons – and the long train got stuck. The Soviet Union already showed such weaknesses when it was defeated in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Few main battle tanks were made

To get ammunition and weapons through logistical networks and eventually onto battlefields, you must first craft them. Therefore, economic power decides wars – which in turn can be measured by gross domestic product.

Russia has about the tenth largest economy in the world, larger than Spain, slightly smaller than Canada. Compared to the US and the European Union, it is more of a dwarf.

This economic size makes it clear: Russia will be seriously cornered if the US and the European Union both support Ukraine with arms and ammunition.

And the economic size of this Russian dwarf is mainly due to raw materials: oil, gas or grain. However, people have difficulty with high-tech, the dependence on other countries is great.

Before the war, only 200 main battle tanks were made annually. An increase through Western sanctions should now be prevented. It urgently needs supplies. Between 1600 and 3100 were destroyed in the war, depending on the estimate. Russian soldiers were spotted in decades-old vehicles, some from the Soviet era.

Selenski knows logistics

Ukraine can handle logistics, O’Brien said. They do not directly attack Russian positions at the front. Instead, they first systematically bombarded their connections to the hinterland: for weapons, ammunition or food. If the opponent is weakened, he will be attacked.

This warfare was mainly made possible by Himars: missile launchers supplied by the US that hit accurately from a distance of 80 kilometers. For example, Ukraine damaged a bridge over the Dnieper River in such a way that it did not collapse, but could no longer carry heavy vehicles.

And Ukraine chooses positions that are logistically important for its attacks. She is currently trying to recapture the region around the city of Kreminna, as there is an important hub there. If it controls this, it could cut off the main Russian supply line to the Luhansk Oblast. The Russian position there would collapse.

That thinking goes all the way to the president. In a speech this week, Volodymyr Zelensky said: “We are working day and night to reduce the enemy’s potential: we are taking away their camps, their headquarters and their means of communication.” O’Brien translates on Twitter what Selenski actually says: “Logistics, logistics, logistics.”

Attack like human waves

In Russia, the political agenda dictates military action. Putin needs a win one way or another. So his forces attack two cities that have little strategic value. When they are captured, hardly anything happens. No logistical connection is broken. There is no further rapid advance, as the soldiers must attack on foot, there were no vehicles ahead of them.

In these attacks, the Russian strategy is particularly cynical and inhumane. The soldiers, often recruited from prisons, have to rush to the Ukrainian positions in human waves. They are supported by artillery, but the math is: the Ukrainians are offered more targets than they can shoot down. At the end of such attacks, the ground is covered with corpses.

Critics counter that the economic power of NATO countries represents only a potential that will do little to help Ukraine if the weapons are not actually delivered. Russia is increasingly focusing its economy on war, from which the NATO countries are far removed.

And military historian O’Brien may be venturing a bit far from his heartland when trying to answer the political question: How sustainable is Western support for Ukraine? Will the necessary weapons be delivered?

That’s probably why O’Brien closely monitors what the West says and what weapons it supplies. So far he seems to feel confirmed. The West is constantly supplying more and generally more powerful weapons. Tanks are the latest upgrade that seemed unthinkable recently.

According to him, there are more important things: that would be a longer range for rocket launchers. This would allow Ukraine to reach the logistical lines and weapons depots that Russia has moved – further away from the Himars, but in Ukraine. Large parts of Russian logistics would collapse.

Joe Biden’s US administration has so far refused to do so. She fears further escalation if Ukraine attacks Crimea, which Putin has declared “the holy land of Russia”. But now Biden is moving, according to the New York Times. O’Brien notes, “We’re getting there—painfully slow.” (aargauerzeitung.ch)