As the Russia–Ukraine war enters its third year, Ukraine faces a daunting
task: how to restore its military advantage. The 2023 summer oensive, which
dragged into autumn, was unsuccessful. Planning for the oensive appears
to have been overly optimistic and poorly connected to how the Ukrainian
armed forces actually ght, despite numerous analyses warning that the
operation would prove costly and dicult, and that manoeuvre warfare was
unlikely to aain a quick breakthrough against a well-prepared defence.
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Conditions are not propitious for another major ground oensive in
2024. Our observations during eld trips to Ukraine over the past year
indicate that, to maximise Ukraine’s chances of eventual victory, Western
countries need to recognise that the driving engine of Ukraine’s eective-
ness has been a destruction-centred approach, resulting in high levels of
arition – that is, reducing an enemy’s capacity to ght by inicting higher
losses in personnel and materiel than one’s own side is suering, which
privileges repower over mobility and direct aack or prepared defence
over anking action. Aempts at manoeuvre against a prepared defence
have consistently oundered, especially in the absence of a decisive force
advantage. While manoeuvre is still relevant on the baleeld, it will need
a lot of help from arition to bear fruit.
Making Attrition Work: A Viable
Theory of Victory for Ukraine
Franz-Stefan Gady and Michael Kofman
Franz-Stefan Gady is IISS Consulting Senior Fellow for Cyber Power and Future Conict, and an Adjunct Senior
Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Michael Kofman is a Senior Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia
Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Survival | vol. 66 no. 1 | February–March 2024 | pp. 7–24 https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2024.2309068
