Why Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Been Slower Than Expected

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has what must be the most difficult job in the world. At last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, he couldn’t help but express disappointment that the security alliance wasn’t able to offer Kyiv a guaranteed pathway to membership. After reportedly being chided for his tone, Zelensky then switched to effusively praising NATO for its support. And then, once he had managed to balance diplomacy with the demands of war, he found himself managing a different narrative, this time to a domestic audience: He put out the message that Ukraine had gotten enough positives out of the summit, even though he surely wanted more.

Kyiv’s sense of urgency stems from the state of play on the battlefield. Ukraine’s counteroffensive, now underway for several weeks, has been slower than expected in part because of how entrenched Russia’s military is, and how it has strewn large swaths of land with deadly mines. Kyiv also wishes it could have been able to take advantage of the recent mutiny by the Wagner group, a dangerous mercenary outfit run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former loyalist of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose whereabouts are now unknown.

Where is the war headed? Will Wagner’s forces reemerge on the battlefield? And has Putin been weakened by the most public mutiny in his time in power? For answers, I spoke with Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow and the director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She previously served in the CIA for eight years and in government as a Russia expert.

FP subscribers can watch the full FP Live interview in the video box atop this page. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: After last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, it was widely reported that Ukraine didn’t get the pathway to membership it wanted. But it did get more economic assistance and promises for more military aid. What impact do you think that might have on the ongoing conflict?

Andrea Kendall-Taylor: The summit was bittersweet. It was bitter because of the things that Ukraine did not get. They did not receive a clear invitation to join the alliance with a clear timeline for their entry into NATO, which was a missed opportunity for Ukraine. But there is a lot to be positive about. Turkey dropped its opposition to Sweden joining the alliance. We saw NATO reaffirm the 2 percent threshold for military spending as a percentage of member states’ GDP, and allies talking about that as a floor rather than a ceiling. NATO unveiled its regional defense plans.

What was really significant was the agreement that came on the margins of the summit, in which all of the G-7 countries and others have now signed on to make bilateral pledges of long-term, sustained military support for Ukraine. That’s where a lot of the energy has been within the alliance with the United States and its allies and partners, is moving toward what people are calling the “Israel model,” which is to equip Ukraine over the long term with very credible commitments. That helps Ukraine from a defense-planning perspective. It helps Kyiv become more interoperable with NATO.

Zelensky was able to take this home and highlight this win for his Ukrainian domestic audience. Yes, they fell short on the invitation and the clear pledge that Ukraine would join NATO, but what they did get was a lot of bilateral security agreements. That starts to create a framework that will strengthen Ukraine’s defenses over the long term. Even though the communiqué didn’t go as far as many people would have hoped and Zelensky made his displeasure known to all, we now understand that the United States is very isolated within the alliance. To me, the summit really demonstrated that the ground has shifted and that it’s no longer a question of if Ukraine will get NATO membership—it’s a question of when.

The communiqué language from Vilnius and the U.S. role in that represented this incremental approach that the Biden administration has favored all along. We know that the United States doesn’t want to move quickly on anything, including the provision of military aid, because they fear a Kremlin backlash. This was another example of Washington boiling the Kremlin frog, so to speak, that it was an incremental step toward NATO’s membership. Now all eyes are focused on how we can move that forward in the next year, in the run-up to the Washington summit in 2024.

RA: Let me ask you about the recent attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge. Russia claims Ukraine is responsible. This is the second time the bridge has been attacked in a year. Why is it so important?

AKT: As you said, this is the second time the bridge was attacked, and each time the logic has been twofold. First, it has tactical significance; the bridge is a really important supply line for Russian fighters in Crimea. We know that the bridge has really been a bastion the Russians have been able to use in order to execute a lot of the attacks into Ukraine. Ukrainians are trying to disrupt those supply lines in order to create the conditions most conducive to their counteroffensive. The importance of the supply line is a little bit debated in the Russia community. Some people will note that Russia has been able to sustain its fighters in Crimea long before the Kerch Bridge was ever built, and so it does have alternate routes using waterways and other things.

The bridge is also disproportionately symbolic. It is personally important to Putin. He was present at the bridge’s opening, and so being able to attack that bridge really hits at Russian morale.

RA: The counteroffensive has been going on for several weeks. How would you assess its progress so far?

AKT: It’s been slow—and Ukrainian officials have recognized that themselves. My sense is that the Ukrainians feel that they’re much further behind where they would have wanted to be at this point. They still seem to be very focused on trying to weaken those Russian front lines, going after supply lines, arms depots, and doing the softening that needs to take place before they’re able to identify the vulnerability in the front line that they would look to very quickly break through and take advantage of. We hear from U.S. officials that Ukraine hasn’t fully deployed its full force in this counteroffensive. My sense is that there’s still more that is likely to come in the next couple of weeks.

RA: I’ve been struck by recent reporting that showed the sheer number of mines that seem to have been planted all along territory captured by Russia. How much of an impediment is it proving to be for Ukraine’s military?

AKT: It’s a significant impediment. We have known for a while that Russia has shifted its focus from more offensive operations, like in Bakhmut, to defensive operations and really entrenching these front lines. The mining effort is all part of that.

These are extremely entrenched Russian lines, and the Ukrainians understood that it was going to be difficult. It’s part of the conversation that they’ve had with their Western backers. The United States and others are giving Ukraine de-mining equipment. Early on in Ukraine’s offensive, something like 50 percent of that de-mining equipment was taken out by Russian forces, which was a major setback.

RA: In as much as this counteroffensive has been slow, how much of that could be attributed to hesitancy on the West’s part to give Ukraine the weapons it’s asking for?

AKT: What you hear from U.S. officials is that they’re looking to provide Ukraine with what it needs for this point of their offensive. We’ve seen that needle move markedly over the course of this war to providing increasingly advanced weapons systems, with the Leopard tanks and long-range ammunitions from the United Kingdom and France and other allies. There is a concerted effort to try to get the equipment that Ukraine needs into Ukrainian hands. It’s obviously a difficult proposition, and so it has been slower than many would have hoped. There are still things like the ATACMS, the longer-range munitions that the United States has not yet been willing to give.

The recent announcement that the United States would be providing cluster munitions was a bit divisive within NATO, in large part because of the human rights aspect. But the United States is also struggling to keep pace, particularly on the munitions front, in getting Ukraine what it needs quickly, and that was the impetus behind the decision on the cluster munitions, because we didn’t have anything else. That is what we had available to give. There was a lot of urgency to get those to the Ukrainians in order to try to aid their offensive.

RA: I want to discuss the Wagner rebellion, which took place on June 23. Where is Yevgeny Prigozhin? Where are his forces, and when might they reemerge on the battlefield?

AKT: There’s still a lot of murkiness around this and a lot that we still don’t know, and events are likely to change rapidly. The key update is that there is a concerted Kremlin effort to try to separate Yevgeny Prigozhin from Wagner, his fighters, and his other considerable assets. For example, we’ve seen that the Russian government has already canceled many of the contracts that they have with Concord, which is Prigozhin’s catering company. It’s been reported that the troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, which was responsible for a lot of the election interference in the United States in 2016, has been shut down.

A lot of this is likely to be more of a rebranding and a change in ownership rather than an end to a lot of these operations, because Wagner and Prigozhin provided a lot of valuable resources for the Russian state. It is in many ways an extension of the Russian state, whether it’s working in mines in Africa or fielding this considerable and most effective force in Ukraine.

When the rebellion began, Putin was caught between a rock and a hard place. It was obviously imperative to crack down and put an end to this mutiny, but at the same time, they had to be very careful not to alienate the Wagner fighters, who have been the most effective in Ukraine. The Kremlin needs these assets. What’s happening now is they’re trying to carefully separate Prigozhin from these assets without losing the resources and the capacity that the Wagner fighters and other parts of Prigozhin’s empire provide to the Russian state.

RA: The Wagner Group was clearly such an influential force on the battlefield. But the Pentagon says that the group is no longer participating in combat operations in Ukraine. So what’s going on? If Wagner is off the battleground right now, why hasn’t that shifted some of the battlefield dynamics and allowed Kyiv to push further ahead?

AKT: It’s too soon to tell exactly the impact that the removal of the Wagner fighters is having on the battlefield. Prior to the mutiny, Wagner forces were most heavily engaged in and around Bakhmut. That was the painstaking battle over that city that played out over the course of many months. That’s where Wagner was primarily focused. After they effectively seized Bakhmut, Prigozhin slowly took his fighters out of Bakhmut and allowed the Russian military then to do the hard work of holding the city.

In terms of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the most gains that they’re beginning to have are actually around Bakhmut. They’ve gained some strategic advantage there in terms of taking higher ground, working on breaking up the lines of communication of the Russian military there, and moving toward what could be an encirclement of Russian forces. It very well may be that now that they’ve withdrawn Wagner, it’s going to be more difficult for Russia to continue to hold Bakhmut.

Another key question that I don’t have an answer to is what is the availability of those fighters and what does the future hold for them. The Russian state and Putin himself have said that those Wagner fighters could join the Russian Ministry of Defense in signed contracts, but there are many questions about how they might be incorporated into the Russian military, whether or not they would be willing to follow the hierarchy and chain of command. There could be some bad blood between the Russian military, the Ministry of Defense, and those Wagner fighters. We know that the Belarusian president has given them a training base there, so they could reconvene and reform there and could be redeployed, potentially under different leadership, more loyal and compliant with the Kremlin.

RA: It seems like the Wagner rebellion revealed weaknesses in Putin’s standing, his relationship with his generals, and the fate of his government. We haven’t seen Gen. [Sergei] Surovikin since June 23. There were reports he knew about the Wagner mutiny in advance. Gen. [Ivan] Popov stepped down after accusing Moscow of treachery. Lt. Gen. [Oleg] Tsokov was killed in a missile strike last week. And one other was gunned down in mysterious circumstances. It feels like hit after hit on senior levels of Putin’s military apparatus.

AKT: I would separate the Russian military from the domestic stability dynamics inside Russia. Popov, and the generals being taken out on the battlefield, to me, that is all very representative of the state of Russian military morale and where the heads of Russian fighters are. That has been a concern for a very long time. From the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many people have suggested that might be a key vulnerability that would impede them. But despite that low morale, they’re continuing to be able to hold the front lines.

In terms of what this Wagner mutiny means for Putin’s stability, that’s a very different question. Many people have concluded that this has weakened Putin. I would agree with that, in part. This mutiny has weakened Putin potentially over the long term, but for the time being, I think he’s done a very good job at quelling the threat. We’ve seen Putin go on the offensive, which is something we haven’t seen from him for a very long time. In the wake of this mutiny, Putin has been out using the Russian state media to discredit Prigozhin, to portray him as a criminal, bringing up his criminal past, that he’s this bad egg. From a public opinion perspective, I think he’s dampened any sort of threat or change in perceptions of his legitimacy. It was remarkable that we saw Putin going out in the caucuses just days after the mutiny, shaking hands, kissing babies. He was very attuned to the possibility that the mutiny could weaken his legitimacy. He’s gone on the offensive both to discredit Prigozhin and to remind people that he is popular. He convened a whole group of the National Guard and the FSB and brought them all together and has held up the security services as the defenders of the state, reminding people that the security services are united in support for Putin. In the near term, it seems like there is no imminent threat to Putin. But the big question comes over the longer term whether this has changed people’s perceptions about what’s possible.

RA: What about the Russian elite, the ones who have gained and profited from Putin being in power for so long?

AKT: My interpretation is that the elite signed a deal with Putin. They all owe their wealth, their fortune, and their positions within society to Putin. Because their fates are so intertwined with his, my sense is that they are still standing behind Putin because they very much fear a tumultuous and chaotic transition. If Prigozhin had seized power, that could have threatened most of their financial interests. I think what the elite will prefer is a much more managed transition—someone who Putin anoints and can guarantee the same contract will be upheld.

RA: Throughout this war, there’s been the undercurrent threat of nuclear war, and there’s also been a constant flux in how policymakers weigh the threat and the likelihood of Putin resorting to nuclear weapons in some form at some point. How do you currently gauge that threat?

AKT: The Biden administration has been very clear that the risk of Russia using a nuclear weapon is low, but it’s something that we can never disregard. That threat has been constant throughout this conflict. It has been an important dynamic that has shaped the way that the Biden administration has engaged and why we’ve seen incrementalism. They’ve taken these small steps in large part because they don’t want to risk provoking a significant Kremlin response, which could include the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

The scenario in which people worry about the risk of a nuclear weapon is if we start to see the Ukrainians making very significant gains on the battlefield and we see the Russian public, military, and elite starting to react to that, such that Putin feels more uncertain about his own standing. That’s the scenario where I worry about the potential use of a nuclear weapon. Now, the Ukrainians have been extremely vocal in saying that if Russia uses a nuclear weapon, it’s not going to change how they approach the conflict. It just raises the cost that they’re going to have to pay to liberate their territory. They’ve been very upfront that they are not going to be deterred by the potential use of a nuclear weapon. That may, in fact, be one area where there is some daylight between the Biden administration and the Ukrainians.