A year after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the military lessons of the conflict are attracting attention, and for good reason.
We note, among other things, that Europe is no longer safe from conventional wars, that Putin does not hesitate to sacrifice his troops even if he does not achieve his objectives, and that the strike force of a superpower is sometimes worth little in the face of the determination of a weaker adversary. The non-military lessons of the invasion are also crucial. At least three of them bear witness to the multidimensional nature of the conflicts that mark the world today, even when they are predominantly military like the one in Ukraine.
“The weaponization of everything”
In his work The Weaponization of Everything, political scientist Mark Galeotti notes that a multitude of non-military tools can enable states to destabilize and weaken their adversaries. Economic measures are part of this: in addition to Western financial aid to Kyiv, the speed and coordination with which American, Canadian and European governments and companies have imposed economic sanctions on Russia has been decisive so far.
These sanctions alone will not convince the Kremlin to back down in Ukraine, but a former member of the Putin government recently pointed out in the review Foreign Affairs that they hurt Moscow more than Russian propaganda claims, and that their effect is growing over time. US President Joe Biden has just announced additional measures to weaken Russia’s economy and defense industry, for example by prohibiting nearly 100 Russian and third-country companies, including China, from to buy semiconductors made in the United States or with American technologies and software abroad.
The sanctions have also hurt the West (inflation, reduction of Russian hydrocarbon exports and energy crisis in Europe), but this situation will certainly be beneficial in the future if it incites the United States, Canada and the Europe to reduce their dependence on the hostile powers of this world, in particular by accelerating the energy transition or by diversifying sources of supply.
The king (cyber) is naked?
A second non-military lesson from the conflict so far stands out: Russian cyberpower has not been as formidable as one might initially think. While Russian interference in the 2016 US election had greatly shaken the United States, Moscow is slow to prove the usefulness of its cyber offensives to achieve its military objectives in Ukraine. At the start of the invasion, cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s communication systems would have nevertheless reached their targets – that against Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite network would have temporarily disrupted Kyiv’s defense operations -, as Jon Bateman recalls. and Nick Beecroft of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. However, thereafter, Russia has not regularly combined its military offensives with major cyberattacks. There are several reasons for this: Moscow’s poor planning, effective collaboration between Kyiv and the allies to strengthen Ukraine’s cyber defense, Putin’s fears that a cyber attack could lead to a direct conflict with NATO.
It is not impossible that Russia will intensify its cyberattacks over time, but the material destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure or the strikes against the Nord Stream gas pipelines show the extent to which the conflict remains predominantly military for the moment.
These examples also underline the importance of ensuring both the physical and cyber security of our infrastructures that may be the target of hostile states.
The war of ideas
A third lesson from the invasion is that the information war between Ukraine and Russia currently has no big winners, but could determine the outcome of the conflict. A year after the start of the invasion, the Russian propaganda machine is still in full swing on the country’s social media and mainstream media, where accomplices of Putin’s regime are relaying false information, such as claims that Nazis are ruling Ukraine or that Kyiv and its allies are staging massacres on Ukrainian soil to discredit Moscow. In doing so, Russia of course hopes to maintain the support of its population and friendly countries (Iran, China, Venezuela), but also to divide Western societies by encouraging them to question the information and images coming from the field.
On the Ukrainian side, President Zelensky quickly and skilfully convinced his counterparts of the urgency to act, leading Western leaders to form a common front. Zelensky’s visit and speech to the United States Congress last December shows that he has not lost his resolve, but also that he knows that Ukraine will not be able to resist the invader for long without the military and financial aid from the West and the United States in the first place. In the words of Joe Biden in Kyiv and Poland this week, the President of the United States seems ready to do anything to help Ukraine defeat Russia. It remains to be seen for how long the elected representatives of Washington and Western capitals will agree to invest in a war of which there is no end in sight.
* Co-signatories: Danny Gagné and Fanny Tan, researchers in residence at the Multidimensional Conflicts Observatory of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair