Russia is suffering more setbacks in its war in Ukraine. Its spring offensive gained little ground, while Ukrainian forces used inexpensive strike drones and locally produced missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia. Some Western experts have concluded that the tide has turned — the momentum has shifted and Russia has started to lose the war.
Russia, though, may be about to raise the stakes. At a June 18 Atlantic Council panel in Washington, three former senior U.S. officials — a former NATO supreme allied commander, a former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO — issued a warning: this war may be a long way from being over, and a Russian attack on NATO remains a possibility.
Ukraine Strikes Back
This all comes against the backdrop of Ukraine taking the war back to the heartlands of Russia. One of the most intriguing developments of the conflict, which had looked like a stalemate for some time, has been Kyiv’s strategy of mounting massive drone attacks on facilities deep inside Russia while imposing a logistical blockade on occupied Crimea.
MORE: Ukraine’s Plan for Crimea: Turn the Peninsula Into an Island
Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, argues that war is a test of will and a test of logistics. Ukraine has had the superior will from the start, he says — and now it has dramatically improved its logistics as well.
“Through their attacks on infrastructure and their mid-range drones they are now making it very dangerous for any Russian convoys or trains moving in the southern or eastern part of Ukraine. So that’s part of what has given me optimism,” Hodges says.
“But I think it seems like the Russians have never changed their approach to what they’re doing. What they’re doing today is almost the same thing that they were doing four years ago: just trying to overwhelm Ukrainian defenders. Whereas the Ukrainians have figured out what I think is their theory of victory, which is the destruction of Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure, so that Russia cannot raise the financial resources they need to continue the war.”
MORE: Hodges: The Momentum Has Shifted in Ukraine’s Favor — and Russia Knows It
That theory of victory rests on striking two distinct sets of targets: Russian oil facilities and the logistics and transport connecting occupied Crimea to Russia’s mainland. Military experts believe this may give Ukraine a decisive advantage and degrade Russia’s ability to sustain its offensive.
“It’s very heartening to see what’s being done to choke off logistics to Crimea,” says Wesley Clark, a former NATO supreme allied commander Europe.
But for the approach to succeed, Clark says, Kyiv will have to keep hammering the same targets.
“It’s necessary that Ukraine continue to strike the same oil and gas pipelines and refinery centers and production centers again and again and again, because they get repaired. So unlike what the United States did in the preparation for D-Day, it’s not just a single series of strikes. This has to go on, and on, and on. And so the question for Ukraine is can they sustain it? And it looks like they can.”
Ukrainian Drones Hit Russian Morale, Too
Ukraine’s attacks on Russian military logistics also target military communications — which can lead to another consequence helping Kyiv’s cause: falling morale in Russian units.
“There’s the vulnerability of external lines of communication,” says Douglas Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “Those logistics that are being struck now are meant to supply a relatively low-grade, low-quality ground force, the occupying troops in Crimea and the Donbas. And I say low-grade because of morale, discipline, abuse of leadership and so forth.”
Cutting supply lines to an already demoralized force, he argues, could compound quickly.
“The combination of these factors, cutting off the logistics and depriving a low-quality army of the means of subsistence could end up producing a tipping point in the occupied areas. So I think it’s a two-part puzzle.”
Hodges sees the same vulnerability — an underestimated factor that could further change the battlefield for the Russian army.
“The soldier morale and cohesion of units can be fragile at a certain point if you’ve got crap leadership, soldiers don’t understand what they’re fighting for or don’t believe in what they’re doing, or they don’t believe in each other,” he says.
“We could reach that point where units start to crack in big ways because of the experience that they are enduring, if their officers are making them pay bribes to be able to go on leave for example or to do things like that. And you know, the moral component of cohesion in units is so important: Napoleon said that moral was three to one over the physical.”
This, says Hodges, can lead to a domino effect.
“I imagine that in addition to the Ukrainians actually destroying logistics infrastructure, the fact that this is happening in the rear area will cause concern for average soldiers. Not getting supplies, that will cause real problems. Just like the population in Moscow and St. Petersburg seeing these refineries on fire, it’s like: wait a minute, we were winning, that’s not supposed to be happening. And so the moral component there will also I think have a cumulative negative effect on the Russians.”
One signal of that erosion, Hodges says, will be visible within weeks.
“What I’m looking for is what happens with Russians going on summer holiday,” he says. “Will they go to Crimea or not? I mean, the traditional family vacation — people go to Crimea on the Black Sea. Even after the large-scale invasion started when there was fighting not too far away, they still went.”
“I wonder if they will feel confident enough to go this summer where there’s, you know, gasoline shortages, most of the bridges connecting to Crimea are damaged or weakened. That to me would be a signal of whether or not people have confidence in how the war is going.”
Can Russia Attack NATO to Raise the Stakes?
Despite Ukraine’s success, the panelists warned against premature conclusions. Clark notes that technological advantages in this war have been fleeting: whatever new approach one side has brought to the battlefield, the other has matched it within months.
If Ukraine has an upper hand in any drone technology or military innovation at this moment, Russia is likely to catch up soon to offer a similar technological response. Moreover, the Kremlin can respond in a number of different ways. Vladimir Putin may still be confident he can wait the West out, rely on U.S. President Donald Trump to tip the scales, or even open another front.
“Think of it this way, Putin is producing lots of military equipment that he’s not putting into the Ukrainian front. What’s he doing with that equipment? We’re seeing a buildup in the north against Norway. We’re seeing a buildup against Finland. And of course, there’s a buildup against the Baltics,” Clark says.
“So, it’s possible that from Putin’s point of view, he looks at this and simply says: Yeah, it’s not so good, but just let it go, this is an economy of force, maybe I’ll get a good agreement. Maybe I can press President Trump to give me a good agreement, but I’ve got other cards to play against NATO.”
Clark stresses that the buildup is serious and the West needs to see the whole picture.
“He has what he considers a friend in the White House, he has a split in NATO and he’s building up forces in the Baltics and in the north. Yes, the economy is strained and things look bad in Russia — but that’s Russia, we’ve got to look at it through Russian eyes. This is going to be a long struggle. It’s a long way from being over,” Clark warns.
The force concentrations along NATO’s borders, he believes, are not unlike what the world saw before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and a Putin who is losing the initiative in Ukraine may be tempted to change the game by testing the alliance directly.
Lute, however, believes that Putin’s capacity to launch a conventional ground attack against a NATO country remains limited.
“He does however retain a couple of options. One is air and missile attacks. It’s clear that his production capacity in those arenas is sufficient not only to sustain the attacks on Ukraine but potentially to broaden the attacks into Western Europe if he chose to do that,” Lute says.
Far more likely than either, he argues, is an intensified campaign below the threshold of open war.
“I think much more likely though than either conventional ground or air and missile attack against NATO itself would be a sustained campaign, or maybe even an amplified campaign, in the hybrid arena. So this is sabotage, assassinations, misinformation campaigns, election interference, the sorts of things that we’ve seen repeatedly across Europe over the last year.”
And Washington itself, Lute argues, may have inadvertently helped Moscow by straining the very alliance that would have to defend Europe.
“We’ve seen in recent years a gift from Washington to Putin: as Washington opens divides between the United States and its NATO allies, those are golden opportunities that we’re presenting to Putin to widen those divides and achieve something that Russia even all the way back into the Soviet era aimed to achieve, and that is to break the transatlantic link. And I think frankly some of the things we’ve done from Washington recently just give him even greater opportunities to do that,” Lute says.
Putin’s Nuclear Threat
Another item in Russia’s arsenal, if it sees itself losing, is nuclear weapons. They have not been used on the battlefield since World War II — but could this war reach a point where Putin considers them?
Clark believes this is not impossible, in part because Putin may be making decisions on badly distorted information about the front line.
“He might toy with the idea of nuclear weapons. He’s certainly not averse to threatening the use of nuclear weapons,” Clark says.
“But I don’t think he’s getting accurate battlefield information honestly. I know this because I know this is the way the Soviet army was trained. And these people are the descendants of the Soviet army. And if you report a problem it’s your problem, and you can be criminally prosecuted for it. So you’re not going to report a lot of problems, you’re going to report a lot of progress, and what happens in the units stays in the units. So there’s a real problem getting accurate information, I think, to Putin.”
“He may see the general outlines of it, but I’m sure the generals tell him every day their latest success and this feeds his instinct to stay in the war. He knows they lie to him, but he puts a measure in there to expect that, and he is still pushing for what he wants. He believes now that he can hang tough, that the pressure will still be on Zelenskyy to compromise, and as President Trump said, now that he’s got Iran fixed, he’s going to turn back and work on Ukraine,” Clark says.
Hodges agrees that whatever Russia’s difficulties, Putin has no interest in ending the war now.
“He’s willing to absorb as many casualties as necessary. It’s only when he realizes that he is going to be taken out of power, or that the resolve of the West to support Ukraine is so great and is only increasing, and as he watches the oil and gas infrastructure disintegrate while this is happening I don’t think he’s going to change any of their maximalist demands,” Hodges says.
“So, I think we should assume that they’re going to continue doing what they’re doing. And this notion that somehow we should support Ukraine only to get a better negotiating position is the wrong approach. It’s pedal to the metal: provide everything that they need to get Russia back inside their own borders. That should be our approach.”
Can the West Stop Russia?
So while Ukraine enjoys battlefield momentum, Russia may see escalation as the best defense.
Lute believes this is where the West could make a grave miscalculation: settling for the status quo and half-hearted support for Ukraine.
“The biggest mistake would be to miss that the momentum has shifted in Ukraine’s favor and that this is the opportunity to double down on Western support — and certainly not take for granted the fact that Ukraine miraculously has shifted the momentum, but take advantage of it,” Lute says.
And if the West does help Ukraine defend itself — if Russia is defeated by Ukraine and a united NATO — where does that leave Russia, and what comes next for the Kremlin?
“You will have the typical sort of reaction against an authoritarian regime,” Clark says. “So there will be revulsion against Putin. Maybe he’s overthrown. Maybe Russia breaks up. Maybe a strongman takes over and says, ‘We were stabbed in the back because Putin was afraid to mobilize.’ You just don’t know where it’s going.”
“But look, in foreign policy, one thing we all know at this point is it never ends. When Francis Fukuyama said it was all over with the fall of the Soviet Union — it never ended. But we’d rather deal with that problem of a Russia that’s been thrown back, that’s searching and looking for other alternatives — and be able to reach out to some people in Russia who see the futility of what communism and Putin’s reign has done to Russia and bring them to the West.”
