SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Like many long-running conflicts, the war in Ukraine has seen its share of shifts in momentum. The February 2022 Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv, was repulsed quickly by the Ukrainians, and for much of the war’s first year it appeared Ukraine – with a lift from NATO weaponry – might repel the Russian assault. In the summer of 2023, a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive fizzled; that setback, together with a months-long political logjam that stopped the shipment of U.S. weapons to Kyiv, sparked fears that Russia might actually win the war in 2024.
At mid-year, the tides appear to have turned once more. The Washington logjam has broken, U.S. aid is flowing again, and now it’s a Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region that appears to have sputtered.
For more than two years, Cipher Brief expert Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (Ret.) has been watching the war from various vantage points in Europe, where he once served as the U.S. Army’s top commander. In February, two years after the Russian invasion, Gen. Hodges told The Cipher Brief that “neither side can knock out the other at this point,” and he warned that Ukraine would have to use the third year of the war “to stabilize the front, fix their personnel system (and) build up their own defense industry.” What Ukraine really needed, he said then, was for the U.S. military supply lines to be reopened, followed by a U.S. commitment to provide Ukraine with long-range, precision ATACMS missiles.
Now the U.S. has done both those things, and Gen. Hodges is among those who see a clear impact on the frontlines – in the critical Crimean peninsula in particular.
Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski spoke with Gen. Hodges about the current state of the war – and the ways in which the momentum has shifted yet again.
THE CONTEXT
- Russia launched a new offensive into Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region in early May.
- The Biden administration permitted Ukraine limited use of U.S.-provided weaponry to strike targets within Russia, mainly to counter the Kharkiv assault. This came after the U.S. approved a delayed Ukraine aid package in late April.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has complained that the Western weapons used by Ukraine have struck Russian air defenses and disrupted military supply lines, and warned of grave consequences should those attacks continue.
- Ukraine has called for Western partners to permit the use of their weapons to hit further into Russia, specifically to target Russian air bases.
- Ukraine has recently increased its attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea. Ukrainian drone and missile strikes have forced much of Russia’s Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet to relocate further east, including to the Novorossiysk base.
- Ukrainian sea drones have also hit Crimea’s Kerch Strait bridge, a key supply link for Russian military operations in the peninsula, in October 2022 and again in July 2023, and several reports suggest another strike on the bridge may come soon.
THE INTERVIEW
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
The Cipher Brief: How would you describe what's changed in the last few weeks in Ukraine?
Gen. Hodges: Three things. First of all, the Russians are in big trouble. They still have hundreds of thousands of people in uniform, but since the dreaded fall of Avdiivka back in February – remember how people were walking around like, Oh my God, they've captured Avdiivka?
Well, it took them 10 years to get Avdiivka, and that's a town about as far east in Ukraine as you can be without getting into Russia. And they have barely moved forward from there, or from Bakhmut. And then they started this new offensive up north of Kharkiv, and they really haven't done anything there except lose tens of thousands of people.
And that was during a period of six months when the U.S. aid had stopped. So that really illustrated to me what I had suspected anyway, [which] was that (the Russians) don't have the ability to knock Ukraine out of the war. They can't do it. All they can do is keep launching multimillion dollar missiles and drones against civilian targets, civilian infrastructure, and they can keep pounding with artillery and pushing their own untrained troops against Ukrainian defenses. And so that's it. They have nothing else they can do.
Russia’s great Black Sea Fleet is in retreat, about a third of it is underwater, and the Russian Air Force still has not been able to get air superiority. And it also is unable to interdict or cut the lines of supply that are bringing new stuff from Poland into Ukraine.
And then of course, there’s the news that because of U.S. sanctions that are finally being implemented, Russian banks are collapsing all over the place. People are trying to get their money out because they can't trade with dollars and Euros anymore.
And all of this is happening without the U.S. actually, formally committing to helping Ukraine win. So that's one thing that's happened.
The second thing, obviously, is that finally with the U.S. aid package being approved, now we're seeing a lot of things beginning to show up again in Ukraine. You see reports from Ukrainians saying that they finally have ammo again. That's a big deal, obviously. And then of course, finally the U.S. has allowed Ukraine to have the 300-kilometer (186-mile) range ATACMS (missiles). That's significant because as the SACEUR, General (Christopher) Cavoli said, you can defeat mass with precision if you have enough time. And you do that by targeting headquarters, logistics and artillery. Because without those three things, it doesn't matter how many untrained troops (the Russians) have. They're not going to accomplish anything. So by taking out artillery, headquarters, and logistics, you negate the only advantage the Russians have. So that's why this 300-kilometer range is so important, and that's also why you're seeing more trouble in Crimea for the Russians as they're getting pounded there now.
The Cipher Brief: How much of an uptick has there been in the volume of strikes in Crimea, or the impact they've had there?
Gen. Hodges: Crimea is the key to this war. In military doctrine, we would call it the decisive terrain. Whoever controls Crimea is going to win this war.
For the Russians, of course, it's important to them because Crimea — the reason Catherine the Great took it the first time, back in the end of the 18th century — allows them to dominate the entire Black Sea, where, by the way, we have three NATO allies. So for the Russians, being able to hang on to Crimea is important to them for that, as well as the fact that it's a launching pad for them to attack all over Ukraine, which they have been doing. So the Russians, they can't lose that, or they don't want to lose that.
For the Ukrainians, not only is it their sovereign territory, but as long as Russia occupies Crimea, then Russians will always block access into the Azov Sea. So for Ukraine, they have to be able to liberate Crimea for economic purposes and to deny the Russians the use of that platform.
Crimea is exactly the same size as Massachusetts – almost to the square kilometer, it's almost the same. So it's not big and there's no place to hide. I mean, every Ukrainian has been there before on holiday or had business there. The Ukrainian Navy used to be based in Sevastopol. So Ukrainians know where everything is. The difference now is they can reach it with lots of ATACMS.
They could always hit some places like they did last year with the Storm Shadow (French-British cruise missiles). They proved the concept that with precision, you could begin to make Crimea untenable. That's why the Black Sea fleet had to start moving. Now with the ATACMS, they can do that a lot. And every square meter of Crimea is now in range of some Ukrainian weapon.
So it's a matter of time. They can't stay there. The Black Sea Fleet is pulling out. The big logistics base at Dzhankoi, the airbase at Saky, on the west side (of Crimea). All of these places are being hit, and so the Russians are having to relocate aircraft to other places.
So if you think about how Ukraine wins in Crimea, you do three things. Number one, you make it untenable. And that's what they're doing now. They're making it so that the Russians can't stay there. There's been special forces attacks that have destroyed radar and air defense, there's been maritime drones, there's been unmanned aerial systems, air drones, and now you've got precision weapons. So that's all happening and Crimea is becoming untenable.
The second thing that has to be done is you isolate the peninsula, and the way you isolate it is, you destroy the three ways that aid or resupply or anything gets in and out of Crimea. Number one is the big Kerch Bridge. Number two is the railroad that has been built that runs from Rostov down along the Azov Sea into Crimea. And then the third is you destroy the ships and ferries that can move stuff back and forth across the Kerch Strait or the Azov Sea.
They've already destroyed several Russian Navy vessels called LSTs. These are landing ship tanks, which normally would carry armored vehicles, but they can be used to move a lot of ammunition and supplies. The railroad will be easily disrupted by a variety of means.
And then of course, the Kerch Bridge. And I think the Ukrainians will drop that bridge when they're ready. It's obviously going to be a huge effort, because the Russians know how vulnerable that thing is, and there’s a high density of air defense and all kinds of things around it. So the Ukrainians, I am confident, will have figured out a plan that will involve all sorts of different things in order to severely damage, if not destroy or drop a span of that bridge. Now you've got Crimea isolated as well as unusable.
And then the third thing, of course, is when they're ready, the Ukrainians will be able to occupy it.
The Cipher Brief: You said that whoever wins Crimea wins the war. Explain that – how is it that Russia cannot win the war if they lose Crimea?
Gen. Hodges: Crimea has significant economic importance because of the seaports there, as well as its military importance. And with Ukraine regaining control of Crimea, Russia will have much more difficulty interfering with Ukrainian grain exports, for example. They'll also not be able to export any more stolen grain from Ukraine themselves.
There's always been some question about Putin's aims, and of course he had a long list of excuses (for invading Ukraine). But if they cannot capture Crimea, I don't know how he could claim in any way that they've accomplished their war aim. And so I think it’s also the fact that they are running out of capability and time. I think that the Russians have really mortgaged their future in order to put in the field what they've got.
You remember there was all this reporting about how 40% of Russia’s economy is now on a war footing. Well, remind your readers that their economy is the size of Spain’s. And Russia’s troops – it is one thing to have tens of thousands of untrained troops, but the leaders, people who should be training them and leading them, they're all dead. They're on a third generation of people for what used to be their elite units. So I think that from an industrial standpoint, a financial standpoint as well as a manpower standpoint, this is not something that they can sustain.
I'm glad to see that the (U.S.) administration is finally getting serious about sanctions. Now if we could work with our allies and partners to cut off the so-called Ghost Fleet, where the Russians are able to still export oil to China and India – that's going out through the Black Sea, past Turkey, and it's going out through the Baltic Sea, past Denmark and Sweden and Norway. We ought to be able to stop that, and that's what gives the Russians some money to help fund the war.
Also, I can't believe that we're not able to stop Iran from sending drones or North Korea sending ammunition. There's not enough pressure on China yet for them to stop providing the support they're providing. So if we turn those things off – and surely with the combined economic power of the West, we ought to be able to do that.
The Cipher Brief: How will the rest of us know, or start to get a sense that, as you put it, the situation in Crimea really has become untenable? What's going to be a sign, other than the Kerch Bridge exploding?
Gen. Hodges: I don't know where that tipping point is. It might involve how many ships are still left from the Black Sea Fleet there. The port that they are moving to is not ready yet, the one out in Georgia, they're building that. The only one they have that is of any significance is Novorossiysk.
And if you look on the map, you can see that that's east of Crimea and it’s a proper Russian base, but it's not of the same capacity as Sevastopol. They're just not going to be as capable. So how fast and how much they actually move from there, that will be an indicator that they realize that they can't use Sevastopol. And then of course, Ukrainian intelligence, and I suspect U.S. intelligence knows – I won't know: How much of the remaining airfields are still operational? What kind of air operations are they running out of there?
And then the logistics. They'll probably be watching how much is going in using these three methods I talked about — the railroad, the bridge, or the ferries. When that starts really decreasing, then that will look like the Russians are realizing there's no point in continuing to put fuel and ammunition in there, because they're going to be going the other direction.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
