How Ukraine can win war against Russian “Goliath”

At first glance, the Ukrainian capital in late November was as lively and buoyant as ever, with restaurants bustling and department stores decked out in Christmas decorations.

But I was quickly reminded that the country was in the middle of a war with Russia. A nighttime curfew had been imposed while soldiers guarded strategic points in the city. When there was a threat of an air raid, ear-piercing sirens rang out, Nikkei Asia reports.

In the early morning of November 25, I was awakened by an air raid alert while on a train from Poland. Russia had launched a major attack on the capital with 75 drones, one of the largest such strikes since it invaded Ukraine in late February 2022.

During a nine-day stay in Kyiv, I would occasionally seek shelter in the hotel's basement late at night due to air raid warnings. While in the country, I spoke with nearly 40 people, ranging from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to soldiers on the ground. What I wanted to find out the most was whether Ukraine would continue its fight against Russia or seek a cease-fire.

No one I talked to called for a cease-fire, although it was clear that people wanted the fighting to stop. In a group interview with Nikkei and other news media, Zelenskyy acknowledged that the country was facing a serious shortage of weapons and that its counteroffensive had stalled. Many Ukrainians I met have family members or friends serving on battlefields.

Still, the overwhelming majority were reluctant to seek a cease-fire because of Russia's repeated past betrayals. According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Russia has broken cease-fire promises about 20 times since 2014.

Ukrainians seem to have a persistent fear that even if a cease-fire is reached, Russia will continue to expand arms production and launch massive future aggressions, seeking to seize the capital and erase Ukraine from the map.

It appears that this fear is shared widely among Ukrainians, from government leaders to soldiers and civilians. Many seem to think they have no choice but to fight. "A cease-fire and a frozen conflict are not an alternative because Russia will come back again after some time," said Zelenskyy. "We will not give up our territories to Russia."

The Ukrainian president emphasized that what Ukraine was doing over the summer and beyond was not a counteroffensive but a fight to survive. "That's how it was. We acted to survive," he said.

This sentiment was echoed in a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from Sept. 29 to Oct. 9 in Ukraine. The findings show that 80% of Ukrainians are opposed to making territorial concessions even if the war is prolonged and threats escalate.

Another survey reveals that 73% still believe in the country's ultimate victory. The poll was taken between Sept. 9 and Sept. 12 by the Ukrainian sociological research body Rating on behalf of the U.S.-based International Republican Institute.

I also had a chance to visit Bucha in the Kyiv suburbs along with neighboring Irpin. In Bucha, about 500 people were massacred by Russian forces last spring. The harrowing evidence of atrocities committed against civilians seems to justify Ukrainian fear of annihilation by Russia.

A monument engraved with the names of 500 victims stands on the grounds of the St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Bucha, where the bodies of those massacred were buried. According to Father Andrii Holovin, the church's priest who made communal graves for the victims, the remains of 30 people were still unaccounted for.

In Russian-occupied territory, many children have been abducted. "We assume that Russians could [have deported] or forcibly [removed] approximately up to 200,000 children," said Daria Gerasymchuk, Ukraine's special representative for children's issues.

Once Russians occupy land, they order Ukrainian families to send at least one child to so-called summer camps in Russia, according to Gerasymchuk. They often take children away and subject them to Russification by having their names changed and forcing them to learn Russian history and national anthem.

Moscow has not shown any signs of ending its aggression. The question is whether Ukraine can beat back the huge Russian army and reclaim its territory. To achieve their goals, Ukrainian forces can never lose the battle of morale and firepower.

Measuring people's state of mind is difficult under any circumstance, but despite their recent struggle, Ukrainian soldiers have maintained higher morale than their Russian counterparts, according to analyses by Ukrainian military officials and warfare experts.

Denys Kobzin, a renowned Ukrainian sociologist and former head of the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, said Ukrainian soldiers' spirits remain strong.

"Soldiers are spending months in the same position. It's quite difficult psychologically for soldiers ... I wouldn't be right if I say that we have morale on the same level that we had in the beginning of the battle," said Kobzin. "But at the same time, we have the morale [that] is still on the sufficient level because we just do not have any space to [retreat to, as we have to protect] our children, our wives, parents, everything."

After last year's Russian invasion, Kobzin voluntarily joined the Ukrainian military and fought in eastern Kharkiv for about four months.

The strong resolve and resilience of Ukrainian soldiers were evident at a rehabilitation center in Kyiv, where about 20 soldiers who had lost limbs in the battle were learning to walk with prosthetic legs and arms.

According to the director of the "No Limits" Center for Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Rehabilitation, about half of injured soldiers voluntarily return to the battlefield after recovery, driven by a strong sense of determination to halt the Russian advance. Many of them have lost their relatives or friends and comrades in war.

Many pundits, however, worry about Ukraine's overall fighting capability. According to Military Balance, an annual report published by the British think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia has more than twice as many tanks as Ukraine and 14 times more fighters and bombers. Moscow is also ramping up production of missiles and ammunition.

To cover its material disadvantages, military assistance from the West is necessary. But Ukraine is also trying to innovate its war tactics faster than Russia. It has begun to pursue unconventional strategies that employ unmanned arms and other technology that can catch Russian troops off balance.

According to Andrii Zahorodniuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, Ukraine has already achieved some success with this approach. Despite lacking a powerful naval fleet, it reclaimed control over parts of the Black Sea by November, using anti-ship missiles and a fleet of sea drones to limit Russian movements.

On the ground, Ukraine has been quick to utilize first-person-view (FPV) drones, which give the operator a drone's view of flying via an onboard camera. In addition to Western military aid, FPV drones have greatly helped Ukraine halt Russia's military expansion.

However, Moscow has begun to copy Ukraine's approach, mass-producing various drones and sending them to the frontline. This has eroded Ukraine's initial advantage, resulting in a stalemate.

Zahorodniuk still asserts that Ukraine has a chance to win. "It's not about who has more guns and who has more people, because if that was the case, Russians would have won already," he said. "The war is the competition of the capabilities, and capability consists of not just weapons and people but also skills, doctrines [and] approaches."

Zahorodniuk said that if Ukraine can again come up with innovative battle plans and surpass Russia in tactical quality, it could regain seized land. No specific war plans have been revealed, but they would probably feature advanced drones and electronic warfare technologies to counter enemy drones.

"This is not the first time in the world when the army which is smaller [has] not [lost] to the army which is bigger," Zahorodniuk said. "There are many cases like that. And every time there was some asymmetric advantage [for the winner]."

As Ukraine continues to battle for survival, the world should not pull back the support needed to help it regain territory. Allowing Russia to claim any semblance of victory could lead the world down a path toward a lawless jungle.