What the Winter War Can Tell Us About Ukraine - And What it Can't

If there is a lesson to be drawn from these facts, it is that when an army lacks military virtues, every effort should be made to keep operations as simple as possible, or else twice as much attention should be paid to other aspects of the military system. The mere fact that soldiers belong to a "regular army" does not automatically mean they are equal to their tasks. Military spirit, then, is one of the most important moral elements in war.

- Carl von Clausewitz, On War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was far from a simple operation, suitable for a force deficient in military virtues. Russian forces attacked from a number of directions and across a broad front. An air-assault on the Antonovsky airport aimed to end the war in a matter of hours, but only succeeded in having the assigned forces surrounded, and wiped out. The Russians, through ignorance or disregard of the deficiencies of their military, developed a war plan beyond their capabilities. 

In this way, a clear parallel exists with the Winter War, the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland. A complex operational plan was devised; Stalin was envious of acumen demonstrated by the German army in the invasion of Poland and desired an opportunity for the Red Army to prove its competence. A simple plan of advancing from Leningrad (St. Petersburg) up the Karelian isthmus using superior firepower and concentrated forces to break through the Finnish line had been proposed, but was mocked, and disregarded, because it was insufficiently showy. 

Source: finlandatwar.com

Complex mobile operations proved beyond the capacity of the purge-stricken Red Army. The particular coldness of the winter of 1939 and the impassibility of Finnish terrain were particularly devastating to an army that had had morale and initiative terrorized from its ranks. Tenacious Finnish resistance humiliated the Red Army. 

Not long after the initial plan foundered, Stalin recognized the need for a drastic change of course. The original plan of a simple but methodical approach to bring to bear overwhelming force against the outnumbered and outmatched Finns was revived. A number of radical reforms were introduced to address the deficiencies exposed by the campaign. The renewed offensive was successful in overwhelming the Finns. Their defensive lines collapsed and they sued for peace. 

The Soviets did not win a great victory. However, the swift application of the lessons of the failure of the initial operational plan, and the imposition of a new plan based on a sober analysis of the capabilities and deficiencies of the Red Army allowed the Soviets to overcome Finnish defenses. The lesson learned by the Soviets at great cost was that to utilize a force lacking in the military virtues that Clausewitz outlined for complex operations is likely to lead to resounding defeats. Whereas these forces may be employed in more simple operations, where factors such as mass, and materiel, can prove decisive, and lead to the development of military virtue through experience. 

Soviet deficiencies were brutally exposed by the harsh conditions

To the credit of the Russians in Ukraine, they appear to have learned this lesson, with succeeding offensives being limited in scope and complexity. In fact, after the failure of the initial offensive, the vast majority of the front became focused on defensive operations, a state of affairs far more suited to an army incapable of complex combined arms operations. However, despite Russian successes in artillery duels in the Donbas, it proved incapable of creating a breakthrough in the Ukrainian lines that could be exploited to restore mobility to the front and achieve a decisive operational success. Not only did the Russians fail to leverage their advantage in artillery to advance against Ukraine, but Ukraine managed to constitute and concentrate sufficient mobile forces to carry out the Kharkiv offensive. 

This suggests that the Russians have failed to develop a method to effectively utilize its military’s existing capabilities to set the battlefield conditions for further large-scale offensive operations. Further, it suggests that since the failure of the initial offensive, Russia has not constituted a mobile operational reserve. 

These factors underscore the differences between the Winter War and the Russian-Ukrainian War. Finland is, and was, a much less populous country than Ukraine, not only this, but it was offered very little in international support. The Soviet Union, in addition to its greater size than modern Russia, was a true autocracy by 1939. While Stalin had done tremendous damage to the functioning of Soviet institutions with his purges, especially the Red Army, he also possessed unparalleled ability to mandate reforms. When it became apparent that the original approach was unsuccessful, Stalin was positioned so as to change course without fear as to how it might be perceived .

Putin, by contrast, has his regime secured on corruption. While he has successfully sidelined the oligarchs, he has not taken measures remotely comparable to Stalin’s extremity to increase regime security. As a result, Putin is limited in his ability to implement drastic changes of course in response to reversals. From his relative political insecurity comes an incentive to double down rather than acknowledge failure. Putin’s regime has been identified as a kleptocracy, a state of affairs that makes addressing the endemic and fundamental problem of corruption in the Russian armed forces self-defeating; to strengthen the armed forces, Putin would be weakening his own hold on power. As a consequence, Putin’s Russia is ill-positioned to undertake the kind of radical reforms utilized by the Soviets to overcome the Finns, a nation inestimably worse equipped than the Ukrainians. 

This returns us to the question: how can the Winter War help us better understand the Russia-Ukraine War??  Russia has repeated the historical error of attempting an operation beyond the capacity of its military, and it has thus far failed to use the lessons of its defeat to improve its performance. Ukraine has endured attritional battles and even prepared the Kharkiv offensive during their course. More recently, the Kherson offensive is a case in which Ukraine demonstrated its own ability to leverage attrition to force the Russians to abandon what had been some of their most significant gains during the early invasion and territory that had been recently declared an integral part of Russia. Recent efforts around Bakhmut do not suggest improvement in Russian operational methods.

The central question, in terms of the immediate future, is whether the Russian force-generation efforts since Kharkiv have succeeded in constituting formations capable of a combined-arms offensive. To this point, there has been increased discussion of a renewed Russian offensive against Kyiv through Belarus, both by members of the Zelensky administration and by foreign observers. While the possibility cannot be dismissed, as I will argue, there is little military sense in such an attempt. That does not preclude the Russians from attempting it nonetheless. Much as occurred in the leadup to the 2022 invasion, the Russian information environment may have become sufficiently disconnected from reality for this fact to be ignored. 

The expectation of a Russian offensive is at least partially based on the absence of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the months since the liberation of Kherson. From this, commentators have come to the conclusion that attritional battles and the shortened frontline preclude Ukraine from launching further offensives. This is particularly the case because of the expectation of a winter offensive following the muddy-impassibility that characterizes Autumn in much of Ukraine. 

Russian propaganda’s portrayal of the intended effect of cutting of gas supplies.

However, this historically mild winter has both strategic and operational significance. Strategically, Russian attempts to starve Europe of natural gas have fallen embarrassingly flat. Propaganda that threatened to freeze Europeans in their homes come Christmas-time dated poorly. Instead, Europe found itself with balmy temperatures, a surplus of liquified natural gas, and no reason to question its decision to support Ukraine. The uncoupling of European energy from Russian sources is unlikely to be reversed, a grim portent for Russia’s economy and its influence in the long term. Despite Russia’s best efforts, its attempt at energy blackmail has paled in comparison to the pain brought by post-pandemic inflation. 

In operational terms, the warm weather has prolonged the muddy season. Without the ground frozen solid for a considerable period, mobility is limited to the speed of a tracked vehicle in the mud. For both sides, any hope of a mobile offensive is therefore based on a period of predictably long frozen ground. As such, it would be wrong to assume that the absence of a counteroffensive is indicative that Ukraine lacks offensive capabilities. Weather alone is sufficient to explain the static front. 

Beyond the question of terrain, Ukraine has another reason to delay a prospective counteroffensive. Russia is in the process of stretching its state capacity, seeking to draw up unwilling conscripts, and get vintage vehicles operational. By contrast, Ukraine is receiving decisive Western aid in the same spheres. A factor that should not be overlooked is the training provided to Ukrainian troops in NATO countries. These Western trained forces will be crucial to counteroffensive operations, given the attrition suffered by Ukraine’s regular forces early in the war. A prospective Ukrainian counteroffensive would see these forces pitted against demoralized, and ill-supplied, Russian conscripts to break through the line. 

As trained infantry is crucial to the breakthrough element of a counteroffensive, so too are the Western deliveries of Armored Fighting Vehicles are crucial to the exploitation of that breakthrough. While significant emphasis has been placed on the question of deliveries of Main Battle Tanks to Ukraine, such as the Abrams or Leopard, more decisive are the recent deliveries of Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), such as the Bradley. Equipped with modern optics and TOW anti-tank missiles, the Bradley proved itself deadly against the older T-72 and T-62 Russian tank models in the Gulf War and Iraq War. Considering the effectiveness with which the Kharkiv counteroffensive was conducted in thin-skinned Humvees, Western IFVs will provide an unparalleled increase in offensive capabilities, once integrated with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Main Battle Tanks would certainly be helpful, but a combination of Ukraine’s own tanks and Western IFVs are sufficient to create the conditions for a Kharkiv-scale offensive and clearing operation. 

Bradley’s proved deadly to Iraqi forces operating many of the same vehicles now used by the Russians

With these factors considered, the Ukrainians have several reasons to have delayed a counteroffensive. The fact that one has not been undertaken since the liberation of Kherson should not be understood as an ominous sign for the course of the war, but rather a result of unfavorable weather and the pace of Western arms deliveries. 

In summation, the Russian war plan repeated the mistake of attempting a plan of complexity beyond the capacity of its military. The failure of Russian artillery offensives to gain operationally significant results suggests a lack of conception as to the utilization of Russian capabilities and the success of the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives are indicative of a failure at subsequent force-generation efforts. Whether the more recent Russian attempts at force generation have proven more effective is yet to be seen. The lack of a social mobilization or significant organizational changes to the Russian military indicate that the gravest issues of corruption and morale have not been addressed. The central role of corruption in Putin’s Russia makes it unlikely that necessary reforms can be implemented.

Another significant difference from the case of the Winter War is in the position of Ukraine relative to Finland. Not only does Ukraine compare more favorably to Russia than Finland to the Soviet Union, but it possesses inestimably greater access to international arms and aid. As a result, the factors which produced an eventual Soviet victory in the Winter War are absent. The Russians cannot reform in the manner that the Soviets were able to, and the Ukrainians will not be exhausted in the way the Finns were. The Winter War demonstrates the necessity of simple operations for armies of diminished capacity, that Clausewitz remarked on two centuries ago. 

However, it would be a grave mistake to apply the balance of force between the Soviet Union and Finland to Russia and Ukraine. The combination of Ukrainian force-generation efforts and Western aid have proven capable of conducting counteroffensives that have met with significant success. Unless a catastrophic change of affairs occurs, this combination of factors should be expected to achieve continuing success against the Russians.