Russian Success and Failure: Limited Aims, Blitzkrieg, and Attrition

Russia continues to make only limited progress in its offensive to secure the Donbass region. While recent reports suggest Moscow may be close to capturing Pokrovsk, advances on the ground remain slow and incremental. An assessment of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine from 2014 to 2025 reveals a pattern consistent with its long-standing preference for attritional warfare rather than decisive battlefield breakthroughs despite holding the initiative. As the conflict nears the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, this trajectory underscores why Moscow’s gains, though measurable, have remained constrained. This analysis examines Russia’s campaign across three phases—Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III—corresponding respectively to limited aims, attempted blitzkrieg, and attrition.

When Russia seized Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbass region in 2014, Moscow faced little resistance from Ukrainian forces. Pro-Russian separatists, with the support of the Russian military, seized the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Phase -I Limited Aims

When Russia seized Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbass region in 2014, Moscow faced little resistance from Ukrainian forces. Pro-Russian separatists, with the support of the Russian military, seized the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Russia’s limited aims strategy was effective because of thin or non-existent Ukrainian defences, enabling Russia’s rapid annexation of the aforementioned territories. Generally, a limited aims strategy is effective because the attacker achieves strategic surprise by catching the defender off guard – seizing territory without making contact or engaging with the weight of the adversary’s fighting forces, obviating bloody battles. Instead, the attacker rapidly grabs chunks of land where the adversary’s forces are the weakest. Ukrainian defences were too weak to prevent Russian land grabs in Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk. In the intervening years between 2014 and 2022, Ukrainian forces battled pro-Russian militias, especially in Donetsk and Luhansk, quite ineffectually to retake these territories. Moscow has become a defender of these territories and Crimea, which aligns with a key principle of the limited aims strategy: the attacker assumes the role of the defender. This is also where Russian military strategy against Kyiv was most effective and decisive until Moscow’s ill-conceived full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. One critical factor that worked in favour of Ukraine in the years between 2014 and 2022 was Kyiv’s heavy investment in Ground-Based Air Defences (GBADs). The second was better preparation against Russian cyber and Electronic Warfare (EW) attacks and external support.

Phase-II: Russia’s Mounts Blitzkrieg and Why it Failed

Russia’s attempt at a Blitzkrieg to subdue Ukraine was right in intent, but for the poor execution and conception. The Blitzkrieg, as John Mearsheimer so aptly observed, “…takes the path of least resistance…” to achieve deep strategic penetration “…into the enemy rear.” The Russians sought to compel Kyiv’s capitulation with the use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) and cyber-attacks. The Russian military attempted to seize Kyiv rapidly – Ukraine’s capital and centre of gravity. The intent to seize Kyiv quickly by attacking the Command and Control (C&C) system of Kyiv may have been sound in a quest to compel the Zelensky regime’s capitulation. It was geared to breaking communications between Ukraine’s central political and military leadership and isolating them from forward-deployed military commanders. Attacking Ukraine’s communication nodes made sense, but the Russians failed to consider Ukrainian cyber adaptation and resilience, most importantly, as this author showed in an analysis in 2023, Elon Musk’s decision to extend his Starlink high-speed space-based internet service connected to thousands of ground-based terminals was critical to Ukraine’s defence against Russian cyber and EW warfare.

Ukrainian defences were too weak to prevent Russian land grabs in Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk. In the intervening years between 2014 and 2022, Ukrainian forces battled pro-Russian militias, especially in Donetsk and Luhansk, quite ineffectually to retake these territories.

To be sure, Kyiv did prepare itself better in the 2014–2022 interval by making its cyber and communications network more resilient and adaptable, helping Kyiv’s defence against Russian cyber-attacks during the first few weeks of the Russian invasion, but this would not have lasted independently of significant external support. The United States (US)-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)’s response to the Russian cyber-attacks to neutralise communications between Ukraine’s central leadership and military commanders on the ground significantly thwarted Moscow’s attempted blitzkrieg. US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) mounted Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO), Offensive Operations (OCOs), and Information Warfare (IW) against Russia. This is one area where more recent analysis comparing the conventional balance, especially in airpower and GBADs, between Russia and Ukraine, and the June 2025 12-day war between Israel and Iran, is slightly misleading. It overlooks American and Western assistance to Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion, which was clearly absent for Iran from its primary patrons – Russia and China. Iran “…felt let down by both Russia and China, despite repeated calls for support [against Israel].” Russian special forces failed in their assault on Kyiv, whereas Israeli special forces were successful in neutralising Iran’s air defences, several of their missile launchers and enabling their air force to decapitate a sizeable segment of Iran’s military leadership. In addition, Ukrainian forces in the initial stages of the war pursued a defence in depth strategy, which involves conceding some territory, but compels the enemy to fight against well-prepared defences. They erected formidable pre-determined defences around key cities such as Kharkiv against Russian armoured, mobile artillery and infantry, which were used by Russia for attacking along several axes. This defence in depth strategy featured strong and mobile air defences with a networked software capability, well-prepared ground-based defences, drones, and the adept use of tactics inflicting considerable costs against the attacking Russian forces.

Secondly, trading mass for velocity is fundamental to a Blitzkrieg strategy. Russian ground forces attacked along multiple axes and tried to capture Kyiv, but relied too much on ground and artillery forces. Moscow’s military strategy befuddled the world when Russian military planners avoided using the full strength of the Russian Air Force (RuAF) at the outset of the attack, despite lopsided quantitative advantages in airpower vis-à-vis their Ukrainian adversary. RuAF had neither experience nor doctrinal guidance in Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD), leading to poor planning and failure to achieve air superiority. Weak planning and the absence of scale and concentration of force with airpower undermined Russia’s attempt to force Ukraine’s capitulation through a blitzkrieg. Airpower or close air support is vital, if not absolutely indispensable, for a blitzkrieg, because it proffers flexibility, speed, lethality and precision complementing the ground offensive.

The United States (US)-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)’s response to the Russian cyber-attacks to neutralise communications between Ukraine’s central leadership and military commanders on the ground significantly thwarted Moscow’s attempted blitzkrieg.

Table-1 provides a glimpse into the massive asymmetry in capabilities between Russian and Ukrainian forces across a benchmark of capabilities, revealing the extent to which the Russians never committed the significant weight of their capabilities to attack at the outset of their military campaign. Instead, they were overcautious in deploying their air assets or bringing the complete strength of their advantages in airpower to bear against Ukraine. Indeed, their most potent fighter aircraft – the fifth-generation Su-57 was not even used in their initial, let alone in the ongoing air campaign against Ukraine.

Table 1: Military Balance in February 2022

Source: Author’s compilation from SIRPI (2020), Global Firepower (2022) and (IISS 2021)

Phase-III: Strategy of Attrition, Despite Initiative

Having failed to achieve a swift victory through a Blitzkrieg, Russia has fallen back on a strategy which is quite familiar and natural to the country. Russian military planners were compelled to resort to attritional warfare, as evidenced today by efforts to wear down the adversary through set-piece battles such as those in Avdiivka and Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s Donbass. Indeed, once a Blitzkrieg strategy fails, it invariably devolves into a strategy of attrition. Today, Moscow finds itself fighting a war of attrition, despite Russia holding the initiative since at least January 2024.

“Initiative”, definitionally means subjecting the adversary’s conformity to one’s own moves. This might seem perplexing to some, but it is entirely consistent with Russian military tradition. During World War II, the Soviet Red Army had considerable initiative following German battlefield defeats from 1943 onwards, which is a key condition for the effective execution of a Blitzkrieg strategy. Yet the Soviets desisted from doing so simply out of respect for their German adversary’s military “prowess”. Despite possessing the initiative today, notwithstanding their earlier failure to successfully implement a Blitzkrieg, the Russians are currently doing just the same against their Ukrainian adversary, grudgingly respecting their military intrepidness and pursuing what the German General Erich von Manstein called – “a steamroller strategy”, effectively grinding down the adversary through set-piece battles and methodical destruction using superior resources. The Russians have learnt and fallen back on a familiar path they followed and practised in the past against the Germans.

Conclusion

The war is now a slugfest – transitioning from a limited aims war to an attempted Blitzkrieg to an attritional military campaign for the Russians. The inadequate capabilities used by the Russians, and even worse was Moscow’s failure to anticipate what Ukraine’s Western allies would do, have condemned them to an attritional war. There are implications for India from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Both warring countries have successfully developed and honed the use of drones. Yet they have not managed to achieve air superiority, and this is as true for the Ukrainians as it is for the Russians. As the Indian Air Force (IAF )’s Chief of Air Staff (CAS) A.P. Singh observed recently, manned airpower remains essential for inflicting devastating and concentrated strikes. Individual as well as swarm drones can at best generate confusion and assist the greater military effort, but lack the offensive punch manned airpower brings and imposes on the enemy. Finally, India must be careful about the purchase of fifth-generation jets from Russia, especially given their non-use by the Russians in their ongoing war effort.

Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. 

• International Affairs
• Russia and Eurasia
• donbass war
• russia ukraine conflict
• russia ukraine war
• russian invasion of ukraine
• russian military campaign in ukraine
• ukraine war

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