A review of “centers of gravity” for the Ukraine conflict

There are people who think Russia is winning and most of them are pro-Russian. There are people who think that Ukraine is winning and they are almost exclusively pro-Ukraine. I personally don’t have a clue but I do feel like there is no one person who is giving what I perceive as a balanced view of the state of play at the strategic level.

This lack of balance is most evident when people focus on the taking or losing of territory. When Russia is taking territory Ukraine is losing and when Russia is being pushed back then Russia is losing. But it should be self-evident that Russia’s massive taking of territory at the start of the war did not indicate anything about the likely length of war. Neither did Ukraine successful counter attack. The bottom line is that the moving on lines on a map does not tell you much about how the war is going to end up.

The futility of focusing on territory as a metric of military success was one of the key points made by the German military theorist Von Clausewitz. Ironically, one of his key case studies was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia where Napoleon took lots of Russian territory and won a number of key battles only to fail disastrously in the end. Von Clausewitz argued that to base a military campaign around taking ground was a sure way to fail. Rather, the key was to focus on those things that made it possible for the enemy to fight. These are the so called (because Von Clausewitz called them that and everyone has followed his lead since then) “centers of gravity”.

There are two key points about “centers of gravity” that need to be made before we can apply this concept to the current conflict between Russian/Ukraine. The first point is that just because a nation can’t fight without something, does not mean it is a meaningful center of gravity. To give an example, Russia can’t fight without drinkable water but that does not mean that targeting Russia water supplies is targeting a “center of gravity”. If you had the ability to meaningfully target Russia’s water supplies to the point where their ability to fight was impacted, you would be much better off using that weapon or force on something that was scarcer and thus easier to destroy. A key to the concept of a “center of gravity” is that they are unique areas that are limited in scope but cripple the enemy if you take them away.

The second point is that what is a center of gravity for one party is not necessarily the center of gravity for another party. If you’re a bunch of Victorian era British red coats in Zulu territory, your supply of ammunition is a critical center of gravity that makes all the difference to your combat power. But to the Zulus, it don’t matter how much ammunition they have because they can’t use the few rifles they have effectively anyway. This is an obvious point, but it is one that has been forgotten surprisingly often by professional military men throughout history.

If you look at Ukraine war through lenses of “what are the centers of gravity that meet the above two points?” you can start to sort out what is important and not important. If Ukraine loses more territory the war is not going to end. The Russians are not even close to having as much as Ukraine as they were at the high point of their invasion. In the same vein, Ukraine has lost a lot of land to Russia since 2014 and yet up until this point they have been still willing to fight. As a result we can safely say that territory is not a “center of gravity” in this conflict because the land itself is not fueling their ability to fight.

There are other things we can exclude as well. For example, killing Russians does not seem to have much impact on their ability to wage war. Obviously it is theoretically possible that you could kill enough Russians to end their ability and willingness to fight but that does not seem be realistic possibility. On the other hand, Ukraine never had the economic ability to support the war on their own. So destroying more of Ukraine’s economy is not attacking their center of gravity as their ability to fight is not dependent on their own economic might. As long as other people are willing to give them money to pay the bills, their own economic performance does not matter all that much.

In my mind, I break down the “centers of gravity” on the strategic level into three different areas for both sides. For Russia, the critical centers of gravity are its advantage in quantity of military equipment, its economic ability to sustain the war, and strategic weapons. For Ukraine, the three main critical centers of gravity are superiority in drone warfare, foreign support, and morale. I think examining these areas will give us a more balanced view of the current state of play then looking at lines on a map.

Russian Equipment Advantage: People often talk as if Russia’s manpower advantage is what makes them so dangerous. But in truth, if all Russia had was men, it would be simple matter of setting up some barbed wire, and couple of machine guns to stop them. In reality, it has been an endless wave of tanks, an endless supply of artillery, and a large air force that has made the Russian invasion so hard for Ukraine to handle. But it seems like the endless wave of tanks is almost all dried up. Shiny new tanks are still showing up on the battle field but the average age of the tanks and other armored vehicles seen on the battle field has been going up because they have been pulled from deep storage. Open source imagery shows the the storage sites for old armored vehicles are almost empty. Artillery seems to be relying on North Korean shells to keep them fed and that does not seem like a safe long term bet as North Korea is likely digging into its own stockpiles at a rate that is not sustainable. Only Russia’s Air Force seems like it can keep going for another year at the current rate.

Verdict: This is the weakest “center of gravity” for Russia. I don’t think that Russia can sustain the losses in 2025 that they took in 2024. And if they don’t have the material, can they sustain any kind of meaningful offensive?

Russian Ability To Sustain The War Economically: Historically speaking, the lack of ability to foot the bill for their own military campaigns has been what has brought Russia to their knees in countless wars (World War I and the Russian/Japan war just prior to World War I just to name a few) and in countless other wars they had to be subsidized by their allies to keep them in the fight (Americans probably think of World War II but the UK had to give Russia a lot of fiscal help to keep them in the war against Napoleon as well). Up until fairly recently, Russia seemed to be doing relatively well on the economic front but lately their currency has been going into a free fall and their interest rates have gone sky high. Their hard currency and gold reserves have been dropping and inflation has been rising fast.

Verdict: If I had to bet, I would bet that Russia could make it economically for another year in spite of their current problems. But they are right on the edge. If the world goes into an economic recession and oil prices fall (as they normally do during a world recession) it could put Russia into an economic meltdown in 2025.

Russian Strategic Weapons: If Russian did not have nukes and long range ballistic missiles, Polish tanks would probably be in Ukraine and maybe driving toward Moscow. Moreover, it has been primarily Russian Strategic weapons that have enabled Russia to severely cripple Ukraine’s electrical grid which has arguably had a big impact on their will to fight. Without these weapons, a lot of the reasons given in the west for hold and restricting aide would lose it force. That said, Russia would clearly like their weapons to have more of restraining impact on the west that it has and using the conventional strategic weapons on Ukraine has been very expensive for an increasingly strapped economy. But at the end of the day, the world has clearly seen that it is better to have strategic weapons then it is to have allies that have strategic weapons (and I think this is why nations like Korea are seeing increasing public demand for weapons of their own).

Verdict: There don’t seem an humanly foreseeable that this center of gravity is going to go away and it is a reason to worry about Russian defeat almost as much as it contributes to a possible Russian victory.

Ukraine Drone Advantage: Even a lot of Russian military bloggers have admitted that the Ukrainians have adapted to drones better than their own forces have. It is hard for me to imagine the Ukrainians holding off the Russians like they have without this advantage. When Ukraine was starved for shells, it seemed like both parties agreed that it was only drones keeping Ukraine afloat. Now that Ukraine is coming up increasingly short on manpower, it still seems like drones are the only thing keeping them afloat. And while, Russia has made great strides in adapting to drones, it still seems as if they are lagging a good lap behind. From the Russian bloggers own accounts, this seems to stem from institutional factors that are unlikely to change in the near term. A bigger concern is China’s recent threat to shut off all drone supplies to the world but it is unclear to me how realistic this threat is or what impact it will have on Ukraine.

Verdict: I think this is one that is unlikely to change much in 2025 unless China manages an effective embargo.

Ukraine Foreign Aid: There is no doubt that that Ukraine needs aid to keep up the fight and there is no doubt that things don’t look favorable on that front. Popular sentiment is turning against them all across the west and while there are still strong majorities in the west that wish Ukraine well, a lot less people want to see real money spent on the problem. To make matters worse, there are signs of an impending worldwide economic slowdown this year. That will make people even less inclined to be generous. That said, governments can continue to do things long after popular support is gone. One thinks back to when Nixon was elected with a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam and wound up doing things that his predecessors never dared to do in terms of expanding the scope of the war. So who knows were Trump’s “secret plan” will involve.

Verdict: I would be shocked if Ukraine received as much money in 2025 as they did in 2024. I suspect that most of the money they do receive will be structured as coming from Russia frozen funds or as “loans”. But whether it will be cut to the extent that it will take Ukraine out of the fight is something I can’t even begin to guess at.

Ukraine Morale: Morale is arguable a center of gravity for any side of any conflict. But in Russia, morale don’t matter as much on the strategic scale as long as most Russians have a job and food on the table as they have to risk more to try to stop the war then they stand to gain in pure materialistic terms. However, in Ukraine’s case, if people stop believing in the nation of Ukraine and stop thinking it is worth dying for the nation will cease to exist. Ukraine was already dead in a demographic sense before the war started and many more Ukrainians now live outside the nation and might never come back. In spite of these facts many people in Ukrainian are still willing to fight and die for Ukraine. It is this inexplicable willingness to fight for a country with no future that has sustained Ukraine thus far. As American experience in Afghanistan and South Vietnam have shown, you can give all kinds of aid to a nation that has no will to fight and it will collapse in an instant if you are not there to fight for it.

But lately Ukraine’s morale has shown signs of collapsing. Desertions are way up in the hundreds of thousands and Ukraine’s political leadership seems unwilling to take the steps necessary to deal with their man power needs. This only fuels people in the west who think that enough money has already been given to Ukraine. It is hard to say how bad the problem is. If you went with increase desertions as being an indicator of collapse, you would have thought that the Union would collapse in its war with the South. But one key difference is that the Union leadership was always willing to do whatever it took to keep the armies fully staffed and the same can’t be said for Ukraine.

Verdict: I think this is the single biggest risk for Ukraine. If it were not for the signs of morale collapse in their armed forces I would be cautiously optimistic for Ukraine’s short term future given the fact two of Russia’s “centers of gravity” appear to be close to giving out. But if Ukraine does not stem the slide in its morale, they will collapse before they can reap the fruit of Russia economic troubles or their running out of equipment.

As I said in the beginning, I can’t begin to predict who will win. This is because both sides look like they are close to collapse in keys areas that sustain their ability to fight. Maybe this means they will accept a temporary stalemate that makes neither side happy this year or maybe it means that one side or the other will completely fall apart. At this stage of the game, a stalemate looks more likely to me but so far during this war both Putin and Ukraine have made decisions that I completely did not expect so I don’t know why that should stop now.

Having said that, I don’t expect that this particular war will still be going hot and heavy in 2026. I think there will either be some kind of truce/cease fire or one of the sides will collapse.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *