Ukraine could face defeat in 2024. Here’s how that might look.

An ex-commander of the United Kingdom’s Joint Forces Command has expressed concern over the possibility of Ukraine facing a challenging situation against Russia in the year 2024.

General Sir Richard Barrons has told the BBC there is “a serious risk” of Ukraine losing the war this year.

The reason, he says, is “because Ukraine may come to feel it can’t win”.

“And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?”

But its forces are running critically low on ammunition, troops and air defences. Its much-heralded counter-offensive last year failed to dislodge the Russians from ground they had seized and now Moscow is gearing up for a summer offensive.

So what will that look like and what are its likely strategic objectives?

“The shape of the Russian offensive that’s going to come is pretty clear,” says Gen Barrons.

“We are seeing Russia batter away at the front line, employing a five-to-one advantage in artillery, ammunition, and a surplus of people reinforced by the use of newish weapons.”

These include the FAB glide bomb, an adapted Soviet-era “dumb bomb” fitted with fins, GPS guidance and 1500kg of high explosive, that is wreaking havoc on Ukrainian defences.

“At some point this summer,” says Gen Barrons, “we expect to see a major Russian offensive, with the intent of doing more than smash forward with small gains to perhaps try and break through the Ukrainian lines.

“And if that happens we would run the risk of Russian forces breaking through and then exploiting into areas of Ukraine where the Ukrainian armed forces cannot stop them.”

But where?

Last year the Russians knew exactly where Ukraine was likely to attack – from the direction of Zaporizhzhia south towards the Sea of Azov. They planned accordingly and successfully blunted Ukraine’s advance.

Now the boot is on the other foot as Russia masses its troops and keeps Kyiv guessing where it is going to attack next.

“One of the challenges the Ukrainians have,” says Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow in land warfare at the Whitehall thinktank the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), “is that the Russians can choose where they commit their forces.

“It’s a very long front line and the Ukrainians need to be able to defend all of it.”

Which, of course, they cannot

“The Ukrainian military will lose ground,” says Dr Watling. “The question is: how much and which population centres are going to be affected?”

It is quite possible that Russia’s General Staff have yet to go firm on which direction to designate as their main effort. But it is possible to broadly break down their various options into three broad locations.

“Kharkiv,” says Dr Watling, “is certainly vulnerable.”

As Ukraine’s second city, situated perilously close to the Russian border, Kharkiv is a tempting goal for Moscow.

It is currently being pummelled daily with Russian missile strikes, with Ukraine unable to field sufficient air defences to ward off the lethal mix of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles aimed in its direction.

Image caption,Russia hits Kharkiv daily with drones, missiles and shelling

“I think the offensive this year will have breaking out of the Donbas as its first objective,” adds Gen Barrons, “and their eye will be on Kharkiv which is 29km [18 miles] or so from the Russian border, a major prize.”

Could Ukraine still function as a viable entity if Kharkiv were to fall? Yes, say analysts, but it would be a catastrophic blow to both its morale and its economy.

The area of eastern Ukraine known collectively as the Donbas has been at war since 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists declared themselves “people’s republics”.

In 2022 Russia illegally annexed the two Donbas oblasts, or provinces, of Donetsk and Luhansk. This is where most of the fighting on land has been taking place over the past 18 months.

Ukraine has, controversially, expended enormous efforts, in both manpower and resources, in trying to hold on to first the town of Bakhmut, and then Avdiivka.

It has lost both, as well as some of its best fighting troops, in the attempt.https://polling.bbc.co.uk/ws/av-embeds/cps/news/world-europe-68778338/p0hlc5tz/en-GB/amp#amp=1Video caption,BBC documentary shows Ukrainian front line troops defending against a Russian attack

Kyiv has countered that its resistance has inflicted disproportionately high casualties on the Russians.

That is true, with the battlefield in these places being dubbed “the meat grinder”.

But Moscow has plenty more troops to throw into the fight – and Ukraine does not.

The Commander of US Forces in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, has warned that unless the US rushes significantly more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine then its forces will be outgunned on the battlefield by ten to one.

Mass matters. The Russian army’s tactics, leadership and equipment may be inferior to Ukraine’s, but it has such superiority in numbers, especially artillery, that if it does nothing else this year, its default option will be to keep pushing Ukraine’s forces back in a westward direction, taking village after village.

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