Opinion | David Petraeus: The race to make Putin’s aggression unaffordable

KYIV — It’s getting colder in Ukraine, and the war is entering a crucial phase. Russia is expanding its production of missiles and new jet-powered drones and intensifying attacks on cities and infrastructure. Soon, it seems, Moscow will also mobilize additional manpower. That doesn’t mean Vladimir Putin is winning, but executing Ukraine’s own theory of victory will require a sober assessment of how the situation has changed in recent months.

I just returned from six days in Ukraine, where I met with the commander of its unmanned systems forces, a principal architect of its air defenses, four corps commanders, and other senior government and military leaders. They’re as impressive as ever, and they aren’t despairing. Instead, they describe their extraordinary military as adapting while fighting a much larger enemy that is evolving faster than before.

For much of the war, Ukraine’s advantage had been its ability to learn quickly. Soldiers, engineers, intelligence personnel and defense companies could identify problems, develop solutions, test them in combat and modify them with remarkable speed. Drones, precision fires, long-range strike systems and sophisticated battle-management systems have transformed how Ukrainian forces fight. But adaptation is complete only when improvements reach the front lines fast enough — and at sufficient scale — to change the battlefield equation.

That is increasingly the contest. Russia has improved its capabilities while expanding military production. The next phase of the war therefore won’t be defined by innovation or industrial heft but by which side can combine the two faster.

Ukraine’s theory of victory begins with denying Russia meaningful gains. Tough, skillful ground fighting — integrated with drones, precision fires, battle-management systems and air defense — has repeatedly blunted Russian advances. Ukraine’s General Staff estimates that more than 1.5 million Russian personnel have been killed or wounded since February 2022, substantially more than the total U.S. military dead and wounded in World War II. Russia also appears unable to replace those losses through its existing system of contract recruitment, which helps explain its preparations for another possible mobilization.

Yet Ukraine’s military knows it can’t simply hold the line. Its increasingly capable long-range forces are therefore striking Russian oil refineries, logistics hubs and ammunition depots, among other targets, degrading it opponent’s war-making system. Isolating occupied Crimea is another important part of that campaign because of the peninsula’s military and symbolic significance. Ukraine is turning what Putin regards as his conquest’s crown jewel into a liability.

The effect is cumulative. Every refinery damaged or air-defense system destroyed creates costs Russia must absorb or work around. Each response then creates another potential target. Such persistent strategic pressure is visible beyond the battlefield, too. Attacks on energy infrastructure have led to significant disruptions inside Russia. Motorists must use crowdsourced apps to find stations with gasoline or diesel.

Yet Russia is pursuing its own pressure campaign. Putin’s theory of victory is that he can absorb greater losses, mobilize more manpower, produce more weapons, devastate Ukrainian infrastructure, strain Ukrainian finances and wait for Western resolve to weaken. Above all, he believes time favors Moscow.

He’s testing that proposition every night. The Russian military is exploiting Ukraine’s shortages of Patriot interceptors and other air defenses while increasing ballistic- and cruise-missile attacks and jet-powered drone strikes against Ukrainian cities, energy infrastructure and military targets.

I experienced the latter this weekend when my train from Kyiv to Poland was stopped in Volyn, a few miles from the Polish border, and forced to evacuate multiple times. Roughly 15 minutes after the final one, Russian drones struck the locomotive of a train on the adjacent track and a gas station nearby. No one was injured, but the episode was a vivid reminder of what Ukrainians confront daily: a Russian campaign that reaches far beyond the front lines, targeting the infrastructure on which ordinary life depends and seeking to terrorize civilians. There have been hundreds of strikes like it in the past year or so alone.

Ukraine is bearing up against that onslaught, but it’s desperate for more machinery. Patriot missile interceptors are essential and running low. The military also needs electronic warfare systems, jet-powered drone interceptors and hardened, distributed energy infrastructure. Meantime, its forces must continue to strike Russian launchers, air bases and production facilities, ensuring that their offensive and defensive campaigns reinforce each other.

A critical snag: Kyiv is facing a serious financial vulnerability. The government estimates a defense-financing shortfall of $27 billion. That matters because scale is ultimately a financial problem as much as a technological one. Ukraine can develop an effective interceptor or long-range drone but will enjoy a battlefield advantage only when thousands can be produced, improved and replaced.

The war is thus becoming a race between two theories of victory. Russia is betting that Ukraine’s manpower, air defenses, infrastructure, finances and Western support will erode before Russia’s do. Ukraine is betting that it can deny Russia decisive gains while imposing military, economic and political costs that rise faster than Moscow can absorb.

Neither is predetermined. Ukraine doesn’t need to conquer Moscow. It needs to demonstrate that Russia cannot advance at an acceptable cost, that Ukrainian military and economic pressure can continue, and that Western support will endure. Kyiv’s European partners can help ensure the latter by treating the country’s defense-industrial base as an extension of their own.

Greater economic pressure should reinforce that military effort by constraining the energy revenues and international networks financing Moscow’s war. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act would help do so. The objective isn’t to punish Russians but to change Putin’s calculus. Serious negotiations become possible when he concludes that another year of war is more likely to weaken Russia than improve it. He needn’t acknowledge defeat: He could retain occupied territory, claim that Russia had defended the Donbas and declare victory.

Let him. The more consequential outcome would be a sovereign Ukraine that enjoys better integration with Europe and boasts the continent’s most experienced and capable military.

Eric Schmidt, who has played an important role in supporting Ukraine’s defense-technology innovation, has correctly observed that the race for scale is becoming decisive. Ukraine has shown that it can innovate, adapt, fight and endure. Its partners now must help it demonstrate those skills at an industrial scale while providing the air defenses, financing and other capabilities necessary to withstand Russia’s aggression.

Do that, sustain the pressure, and Putin will learn that time isn’t the friend he thought it was.