F E AT URE
Full-spectrum warfare and Russia’s path to defeat I can’t sleep. I’m glued to the minuteby-minute news cycle that is the war in Ukraine. How did we get here? My combat brain tells me that how we got here doesn’t matter. We are in a fight. My combat brain is performing an OODA loop (observe–orient–decide– act) on every video clip I see. I watch a clip of a mother crying while in the background medical staff fail to save her 6-year-old daughter. My mind explodes and starts to calculate the quickest way to Poland and the clothing I’ll need to survive a European spring. Then my parent brain reminds me it’s time to pick up my own 6-year-old from school and make sure she gets her chemo drugs that are fighting off her leukaemia. F—k! I’m not going anywhere. I’m an Australian Army veteran of 13 years. Eight of those were in special forces, where I had three tours of Afghanistan. A friend suggested I write this piece on how I would fight the Ukrainian war as a way of channelling my frustrations into something positive. It is the consensus of the West that Russia cannot win this war and I agree. However, President Vladimir Putin can keep the West from sending troops through his veiled threats of nuclear conflict. So, it will be a war by proxy. Hello, second cold war. Sorry, Ukraine. At this moment the Ukrainian defence force is the most motivated and tenacious fighting force on the planet. With the world’s most inspiring leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Russian forces appear to have a large portion of young, unmotivated conscripts who have been pushed across the border in the middle of the night with little direction or leadership. The Ukrainian defence force has done the amazing by winning many of its engagements and bottlenecking the huge force of Russians north 30
AUSTRALIAN PEACEKEEPER
of Kyiv. However, I don’t think this will last. Weight of numbers and overwhelming firepower have a quality all of their own. Any Russian victories will help Russian morale and in turn their fighting confidence. They will gain momentum and start rolling through Ukrainian conventional forces. As is being seen in the south of the country. Ukraine needs to keep up maximum pressure on Russian forces to destroy their fighting spirit and maximise Russian casualties. I think the best way of doing this is to engage in full-spectrum warfare. In broad strokes, continually hitting the Russian soldier with multiple types of warfare. Conventional, insurgent, psychological and propaganda. The Ukrainian army continues to engage the invaders in conventional warfare, securing western and central Ukraine. This is so they can maintain clear lines of supply and communication deep into the heart of Ukraine. This will allow the Ukrainian insurgency in occupied territory to be more easily resupplied by Western allies. And it will keep the majority of Russian forces focused on fighting
the conventional battle, not spreading out to suppress the population and insurgency. Conducting the insurgency will most likely fall to the Territorial Defence Forces, Ukraine’s civilian volunteers. They have no uniforms and have been given very little in the way of arms and training. Most of the veterans with military experience have been absorbed by the Ukrainian army. The West has just finished fighting a 20-year war against terrorism and insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. All that experience can be reverseengineered and fed into the Ukrainian TDF via training camps in western Ukraine. This will make the TDF more effective at fighting the invaders and reduce their own casualties. One of Ukraine’s biggest advantages is its people’s close ties to Russia. A large portion of the population speaks the same language as the invaders. I would start a graffiti/signage campaign among the Ukrainians who can’t fight. This will speak directly to the Russian soldiers and if there’s enough of it they won’t be able to block it out. We have all