Winter is coming to war in Ukraine ... and it could be Kyiv's greatest ally
It is widely assumed that winter conditions will favour the Russian military in the war in Ukraine. This assumption is incorrect and arises from the belief that living in a cold environment produces people who are capable of fighting in one.
The reality is that fighting imposes very different demands that require specialist skills. The newly mobilised Russian troops who have received minimal training are poorly equipped or prepared for the environment and therefore winter is likely to favour Ukrainian forces.
The first practical difference between fighting and living in an environment is that seeking cover – especially when trees lack vegetation – requires troops to keep low, lie on the ground, and spend time in dead ground. In winter, this inevitably means that troops must lie down in water and kneel or crawl through snow or mud. Whereas someone living in an environment can go to great lengths to stay dry, this is virtually impossible for soldiers fighting on a winter battlefield.
Wet people in a winter environment have a very limited timeframe within which they will remain combat effective. Troops who are wet will rapidly become cold, succumb to hypothermia and die unless they can raise their body temperature. It is therefore essential that armies fighting in these conditions train personnel to keep their wet and dry kit separate, are disciplined in switching between these sets of clothing, and know when to stay warm.
The critical component of sustaining a fighting force in winter is a cadre of junior leaders who know when to withdraw people from the line to seek shelter, warm up and dry their equipment. An important, additional factor, is the troops’ personal discipline to effectively maintain the capacity to regain warmth. A force that is unable to exercise this will suffer from casualties through exposure, frostbite, and low morale.
For the Russian military, the large number of personnel who have been brought into service have received two or three weeks’ training and been issued with the minimum of combat equipment. The personal discipline of keeping dry has not been effectively instilled in the force. Heavy casualties among junior leaders during the earlier phases of the invasion, combined with a lack of time to build esprit des corps within units, means that cohesion in Russian units is lacking. In these circumstances, soldiers are liable to favour congregating in warm locations such as buildings where they can light fires. This concentration creates targets for artillery.
For the Ukrainians, who have spent eight years defending the Donbas, most units include veterans who lived for several months in winter conditions in the trenches. Deference to these veterans and a common sense of purpose has created the unit cohesion for their advice to be respected. Combined with distributed cold weather equipment, the Ukrainian military is likely better able to keep troops in the field through the winter. In this context, just forcing the Russians out of shelter to fight is likely to impose casualties on Russian units.
A second consideration is logistics. While tracked combat vehicles can retain their mobility in mud and snow, both the Russian and Ukrainian military are heavily reliant on commandeered civilian vehicles for their logistics. These vehicles are liable to become bogged down or to have their tires ripped by ice. Without fuel or ammunition, there is a limit on how far tracked combat vehicles can manoeuvre. Any offensive operations, therefore, are likely to take place with a reduced speed and mass, necessarily reducing the gains they produce.
The Ukrainian military, therefore, is likely to seek to keep the Russians in the field through the winter when they will suffer the heaviest from the cold. This should force Russia to deploy newly mobilised personnel, rather than training them properly as new units, helping the Ukrainian military retain the initiative into the spring. As such, the intensity of fighting in Ukraine is unlikely to diminish this winter.
Dr Jack Watling is senior research fellow for land warfare at Royal United Services Institute
