There is a consensus emerging in the West that Russia has already lost its war against Ukraine. The timing, cost, and scope of Ukraine’s victory may be unknowable, but survival of the sovereign state of Ukraine is no longer in question.
Similarly, it is commonplace to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruined Russia’s vaunted domestic political stability once and for all by mobilizing military-age men to fight in Ukraine. The sight of thousands of people escaping the country to dodge the draft was taken as confirmation that Putin had miscalculated badly and risked ruining the regime’s legitimacy at home.
Yet what matters to the Kremlin is the crude reality that the draft has enabled Russia to mitigate troop shortages at the front. The deployment of mobilized forces in Luhansk prevented Ukraine from making major advances in the region since the fall of Lyman, Ukraine, in early October. In Kherson, reinforcements facilitated Russia’s orderly withdrawal, helping to avoid a repeat of its disastrous defeat in Kharkiv. The Russian army has even made incremental gains near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region at the cost of scores of newly mobilized soldiers and prisoners.
