Kdaj bo konec vojne v Ukrajini? Putin, kolikor se spomnim, je sicer leta 2022 napovedal, da vojne ne bo konec pred letom 2025. Napoved spodaj na podlagi zgodovinskih analogij, ko je neka država v izgubljenem položaju izvedla obupni poskus diverzije (kot Ukrajina v primeru operacije Kursk), kaže na konec vojne sredi leta 2025 – če bo Ukrajina začela z mirovnimi pogajanji. Sicer pa leto kasneje, ko bo morala brezpogojno kapitulirati.

(Moj dodatek: seveda pod predpostavko, da se v vojno neposredno ne vključijo Nato države in pošljejo denimo armado z milijonom vojakov v Ukrajino. Kar pa bi pomenilo neposredno vojno z Rusijo in s tem jedrsko eskalacijo. Takrat pa je že vseeno, ker ne bo nihče zmagal).

Let’s talk about dead cats bouncing.  Strategically.

Last time I made a big prediction it was that Ukraine would begin to collapse after Spring 2024, and the Donbass front cracked and Ukraine launched a desperation push in Kursk in Summer ’24.

We can see the end from here.

So first, what is a dead cat bounce offensive?  It’s a last-ditch attack undertaken by a power that is already in military collapse, seeking to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat after the strategic balance has turned decisively against them.  Absent some level of divine intervention – see the French Orleans Campaign of 1429-30 – these operations are generally very counterproductive and significantly hasten the defeat of the power launching them.

There have been a lot of dead cats bouncing over the course of miliary history, enough that we can actually make predictions using them.  So let’s do exactly that and examine three such operations from the conflict closest in character to the Ukrainian War: World War One.

Case Study 1: The Brusilov Offensive

World War One started out badly for Russia with a brutal defeat at Tannenberg in East Prussia and only really got worse from there, with Russian troops abandoning Poland and falling back to a line in modern Belarus in mid-1915 in an attempt to stabilize the front.  Although late Imperial Russia certainly had plenty of issues with state capacity, backwards infrastructure, and official incompetence, the reason for the Tsar’s troubles was really much simpler: the Western Front was not the Central Powers’ priority for most of World War One.  Russia was fighting the main forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans simultaneously.  And Wilhelmine Germany in particular was actually something of an 800-lb military gorilla.

Staring defeat in the face, the Stavka planned a bold operation to roll back the Central Powers: an attack on their left flank, close to the Romanian border and aiming to batter the weaker Austrian forces holding the southern sector of the front.  And it worked – kind of.  Russian forces under General Brusilov’s command made significant gains, turfing the Austrians out of Galicia thanks to fine tactics that presaged the stormtroopers of the last year of the war.  Other Russian armies attacked with far cruder methods and failed, and even Brusilov’s men quickly ran out of steam once the Germans buttressed their Austrian allies.

The offensive was hideously bloody for the Russian Army, which took something over a million casualties over three months of brutal fighting.  And while they had plenty of men for replacements, Russian industry and political stability were other things altogether.  The February Revolution dethroned the Tsar and crippled Russia as a great power nine months after Brusilov’s men went over the top, although Lenin (who took power after another revolution!) would not sign the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk for another year.

Time from dead cat bounce offensive to collapse: 9 months to political collapse, 21 months to near-unconditional surrender.

Case Study 2: The Nivelle Offensive

The Russians weren’t the only power that started the Great War badly.  Between the Frontiers and the Marne, the French Army suffered something like half a million casualties in just two months of 1914.  French forces continued to take a beating as weeks turned to months and then to years and the causalties piled high, with morale in the trenches starting to noticeably crack in early 1917.

Staring national collapse in the face, GQG decided to attack in the middle of 1917.  Half a million French troops went over the top on the Chemin des Dames on April 16th, 1917; less than a week later the operation had ground to a halt in an ocean of blood.  French troops advanced four kilometers and took close to 200,000 casualties to do it.

French troops began mutinying almost immediately, throwing the French Army into chaos for more than a month.  Fortunately for France, American troops began arriving shortly after – but the French Army was a spent force after the Nivelle Offensive and France would have probably spiraled into chaos much like Russia had the US not rescued the situation.

Time from dead cat bounce offensive to collapse: 11 months, because had American troops not been flooding into France our next case study would have turned out very differently…

Case Study 3: Operation Michael

The Entente Cordiale won the Great War in 1918.  You wouldn’t have expected that going into the year, in which the alliance careened from disaster to disaster facing the full and undivided attention of a Germany that for once only had to fight in one direction.  With that said, Germany was a wounded power – and the American goliath was making itself known on the Western Front.  If they were going to win the war, they had to act fast.  And they did.

First to come was the disaster of Caporetto in late 1917, in which Italian forces were routed from their longstanding Alpine front line and had to be rescued by the French and British at the gates of Venice.  Next was Michael.

The German Army went over the top on March 21st, 1918 and blew an eighty-mile hole through the Allied front line on the Western Front, eventually pushing the Allies back some forty miles.  This in a trench war in which major advances had previously been measured in hundreds of yards.  Even given the German Army’s battered state, had the American Expeditionary Force not been on the ground to counterattack the Entente likely would have collapsed with France knocked out of the war entirely.

Germany would sign the Armistice eight months later, facing the prospect of an endless flood of American troops after an Entente counteroffensive had rolled back their gains.

Time from dead cat bounce offensive to collapse: 8 months, contingent on the introduction of significant new enemy forces.

So, what can we learn from all of this, and what does this mean for Ukraine?

Well, Ukraine dedicated its strategic reserves (and much of its operational reserves from the existing front line) to its Kursk Offensive in August 2024, which bogged down with disastrous casualties in the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo.  This was a desperate move seeking to dramatically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and like most such moves undertaken by powers who have the strategic balance so sharply against them, it failed with considerable losses.  In short: it was a dead cat bounce offensive.

Given our timelines from WWI above – 9 months from the Brusilov Offensive to the February Revolution; 11 months from the Nivelle Offensive to Operation Michael; and 8 months from Michael to the Armistice – we can make a prediction.  It is as follows:

Ukraine’s military situation will become untenable by the end of Summer 2025.  Should they not sue for peace at that time, there may be as much as a year of additional combat before Ukraine surrenders unconditionally or is entirely conquered.

Vir: Armchair Warlord via X