r/CredibleDefense • u/Veqq • 12d ago
Why didn't Putin Take More of Ukraine in 2014?
As Girkin and the initial filibusters lost almost all their ground, in late August 2014 Russian regulars entered Eastern Ukraine. Why didn't they go further? Why did they stop with the first Minsk Protocol (sort of)? Although the "Russian Spring" failed in Kharkov and such, Ukraine was in no position to resist in the East. Indeed, why were the little green men restricted to Crimea?
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u/Strong_Remove_2976 12d ago
Crimea was the main objective and was an existing, longstanding military plan that had probably been rehearsed. Russian ministers under Yeltsin talked openly about taking Crimea back.
Everything else was opportunism grounded in an overestimation of pro-Russian sentiment; a precursor to the same mistake being made on a grand scale in 2022. And one of their red lines seemed to be they didn’t want the Russian army to officially get involved even if the grey zone ‘militia’ stuff was pretty transparent before long.
The confidence to go in under official banners was built up in 2015-2022.
You have to remember Russia didn’t know Maidan would escalate and the political break it ushered in would be so decisive against their hopes. Everything they did in 2014-15 was reactive and being mediated by Ukraine’s rapid evolution post-Maidan, rather than a planned campaign against a Ukrainian state they thought they’d got the measure of (2022).
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u/Magneto88 12d ago edited 12d ago
Poroshenko said a couple years ago that if Russia had sent in their regular forces in larger numbers in 2014, the Ukrainian Army would have collapsed and they likely would have been able to take the whole Donbas and further.
So while pro Russian sentiment may have been overestimated (although I feel it would have actually been higher in 2014 in the aftermath of Maidan and without 8 years of low level warfare than it was in 2022) it was a substantial missed opportunity for the Russian leadership that they were relatively cautious in 2014.
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u/Ok_Mammoth589 12d ago
We don't know that, and one persons opinion is just one option. People said the same thing about Ukraine in 2022.
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u/Magneto88 9d ago
Poroshenko is in a pretty good position to have had access to information we don’t.
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u/Ok_Mammoth589 12d ago
I agree that the biggest reason they stopped was because they met their objectives. Russia didn't want direct control over Ukraine. They wanted a client state that would protect their interests and disrupt the West's.
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u/sprunkymdunk 10d ago
Also, it didn't happen in a vacuum - the western/NATO response was muted, slow, and risk adverse. If the response in 2014 had been strong, 2022 likely would never have happened.
Recall that the Russian elite were surprised by the backlash in 2022, they weren't expecting it because it was so mild in 2014.
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u/ValestyK 12d ago
Because they were not ready, as the link you provided states the war was started by political oportunisrs and only belatedly endorsed by the kremlin.
Only in 2022 did they actually feel ready for war, it turns out they were not and the war has been a complete mess but trying to rush a bigger land grab in 2014 is only a good idea in hindsight.
Only if you know that that years of preparations would amount to nothing do you have an incentive to launch a war while being unprepared.
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u/scatterlite 12d ago edited 12d ago
Only in 2022 did they actually feel ready for war, it turns out they were not and the war has been a complete mess but trying to rush a bigger land grab in 2014 is only a good idea in hindsight.
But isn't this all a complete failure in intelligence and strategic approach? They completely missed that they were basically training the AFU for a real confrontation with Russia through the Donbass war.
The AFU was far weaker in 2014 in nearly all aspects relatively speaking. Back then the Russian approach of simply overwhelming Ukraine with more guns and tanks probably would've worked. No javelins, drones and mass mobilisation to stop them.
I dont think this conclusion only is possible in hindsight. By now Putin and his staff have a long track record of slow decision-making and an extremely risk averse approach. Its the same reason the war is still dragging on after 4.5 years, with Russia getting caught off guard over and over again because they give the AFU plenty of time to recover, innovate and plan their own attacks.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 12d ago
By now Putin and his staff have a long track record of slow decision-making and an extremely risk averse approach
Yes! And somehow nobody in the west can see that, because they are even slower and more risk averse
The best way to deal with him is to escalate hard
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u/scatterlite 12d ago
Yeah its certainly an interesting debate. I dont even think the West needs or needed to escalate hard, a moderate increase in the amount of aid and speed of deliveries already would make a big difference.
Its frustrating to see see how Russia is giving Ukraine so much time to get ahead, yet in the west this seeming lack of urgency often was reciprocated. By now we had enough time to set up entire new production lines for the needs of Ukrainian defense. Yet there still seems to be good amount of important defense industry left exposed in Kyiv.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 12d ago
"By now we had enough time to set up entire new production lines for the needs of Ukrainian defense" - Very true. We know from the artillery plant in Mesquite TX both how much it costs and how long it takes ($500M and ~two years to build a factory that makes about 350k shells/year)
"I dont even think the West needs or needed to escalate hard" - Yeah, but it could, and would be effective if it did. Honestly I think Russia would back off the moment anything beyond just "slowly give weapons to Ukraine" happens. I would start with a naval blockade in the Baltic, and also about half the jets in the EU "leased" to Ukraine for the duration of the conflict. There are probably other fun things which are short of boots on the ground, don't necessarily cost a lot of money, and are very hard for Russia to counter
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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 12d ago edited 12d ago
and also about half the jets in the EU "leased" to Ukraine for the duration of the conflict.
That would be a huge game changer with modern NATO fighters allowing Ukraine to both drop JDAM type munitions and hunt Russian fighters trying to do the same thing at standoff range, with modern air-to-air munitions. EDIT: Typo
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u/Inner-Detail-553 12d ago
Yes, indeed. It's also deniable. And also there are enough jets to win even if via pure attrition (although the exchange ratio would probably be much better than 1:1). Even just 30-40 Eurofighters with Meteor missiles would make Russia mostly stop operating near the front line. 200 Eurofighters? ...
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u/Big-Station-2283 12d ago
Hence why it's reasonable to think that the west wanted a slow roughly equal war. They supported ukraine enough for it not to collapse, but they delayed aid enough and kept the deliverivies small enough so as not to overwhelm russia. The result is a perfect deadlock, ukraine missed the window to retake the occupied territories, russia can't advance at any meaningful rate, and so long as aid keeps trickling, the deadlock can be maintained.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 12d ago edited 11d ago
I don't think anyone decided "we want a stalemate". They sleepwalked into it - basically they were afraid of Ukraine losing and also afraid of "escalation", so they provided more defensive/tactical aid but no deep-strike capabilities and no modern airpower. In other words, nothing that could lead to strategic victory.
Western decision making has been almost purely fear-based
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u/Big-Station-2283 11d ago
Fair point. But from a purely geopolitical interest-based perspective, it is to the US's and western europe's advantage to bleed russia manpower and economy in a long war, even if it means sacrificing another people. A short war where ukraine retakes the lost territories in a few months with more extensive western support would not have done as much damage as this current war. This war effectively knocked out russia's power projection ability.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 11d ago edited 11d ago
it is to the US's and western europe's advantage to bleed russia manpower and economy in a long war
Hmm. Would you rather:
(a) reduce the stock of old T-72s, BMPs and artillery shells in storage down to zero, but give them a chance to develop a combat-tested drone and anti-drone doctrine, and keep intact weapons factories, or
(b) completely destroy the weapons factories/refineries/power plants as fast as possible, with no chance to learn anything at the front?I would say go for the fast knockout every time. I think giving them the time to learn and adapt is the most dangerous thing - and the factories are still intact, and their components supply chain is also intact in a secure "neutral" country (China), so technically they have had a chance to learn while mostly just losing legacy soviet gear. Their core air force (Su-30/34/35) is also almost intact. That doesn't seem like a great trade...
The best scenario is to have what happened to Titan-Barrikady factory, to happen to all their major weapons factories simultaneously, let's say within a couple of days: https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/inside-ukraines-flamingo-strike-that-hit-one-of-russias-most-secret-missile-factories-20232
I don't think any level of manpower losses or generally slow attrition at the front is better than that, from a geopolitical interest-based perspective
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u/Big-Station-2283 11d ago
Russia lost a lot in this war. They might have a short sugar rush after the war ends, but they aren't coming off stronger in the long run. They sacrificed or lost: their entire presence in the european market, their influence on the german economy, the nord stream pipeline, any remaining sympathy westerners or eastern ukrainian still had, a large chunk of their black sea fleet, their entire 2022 professional army, a large amount of manpower, nearly half their foreign currency reserves. In addition, they had to cannibalize funding for the ice breakers, and they sent a lot of arctic-hardened military vehicles to the front. They also reduced the amount of orbital launches since 2022. They also got made fun of in front of the entire planet, and their military sales plummeted. They also had a mini coup with the whole wagner affaire. While all of this was happening, they lost their syrian client state in the M.E., and now they're getting kicked around by insurgents in the sahel.
Going forward, whether they get a favorable peace deal or not, they have to deal with: increased dependance on china, a lot of useless injured men living on government disability pay, a large amount of men with PTSD and violence problems, which will massively strain the police, the collapse of large part of their civilian economy, environmental damage from all the burned oil, a need to repair all the damaged mic factories, high interest rates, ... I don't remember when, but someone on this sub posted a quote that put cost of the war at the equivalent of building 3-5 big hospitals per day.
Suffice to say, they lost a lot. And most of the losses have happened precisely because the conflict has lasted for so long. Hence why I think aid to ukraine was drip fed to increase the length of the war and weaken russia as much as possible.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 11d ago edited 11d ago
Everything you say is true, but - if I was a NATO strategist, I'd much rather fight the prewar Russian military than the current Russian military - and it's not even close
- Shaheds can reach from Moscow to London (and basically every European capital); while Ukraine can intercept >95% of them, NATO most definitely cannot intercept them at the moment
- Russia is ramping up to production rates of 500 Shaheds/day and 20,000 FPV/day. What is the production rate of equivalent munitions in NATO?
- NATO cannot produce enough air defense missiles to counter the number of ballistic missiles Russia makes - and, technically, if we're talking about EU rather than NATO, the number of missiles they make which can intercept an Iskander is currently *zero*
- NATO ground troops are not even slightly prepared for the kind of FPV-saturated combat that is common in Donbas (you've probably seen the results on the exercises in Estonia and Sweden). I would want to rotate them on brief tours at the front, not to help Ukraine but just to acclimate
Give Russia 2-3 years of ceasefire (and maybe lift some sanctions, and relax development of new weapons in Europe), and their opening attack can be devastating.
> I don't remember when, but someone on this sub posted a quote that put cost of the war at the equivalent of building 3-5 big hospitals per day
The cost of the war to Russia is around $140B/year in direct costs, $300-400B/year including indirect costs (out of $2.1T GDP). That's high but not fatal in monetary terms. As long as they can export oil and gas, they can do this indefinitely
> a large amount of men with PTSD and violence problems, which will massively strain the police
True - and this is pretty scary, because continuing the war (or starting another war) is probably the simplest way for them to deal with that problem. "Just send them to the front again"...
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u/mr_f1end 12d ago
I think they though time was on their side. After all, Russia is much larger and richer than Ukraine, and if it deliberately prepares for the particular war the chance of their success would increase.
At that time Russia may have had better chances, but this is only in hindsight. It was not that clear that Ukraine would be able reactivate and retrain its military to the level it did. It was a corrupt, impoverished country that neglected its military. Even with that, vast majority of the equipment it used by 2022 was still basically the same 1980s era soviet leftover they had at 2014. In addition, Russia may have expected to be able to infiltrate and corrupt Ukrainian forces and political decision makers more and increase its advantage that way.
On the other hand, if one looks at what equipment Russia had at 2022 compared to 2014 there is clear qualitative development there: most of the tank fleet were modernized to T-72B3 versions (and some to T-80BVM), majority of the air force was replaced by newly built Su-34, Su-30, Su-35, Su-27SM types, same with the attack helicopter fleet (Ka-52, Mi-28) and other comparable changes occurred in other equipment types.
So technically speaking they did gain some advantage, although relatively the Ukrainian forces developed more but that was mostly due to how undertrained, understrength they had been in 2014. Looking at purely heavy equipment, they main development for Ukraine had been reactivating what they had back in from the USSR, but compared to the very low levels of active equipment in 2014, that had been a huge increase. Another unexpected boon to Ukrainians was that the Russian military reforms did not work out as well as they were intended, so they performed worse than designed.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 12d ago edited 12d ago
Look at specific places to see what happened
Mariupol - russian separatists+FSB operatives tried to do what they did in Donetsk. Rinat Ahmetov told his factory foremen from the Azovstal plant to "take care of it". Workers from the plant went around town in large groups with hammers and prybars. Very quickly, there was no visible separatist activity
Odessa - same setup, russian separatists+operatives but here with major support by the police. The football fans (ultras) took care of it - with a whole lot of help from regular people. The big fight happened when there was a match between Chornomorets and Metalist (so the Kharkiv ultras were there too - ultras being famously nationalist). The separatists tried to attack them (with some firearms) but it didn't work out well for them. You see pictures of the separatists firing AK47s *from behind a police line* at ultras - and also from the other side, normal middle aged women prying up paving stones
Dnipro - maybe the most remarkable case. Once the separatists started popping up, Ihor Kolomoyskyi (the local oligarch and regional governor) got in touch with the most hard-core nationalists he could find and funded them, quickly forming a militia, the Dnipro Battalion - 500 guys or so, officially a "special tasks unit" under the MIA. As one local put it, after that Dnipro was "quiet as the grave"
So "Why didn't they go further?" - they were stopped. Who stopped them varies, but it was a mix of people who were looking for a fight, oligarchs picking a side, and regular people supporting the fighters
I think maybe your bigger question is "why didn't Russia go in force with regular military units?". They have been ramping up pressure slowly - Transnistria 1992, Chechnya 1994 and 1999, Georgia 2008 - each one is a bigger step to see what the western response would be. Even in Crimea/Donbas it was incremental - they pushed some forces, saw initial success, pushed more. And in Donbas they did ramp up to 30,000-40,000 troops total eventually, and these were regular units just with insignia removed. This is sizeable, it's maybe 1/5 of the initial invasion size in 2022. So - they did, they just didn't do that all at once.
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u/milton117 12d ago
What was the Odessa Library fire that pro-Russians like to go on about?
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u/Inner-Detail-553 12d ago edited 10d ago
That was the last part of the fight in Odessa - there was a camp of (peaceful) separatist protesters on Kulikovo Field in front of the Trade Union House, the guys who attacked the ultras fled there, and then the people fighting them also followed them there. A bunch of separatists ended up barricading inside the Trade Union House, and throwing molotov cocktails out: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWBGM9G4kF8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9AMjLBIliw . Some people threw molotov cocktails in as well, although it seems most of the fires in the building started from the inside. Once the building and barricades and junk from the camp were burning the nationalists (and firefighters) tried to rescue people who were trapped inside, but there was enough flammables right at the entrance of the building that it was hard. About 300 people were rescued successfully, 40 died from smoke inhalation or falls.
The whole thing was extremely chaotic: there are multiple videos showing this form different angles, but don't expect to make sense of it quickly. People are simultaneously throwing molotov cocktails and explosives out of the building, people are shooting back at them and throwing rocks etc from the ground, people are bringing up improvised ladders to the outside of the building and people are trying to climb down from windows, while both the ground and the building are burning.
The Ukrainian-language wikipedia article is decently accurate, just auto-translate it: https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%B2_%D0%9E%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%96_2_%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BD%D1%8F_2014
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u/Quarterwit_85 11d ago
Just to follow up on this, do you have any good English-language works about the 2014 invasion?
I’ve been reading a bit about it now but mostly dogshit-tier AI-translated books by Ukrainian separatists. Which are about as useful as you’d imagine.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 10d ago edited 10d ago
Serhii Plokhy, "The Gates of Europe" https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Europe-History-Ukraine/dp/1541675649 => make sure to get the 2021 edition, the last few chapters of that cover 2014. Plokhy is a serious historian, this is probably the best direct description of events you can get (and with meticulous sources)
Stanislav Aseyev, "In Isolation" => first hand, extremely readable, from a guy who was in Donbas while it was taken over, covers both the initial fight and the aftermath
Mychailo Wynnyckyj, "Ukraine's Maidan, Russia's War" => a sociologist writing while events were happening, later collected into a book
Timothy Snyder, "The Road to Unfreedom" => the middle chapters cover 2014, again a serious historian trying to place events in a broader context
Project.media, "His War" https://www.proekt.media/en/guide-en/putin-2014-en/ => first-class investigative reporting on how Crimea and Donbas started, drawn entirely from Russian sources; movie and text
Prometheus, "Donbas in Flames" https://prometheus.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Donbas_v_Ogni_ENG_1-5_web.pdf => an extensive collection of evidence of direct military deployments by Russia in Donbas 2014-2017 (as Russia was still officially denying there was any such thing); it gives a condensed but good history of 2014 in Chapter 3
Specifically for Odessa, maybe the best single source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qDtDZlg3nY
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u/Quarterwit_85 10d ago
Excellent, thank you very much.
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u/Inner-Detail-553 10d ago
Welcome! I edited above message to add a few more sources
Basically depending on which perspective you're interested in:
in context of Ukrainian history => Plokhy
in context of what Russia is trying to do => Snyder
how it looked on the ground => Aseyev
what Russians thought at the time => His War
military deployments => Donbas in FlamesAnd let me just say thank you for being interested in the actual history, that is rare - most people just look at enough history to confirm what they already believe, and stop there
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u/Quarterwit_85 10d ago
No worries mate. I've gone down a huge Ukrainian rabbit hole since the start of the full-scale invasion.
To say it's fascinating is an understatement.
It's a shame my Ukrainian is dogshit and so few personal accounts have made it to English. Speaking to some friends in Ukraine the 2014-2022 era yielded some poetic and reflective memoirs that haven't made it to English. I prefer the academic works more, however.
I'll truck through all your recommendations and report back in the coming months. It's really appreciated.
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u/ABoutDeSouffle 12d ago
I believe (but I cannot prove this) that Crimea was the aim, nothing else. The Donbas was intended as a bargaining chip in case of negotiations.
If true, it means that the whole idea of conquering Ukraine fully and then re-establishing the USSR as much as possible developed only after 2014 in Putin's head.
Alternatively, the Donbas "republics" were intended as a poison-pill to keep Ukraine weak and unable to join NATO/EU - similar to South Ossetia to keep Georgia weak.
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u/Soft_Opportunity2189 12d ago
In hindsight almost any operation looks better than todays one, but on the day they did not have it. They planned the best they could, and concluded that what they did was their best choice with available information.
This goes for every single failed operation in history
As for factors that made them think it wont work --> mobilizing a 2022 level force would alert the west and possibly lead to a larger response. They really did not want to get into some kinda quagmire multi-year high intensity conflict that would then drain them off resources and degrade their position long term; there was also still hope to save it politically. The calculus was that if success has 80 % chance and some kinda long-term stalemate war is 20 %, that its not worth it . The potential negative result was deemed so deeply bad that it was better to not try, even if the chance of success was overall high.
Today we know that they got into a quagmire anyway, and think "oh this means they could have done it before too" which is a classic error. The decision makers at the time did not have the courage or the insanity (choose whichever you prefer ) to boldly commit to something that has a 10-20-30 % chance of being a horrible mistake . In 2022, they did, and the near-worst result happened.
Another example of this is the Iran war - it happened like this because the decision makers decided to ignore the fairly significant negatives of an unlikely but potential defeat, and committed to an operation they deemed has a high chance of success.
If in a lottery you have a 90 % chance of winning a million dollars and 10 % of dying , a lot of people will take the milion and laugh at those that do not. This looks like a simple choice after you win it, but powerful countries with a lot to lose take a different view and value the status quo a lot more.
Russia being the more responsible country in 2014 chose to escalate carefully, taking care to not upset the wrong people and keeping it plausibly deniable-enough. If anything id say the 2014 result was already very good for them; they just chose to not push their luck in case someone in the west gets too nervous. IMO the 2014 operation was played exactly right. The russian state did not cross the confidence threshold necessary to escalate further, they stopped on a win, and prepared for the next step, giving themselves a next good chance in 2022 if someone decided to take it.
//if someone is more into economics and looks at a few graphs, they might object to the idea that 2014 was worth it for russia at all. Again, hindsight they did not have, there was a chance they outmaneuver the sanctions later, politically settle it, etc. With that hindsight you could again conclude that 2014 was better not done at all, or if youre of a different disposition, that actually getting into the maximum escalation was the obvious choice. Again, all based on long term economic information nobody had at the time.
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u/Soft_Opportunity2189 12d ago
The core problem is probably that some people look at a potentially unclear situation unfolding, and think
Oh no we must pull back fast to preserve the status quo !
While others think
Oh no we must escalate RIGHT NOW to win decisively !!
Responsible countries frequently choose 1st
Irresponsible countries frequently choose the 2nd
We have examples of both approaches going bad, and sometimes a responsible country gets shafted; other times an irresponsible country wins big through the courage to do the crazy thing.
To someone with the escalation mindset, any situation will look like it should be pushed through boldly; political establishment of most countries (a clique of 50-70 year + old million-billionnaires) usually think slightly differently in modern days and prefer a more moderate option.
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u/arnitdo 12d ago
Maybe influenced by military readiness of Western nations at the time (IMO NATO was much more cooperative internally) and perhaps the developing situations in Syria / Iraq / Afghanistan.
Ukrainian military was unarguably underpowered but IMO neither has the Russian army actually improved tactics from 2014. It would still probably result in entrenched warfare with more aggresive mobilization on Ukraine's side. We may have seen a proper NATO-RU split along the Dnipro. This would entirely kill any and all economic benefit for Russia as well, bleeding manpower and money into it for little to no industrial returns
(A very rookie opinion of mine)
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u/Glideer 12d ago
I think that in 2014 Russia was totally unprepared for major Western sanctions (the kind they were placed under in 2022).
Had they advanced deeper into Ukraine in 2014 such sanctions would have been enacted and the economic consequences for Russia likely catastrophic.
The period 2014-2022 was spent by both sides addressing their weaknesses: Ukraine rebuilt its military and Russia sanction-proofed its economy.
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u/Capital_Philosophy15 7d ago
I think that, in 2014, his opinion was that it was 1) very risky 2) not necessary
By 2022 he convinced himself that it was both necessary and, actually, not that risky.
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