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All the things we got wrong about the invasion of Ukraine [1]

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Date: 2025-04-24

Back when the Ukraine war started I could never get enough information about it. I devoured it. This is despite having followed the last Karabakh war closely before that, and having concluded it’s actually not healthy to watch videos of humans being blown up by drones.

My decision did not hold fully, but I managed to at least hold off from Telegram — the rawest and the most grisly footage appeared there first (probably still does).

Refreshing Twitter madly, or some other site, I eventually got here by clicking some link. This site is not a place I’d naturally visit: I’m both European and not the least leftist. Be that as it may, I stayed because of thoughtful articles from Mark Sumner and various other authors. Despite not sharing politics, we all shared one thing — a desire for Ukraine to win this.

However, pretty early on I stated noticing a lot of wishful thinking on our side. The truth is, UA and RU are quite similar, sharing not just military upbringing, technology and doctrine but also culture and mentality (spare me the nitpicking, I’m East European and I know it all). The best analogy for the war is if USA invaded Canada.

We constantly saw the sides doing similar things through tinted lenses. If we saw UA doing something unorthodox, it was “improvisation genius” and “indomitable spirit”. If RU did the exact same thing it was proof of how badly equipped and organized they were and how their logistics sucked.

Generally we got the economics of war completely wrong. The RU economy didn’t collapse, in fact, it experienced some war-fueled growth accompanied with low unemployment and rising salaries. Not great not being able to import iPhones but far, very far, from collapsing. Also people with rising salaries and plenty of job options never revolt.

Regarding military hardware I remember elaborate articles about how RU was going to run out of stuff, most memorably gun barrels, “within a year” or some such. This was, supposedly, because they didn’t have the tech/knowledge/people to build them any more. I argued back then, and it seems I have (unfortunately) been right, that RU was never going to run out of the cold war hardware this war was being fought with. That they do know how to make it and they would ramp up to do so eventually.

Then there were the crazy expectations from the Summer ‘23 offensive. We got that wrong too. I am not trying to say I foresaw the failure, I did not, or that I would not attack if I were there, but I did argue on many occasions here with people who were saying that if only UA captures this or that hill, it’s only downhill from there til Melitopol. I argued that the terrain is mostly flat and dominant heights barely exist or matter and each tree line is a formidable obstacle, and whenever you conquer one there’s another 200 meters to the south. Unfortunately, that was correct too.

My conclusion was that if an edge were to be had in this war it will come via tech and it will be brief as the other side will copy quickly. If you are the first to invent fiber-optic drones you have two months max to take advantage of that until the other side has them too. Same with just about every innovation.

My suggestion was that the West can not achieve much by sending UA hardware, but can by becoming UA’s R&D powerhouse instead. Unfortunately it does not seem that is what has transpired. UA seems to be innovating on drones in particular much faster than the West, while the West seems content sending UA 70s hardware and artillery shells.

There are other things we got wrong, but it’s late here and my brain wants sleep. Might edit tomorrow if I remember more instances of our wishful thinking.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/24/2318616/-All-the-things-we-got-wrong-about-the-invasion-of-Ukraine?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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