The Ukrainian strategy to ‘break Putin’s teeth’

How Ukraine is holding on, and may yet defeat the Russians

Russian troops have not taken a single major city in Ukraine. The Ukrainians have killed at least 7 Russian generals, stood their ground, and still hold Kyiv. The Ukrainian air force still flies. For these facts, last week Russian President Vladimir Putin was forced to adjust his broken war plan and appointed a new top commander (whose nickname, the "butcher of Syria," suggests what’s to come).

How? How is it possible that Ukraine, with an economy one-tenth that of Russia’s, is winning on the battlefield against supposedly-superior Russian forces?

They’re breaking Putin’s teeth. That’s the common Ukrainian response when asked what they must do to fight off the Russians. It sounds like a line. It is not. It contains much strategic wisdom. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz suggested the same two centuries ago, that “the aim of warfare is to disarm the enemy.” The Ukrainians are chipping and cracking and de-fanging the Russians, extracting tooth by bloody tooth, until Putin’s forces no longer have the ability to chew up more Ukrainian soil.

The Ukrainians are breaking Putin’s teeth, and they are doing it by beating Russia on the battlefield, fueled by a superior will to fight, and because they’ve become a “single fist” in the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

Ukraine is outfighting Russia. It’s not just the Russian invasion’s mistaken assumption that they could take Kyiv in three days. Russia’s not done something on this scale since the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, so while they’ve got a theory about a military invasion, they do not know what they are doing in practice. It shows.

Even if the Russians have played a strong hand poorly, the Ukrainians have several advantages. Their ground forces are cutting up Russian tanks with shoulder-fired munitions, negating a Russian materiel advantage. Ukrainians know every cranny and nook of their block, their city, their country. The Russians have to ‘ask Siri’ under fire.

Then there’s sleep. Russians have to rest. Sometime, somewhere. They’ll find a nice spot to bed down, or some units may build up bases to operate from for a while. Either way, this human need will become their greatest tactical weakness. The Ukrainians will always find the resting Russians, and target them when their guard is down.

Willpower matters at war. You’ve got to want to break an adversary’s teeth. In 1979, British biologists Richard Dawkins and John Krebs coined the phrase “life-dinner principle” about the unequal selection pressures between predator and prey. They wrote, “The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.” Ukrainians are similarly motivated. They fight for survival, while Russia only fights for some vague vision of a reborn empire. They’re motivated, which is why Ukrainian fighters will always outnumber Russian troops in Ukraine.

Other movements that have been outgunned by formal forces have found strength in perseverance. Gandhi wrote, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will.” And Mao advised, “Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things that are decisive.”

It’s a sentiment Pres. Zelensky would recognize. When asked recently why his country had fought well, he didn’t hesitate with a response. “We united as a nation.” Not just the soldiers on the field, but the “combined heroism of everyone—of the people, of the authorities, of the armed forces. We became a single fist.”

Pivot from that thought to the Russian response. While some polls may show otherwise, the Russians are fracturing, forced to denounce one another Soviet-style, and top talent has fled the country.

Ukraine has one final key advantage. They don’t have to “win” to win. They merely need to not-lose. The burden falls on Russia to advance and hold. The default leans toward Ukraine, an enormous advantage, one that requires shattering a few Russian incisors and molars, something they’ve proven can be achieved with a single Ukrainian fist.