If Russia keeps up its attacks on Ukraine, it will likely take five years for its forces to “grind their way” to a minimum goal of fully capturing just four regions at a loss of up to 1.8 million soldiers, dead and wounded, the new head of the British army has said.
General Sir Roly Walker said in a long war “there are no winners. It is an utter devastation for both sides and lost generations”.
Answering questions at a conference in London, the new Chief of the General Staff said that the war in Ukraine was “not going well for anyone”.
But he warned that Vladimir Putin must fail or else a wider security framework that protects the Euro-Atlantic NATO alliance – the true target of his aggression – would be at risk.
“It has just started in Ukraine, so it must fail in Ukraine otherwise where does it go next?” he told an audience of military personnel, industry officials and other defence experts at the Land Warfare Conference in London, held by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank.
The general was responding to a question on his predictions for how he thought Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine would unfold and when it might end.
“If they carry on as they are, it would probably take the Russians five years to grind their way to their minimum objectives of the four oblasts [regions],” General Walker said.
He was referring to the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. They are all partially under Russian control already following more than two and a half years of fighting and more than half a million casualties.
Setting out the cost of such a goal to Russia, the top commander said: “At the current rate of attrition of dead and wounded, that puts them probably well north of 1.5 million people – casualties – to achieve that with untold billions of [pounds of] lost equipment.”
He continued: “So, the big if is if the Ukrainian armed forces can keep, sustain the defence that they have.”
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As for how the conflict was going, General Walker said: “I think the dilemma… is on the Russian regime. There has got to be more things for Russia to worry about than losing the best part of 1.5 to 1.8 million people for a slice of Ukraine with the way the world is going.”
He dismissed an original ambition that Western allies believe President Putin had, which was to capture the whole of Ukraine with just 160,000 troops within six weeks, as a “wizard scheme”.
“That was the quick war theory, which was put paid to by a scratch force with a little bit of help,” he said, referring to the huge volume of weapons and assistance given to the Ukrainian armed forces by more than 50 countries, including the UK.
“So I think in that sense, it’s hard to see how this is going in Russia’s favour. But maybe their calculus is different to ours,” General Walker said.
The comments came as the army chief warned that his soldiers must be ready in three years to fight a war against an “axis of upheaval” of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
He predicted, win or lose, that Russia will emerge from its invasion of Ukraine “very, very dangerous” and “wanting retribution” against countries like the UK that supported Kyiv.
“The point here is when you think they [the Russians] are down, they will come roaring back to get their vengeance,” he said.