Objectively speaking, Russia is waging a proxy war in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that it is bound to win.

Russia Bound to Win Its Proxy War in Ukraine

By Alexander Golts

It seems that Kiev is much to blame for the Ukrainian crisis in general. At the same time, however, it is a pardonable mistake. After Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized one city after another, the public demanded that Ukrainian leaders take decisive action to try to control the chaos. But in recent decades, leaders everywhere have failed to achieve victory against paramilitary forces that use civilians as human shields.

If the Ukrainian Army attacks the insurgents and inadvertently causes civilian casualties, it will be accused of using excessive force, turning a short-term military victory into a political defeat. In most cases, though, the fear of killing civilians dissuades leaders from carrying out such operations. That was the case with the U.S. Army in Somalia in 1993, and again 10 years later in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has nothing to do with the skill of the troops involved. Ever since World War II, the public's values have changed regarding the acceptable number of casualties in any military conflict.

In the Ukrainian conflict, even if the authorities retake this or that city, the separatists will immediately seize a different one. So, as the Ukrainian Army tightens its hold on Slovyansk, for example, the separatists seize the army recruitment office in Luhansk. And if the authorities manage to put out that fire in Luhansk, the insurgents will pop up somewhere else.

Several of my colleagues were quick to suggest that Moscow was waging a new type of warfare in Ukraine, but from the standpoint of military theory there is nothing new about it. More than 2,000 years ago, Chinese military leader Sun Tzu wrote: "to go to battle 100 times and win 100 victories is a bad strategy. It is far better to conquer a foreign army without a single battle."

Prominent military theorist Yevgeny Messner developed the theory of "war through insurgency." More than half a century ago, he wrote that opposition to the ruling authorities "produces irregular forces — ­ordinary citizens who use unconventional methods to fight the authorities and the army. Within the army itself, it introduces the ideology of desertion, treason and insubordination." Messner adds that ordinary defenses are useless when a country's army is physically surrounded by "irregulars and its own citizens raging with political passions."

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