Ukraine - A Case Study in Upstream Capacity Building

As territory, towns and cities captured at great cost are liberated, there are numerous reasons why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is experiencing ongoing struggles. These span the levels of conflict and range from strategic miscalculation and a centralised command structure inherently unable to adapt and react to poorly conceived and executed operational plans to tactical errors. All have contributed to the prolongation of what Vladimir Putin had seemingly planned as a short ‘special military operation’ into the first mass mobilisation of the Russian population since World War II and continued escalation. From the Western perspective there have been lessons to draw from the conflict and the Ukrainian armed forces’ robust defence of their sovereign soil.