What Does the War in Ukraine Tell Us About Urban Warfare?

by Anthony King

Introduction

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. More than 190,000 Russian troops attacked Ukraine from the north, east and south. The first inter-state war on mainland Europe since the end of the Second World War (1939–1945) had begun. Against all expectations, the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to hold off the initial assault, and the government led by President Volodomyr Zelensky remained in power. In December 2023, the war still rages. The Russian Armed Forces remain in control of most of Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, but they have faced significant losses, with estimates suggesting that approximately 315,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.^{Footnote 1}  Ukraine, despite suffering severe casualties, has exceeded expectations with Western support. It not only repelled the Russian invasion but was also well positioned to mount a counter-offensive. The success of that counter-offensive remains unclear, but the fact that the Ukrainians were even in a position to attack is remarkable. However, it is expected that the war will not be short.

The ongoing Russo–Ukrainian War remains the focus of intense professional and academic analysis. This brutal conflict is proving to be as important for observers as the Boer War (1899–1902) and the Russo–Japanese War (1905) were in the early twentieth century. It is replete with valuable lessons about the character of military operations, illustrating the importance of air power, maritime forces, cyber and electronic capabilities, artillery, armour and training. One of the most striking elements of the Russo–Ukrainian War has been its urbanized character. While there has been significant fighting in the field—for instance, in the hills around Bakhmut and the woods in the Kreminna area—what stands out is that military operations have consistently converged on urban areas, and that is where most of the major and most intense combat has occurred. 

Until now, the war has unfolded in five distinct phases: the invasion and the Battle of Kyiv (24 February to 1 April 2022), the struggle for the Donbas and the south (2 April to 28 August 2022), the first Ukrainian counter-attack (28 August to 11 November 2022), the winter campaign (12 November to 20 May 2022) and the Ukrainian counter-offensive (beginning on 20 May 2023). Each of those phases has been defined by a signature urban battle around which the military campaign has revolved. 

Table 1: The Russo–Ukrainian War: Phases

In the war’s opening phase, the Russians aimed to take Kyiv by a coup de main within the first days and thus precipitate the collapse of the Zelensky government. However, the Russian assault failed and an intense battle ensued around the city of Kyiv in the northern suburbs of Bucha and Irpen, and around Chernikiv and other satellite towns. The Russian forces suffered egregious losses in those engagements and were forced to retreat. The Battle of Kyiv emerged as a decisive point in the war, marking a defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin and thwarting his prime objective of achieving regime change in Ukraine.

Urban fighting continued to shape the course of the Ukraine war in its second phase. Following their defeat around Kyiv, Russian commanders concentrated their forces in the Donbas and the south, and sought to seize Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzia and Kherson. That led to a series of attritional urban fights in the spring and summer of 2022. The battles for Mariupol and Sieverdonetsk were the largest-scale and most intense combat during the second phase of the war, resulting in heavy casualties and the massive destruction of both cities, but there were many other battles, including Rubizhne. On 29 August, Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive, initially targeting Kherson and subsequently focusing on Kharkiv. The operation proved remarkably successful and, notably, it unfolded predominantly in urban areas. As in most cases, Russian forces ceded ground without a significant fight. In September, Russian troops abandoned the towns east of Kkarkiv, including Izyum and Kupyansk. In early November, Russian troops withdrew from Kherson. The re-taking of Kherson, the only regional capital taken by the Russians, marked the end of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. 

As winter set in, both sides faced the challenges of dwindling ammunition supplies and troop numbers, leading to a temporary stalemate as lines solidified. Nevertheless, even in the fourth phase, the war was defined by urban combat. Ukrainian forces focused on seizing Svatove and Kreminna, while the Wagner Group continued its brutal struggle for Bakhmut. That battle persisted until 20 May 2023, when Russian forces finally secured the town. On 4 June 2023, the Ukrainians launched their long-awaited counter-offensive, and the fighting remained intense throughout the summer. They attacked on three axes: to the east around Bakhmut, to the southeast from Velyka Novasilka, and to the south from Orikhiv. The new NATO-trained and -equipped brigades were employed in those operations. However, although the Ukrainian forces fought hard and bravely, and although they re-took some small parcels of terrain, they were unable to penetrate the Surovikin Line. There was some criticism of the Ukrainian forces and their approach: they failed to concentrate their forces and made some errors. Yet the counter-offensive was always going to be very difficult. The Ukrainians lacked air superiority; they were fighting with inexperienced forces; and they did not possess effective division- and corps-level headquarters with a cadre of professional staff officers to orchestrate the operation. The result was a series of small tactical battles, many of which were successful but none of which were decisive. However, even if the Ukrainians had succeeded in breaching Russian defensive lines, the offensive would likely have culminated in a major urban fight, possibly for Tokmak, Melitopol or Mariupol. The success of any counter-offensive would probably have been decided in an urban operation. The very fact that there was no major urban battle is very good evidence that the counter-offensive did not succeed.

Although the Russo–Ukrainian War goes beyond just urban battles, it can be characterized as an urbanized campaign. This raises questions about contemporary land warfare and prompts a re-evaluation of my previous analysis of urban warfare. In my 2021 book, Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century, I argued that urban warfare has become more prevalent in the twenty-first century, largely due to reduced military forces.^{Footnote 2}  Not only does this increase the likelihood of urban combat, but in addition the urban battle has assumed a distinctive anatomy: the inner-urban micro-siege. At the same time, the localized siege has extended outward along political, economic and ethnic networks to recruit supporters across the global urban network, making the urban battle both localized and transnationalized. The question now is whether a similar battlescape is unfolding in Ukraine.^{Footnote 3}

This article is divided into three sections to address these questions. The first section explains why urban warfare has predominated in Ukraine, suggesting that reduced force size has played a more important role than the classic explanations of urbanization and asymmetry. The second section examines the siege-like character of urban battles in the Russo–Ukrainian War. In the third and final section, the article argues that while combat has occurred in small places like Rubizhne, the fighting has reverberated out across a global urban archipelago. Like other recent wars, urban battles in Ukraine have both localized and globalized, holding profound significance for military professionals.

Why Urban?

In the last 25 years, many scholars have identified two central factors contributing to the proliferation of urban warfare: demography and asymmetry. In the past 50 years, the urban population has exploded. In 1960, 0.5 billion out of 3.5 billion people lived in cities. By 2020, the world population had doubled to 7 billion, and 3.5 billion resided in cities or other urban areas.^{Footnote 4}  Since half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, often in desperate conditions, it is inevitable that conflict and war are more likely to take place in urban areas.^{Footnote 5}  At the same time, urban terrain provides would-be insurgents/defenders with the best asymmetric opportunities against advanced state forces, including the challenge of identifying and targeting them in the complex, dense urban environment.^{Footnote 6}  

The dual explanation for the surge in urban insurgency and civil conflicts in the twenty-first century seems to be effective. However, it falls short in clarifying why inter-state wars, like the Russo–Ukrainian War, have become heavily urbanized. At this point, a third variable, which has been overlooked, should be considered: the force size. In the twenty-first century, military forces are much smaller compared to the massive citizen armies of the twentieth century. Western state forces are now about half or a third of their Cold War size, and significantly smaller than during the Second World War. For example, in 1945, the US Army possessed a strength of more than 8 million active duty military personnel (8,267,958 to be exact); in 1991 there were 731,700; and as of 30 September 2023 there were only 453,551.^{Footnote 7}  The forces of the West’s opponents have suffered a similar contraction. The Russian army, at 290,000 in 2020, was approximately 20 percent of the size of the Soviet Army at the end of the Cold War (1.4 million soldiers).^{Footnote 8}  The reduction of forces may appear mundane, but it has fundamentally transformed the geometry of land warfare. In the twentieth century, mass armies were able to, and indeed had to, form large fronts against their equally large opponents. Those fronts often bisected entire countries and even regions, spanning hundreds of miles. Towns and cities punctuated those fronts and were often fought over. However, since the majority of combat power was concentrated in the field, most of the major battles of the twentieth century took place in the countryside, not in the towns. Naturally, the fact that urban areas were smaller in the past increased the likelihood that forces would engage each other in the field.

With the contraction of military forces, that campaign geometry has been inverted since the end of the Cold War. Because of the relatively limited number of troops, small twenty-first century armies cannot hold dense fronts. Consequently, they tend to converge on decisive locations: political centres, critical national infrastructure, economic centres, road and rail networks, bridges and junctions. As these key facilities are typically found in urban areas, forces converge on towns and cities: “battles materialize in urban areas because rail and highways converge in cities, and not in rural locations.”^{Footnote 9}  Needless to say, strategic hubs are important, but even small urban areas become crucial operational objectives because roads and rail networks run through them. To advance a campaign, it is necessary to secure those junctions, and therefore the urban areas they are located in. As military forces have contracted, there has been a notable trend of actively converging on urban areas. Defenders seek to hold key terrain in those urban areas, while the attackers strive to capture them.;

Following the reduction of military forces, we should expect to see increased fighting in and around urban areas. Consequently, whether a theatre is particularly urbanized or not, urban combat is likely to increase, even in inter-state war.

The Russo–Ukrainian War strongly affirms this thesis. Although Ukraine has some major cities, including Kyiv (with a population of 3 million) and Kharkiv (1 million), it is primarily a vast rural country spanning over 600,000 square kilometres. Based on the topography alone, it was not self-evident that urban fighting in Ukraine would predominate. As Rubizhne shows, many of the most intense urban battles have occurred in relatively small settlements rather than in in the larger cities, except for the Battle of Kyiv itself. This might seem strange or anomalous.

Examining the force size helps us understand why the combatants in Ukraine have converged on cities. It is useful here to compare the ongoing war in Ukraine with the Red Army campaign during the Second World War. When the USSR drove the Wehrmacht out of Ukraine in 1943–44, it fielded some 3 million troops, organized into 20 armies. Notably, in 1941, the Wehrmacht had invaded Ukraine with 3 million troops and sought to defend it with about 700,000. At the fourth battle of Kharkov/Belgorod-Kharkov in August 1943, fought over some of the same terrain as the current war, the Red Army deployed 1.2 million troops against a German force of 200,000. The sheer size of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht meant that their forces created a continuous and densely held front from the Black Sea to Russia. During 1943–44, although there was fighting in towns like Kharkiv (or Kharkov as it was then known) and Kyiv, the vast majority of combat forces were in the field on the front, and that led to large-scale battles.

This situation contrasts significantly with the way in which Russian and Ukrainian forces are currently deployed. In February 2022, Russia initially deployed some 190,000 troops—approximately 150,000 combat troops— in about 100 battalion tactical groups (BTG) into Ukraine.^{Footnote 10}  By May, the Russians had deployed 146 BTGs, with 93 actively engaged in Ukraine.^{Footnote 11}  With mobilization and proxy reinforcement following heavy losses, Russia probably (at the time of writing) has about 150,000 to 200,000 combat troops in the theatre. Ukraine initially had an army of about 120,000, and its frontline combat forces were much less numerous. To repel Russia’s initial attack, Ukraine used five spearhead brigades, totalling about 30,000 troops. The counter-offensive of 2023 was conducted by about twelve brigades, perhaps 60,000 troops.^{Footnote 12}  The Ukrainian Army is currently (at the time of writing) about 200,000 strong,^{Footnote 13}  with 500,000 local militia, but only a fraction of them have been engaged in offensive action. While these forces may appear objectively large, they are diminutive by Second World War standards. The Russian Army that invaded Ukraine in 2022 was about 6 percent of the size of the Red Army in Ukraine in 1943–44. Together, the two combatants currently have about 250,000 soldiers on the ground which is only about 7 percent of their total in-theatre forces in the Second World War. Ukrainian and Russian forces are simply not numerous enough to form the fronts which typified the Second World War. Consequently, these smaller forces have been compelled to concentrate on decisive terrain, which is found not on fronts in the fields but in urban areas.

As a direct result of their size, during the first and second phases of the war, Ukrainian forces concentrated on and in urban areas, where critical strategic, operational and tactical objectives were located. This was not the original plan for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Initially, they expected Putin to target the Donbas, so they positioned ten brigades and their best troops in the Joint Forces Operations Area in the east. However, when the invasion unfolded and Russian intentions became clear, several brigades were transferred rapidly to Kyiv.^{Footnote 14}  They defended Kyiv and its environs because it was a critical strategic objective for Putin. Additionally, they held on to Mariupol and Sieverodonetsk for as long as possible to slow the Russians’ advance and attrit their forces. The Ukrainians recognized the operational significance of these cities: the Russians needed to clear the Black Sea coast and had to take Mariupol as an important port. They could not advance further into Luhansk and Donetsk without having secured Sieverodonetsk and its road system. Russian logistics relied on it. As Amos Fox has noted: “Russia, for instance, requires significant railroad exchange points and depots because its logistics network is built on a non-palletized bulk supply distribution system…. At those distribution points, Russian supplies are manually downloaded, sorted, and either repackaged and reloaded for movement to further frontline units, or collected to form field depots.”^{Footnote 15}  Inevitably, Russian and Ukrainian forces both converged on urban areas, turning the war into a series of gruelling sieges.

In my book Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century, drawing on the available evidence from the civil wars and insurgencies of the last two decades, I claimed that fighting had taken and would take place predominantly within urban areas.^{Footnote 16}  It must be acknowledged that, compared to Libya, the Philippines, the Syrian Civil War and the war against ISIS, there has been much more fighting in the field in Ukraine. For instance, Ukrainian and Russian forces struggled intensely in Bakhmut from November 2022 to May 2023, during which time that combat destroyed or damaged much of the town. Yet trench warfare also occurred in the countryside around Bakhmut, with struggles for a series of localized positions and around villages, especially to the north of the town in the winter of 2022–23. Similarly, the battle of Lyman was substantially decided by Russian operations outside the town. While military operations in Ukraine have converged on urban areas, a notable amount of fighting has still taken place in the field. Therefore, an important revision to my argument is required.

There are several reasons why there has been more field combat in Ukraine than in Syria or Iraq. In the Donbas, the war has been fought over small towns of 100,000 or fewer people: Bakhmut has a population of 73,000; Rubizhne 56,000; Sieverodonetsk 100,000; Lysyschank 100,000; and Lyman 20,000. Consequently, although those towns have become important operational objectives with intense close urban fighting inside them, the localized fronts have also often extended into the nearby fields. Because these urban areas are so small, Russian forces have been sufficiently sized to try to envelop them, compromising Ukrainian defences within the towns. The fighting on those mini-fronts outside the towns has certainly been rural. However, that combat has been an adjunct to an urban operation, and the fighting seeks to gain an advantage in terms of the urban objective. By contrast, in Syria and Iraq, fighting typically took place in much larger cities like Aleppo, Raqqa and Mosul. The insurgent forces in those areas were also much smaller. For instance, in Mosul, a city with a population of 1.5 million, ISIS deployed about 6,000 fighters. Defending Mosul from outside the town with such a force was impractical, leading ISIS to concede freedom of movement to the Iraqi Army and fight from within the city itself. 

It must be underscored that, because of the small size of urban areas in the Donbas, and the fact that Russia and Ukraine have fielded more troops than insurgent groups in Syria and Iraq, more field fighting has taken place in Ukraine than I suggested in Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century. But even so, the Russo–Ukrainian War broadly supports the thesis I put forth in my book. As military forces contract, they are gravitating toward urban areas where the key terrain is located. In the Russo–Ukrainian War, the fighting has indeed concentrated on towns and cities, but significant combat has also taken place in the fields surrounding those urban areas.

Localization

Due to their limited troop numbers, the Ukrainian and Russian armies have principally engaged each other in and around urban areas. However, the diminutive size of their forces has also influenced the character of their urban battles. In the twentieth century, manoeuvre was a central principle of land warfare. Armies discovered that the most effective way of achieving military success in the field was to try and manoeuvre against the enemy, disrupt its front line and then attack its flank or rear. This proved difficult for much of the Great War (1914–1918) on the Isonzo and Western fronts, but the invention of tanks in 1917 and the development of new operational and tactical concepts helped armies become proficient at manoeuvre in the field. The Second World War saw significant stasis at certain points, but overall, the war was defined by manoeuvre, not position. Throughout the Cold War, armies still aspired to manoeuvre, as seen with the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the Gulf War (1990–1991). 

The Russo–Ukrainian War has taken on a notably different form. There have been limited opportunities for manoeuvring. The Russians managed to seize Kherson without facing a significant fight, but the Ukrainians executed a very successful counter-offensive, retaking Kherson and a large area around Kharkiv from September to November 2022. Although manoeuvre played a role in those operations, it has been overshadowed elsewhere by positional warfare. In the first phase of the war, the Russian Army tried to take Kyiv by a coup de main operation in February and March involving strategic- and operational-level manoeuvre. They seized Hostomel Airport in a heliborne assault; however, the attack was repulsed, resulting in the failure of manoeuvre. Since then, the Russians have shifted their focus away from manoeuvre warfare, instead engaging in the gradual reduction of Ukrainian urban strongholds, particularly in the Donbas.

Throughout the Russo–Ukrainian War, position, not manoeuvre, has been primary. Consequently, defence has taken precedence. Operating from fortified positions, Ukrainian forces have attrited Russian forces in close battle. They have created kill-boxes outside urban areas, engaging and eliminating enemy forces at a distance through deep ground fires and airstrikes, including highly effective uses of uncrewed air vehicles (UAV). Urban areas have also provided a base for special operations forces raids and counter-attacks. During the first and second phases of the war, special operations forces, equipped with next-generation light anti-tank weapons or Javelin anti-tank missiles mounted on light vehicles, proved to be highly effective in attriting Russian forces as they approached urban areas.^{Footnote 17}  Following the failed coup de main operation, the Russians shifted to a technique—reducing urban strongholds by slow, deliberate operations—reminiscent of their approach during the battles of Grozny in 1994–1995 and 1999–2000. They relied on massive firepower to reduce Ukrainian defences before sending in troops to seize defensive positions.^{Footnote 18} In Mariupol, for example, the Russians destroyed around 90 percent of the city, according to the mayor.^{Footnote 19} Their attrition method was used particularly on Sieverodonetsk in June and July, when they damaged 80 percent of the structures in the town and destroyed much of it.^{Footnote 20} 

The Battle of Rubizhne, fought from 15 March to 12 May 2022, when Russian forces eventually took the town, is now all but forgotten, but it provides a useful example of the character of inner urban micro-siege during this war. It accords almost exactly with the argument in my book. Rubizhne might seem an unlikely place for a major urban battle. Situated on the left bank of the Severi Donets river, less than five kilometres northwest of Sieverodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast, it has had an undistinguished history, apart from housing a Nazi police headquarters in the Second World War. A relatively new town, it was originally founded in 1904 as a railway station and was incorporated as a city in 1934. In 2021, Rubizhne had a population of approximately 56,000. Probably its most distinctive feature was the large high-rises of the Luhansk Medical School on the northwestern edge of the town, while the rest of the town consisted of low-rise residential housing, businesses and facilities.

A Russian soldier’s Google-translated account of the Battle of Rubizhne, “Fighting for Rubizhne: How was it?” was posted on Twitter by @Ich_Bryan.^{Footnote 21}  The soldier described how his mechanized battalion was ambushed by Ukraine artillery fire as it approached the town, resulting in the killing of 200 soldiers. Assuming that the Ukrainians would defend the apartment blocks of the medical school in the north of the town, his battalion attacked those buildings, only to discover that the Ukrainians had fortified themselves into concrete garages in the southeast. He described the intense and desperate fighting to drive the Ukrainians out, leading to the decimation of his battalion in the process. In retaliation, Ukrainian forces launched a counter-attack using tanks to inflict more casualties on the Russian forces. A small Ukrainian force effectively utilized urban terrain to destroy a mechanized brigade and delay the Russian advance; it took the Russians six weeks to take the town. 

The Battle of Bakhmut stands out as the longest and most brutal urban conflict in the Russo–Ukrainian War, demonstrating the brutal attrition of urban warfare. However, it also serves as a useful illustration of why fighting in the field around urban areas has been an important part of the war in Ukraine. This suggests a potential revision to my initial thesis. Bakhmut, an industrial city situated on the Bakhmuta river in eastern Luhansk, is similar in some ways to Sieverodonetsk and Soledar. The eastern side of Bakhmut is a suburban residential area consisting of low-rise homes, while the western part is more densely populated, featuring nine-storey apartment buildings and several large industrial plants, many with basements. Consequently, the town, which is bisected by a river whose bridges were blown up by the Ukrainians, contained some excellent structures for defence. However, Bakhmut sits in a bowl; it is surrounded by hills whose occupation compromised defensive positions in the city. Michael Kofman has even suggested that in Bakhmut, “the key was on the flanks.”^{Footnote 22} 

In May 2022, Russian forces attempted a grand but unsuccessful assault on Bakhmut as part of a larger effort to encircle Ukrainian forces in the Slovyansk Pocket. Failing in that endeavour, they began a serious, more focused limited offensive against Bakhmut in November 2022. Since the M-03 and H-32 highways run through or near the town, from which the E-40 is accessible, it was vital to seize the town in order to advance on Krematorsk and Slovyansk.^{Footnote 23}  It would have been unthinkable for the Russian forces to annex Luhansk Oblast without taking Bakhmut. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces had compelling operational reasons to either seize or defend Bakhmut. The town also assumed a political and symbolic significance in the course of the fighting for both sides. Disagreements within the Ukrainian high command led to debates about whether to hold Bakhmut, with reported advice from the U.S. urging withdrawal to minimize casualties and avoid encirclement. General Syrski argued for Bakhmut’s defence, emphasizing that it was a useful way of attriting enemy forces. Similarly, the Russians believed they could fix and destroy Ukrainian forces there. For Ukraine, the town became a means of inflicting casualties on the Russians, resulting in a favourable exchange rate where Russia lost 4.5 to 7 soldiers for every Ukrainian casualty. In light of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and the Wagner mutiny, the decision to hold Bakhmut and use it as a way of inflicting casualties on the Russians seems to have been sound.

In contrast to the battle of Kyiv, where approximately 3,000 Ukrainian troops, aided by armed civilians and irregulars, successfully repelled about 15,000 Russians, the fighting in Bakhmut saw the convergence of much larger forces. The Ukrainians eventually deployed about five brigades into the town and its environs, totalling about 20,000 troops. The Russians outnumbered them, likely deploying 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers onto the front at any one time. In March, American General Mark Milley claimed that the Wagner Group had deployed 6,000 professionals and 20,000 to 30,000 conscripts. There was heavy and constant fighting inside Bakhmut itself from November 2022 to May 2023. That noted, the substantial size of the forces made it impractical to confine the fighting solely within the town, especially considering its location in the bottom of a valley. As a result, lines extended outward from town, especially to the hills in the north, where there was intense fighting. It was crucial for the Ukrainians to prevent an encirclement of the town. Notably, on 24–25 October, it was reported that the Wagner Group had incurred 55 percent of all its casualties in October when its attacks to the east of the town failed. In December 2022, approximately 1,000 Wagner fighters were killed around Bakhmut.^{Footnote 24} 

While regular Russian troops, including airborne forces, were deployed in Bakhmut, fighting primarily on the flanks of the town, the bulk of the fighting was conducted by the Wagner Group. Indeed, they were guilty of grotesque atrocities, including decapitating Ukrainian soldiers and murdering their own members with hammers. In the course of the battle, the Wagner Group was divided into two separate forces. The first force consisted of its skilled and trained fighters, while the second element comprised conscripted criminals, recruited from Russian prisons. Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s former commander, employed those troops in different ways. The conscripts were employed more or less as cannon fodder, reputedly in human wave attacks. They were not sent forward en masse, but in small, expendable groups. Those bloody advances wore the Ukrainians down and revealed their positions.^{Footnote 25}  Only then would the skilled, trained Wagner fighters be sent forward in deliberate attacks. Those skilled troops developed their tactics during the battle, especially for the fighting inside Bakhmut. They formed themselves into combined arms storm detachments of approximately 50 soldiers, with two assault groups, one fire support group and a reserve. The Russians used large numbers of UAVs to support those attacks, as did the Ukrainians to repel them. The Wagner groups fought both around the flanks of Bakhmut, trying to seize the high ground, and inside the town itself, gradually reducing Ukrainian fortified positions within it. Those attacks were supported by significantly heavy artillery fire: initially 152-mm howitzers, followed by 122-mm or 120-mm mortar fire.^{Footnote 26}  Following those intense bombardments, the Wagner Group mercenaries, sometimes alongside airborne troops, advanced. 

In the town, the Wagner troops relied heavily on massive artillery bombardments to take the east bank of the river in December and January, and then, from February 2023, the western part of the town. From late 2022, the disputes between Prigozhin and Russian generals centred on artillery support, reflecting the Russian reliance on firepower to break down Ukrainian defences. General Surovikin had initially favoured Prigozhin and his Wagner Groups in their assaults on the town, but from February, regular Russian forces were given the priority. Perhaps due to the elevated terrain or the town’s topography, the battle of Bakhmut saw limited involvement of tanks, but both factions deployed numerous infantry fighting vehicles. In May 2023, the Wagner Group and the Russian military declared victory, having secured the town from which the Ukrainians were forced to withdraw. However, the victory came at a high cost, with reported casualties of 20,000 Wagner mercenaries and President Biden claiming 100,000 Russian casualties in Bakhmut.^{Footnote 27}  It is difficult to ascertain the exact total of Russian casualties in the battle, but it was notably high. As demonstrated by the Wagner mutiny in June 2023, the battle put the Russian command structure under intense pressure. 

The Russo–Ukrainian War suggests that because land operations have become urban-centric, the traditional advantages of manoeuvres have given way to the priority of urban defence.^{Footnote 28}  In this way, contemporary warfare is returning to a pattern observed in the early modern period when battles in the field occurred regularly but siege warfare, not open battle, was the dominant and most common form of warfare. Additionally, campaigns were organized around fortresses and fortified cities.^{Footnote 29}  The Russo–Ukrainian War has been shaped by a comparable geometry, with a primary emphasis on position and defence anchored in urban areas.

Globalization

As forces have contracted, they have necessarily converged on key objectives, almost inevitably located in urban areas. In Ukraine, both sides have been compelled to fight for, and in, urban areas, where a series of inner-urban micro-sieges have developed. The combat has localized in and around urban centres. Yet this is by no means the entire story of urban warfare in the twenty-first century, or of the war in Ukraine. 

In the twenty-first century, cities have expanded and become more interconnected and heterogenous. Urban areas have become complex transnational entities. As aptly noted by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, “So extensive have the city’s connections become as a result of the growth of fast communications, global flows, and linkage into national and international institutional life that the city needs theorization as a site of local-global connectivity.”^{Footnote 30}   While cities have historically engaged in trade with one another, contemporary cities are deeply integrated into global networks of finances, services and people. Urban settlements have been drawn into an intensifying transnational nexus of informational connectivity and social interconnections. As a result of these global flows, cities have become ethnically heterogenous. In the twentieth century, cities typically contained a majority population and some minority communities; after all, the first “ghetto” was the Jewish quarter in medieval Venice.^{Footnote 31}  Yet, today, cities do not merely include ethnic minorities; they are often radically diverse.^{Footnote 32}

The modern urban landscape in the twenty-first century may seem a long way from the Russo –Ukrainian War but, in reality, globalization and the rise of transnational urban ethnic connections have been significant features of contemporary conflicts. In the Syrian civil war and the war against ISIS, even as combatants struggled for control of urban areas, they actively sought to engage with diasporas across the world. ISIS provided the most striking example of this process. At the time when ISIS was being defeated in Mosul in 2017, terrorist groups launched a major military operation occurring some 5,000 miles (about 8,000 km) away in the southern Philippines at Marawi on the island of Mindanao. The ISIS-affiliated Abu Sayyaf Group, led by Isnilon Hapilon, and its allied Maute Clan attacked Marawi, seizing important buildings in the centre of the city on 23 May 2017.^{Footnote 33}  In hindsight, the attack was seen as a global counter-strike for ISIS in response to the attacks on Mosul—and the group’s imminent defeat there. Supporters of ISIS sought to unite two urban battles in a global campaign through strategic communications: graffiti in Marawi, photographed and uploaded onto social media, optimistically declared “An Islamic State of the World.”^{Footnote 34} 

During the Russo–Ukrainian War, neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces have initiated military operations in cities located in third countries. Nevertheless, the conflict has reverberated out across a global urban network as evident in the mobilization of political supporters and ethnic diasporas in other cities. Acts of sabotage and several assassinations have occurred in towns and cities not directly involved in the conflict. Since June, there have been a number of attacks on Russia. For instance, Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, was assassinated by a car bomb in Moscow on 5 October, apparently by Ukrainian agents. The U.S. disavowed the attack and reprimanded the Ukrainians for it.^{Footnote 35}  There have also been several attacks on the Russian railway system, including one at Novozybkovo in the Belgorod region.^{Footnote 36}  In an apparent response, the Russians mounted a cyber-attack on the Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway company, on 8 October, disrupting its services. 

In 2023, Ukraine intensified its attacks on Russian cities, with the so-called Russian Resistance Volunteers mounting a series of raids across the border around Bolgorod in May, including the Bryansk Raid in Bolgorod. Most strikingly, the Ukrainians began to target Moscow itself. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, a senior military intelligence officer involved in covert operations against the Russians, has orchestrated many of the attacks. Leaked documents reveal that he had planned an attack on Moscow on the anniversary of the invasion which the CIA denied.^{Footnote 37}  It seems likely that he may have subsequently ordered a UAV strike against the Kremlin on 3 May 2023 which is now widely attributed to Ukraine, even though it has never admitted responsibility. Two Ukrainian UAVs, likely Mugin 5’s, attacked the Kremlin at night, causing minimal physical damage but symbolizing the potential vulnerability of Russian air defences and bringing the war home to Russia. On 29 May, Ukraine mounted its first large-scale UAV attacks on Moscow with about 30 UJ-22 UAVs targeting the city. Most were intercepted, but some exploded in residential neighbourhoods in southeastern Moscow, injuring some residents. With these attacks, Ukrainians are transnationalizing the war, drawing Russian cities into the conflict in retaliation for the bombardment of their towns and cities.

Physical attacks like the Bolgorod raid or the UAV attacks on Moscow have been small and infrequent. However, both Russians and Ukrainians have conducted systematic information campaigns. Amidst the ongoing battles in and for Ukrainian towns and cities, both sides actively strive to address, engage, mobilize and recruit support from the global urban archipelago. Russia and Ukraine have conducted extensive information operations across Europe and worldwide to advance their objectives. The Ukrainian government, armed forces and people have been very successful in these operations. From the very beginning of the war, they have conducted a sophisticated information operation, seeking to generate and sustain Western support. The tweet posted by @Ich_Bryan about the Battle of Rubizhne on 2 May can be seen as part of this transnational strategy. The Ukrainians have been adept at releasing footage highlighting Russian defeats and atrocities, while carefully concealing their own casualties.

Significantly, Ukraine’s strategic communications have primarily targeted Western governments. However, they have also sought to address Western citizens and activate the Ukrainian diaspora across Europe. This approach has effectively linked the war in Ukraine’s cities with cities across the continent. The sanctioning of Roman Abramovich, in London, while the Battle of Kyiv was raging in Ukraine, was an example of these trans-urban interconnections. London has long been a preferred refuge for Russian oligarchs since the fall of the Soviet Union, thanks to lenient financial regulations. Financial regulations in Britain were liberal, even lax, and successive British governments failed to investigate the origins of Russian capital or the political affiliations of Russian plutocrats. Consequently, Russian elites invested in the city, purchased property in London, and, in some cases, moved to the city. In many cases, Russian elites used the City of London to launder criminal money. Although moderate in comparison with some of his peers, Roman Abramovich, who amassed substantial wealth by “buying” a former Russian state oil company, was a close ally of Putin. Putin had also appointed him as the governor of Chukotka in Siberia between 2004 and 2008. In 2003, he bought Chelsea Football Club, investing millions of pounds of his personal wealth into the club. Following the Russian invasion, the British government finally took action against Russian elites in London.^{Footnote 38}  Many assets were frozen; and Abramovich himself was sanctioned. He was forced to sell Chelsea Football Club in March 2022, as the Battle of Kyiv was reaching its conclusion.^{Footnote 39}   

While the Abramovich situation may seem insignificant compared to the conflict in Ukraine, it is intimately connected to the Russo–Ukrainian War and should be viewed as a part of the same conflict. It illustrates the unlikely interconnection between two capitals, Kyiv and London. In the first phase of the war, even while the Ukrainian government was physically defending Kyiv, its Western allies were repulsing Putin’s supporters from their own cities. The processes of military ejection in Ukraine and legal expulsion in Europe were plainly different. Yet they formed part of a transnational defence of Ukraine centred in urban areas in which lucrative urban enclaves in western Europe had finally been fortified against Russian elites. 

Conclusion

The Russo–Ukrainian War is an ongoing conflict that is expected to persist for months, possibly years, and could even descend into an enduring standoff as characterized by the war in the Donbas after 2015. It would be premature and inadvisable to draw any final conclusions from it at this point. However, two years after the invasion of Ukraine, the war is deeply instructive and offers valuable insights. The Russo–Ukrainian War may exemplify the character of land warfare in the twenty-first century. It has involved a leading military power, employing its most sophisticated weapons, against an increasingly capable one, intimately supported by the West. It has become a war between two major state forces. By August 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces had become a sophisticated, very well-equipped state military. The Russo–Ukrainian War therefore provides extensive evidence about the character of inter-state war today. 

The geometry of this war has perhaps been unexpectedly intriguing and surprising. Despite the extensive use of precision weaponry, digital targeting systems, UAVs, cyber and electronic warfare, the war has been defined by a series of attritional battles in and around the town and cities of Ukraine. Those sieges seem more reminiscent of medieval warfare than the visions of autonomous, algorithmic, remote warfare which many had proposed. This is a war fought at glacial and not hypersonic speed.

As urban battles have played a significant role in the Russo–Ukrainian War, the conflict is not primarily defined by rapid, machine-assisted strike and manoeuvre but rather by slow, attritional operations. Ukrainian forces have defended urban strongholds, while Russian forces have attempted to displace them, leading to a series of gruelling urban battles. The literature predicted an increase in urban combat because of the expansion of cities and the asymmetric advantage they offer non-state forces. Despite advanced communication, command, and targeting systems, as well as precise weaponry, battles in urban areas have turned into bitter struggles for territory, with sieges becoming the norm. Surprisingly, high-intensity warfare, as seen in Ukraine, is characterized by slow, grinding, destructive campaigns, challenging the idea of rapid, frictionless, precision strikes and manoeuvre. If Ukraine is any indication, the future of warfare will involve positional urban battle.

The Ukrainian counter-offensive, which began on 4 June 2023, has progressed slowly, with the Ukrainians reclaiming some territory but facing challenges in penetrating Russia’s main defensive lines. It is possible that the Russian forces will collapse again, but it seems less likely than what was previously anticipated. The Russians had months to prepare defensive positions. It is almost certain that Ukrainian forces will have to re-take an urban area from Russian troops determined to hold their positions. In the coming times, Ukrainians will likely have to capture a significant urban target currently held by the Russians—a place like Svatove, Luhansk, Tokmak, Melitopol or Mariupol. Ukrainian commanders will surely have recognized the importance of urban hubs in their defensive systems, especially as they will be confronted with the same operational problem as the Russians have been for the last year. At this point, it will be difficult to reproduce the startling manoeuvre that they executed brilliantly in the autumn of 2022. The tanks the Ukrainian Army is requesting are more likely to be used for breaking down Russian urbanized defences than for the sweeping armoured manoeuvres which typified the twentieth century.

In 2024, the Russo–Ukrainian War is likely to affirm the trajectory and pattern of land warfare it has already demonstrated. The future battles of this war are likely to involve attritional battles for position in and around key towns and cities. Just as in 2022 and 2023, the war is likely to be defined by the siege. This war underscores the idea that despite the remarkable digital technologies with which military forces are now equipped, combat itself has become localized into a series of attritional urban fights, which simultaneously resonate out across a global archipelago. The Russo–Ukrainian War illustrates the dual nature of warfare in the twenty-first century—localized yet globalized. 

About the Author

Anthony King is Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter. His most recent book, Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century, was published by Polity Press in 2021. A second revised edition will be published in 2024. He currently holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship and is writing a book on artificial intelligence and military transformation for Princeton University Press which will be published in 2025.

This article first appeared in the October, 2024 edition of Canadian Army Journal (21-1).