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‘Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2022 provided an unwelcome reminder to many
that war has not disappeared as a tool of statecraft, although most in Ukraine
needed no reminding of that fact given that they first experienced Russian invasion
in 2014. The ability of Ukraine to withstand the Russian attack, to inflict heavy
casualties and later to liberate significant parts of their country caught many by
surprise (not least the Russians). This book examines in detail the character and
conduct of the war to date and offers important insight into the nature of modern
war across all warfighting domains. The author explains how Ukraine has managed
to break away from the limitations of old Soviet military culture to develop and
sustain resilient fighting power. This is an important book for anyone who wishes
to understand the current war in Ukraine. It will also be very useful to anyone
interested in the evolution of war today and into the future, the central point about
resilience has relevance far beyond Ukraine.’
Ian Speller, Maynooth University, Ireland

‘Although it might be too early to talk about lessons learned from the war in Ukraine,
this book nonetheless gives us both a framework and content for understanding
why Russia failed in its full-​scale invasion of Ukraine. These are two countries that
share the same Soviet doctrinal past. Still, Ukraine has managed to take advantage
of relevant conceptual lessons from the Soviet doctrine, Western best practices,
and consequent NATO standardisation of the military for the requirements of
modern warfare. Ukraine has learned and adapted. The book is structured in a
manner to encourage learning. It is a must-​read for academics, civilian and military
practitioners who want to improve their understanding of both the war in Ukraine
and warfare in general and the need for building resilience into one’s society and
military as a part of that. This is simply an outstanding and timely book that I highly
recommend.’
Karl Erik Haug, Head of the Department of Modern History and Society,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

‘This book is both a timely and an important assessment of why Russia has failed
to coerce and control Ukraine after its initial aggression in 2014 and subsequent
large-​scale invasion in February 2022. Fedorchak compares the Russian and
Ukrainian military systems and approaches to warfare. She also explains how
robust resilience has evolved to become an inherent characteristic of the Ukrainian
state, military and society. The framework and concept of resilient fighting power
is a key aspect of her analysis. Fedorchak’s comprehensive book is an excellent
early evaluation with many lessons to ponder for NATO and in fact all states
neighbouring Russia.’
Col. (Ret’d) Per Erik Solli, Senior Defence Analyst, Norwegian Institute
of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway
‘The Russian war against the Ukraine has been going on for 8 years and has
gone through several phases. The last being the high-​kinetic war since February
2022. The Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion has filled the world with
admiration as well as brought strong material and vocal support. We have seen the
use of new technology on a massive scale, but have at the same time witnessed an
almost World War I fighting in Donbas. This book by Dr Fedorchak is an analysis
of the experiences from this war. She lands in many interesting conclusions, several
of them actually point in the direction of a return to concepts from the Cold War. It
is for instance seen the return of mass armies combined with what has been called
“fifth generation warfare”. This illustrates the need for a broad as well as deep
understanding of warfare. The book also highlights the need for morale and civilian
resilience, the importance of ingenuity, military use of civilian resources and
international support. The conclusion by Dr Fedorchak is an important contribution
to the state of the art of warfare. It shows that war does not follow singlefile theory
or general expectations. Instead, it calls for more comprehensive studies of the
Russia-​Ukraine war, to be used in future conflicts.’
Fredrik Eriksson, Assistant Professor Military History,
Swedish Defence University, Sweden
THE RUSSIA-​UKRAINE WAR

This book provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-​Ukraine war, using the
concept of resilient fighting power to assess the operational performance of both
sides during the first year of the full-​scale invasion.
The Russian war in Ukraine began in 2014 and continued for eight years, before
the full-​scale invasion of 24 February 2022. It is not a new war, but the intensity of
the warfighting revived many discussions about the conduct of inter-​state warfare,
which has not been seen in Europe for decades. This book does not aim to offer
an exhaustive operational analysis of the war, but rather provides a preliminary
systematic analysis across various domains of warfare using the concept of fighting
power to assess the operational performance of both sides. First, the book discusses
the conceptual component and the post-​ Cold War adaptations of the Soviet
strategic tradition by both the Ukrainian and the Russian Armed Forces. Following
that, it gives an evaluation of the various aspects of warfighting in the land, air,
maritime and cyber domains. Then, the book examines the role of international
allied assistance, sanctions and weapons delivery in strengthening the resilience
of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The book concludes with some comments on the
role of inter-​state warfare in the current strategic environment and future warfare.
This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies,
defence studies, foreign policy, Russian studies and international relations.

Viktoriya Fedorchak is a lecturer in War Studies at the Swedish Defence

University. She is the author of British Air Power (2018) and Understanding
Contemporary Air Power (2020).
Routledge Advances in Defence Studies

Routledge Advances in Defence Studies is a multi-​disciplinary series examining

innovations, disruptions, counter-​culture histories, and unconventional approaches
to understanding contemporary forms, challenges, logics, frameworks, and
technologies of national defence. This is the first series explicitly dedicated to
examining the impact of radical change on national security and the construction
of theoretical and imagined disruptions to existing structures, practices, and
behaviours in the defence community of practice. The purpose of this series is to
establish a first-​class intellectual home for conceptually challenging and empirically
authoritative studies that offer insight, clarity, and sustained focus.
Series editors: Timothy Clack, University of Oxford, UK, and Oliver Lewis
Rebellion Defence and University of Southern California, USA
Advisory Board: Tarak Barkawi London School of Economics, UK; Richard
Barrons Global Strategy Forum, UK; Kari Bingen-​Tytler Center for Strategic and
International Studies, USA; Ori Brafman University of California, Berkeley, USA;
Tom Copinger-​Symes British Army, UK; Karen Gibsen Purdue University, USA;
David Gioe West Point, USA; Robert Johnson Oxford University, UK; Mara Karlin
John Hopkins University, USA; Tony King Warwick University, UK; Benedict Kite,
British Army, UK; Andrew Sharpe Centre for Historical and Conflict Research,
UK; Suzanne Raine Cambridge University, UK.

The Russia-​Ukraine War

Towards Resilient Fighting Power
Viktoriya Fedorchak

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routle​dge.com/​Routle​dge-​Advan​ces-​in-​

Defe​nce-​Stud​ies/​book-​ser​ies/​RAIDS
THE RUSSIA-​UKRAINE
WAR
Towards Resilient Fighting Power

Viktoriya Fedorchak
Designed cover image: © Getty images
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 Viktoriya Fedorchak
The right of Viktoriya Fedorchak to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​39841-​9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​39843-​3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​35164-​1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/​9781003351641
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
 Who we are and where we are going to…
For Ukraine, the land of free people…
For Ukrainian people, with deep roots in Ukrainian soil…
For Ukrainian land, liberated and blooming…
For Ukrainian skies, free and peaceful…
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements xi
Disclaimer xii
List of abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1

1 Analytical framework 4

2 The conceptual component: Soviet strategic thinking and

military doctrine in the post-​Cold War reforms 23

3 Historical context 44

4 Combatants 61

5 The land domain 81

6 The air domain 100

7 The maritime domain 120

8 Information and cyber aspects of the war 138

9 The resilience of the Ukrainian people 159

x Contents

10 International military assistance 174

11 Final considerations: Modern warfare and resilient

fighting power 195

Conclusion 215

Bibliography 218
Index 236
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This was not an easy book to write. Hence, the assistance of people who were there
for me in various ways is of great importance. I am grateful to my Air Operations
Division at the Swedish Defense University, who welcomed me to their community
a year ago. I am exceptionally grateful to Per Hård af Segerstad for the soft landing
and welcoming working environment; Rikard Niva for the numerous conversations
that kept my spirits high; Emil Walter for introducing me to the Swedish air
power; and Daniel Smith for understanding and the important work he does for
the Ukrainian military. Special thanks to the civilian and military leadership of the
university for the warm welcome and supporting me throughout this year.
I am grateful to my editors and publishing team for making this project happen
despite the restrained time frames and challenging circumstances. I would like to
thank the reviewers of my initial book proposal for redirecting my energy in the
right direction.
Most of all, I am grateful to my mother, Fedorchak Olga Semenivna, who was
with me every step of the way.
Dr Viktoriya Fedorchak
DISCLAIMER

Views expressed in this monograph are the author’s alone, and do not represent the
official positions of the Swedish Defence University and the Swedish government.
ABBREVIATIONS

ADP Army Doctrinal Publication Operations

AEW Airborne Early Warning
AI Artificial Intelligence
AJP Allied Joint Doctrine (Allied Joint Operations)
AOR Area of Responsibility
APC Armoured Personnel Carriers
ASW Anti-​Submarine Warfare
ATACMS Army Tactical Missile System
ATO Anti-​Terrorist Operation
ATV All-​Terrain Vehicles
AWACS Airborne Warning & Control System
A2AD Anti-​Access and Area Denial Capabilities
BDA Battle Damage Assessment
BTG Battalion Tactical Group
C2 Command and Control
C3I Command and control, Communications and Intelligence
C4ISR Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4) Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR)
CAR Conflict Armament Research
CAS Close Air Support
CGS Chief of General Staff
CINC Commander in Chief
COIN Counterinsurgency
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
EPF European Peace Facility
FSB Russian Federal Security Service
xiv List of abbreviations

GRU Chief Intelligence Office (abbreviation used both in Ukraine and

Russia)
HARM High-​Speed Anti-​Radiation Missiles
HIMARS High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems
HUMINT Human Intelligence
IDCC International Donor Coordination Centre
IFV Infantry Fighting Vehicles
IFU International Fund for Ukraine
ISR Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
ISTAR Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance
ISW Institute of the Study of War
JCC Joint Coordination Centre
JFO Joint Force Operation
MDI Multidomain Integration
MANPADS Man-​Portable Air-​Defense Systems
MMCM Maritime Mine Counter Measures
MOD Ministry of Defence (UK)
MP Member of Parliament (UK)
NAFO North Atlantic Fellas Organization
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NCO Non-​Commissioned Officer
NEC Network Enabling Capability
NFZ No-​Fly Zones
NGO Non-​Governmental Organisation
NGW New Generation of Warfare
NLAW Next generation Light Anti-​tank Weapon
NSA NATO Standardized Agency
NSDC National Security and Defence Council (of Ukraine)
OSINT Open-​Source Intelligence
PGM Precision-​Guided Munition
PMC Private Military Company
POW Prisoners Of War
PSO Peace Support Operations
RAAM Remote Anti-​Armor Mine
RAF Royal Air Force
RPV Remotely Piloted Vehicle
SAR Search and Rescue
SBU Ukrainian law enforcement
SOF Special Operations Forces
SSSCIP State Service of Special Communications and Information
Protection of Ukraine
TDF Territorial Defence Forces
TOW Tube-​Launched, Optically-​Tracked, Wire-​Guided
UAF Ukrainian Armed Forces
newgenprepdf

List of abbreviations xv

UAV Unmanned Air Vehicle

UDCG Ukraine Defence Contact Group
UkrAF Ukrainian Air Force
UCAV Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle
USAF United States Air Force
USV Unmanned Sea Vehicles
UUV Unmanned Undersea Vehicles
VDV Russian Airborne Forces
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
INTRODUCTION

Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine has lasted for more than nine years. In the perception
of the global audience, the events of the annexation of Crimea, followed by the
more kinetic war of 2014–​2015, are remembered the most. The Minsk Agreements
froze the conflict for wider international audiences, with the common perception of
a ceasefire to be agreed on and implemented. However, the reality was ‘less fire than
ceasefire,’ and the warfighting continued in the East for eight years, culminating
in the full-​scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Living through
historical events has a distinctive effect on societies and how these events are
perceived. Systematic understanding of historical events requires both taking into
account perspectives and assessments during those events (or relatively so) and
analysis of the future scholars that have the advantage of distancing themselves
more from the events, people and the entire preceding eras.
This book is intended to serve several purposes. It explains differences in the
construction of the fighting power of the two sides, paying attention to various units,
force cohesion, different technologies and different developments across domains.
The book shows various factors in sustaining the resilience of the fighting power
in this war, illustrating the ability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) to survive
the first year of the full-​scale invasion and intense warfighting and to recover for
the summer 2023 counteroffensive. This book is aimed as a contribution to further
exploration of this war in its entirety and the phenomena of Ukrainian fighting
power and strategic culture in general. The time frame of the main research is
one year since the full-​scale invasion in 2022. Although the book explores the
fighting power of the two countries, the primary argument is that the UAF managed
to develop and sustain resilient fighting power in support of various operational
objectives and prepare for regaining military momentum in the battlespace in the
summer of 2023 as this book was being finalised.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003351641-1
2 Introduction

The primary analytical tools used in this book are ambitious, since they combine
the traditional military concept of fighting power with the more abstract concept,
and in this case attribute, of resilience. In this regard, the framework of resilient
fighting power allows exploring the sustainment, recovery and reestablishment of
the Ukrainian fighting power during this one year of the full-​scale invasion in its
further preparation for the summer 2023 counteroffensive. Hence, the focus is very
much on the fluidity of recovering the ability to effectively fight once more on the
next even more kinetic stage of the war. The concept of resilient fighting power is
then further explored through the main themes of modern warfare: the trinity of
political will, people and technology, total/​comprehensive defence, mass approach
in structuring armed forces, and interservice and cross-​domain integration. The
aspects of asymmetry, force multiplication, precision and mass barraging are
inherently part of various discussions and explorations of these domains.
This book is structured to encourage consistent learning about fighting power.
Chapter 1 explains the analytical tools used within this book. First, the three
components of fighting power –​ conceptual, physical and moral –​ are explained
using various military doctrines and formal documents. Then, the concept of resilient
fighting power is discussed in detail. The main post-​Cold War developments in
warfare are provided as a wider context for distilling the key themes of modern
warfare, which are later on traced across further chapters.
Chapter 2 is devoted to the conceptual component of the fighting power –​military
doctrines and the thought process behind the structuring of the armed forces and
preparing the personnel for the warfighting. The common Soviet past is explained,
illustrating the different extents of Soviet tradition and doctrine present in the
military thinking in the two countries. The place of military doctrine in the post-​
Cold War military reorganisation is discussed here.
Chapter 3 provides the historical context of the war, paying attention to the
warfighting experiences of the opposing sides during the first eight years of the
war. The chronology of the events is followed through different experiences and
learning points of the UAF and the Russians. This time frame is also explored for the
reinforcements of the two militaries for further full-​scale Russian aggression against
Ukraine. The question of the Russian militarisation of Crimea is addressed here.
Chapter 4 focuses on the people aspect of the physical component of the fighting
power, illustrating the numerous groups of combatants fighting for both sides.
While both sides were characterised by different groups with varied training and
experience, the cohesion of troops differed primarily due to different leadership
approaches in Ukraine and Russia and the extent to which Ukraine had moved
away from the Soviet military culture, while the Russian military remained largely
Soviet in organisational culture and performance.
The next four chapters focus on the four domains of warfare: land, air,
maritime and cyber (plus information warfare), respectively. Although space
capabilities played an enabling role for various capabilities on both sides, their
extent could not be traced to devote an entire chapter to the space domain. The
 Introduction 3

three chapters on the traditional physical domains of warfare are structured as

follows: the main developments in the domain are followed by the primary points
for consideration. Hence, Chapter 5 focuses on the land domain, the complexity
of the warfighting in spring, consolidation of the frontlines, the Ukrainian summer
2022 counteroffensives, the specifics of different approaches to artillery between
two countries, and the consolidation of forces for the next stage of the war.
Chapter 6 explores the air war over Ukraine, illustrating the place of Ukrainian
aviation in defending Ukrainian skies during various stages of 2022. The questions
of degrading Russian mass and technological advantages in the air fleet with the
employment of Ukrainian layered air defences and dispersal and establishment
of mutual air denial on the frontlines are discussed here. Russia’s long-​range
ballistic missile attack campaign against the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure is
also addressed here.
Chapter 7 illustrates the more scarce events in the maritime domain, focusing on
the key highlights in the extent that ground-​based defences effectively undermined
the Russian control of the sea in the studied time frame. The sinking of the Moskva
and the use of USVs are discussed in terms of asymmetry in undermining the
firepower of a more numerically superior enemy.
Chapter 8 is divided into two parts. The first part addresses Russian
disinformation and propaganda, and warfighting in the information environment.
The second part is devoted to the cyber domain of warfare, illustrating the shifts in
Russian cyberattacks.
Chapter 9 is devoted to the resilience of the Ukrainian people. This chapter
illustrates the importance of a national strong rear to support the normal functioning
of society and various aspects of warfighting. The resilience of the Ukrainian
society is discussed together with various sources of innovation and crowdfunding
initiatives of the Ukrainian civil society and individuals.
Chapter 10 outlines the importance of international partners in providing
military assistance to Ukraine and its role in strengthening Ukrainian capabilities.
The chapter starts with a discussion of the No-​Fly Zone over Ukraine which
did not happen. Then, military assistance by various stakeholders is analysed in
terms of correspondence to various developments and consequent demands in the
battlespace.
The final chapter (Chapter 11) provides a wider discussion of the main themes
of modern warfare identified in the first chapter. Furthermore, factors contributing
to the development of the resilient fighting power in this war are considered, taking
into account differences between the two sides across the three components of the
fighting power.
1
ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

This chapter explains the main analytical tools of the book and the main trends and
themes in modern warfare, which will be further discussed in their specifics across
domains and experiences of the war. The analytical framework for this book is
rather distinctive. It is ambitious to combine two concepts: the traditional military
concept of fighting power (including the three traditional components) with a more
abstract and interdisciplinary concept of resilience. Accordingly, the combined
concept of resilient fighting power shifts the focus on the ability of the military
(owner of the fighting power) to bounce back and recover to the point of continuing
fighting, gaining military advantage and progressing in the battlespace to achieve
posed objectives. Since the war is not over and the focus is on the one-​year time
frame, this combined conceptual framework allows focusing on the continuous
process of reviving the fighting power at different stages of this year, exploring
factors contributing to strengthening its resilience.

The concept of fighting power

Traditionally, fighting power consists of three interconnected components:
conceptual, physical and moral. The concept emphasises the importance of
balancing the three components to achieve greater military effectiveness in the
battlespace. From an analytical perspective, this concept provides an opportunity
for systematic analysis of developments in the battlespace and the cause–​effect
relationship between them. It is worth noting that the description of components
given below is a collective reflection combining various takes on the concept in
different doctrines. Hence, some elements of each component might be outlined in
one doctrine, while omitted in others. Similarly, some doctrines include education
as a conceptual component, while others as a physical one. From the analytical

DOI: 10.4324/9781003351641-2
 Analytical framework 5

and practical perspectives, these discrepancies are of little importance because the
essence of the components and fighting power in its entirety remains the same.
British Allied Joint Publication-​3.2: Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations is
used to reflect the most recent formal reflection of the concept.1
I. Conceptual component. This refers to ‘the thought process regarding how
to fight contemporary wars, taking into account new challenges, national specifics,
and scarce resources.’2 This component includes the knowledge and practical
improvements derived from previous operational experiences, distilled best practice,
experimentation and innovation linked to the modern threats and characteristic
features and demands of the operating environment. It should encourage analytical
and critical evaluation of new situations on both the operational and tactical levels.3
While it provides a common ground for understanding the context of the operation,
it also serves as a common basis for innovation, creativity and adaptability to the
specifics of the operating environment.4 This component can be considered as a
bridge between past experiences in warfare revised for the requirements of today’s
practices to improve the outcomes and distil best practice for the future. Like any
thought process, in order to be relevant and timely, the conceptual component
should always be in transition, revised and adjusted to the arising features of a
distinctive operating environment, as well as the overall strategic environment.5
There are various takes on which elements constitute the conceptual component.
As a result, different editions and various service and environmental doctrines tend
to emphasise different elements and that emphasis is often conditioned by various
factors of organisational culture and dominance of one approach over another at
a given time. According to earlier doctrines, the conceptual component consists
of the principles of war, doctrine, conceptual innovation, and understanding of
context and conflict.6 In more recent army doctrine, a more holistic approach
has been taken, identifying doctrine and adaptation as the main elements of the
conceptual component.7 In essence, the wider elements, such as the principles of
war, understanding of context and conflict are envisaged to be already part of the
text of the doctrines –​that is, doctrinal concepts just as those in the taught courses
in military education. Hence, the essence of the conceptual component does not
diverge significantly in different doctrines.
The principles of war are lessons on warfighting acquired from factors of
warfare. They are universal for any domain of warfare and illustrate the enduring
nature of warfare despite its changing character due to technological advancement.
On the other hand, military doctrine includes ‘fundamental principles by which
military forces guide their actions in support of objectives.’8 Unlike the principles
of war, doctrines tend to be more specific for a given domain of warfare (e.g.,
environmental doctrines), perceptions of contemporary threats and the technologies
available for managing those threats. Hence, doctrines are often conditioned by
national strategic traditions, the organisational culture of the armed forces and their
technological advancement. Traditionally, doctrines aim to teach how to think rather
than what to think and should provide common ground for further innovation.
6 Analytical framework

Conceptual innovation or adaptation is an inevitable part of the conceptual

component and the thought process in general because the operating environment
is never inert. Adversaries and enemies learn and adjust their tactics and consequent
behaviour in the battlespace. Adaptation of planning and innovation in actions
in response to those changes improve military effectiveness in the battlespace
and often save soldiers’ lives. From an organisational perspective, conceptual
innovation is also a driving force for organisational renovation and adaptation to
the new requirements of the time –​that is, national political and external strategic
environments. One more element that different doctrines move between conceptual
and physical components is military education. In recent editions of doctrine, it is
attributed to the conceptual component. Military education is ‘aimed at improving
individuals’ knowledge and skills to strengthen their adaptability, improvisation,
and critical and innovative thinking.’9 Military education provides the common
ground embodied in doctrines and best practices allowing for further critical
thinking on innovation and adaptability. Moreover, the common tradition in the
conceptual component allows for improvement of interoperability between allied
nations across services and domains of warfare.
II. Physical component. This refers to the more tangible physical means of
fighting. It includes five main elements: personnel, equipment, training, readiness
and sustainment (maintenance).10 In other words, armed forces must have the right
number of people with the right skills and mindset, sufficient equipment to do the
task, and continuous supply of provision, spare parts and servicing for the operating
platforms and equipment in order ‘to achieve the necessary level of readiness and
consequent enduring quality of performance in the battlespace.’11 Personnel is a
key element in the physical component because warfare remains a human activity.
Motivated, skilled and trained people fighting across domains are the ones who
make operational art happen. When they lack the skills and motivation to fight,
even the availability of the most advanced technologies will not compensate for
the shortfalls of poor personnel and poor morale. Hence, investment in developing
the most up-​to-​date and advanced skill set for the requirements of modern warfare
is paramount for effective operational performance. In this regard, striking a
balance between numbers of personnel, their readiness and adaptability to the
unpredictability of warfare is particularly important.
Equipment is another element of the physical component and factors of military
success. Although equipment is a tangible variable that can easily be quantified
and, at first glance, considered sufficient based on mere numbers, the real practical
value of equipment depends on situational requirements. In other words, armed
forces require functional, effective and well-​maintained equipment corresponding
to the necessities of fighting a specific enemy or adversary within a given operating
environment. Moreover, equipment that does not match the requirements of the
operating environment would make little or no contribution to the establishment of
combat power and the achievement of posed military objectives. Furthermore, like
any other element of the physical component, sufficient quantity of equipment based
 Analytical framework 7

on the demands of the operating environment is of utmost importance. It is also worth

mentioning that the effect of firepower or fulfilment of any other operational role can
depend on the combination of equipment and platforms across domains. For instance,
a smaller quantity of aerial capabilities can be overcome by more profound presence
of ground-​based defence for the country that counters invasion. On the other hand,
the long-​term effectiveness of this symbiosis would depend on the intensity of enemy
attacks and the further strengthening of ground-​based air defences (GBAD). Hence,
when equipment is discussed, more attention should be paid to evaluating the specific
demands of the operating environment.
While military education shapes the mind, military training combines all three
components of fighting power and applies them to practice. Training is essential
not only for improving one’s ability to operate complex equipment in various
operating scenarios but to drill it to the point when it becomes instinctive, while
the mind can consider adaptation when the unpredictable circumstances of the
operating environment demand it. Moreover, training is essential for establishing
and improving jointness across services and interoperability across allied nations.
A common approach to training and similarity of equipment allow strengthening
of Allied interoperability and, as the case of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has
shown, was a prerequisite for equipment transfer and consequent employment in
the battlespace.
In addressing readiness, AJP-​3.2 discusses this element in a systematic and
well-​rounded manner:

The physical component of fighting power must be sufficiently responsive to the

operating environment to achieve their mission. Troop-​contributing nations are
responsible for providing trained, equipped and certified forces at appropriate
readiness to meet the minimum military requirements. Readiness includes
all components of fighting power: the physical readiness of the force; their
conceptual readiness; and a strong moral component, ready in time to complete
their operational task.12

Readiness cannot be taken for granted. It might be unrealistic to be prepared for all
possible case-​scenarios, but the characteristic features of the strategic environment
and the adversary or enemy that the country faces tend to suggest some of the more
likely scenarios. A balanced approach to the structuring, training and positioning
of armed forces tends to provide more opportunities for flexible responses and
adjustments to the demands of the operating environment.
One of the less glossy elements of the physical component, but not less
significant, is sustainment, which is the systematic support of military activities
from maintenance of equipment, logistics, medical services, provision of necessary
supplies and services to the personnel to financing and continued budgetary
commitments. No matter how advanced and capable technologies and well-​trained
personnel might be, logistics and the stability of supply chains remain crucial in
8 Analytical framework

supporting combat power in a given operation. As history and contemporaneity

illustrate, hopes for a blitzkrieg do not transfer into the reality of sustaining the
momentum without well thought-​out and continuous logistics. Wars of attrition
tend to kill the momentum of surprise and intensity that invading forces count
upon, not to forget that fighting in home territory often favours the defender.
III. Moral component. This is about the human aspect of warfighting and the
ability to motivate armed forces to fight and perform in the battlespace appropriately.
It includes morale, leadership, ethical foundations and ethos. Morale is the
individual or group commitment, conviction and discipline to fulfil an assigned task
at a particular time. This is an essential element, because high morale can overcome
shortfalls in other aspects of warfighting. High morale rests upon a strong fighting
spirit, shared identity (moral cohesion), discipline, pride, comradeship, confidence,
trust in one’s weapons and equipment and spiritual foundation (belief in the cause).13
War remains a bloody and violent activity, and psychological pressure, fear and
doubts are an inevitable part of warfighting. Numbers of people and equipment are
important, but high morale can often be the main difference between those who stay
in the battlespace and fight until the end, and those who flee because their spiritual
foundation –​the cause of war –​is illegitimate and there is no moral cohesion but
only fear and survival instinct. Hence, the side that defends their homeland against
invaders tends to stand strong with high morale, because they are defending their
land, families and identity against invaders.
Army doctrine defines leadership as ‘a combination of character, knowledge,
and action that inspires others to succeed.’14 Warfare brings people into basic
relationships, where trust and reliance on a comrade in arms are often conditioned
by common experiences of fighting war and discipline. A strong leader who takes
responsibility for his/​her men and women and is not afraid to act, who leads by
example instead of hiding behind subordinates’ backs, inspires people to follow. As
important as discipline and chain of command are, exemplary leadership makes a
huge difference for people on the ground and across the entire chain of command.
Sustaining leadership across all ranks and organisational structures is essential for
effective force employment, because leaders are responsible for taking care of their
subordinates and inspiring them to go the extra mile or survive in the most severe
circumstances.
Ethical, moral and legal foundations and ethos should be at the heart of
military operations and performance in the battlespace. Although warfare is messy,
bloody and violent, there are still certain rules in warfare and an internationally
recognised legal framework to limit use of force: one that distinguishes between
combatants and non-​combatants in the conflict. The entire moral component
depends on the forces’ belief in the ethical and moral causes of war and the manner
of its conduct. In this regard, ethos is the

collection of values and beliefs that guides the application of force and conduct of
operations –​and helps ensure the legitimacy of those operations and campaign.
 Analytical framework 9

This includes belief in the justness of the cause and the ability to maintain the
support of nations.15

Just as a strong ethos can help overcome the horrendous reality of war, lack of
moral and ethical grounds for using violence can undermine forces’ will to fight or
subdue to fear, thus increasing the likelihood of desertion.
A strong moral component is essential for cohesion of the fighting force. Lack
of common beliefs, motives and comradeship combined with poor discipline and
absence of interoperability and jointness between various units can also result in
reviving internal disputes between units during warfare, which undermines their
military relevance and does the job for the opposing side. Similarly, if the invading
side is motivated by looting, then the likelihood of internal fighting for the looted
goods is very high, if not guaranteed. Consequently, ‘if military actions contradict
or are perceived as contradicting these foundations, the legitimacy of the campaign
might be undermined, jeopardising the overall achievement of the political
objectives posed.’16 This consideration equally applies to legitimate campaigns and
those that use fake excuses for revisionist expansionist invasions.
In its turn, fighting power is assessed by combat effectiveness:

the ability of a unit or formation, or equipment to perform assigned missions or

functions. Note: this should consider leadership, personnel strength, the state or
repair of the equipment, logistics, training and morale and may be expressed as
a percentage.17

The aforementioned description of the three components thus illustrates that while
the physical components can be easily evaluated quantitatively, the conceptual
and moral components are more qualitative and require a qualitative approach
to analysis. Assessment of the three components of fighting power also involves
collective performance, which refers to a high degree of unity, trust and proficiency
achieved by units or headquarters that have trained or operated together. Partners
and contractor units can be effectively integrated into the force through training,
optimising collective performance.18
This concept of fighting power was chosen as the primary analytical framework
for this research for a few reasons. First, it provides the needed flexibility in
addressing various aspects of the preparation and consequent performance of
armed forces of the two countries in a theoretically sequential order. The conceptual
component allows investigation of the thought process behind military education
and the consequent building of the strategy and operational performance of the
belligerents. The physical component allows assessment of the capabilities of both
countries in a systematic and detailed manner, taking into consideration modern
trends in military equipment and personnel training. The relevance of the moral
component cannot be overestimated in this war, because it provides a tool to
explore the heroic war of the Ukrainian people under the most disadvantageous
10 Analytical framework

conditions of full-​scale invasion and the decreasing will to fight among the Russian
combatants, their poor morale and consequent performance in battlespace.

The wider concept of resilience and resilient fighting power

Resilience is a widely used term in various disciplines and practices. The term
generally refers to ‘an ability to withstand and quickly recover from a difficult
situation. This comes hand-​in-​hand with the idea of “bouncing back”, returning to
“normal”, and picking up where we left off before whatever difficulty or challenge
we experienced.’19
In psychology, it is defined as ‘the process and outcome of successfully
adapting to challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional,
and behavioural flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.’20 In
other disciplines, it can refer to the political, societal or economic withstanding of
various challenges. In environmental studies, ecological resilience is often used
as a synonym for ecological robustness, referring to ‘the ability of a system to
continue functioning amid and recover from a disturbance.’21
Even in the security and strategic studies and military fields, there are varied
approaches to its definition and application area. In military psychology, ‘military
resilience can be defined as the capacity to overcome the negative effects of setbacks
and associated stress on military performance and combat effectiveness.’22 From
the perspective of national security, resilience is approached as a system of tools
‘to understand our vulnerabilities, pre-​empt challenges before they arise, ensure
we are prepared for them, and mitigate the impacts. Then, when events occur,
we should be ready to withstand and recover.’23 In the context of fighting power
and its doctrine reflection, resilience is referred to as one of the aspects of either
flexibility or agility, depending on which doctrine is discussed.24 Hence, British
Army doctrine defines it as ‘the degree to which people and their equipment remain
effective under arduous conditions or in the face of hostile action.’25
As these definitions illustrate, different aspects are emphasised, and there are
numerous contexts in which an individual, system or organisation recovers from
the disadvantageous effect of a disruption. While the military doctrine stresses
the degree of effectiveness of the physical component, most of the definitions and
approaches to resilience are related to the process of recovery and regaining the
preliminary condition. The application of the term ‘resilience’ to the fighting power
per se is aimed to explore the continuity of the fighting power in this war, that
is, to explore which of the two fighting sides demonstrated resilience in fighting
power, how it was achieved and how it was sustained at various stages of this one
year of the full-​scale invasion within the nine years of the actual war. This term
allows the focus to be on various fluid elements of the fighting power that were
changing during this year of the war and contributed to the strengthening of the
resilience of the fighting power and to Ukrainian national resilience in support
of the UAF. One might assume that the ‘flexibility’ principle of war would have
 Analytical framework 11

provided even more opportunities for analysis but it would have shifted attention
to too many attributes/​composing elements within flexibility, such as versatility,
responsiveness, resilience and adaptability of the whole force.26
Using the concept of resilience as a process allows for an examination of the
constant sustainment, recovery, and rebuilding of Ukrainian military capabilities
in achieving various objectives at different stages of this year of war. The focal
point is the return to effective fighting because resilient fighting power becomes
the prerequisite to various operational achievements in the war. Hence, the focus
is very much on the fluidity of bouncing back to the ability to fight again and even
more effectively. In other words, the point for recovery is the effective employment
of the fighting power, just as it is stated in the military doctrine, but the focus is on
the process and continuity of the transformation of the fighting power in this war.
The concept of resilience also allows a look into the context of the establishment
of the fighting powers of the two countries prior to the full-​scale invasion and
the factors defining the state of affairs. As an umbrella term, it also allows an
exploration of the significance of a strong rear –​national and international –​support
in sustaining the physical and moral components of the fighting power. In essence,
this book illustrates various aspects and contributing factors to establishing and
sustaining effective fighting power in this war. The following themes of modern
warfare provide additional layers for exploration of this topic.

Key trends/​themes in modern warfare

This section explores different trends and themes that can be traced in a variety
of discussions on modern warfare. Some trends and themes are traced in domain
chapters and culminate in the discussions in the last chapter. Other aspects are
aimed at determining the place of the current war within the thinking on modern
warfare in the post-​Cold War era.
It became evident in the first few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union that
the peace dividend did not pay off. More wars and conflicts were to characterise the
post-​Cold War world, and due to the wider experiences with the counterinsurgency
(COIN) operations, the focus on Western military experience and practice shifted
to out-​of-​area operations and wars of choice. The immediate implications of this
were shorter military involvements, more intensive but shortened kinetic stages of
the wars and wider opportunities for the national governments of the Alliance or
partner nations to decide the time at which to shift from the more kinetic to a more
humanitarian side of the operations or when to pull their troops and assets out of
the conflict. This reality of fast achievements and intensive but short-​term kinetic
stages was reflected in the military industry operating on the contractual basis of
peacetime realities, which would often be illustrated in stockpiles of some arsenals
running low due to involvement in high-​intensity tasks.27
Cutting-​edge technologies inevitably resulted in an increased tempo of warfare,
with various implications on the significance of tactical-​level decision-​making
12 Analytical framework

and impact of these decisions on the conduct of operations. Greater attention to

war as one of the flashy news topics significantly increased at this time, adding
new challenges in conducting operations under greater public and international
scrutiny.28 While discussions surrounded the significance of one military power
and domain of warfare over another on various occasions, COIN and Russian
invasions in Georgia and Ukraine in 2014 illustrated the importance of the ground
element combined with other domains. Nevertheless, the increased speed and
tempo of warfare and new technologies dictated the need for greater multidomain
integration (MDI) following the system-​of-​systems approach and interoperability
on national and international levels.
While the peace dividend of the 1990s and the use of COIN in the following two
decades revealed scepticism regarding the likelihood of inter-​state warfare, even
in principle, the shift in the strategic environment towards the revival of the peer
and near-​peer conventional inter-​state conflict raised some traditional questions
regarding the mass approach to structuring one’s national armed forces and
generated discussions of asymmetry between a more technologically advanced or
mass-​focused adversary. In this regard, the focus began shifting to the importance
of the littoral manoeuvre and amphibious warfare in the Indo-​Pacific Area of
Responsibility (AOR). Despite this relatively new shift and focus on inter-​state
warfare, the land-​centric war witnessed in Ukraine since the full-​scale invasion was
not the most anticipated type of inter-​state war nor was it discussed in international
expert circles before 24 February 2022. Hence, this war illustrated many shifts in
the modern understanding of inter-​state warfare and warfare in general. While new
operational experiences might refute some expectations about modern and future
warfare, there are enduring trends that prevail.
In his book, published in early 2022, Mick Ryan identified trends in seven
segments of conflict in the twenty-​first century that he considered were likely to
trigger the most significant changes in the character of war in the future29:

1 The factor of time is appreciated in a new manner. The spread of more cutting-​
edge technologies, the increased speed of planning, demands for fast decision-​
making AI-​enabled technologies across the entire spectrum of capabilities,
and the spillovers of competition into the information space require military
organisations and institutions to employ time more effectively to improve
decision-​making.
2 The battle of signatures. Since each item of military equipment possesses a
distinctive signature within the visual, aural or electromagnetic spectrum, and
distinctive patterns of operations also characterise military organisations, future
warfare should emphasise minimising one’s own military signatures using
recorded signatures to deceive the adversary and taking advantage of identifying
adversary’s signatures across different domains of warfare.
3 New forms of mass refer to balancing military equipment, taking advantage
of both cutting-​edge technologies and less expensive means to establish the
 Analytical framework 13

required mass. The focus is on combining manned and unmanned capabilities

to achieve a force multiplication effect: ‘large and expensive systems may well
still be needed, but they must be procured in fewer numbers and balanced with
large numbers of small networked, and inexpensive systems.’30
4 More integrated thinking and action mean that future military organisations
should be able to operate simultaneously across all domains.
5 The trend of human–​machine integration stresses the use of AI and autonomous
technologies not only as a means across the full spectrum of development of the
modern and competitive fighting power but also as a way of making them ‘full
partners with human beings in the conduct of military missions.’31
6 There is a gradual shift towards competition for influence, meaning the ability to
sustain support for one’s actions at home and internationally. It is also a matter
of being able to sustain it over time.
7 Greater sovereign resilience refers to ensuring that national logistics and supply
chains are sustainable and protected from the adversary’s control and disruption
attempts.

While Mick Ryan focused on the future United States–​China competition in

his book, many of his identified trends can be traced in the full-​scale segment of
the Russia–​Ukraine war within the year studied in this book. Some of the themes
discussed in this book align with Mick Ryan’s main trends, while a few additional
themes are identified. Many of the trends/​themes are entwined or are conditioned
by the same factor of causality.

People, technologies and political will

This triangle is one of the most traditional reflections of various elements of warfare
and the consequent components of its success. Very seldom can the gains in one
segment completely compensate for the shortfalls in two others. Hence, a balance in
the presence of all three elements is required. Looking at the history of warfare and
the contemporary advancement of cutting-​edge technologies, it might be tempting
to say that warfare has become more technology-​centred and dependent. However,
technologies in essence became more sophisticated and overarching across more than
one domain of operation and consequent effect rather than becoming the core element
in warfare. In other words, Colin Gray’s argument of the enduring nature of war versus
its changing character remains valid today just as it was when wars were fought with
less sophisticated weapons than today. Technologies develop together with human
civilisation, and their sophistication requires more time and effort in their production
and maintenance and the training of skilled personnel. However, most technologies
remain in people’s hands no matter the distance or extent of control. Warfare is still a
human activity. The war in Ukraine illustrated this in more than one way.
People are the ones who execute the act of war with the technological means
they are given for the objectives posed by their political and, by extension, military
14 Analytical framework

leadership. As they are central to the process of warfighting, people are the face
of war, they either make it more humane or dehumanise it depending on their
behaviour in the battlespace. They are the final users of the weapons that are
available in warfare. People are the ones who often compensate for technological
shortfalls and malfunctioning, they adapt to the constantly changing circumstances
of the operating environment and the unpredictability of the fog of war. Despite
multiple discussions of moving people out of the loop and limiting their
participation in warfare, the war in Ukraine showed the continuation of full-​scale
cross-​domain warfare with people remaining in the centre of it, while provision of
cutting-​edge technologies allowed even more of the human spirit to manifest along
with the will to fight to defend their homeland. The symbiosis of the cutting-​edge
technologies and people who were taught to fight with what they had –​ outdated
Soviet technologies –​illustrated not only that advanced technologies require more
training and time for training but also that motivation to fight for the survival of
one’s nation can result in less time-​consuming and targeted learning of how to use
those technologies. One example discussed later is the acquisition of Ukrainian
artillery brigade training for the use of Polish Krab artillery pieces and their
consequent use in the battlespace.
Political will, environment and leadership are crucial to enable the effectiveness
of the other two elements. Supportive political will and leadership can stimulate
further successful developments in the battlespace, while the wrong objectives
and micromanagement can impede progress of the armed forces even if they were
initially characterised by numerical and technological advantages. Although the
term ‘mission command’ is primarily applicable to military command and control,
the idea of decentralised execution can be extended to the civil and political
spheres, which in their turn would affect civil–​military relations during various
stages of war. Further chapters will show various manifestations of the mission
command and comprehensive approach in this war. Inevitably, political will,
leadership and national environment are linked to public opinion and support,
illustrated in patriotic public and media campaigns supporting the UAF and the
fight against invaders and the Russian propaganda to preserve support for their
aggressive war in Ukraine. Hence, media or information warfare of narratives was
one of the segments of this war, which showed both the extent of the power of
narratives in the information sphere and varying degrees of its impact closer to the
ground and Eastern Europe.

The theme of total/​comprehensive defence

The concept of total defence dates back to the experience of World War II, which
showed that warfighting could not be contained only within the military sphere;
its devastating effects influenced civilian lives in many ways. In essence, total war
means that the entire society is engaged in various roles to support the warfighting
and to sustain the country and its military through the war. This also means that
 Analytical framework 15

previously peacetime arrangements and business conduct must be adjusted to

the wartime requirements. As an extension of the total war, total defence means
mobilising civilian and military assets to support the national defence.32
The conventional thinking on the topic of total defence was developed during
the Cold War, which, in essence, continued to have the imprint of the threat of total
war. Accordingly, the two primary pillars of total defence were civilian and military
ones. However, in the post-​Cold War environment, the changes in the perceptions
of threats, the peace dividend and the consequent perceived unlikelihood of total
warfare resulted in reshaping the concept into a comprehensive defence. NATO
defined comprehensive defence as ‘an official Government strategy, which
encompasses a whole-​of-​society approach to protecting the nation against potential
threats.’33 In this regard, the change from the total defence is in refocusing on the
whole-​of-​society and the-​whole-​of government approaches. In the Allied context,
total and comprehensive defence is related to the collective defence, as national
resilience contributes to the Allied collective defence. After the Russian annexation
of Crimea in 2014, at the NATO Warsaw summit in 2016, Allied nations agreed on
enhancing national resilience with the aim of achieving seven baseline requirements
for civil preparedness:

• ‘assured continuity of government and critical government services;

• resilient energy supplies;
• ability to deal effectively with uncontrolled movement of people;
• resilient food and water resources;
• ability to deal with mass casualties;
• resilient civil communications systems;
• resilient civil transportation systems.’34

The Allied context illustrates the enduring connection between national societal
resilience and continued functionality of the society and country in general and the
ability to project power and use military force in warfighting. Whether the military
engagement is in out-​of-​area operations or in homeland defence, preparedness,
resilience and adaptability of the society serve as wider support and pillars of the
national defence.
Either version of the concept is essential under the condition of protracted
warfare, in which the primary focus is on continuous sustaining of the national
society and providing support to the fighting force through different stages of
intensification of the warfighting and varied degrees of threats to the civilian
population, infrastructure and normal functioning of the society across different
spheres. Various segments of cross-​agency or intersociety collaboration can be
preliminarily defined and put distinctive contingency planning in place. However,
industries tend to be one of the crucial elements of reorientation from peace to
wartime. War places significant pressure on restricting various productions, with
some requiring more time and resources than high-​intensity warfare realities allow.
16 Analytical framework

Hence, it is often crucial to have industry reorientation planning in place during

peacetime to achieve effective functionality during war.35

The theme of mass and structuring of the Armed Forces

This theme is not new, and as one of the distilled principles of warfare, has been
present in most of the classical strategic thinking from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, with
further reflections in the modern doctrines. In traditional strategic thinking, the
principle of mass can be referred to as ‘the concentration of people and capabilities
at a given place and time.’36 Neither Sun Tzu nor Clausewitz were convinced that
numeric superiority could guarantee victory with mass as only one of the influential
factors, and Sun Tzu was more in favour of manoeuvre and flexibility in force
employment.
The principle of mass has been reconsidered in the post-​Cold War Western
doctrines and approaches to structuring national armed forces. The initial focus on
total numeric superiority shifted towards attaining artificial mass through layering
and massing effects by using cutting-​edge technologies for force multiplication.37
In the Allied context, the mass is to be attained through the Allied joint integration:

The UK maintains highly credible air power but cannot provide the full breadth
of air power capabilities and enablers to generate, coordinate and sustain the
mass required to conduct high-​intensity operations alone. For that reason, we
must always be innovative in our development and application of air power, and
the way we integrate it across all operational domains and with our international
allies and partners.38

This example of doctrine illustrates the significant change in the perception and
consequent development and employment of mass in the last three decades. While
the Cold War illustrated greater focus on the numeric superiority between peer
adversaries across domains, platforms and technological specifications, the post-​
Cold War environment was characterised by a reduction in the numbers of the
armed forces and a belief in the peace dividend. Hence, the concept of the mass
approach shifted from pure numeric superiority to a focus on a few more capable
and higher-​quality assets. Therefore, cutting-​edge technologies with precision,
long-​range and system-​ of-​
system potential allowed the achievement of force
multiplication or what can be called artificial mass. In this regard, the emphasis
was on improvements of the command and control (C2), lethality, achievement
of information and technological superiority.39 This change has had an immediate
effect on structuring armed forces worldwide, focusing on reducing the numbers,
and procuring fewer but more technologically advanced and multirole platforms
within the traditional cycles of modernisation and changes of the platforms and
equipment.40 This also meant that the costs of cutting-​edge technologies would be
constantly increasing questioning the cost-​efficiency of various projects.41
 Analytical framework 17

With the revival of peer and near-​peer conflicts, the question of mass shifted
to discussing how warfighting would unravel among countries with different
approaches to the mass. In other words, further conceptualisation aimed at
exploring how the side with advanced technologies would face an adversary with
more numeric capabilities but a relatively lower technological edge. For instance,
David Alman and Heather Venable argued that the United States Air Force (USAF)
gained an advantage through cutting-​edge technologies combined with surprise
and rapid results in the earliest stages of the conflict. However, once an adversary
reinforces its capabilities with the additional technological edge of relatively
similar technological characteristics, this would result in a war of attrition, which
inevitably requires more of the traditional mass to sustain more prolonged inter-​
state wars.42
As a result of the revival of peer conflict discussions, the question of
reconceptualization of mass in the context of the U.S. offset strategies became
paramount. Lt. Gen. (Ret.) David Deptula and Maj. (Ret.) Heather Penney
discussed the importance of quality, quantity, diversity, adaptation and speed
when decisions on force design to match the requirements of the modern strategic
environment are made. Quality refers to the cutting-​edge technologies inherent to
the Western tradition of structuring its military; however, with the increasing tempo
of adversaries building up their technological side of the capabilities, inter-​state
peer or near-​peer conflict symmetry is more likely to be symmetrical.
Regarding the numeric segment of force design, the primary challenges include:

1) effectively covering range and geography with tempo and mass; 2) presenting
the adversary with sufficient system complexity to complicate their targeting and
operational strategy; and 3) withstanding attrition in contested environments to
remain operationally resilient and effective. A symmetric competition of attrition
is no longer the only objective of this attribute. Instead, defense leaders must
understand how to best leverage quantity in its force design to offset adversary
strategies.43

Another attribute of effective force design is the diversity of one’s equipment.

Different types of equipment strengthen resilience because if one type is unavailable,
a different type can be used. Hence, diversification can create additional challenges for
an adversary’s targeting. The attribute of adaptation combines the abilities to deploy
new capabilities, modify existing weapons and seek new force structural adjustments
to the requirements of the battlespace. The speed attribute is also extended to a full
cycle from capability development to its adjustments in the battlespace:

Speed is the pace at which the United States can develop new capabilities,
produce and field them in operationally significant quantities, and then adapt
them to battlespace exigencies. It might also be considered the rate of change.
This attribute is crucial to disrupting adversary awareness, understanding,
18 Analytical framework

decision, and action. This pace must exceed an adversary’s ability to adapt. It is
also key to maintaining operational relevancy.44

Inevitably, time becomes an overarching factor interconnected with the

effectiveness of force structuring and the consequent employment of fighting
power. According to the two authors, artificial mass and force multiplication
through cutting-​edge technologies and multirole features of various platforms
require more time to develop. While previously, they could provide a decade of
asymmetric advantage, nowadays the strategic environment and adversaries’
capabilities building illustrate the need to focus on ‘rapid adaptation,’ meaning the
ability ‘to field a force that can present unexpected force mixes with unanticipated
operational architectures at speed.’45
Therefore, structuring of the armed forces with mass in mind should be
approached as a system. Attention should be paid to a full cycle of timely
capabilities, development, employment and adjustments or restructuring to the
requirements of the battlespace taking into account the wider context of the civilian
and military industrial segments in improving adaptability and readiness of the
available equipment and its sustainment. Critical mass in modern warfare can be
defined as the ability to rapidly produce and/​or have sufficient numbers of military
capabilities to deploy, modify, sustain and integrate into the force structure of a
given operating environment according to the operational requirements. Thus, the
scale would largely depend on the adversary and the type of conflict or war at
stake. The capabilities also have to be addressed in their wider context of military–​
industrial readiness for the wartime production cycles: ‘The mass approach, more
than any other, requires self-​sufficiency in manufacturing the required mass for
the instances of protracted warfare, and the lack of connection between the mass
approach and achievement of posed objectives.’46

Cross-​domain integration, interoperability and combined arms

approach
The question of interservice integration has been an important theme in discussions
of warfare since the gradual additions of new domains to warfare, starting with land-​
centric views that were gradually shaped by maritime and aerial physical domains,
and then by cyber and space domains. Any modern military doctrine, strategy or
policy paper discusses the necessity of strengthening interservice collaboration
and integration to avoid duplication of effort and conflicting orders, improve
effectiveness of budgetary spending and prevent blue-​on-​blue fire in operations.
Interconnectedness and interservice collaboration allow for more effective use of
intelligence across services and levels of warfare and more effective employment of
cutting-​edge technologies. In its turn, interservice collaboration and cross-​domain
integration are aimed to facilitate and improve interoperability among different
allied nations in the multinational cross-​domain operating environment.
 Analytical framework 19

In the first few decades of the post-​Cold War reforms, greater attention was
paid to interservice collaboration and integration. At that time, the term of jointery
or jointness became prevalent in Western national doctrines. Jointery or jointness
(American spelling) was traditionally defined as ‘a series of initiatives across
defence to coordinate the activities of the three services more closely, pooling
their expertise and maximizing their punch, while at the same time eliminating
duplication and waste.’47
Except for its more positive aspects of reducing duplication and improving
interservice operability, this phenomenon caused concerns regarding the
independent status of the single services. As some national experiences illustrated,
jointery can be counterproductive when some single services are merged and
substituted by a single joint one. Another concern of this phenomenon is that the
entire national system will evolve around a single service, making others redundant
or developed only for the supportive purposes of that single service. In order to
be effective, jointness requires a balance between single services’ autonomy and
contribution to the joint objectives and planning. Accordingly:

the successful implementation of jointness requires effective single-​service

thinking and resultant performance with jointness in mind rather than
implementing jointness with little consideration of single-​service requirements
and the nature of each domain. There are two ways of thinking about and
implementing jointness. In the first, a joined plan can be developed and then
distributed between the three services. This joined-​up approach may not reflect
an in-​depth understanding of each domain. The second approach is to look into
each environment, shape single-​service responses within each domain, and
incorporate them into a joint strategy.48

Another consideration in terms of jointery and its effectiveness refers to how it is

implemented across the services. The traditional top-down rigid approach might
result in setbacks, while the bottom-up solutions are likely to have greater effect
across various levels. From the structural perspective, jointery often results in the
introduction of joint C2 structures. The UK Joint Operations Doctrine defines a joint
force as ‘a force composed of significant elements of two or more Services operating
under a single commander authorised to exercise operational command and control.’49
Overall, the process of interservice integration and jointery can be manifested
in various ways. It can be an ad hoc improvement of inter-​agency collaboration
and reduction of duplication. It can include merging some functions of the single
services into joint entities. It can also result in establishment of permanent joint
structures with the full incorporation of training, military education and structuring
of the Armed Forces. Finally, it can be manifested in the establishment of joint
frameworks for the improvement of operational performance.
The concept of MDI can be viewed as a natural progression from the previous
interservice integration and jointery. The focus is even more on the interconnectedness
20 Analytical framework

of various domains of warfare and the crucial necessity of cohesion across various
segments in achieving layered, cross-​domain effects. The foreword to the Joint
Concept Note 1/​20 Multidomain Integration explains MDI as follows:

This multidomain integration (MDI) will change the way we operate and war
fight, and the way we develop capability. Effective integration of the domains
will achieve a multidomain effect that adds up to far more than simply the sum
of the parts. This integrated force must also be fused across government and
interoperable with principal allies.50

In this regard, following the vision of the Integrated Operating Concept,51

the aim of this exploratory concept is to facilitate modernisation of warfighting
‘moving beyond “joint” to an era when modern manoeuvre in any domain will be
enabled by effects from all domains. This integrated force must also be integrated
nationally and with our key allies and partners.’52
Intensification of modern warfare due to numerous factors, spreading of cutting-​
edge technologies and rapid data sharing in the information space to mention but
a few inevitably requires layered effects from different domains of warfare. The
effects of different weapons originating in different domains cannot be completely
separated from their effects on other domains. The battlespace is integrated by its
very essence, and the side that can better integrate its assets, reduce duplication and
achieve effective deconfliction can obtain more productive layered effects across
different domains and levels of warfare and, hence, attain a military advantage.
This aspect is of even greater significance under conditions in which there are
significant gaps across military equipment in various domains. The layered
approach of combining arms in one domain or across domains can compensate for
immediate gaps in other domains.
The concept of combined arms is not new in warfare and has undergone various
transformation stages. In a traditional sense, combined arms refers to simultaneously
combining different capabilities in order to achieve posed objectives. From one
perspective, it can be perceived as focusing on manoeuvre and an indirect approach
rather than mass, thus aiming to undermine the enemy’s cohesion through the
advantages of tempo and precision targeting. From another perspective, it can be
approached as a merging of effects:

fire and maneuver, direct and indirect approaches across domains, orthodox and
unorthodox ways and means. Combined arms reduce the decision space of the
adversary. The more effects a force brings to bear in time and space, the more
likely the enemy system is to collapse.’53

Overall, these analytical framework and themes are further used across later
chapters in order to illustrate resilient fighting power in this war and the primary
factors defining the success of this resilience.
 Analytical framework 21

Notes
1 Allied Joint Publication AJP-​3.2: Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations
(Brussels: NSO, 2022).
2 Viktoriya Fedorchak, Understanding Contemporary Air Power (London: Routledge,
2020), 6–​7.
3 AJP-​3.2, 19.
4 Ibid.
5 Viktoriya Fedorchak, British Air Power: The Doctrinal Path to Jointery (London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 25.
6 UK Air and Space Doctrine (Joint Doctrine Publication 0-​30), 2 edn. (Shrivenham: DCDC,
December 2017).
7 AJP-​3.2, 20.
8 Ibid., 19.
9 Fedorchak, Understanding Contemporary, 7.
10 AJP-​3.2, 20.
11 Fedorchak, Understanding Contemporary, 7.
12 AJP-​3.2, 21.
13 Ibid., 19.
14 JDP 0-​30 (2017), 3–​10.
15 AJP-​3.2, 19.
16 Fedorchak, Understanding Contemporary, 7.
17 AJP-​3.2, 18.
18 Ibid.
19 Cabinet Office, The National Resilience Strategy 2021, 12.
20 American Psychological Association. Available online: www.apa.org/​top​ics/​res​ilie​nce
21 Encyclopedia Britannica. Available online: www.bri​tann​ica.com/​scie​nce/​eco​logi​cal-​res​
ilie​nce
22 Bradley Nindl et al. ‘Perspectives on Resilience for Military Readiness and
Preparedness: Report of an International Military Physiology Roundtable,’ Journal of
Science and Medicine in Sport, 21 (2018): 1116–​1124.
23 Cabinet Office, The National Resilience Strategy, 12.
24 In the Army doctrine, it is flexibility; in the RAF doctrine, it is agility.
25 Army Doctrine Publication AC 71940: Land Operations (London: MOD, 2017), 1A-​3.
26 Ibid.
27 Christina Goulter, ‘British Experience,’ in Precision and Purpose: Airpower in the
Libyan Civil War, ed. K. Mueller (Santa Monica: RAND, 2015), 168.
28 Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill ‘What Is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited,’
Journalism Studies, 2, no. 2 (2001): 278–​279; T. Harcup and D.O’Neill, ‘What Is news?
News Values Revisited (Again),’ Journalism Studies, 18, no. 12 (2017): 1470–​1488.
29 Mick Ryan, War Transformed (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2022), 82–​84.
30 Ibid., 97.
31 Ibid., 84.
32 Ieva Berzina, ‘From “Total” to “Comprehensive” National Defence: The Development
of the Concept in Europe,’ Journal on Baltic Security 6, no. 2 (2020): 1–​9.
33 NATO SOF HQ, Comprehensive Defence Handbook, Vol. I (2020), 15. Available
online:www.nshq.nato.int/​Libr​ary/​Downl​oadF​ile/​e8a86​ab2-​cbf4-​900e-​3fcc-​c3daa​
451c​067
22 Analytical framework

34 W. Roepke and H. Thankey. ‘Resilience: The First Line of Defence,’ (accessed 22 March
2023). Available online:
www.nato.int/​docu/​rev​iew/​artic​les/​2019/​02/​27/​res​ilie​nce-​the-​first-​line-​of-​defe​nce/​
index.html
35 Viktoriya Fedorchak, ‘The Mass Approach in the Air War Over Ukraine: Towards
Identifying a Critical Mass,’ Handlingar Och Tidskrift, no. 1 (2023): 119–​120.
36 Ibid., 111.
37 David Alman and Heather Venable, ‘Bending The Principle Of Mass: Why That
Approach No Longer Works For Airpower,’ War on the Rocks (accessed 3 March 2023).
Available online: https://​waront​hero​cks.com/​2020/​09/​bend​ing-​the-​princi​ple-​of-​mass​
why-​that-​appro​ach-​no-​lon​ger-​works-​for-​airpo​wer/​
38 Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 0-​30: UK Air Power, 3 edn. (Shrivenham: DCDC,
December 2022), iii.
39 Alman and Venable, Bending the Principle of Mass.
40 Fedorchak, Understanding Contemporary, 147–​149.
41 Fedorchak, ‘The Mass Approach,’ 112.
42 Alman and Venable, ‘Bending the Principle of Mass.’
43 David Deptula and Heather Penney, Building An Agile Force: The Imperative for Speed
and Adaptation in the U.S. Aerospace Industrial Base (Arlington: The Mitchell Institute
for Aerospace Studies, 2021).
44 Ibid.,19.
45 Ibid., 21.
46 Fedorchak, ‘The Mass Approach,’ 119.
47 The Strategic Defence Review (1998), Cm 3999, Introduction, para 4.
48 Fedorchak, Understanding Contemporary, 17.
49 Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP 01): UK Joint Operations Doctrine (Shrivenham: DCDC,
2014), 123.
50 Joint Concept Note 1/​20 Multi-​Domain Integration (Shrivenham: DCDC, 2020), iii.
51 Integrated Operating Concept (Shrivenham: DCDC, 2021), 10.
52 Ibid., v.
53 Benjamin Jensen and Matthew Strohmeyer, ‘The Changing Character of Combined
Arms,’ War on the Rocks (Accessed 5 February 2023). Available online: https://​waront​
hero​cks.com/​2022/​05/​the-​chang​ing-​charac​ter-​of-​combi​ned-​arms/​
2
THE CONCEPTUAL COMPONENT
Soviet strategic thinking and military doctrine in
the post-​Cold War reforms

This chapter has three objectives. First, to identify Soviet strategic thinking and
the predominant trends in the development of military doctrine as a context for
understanding the common Soviet military background of Russia and Ukraine.
Second, to show the post-​Cold War conceptualisation of the role of the military in
the two countries, their restructuring in the post-​Soviet recovery and the place of
doctrine in these reforms. Third, the national defence and warfighting approaches of
the two countries before February 2022 are explored through their recent doctrines
and strategy documents. This chapter is structured as follows: first, Soviet strategic
thinking and doctrine are discussed in the time frame from the inter-​war period
until the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by a discussion of post-​Soviet
doctrines and their role in reorganising the armed forces in Ukraine and Russia
and the extent to which the two countries either moved away from or followed the
Soviet traditions.

Soviet strategic thinking and military doctrine

In order to understand the influence of Soviet military thinking on modern events,
it is essential to look into the origins of that thinking, its main principles, the extent
of its embedding in official documents and its transfer into practice both in times of
peace and war. Hence, it is worth beginning with the origins of Soviet thinking on
how to fight wars and its reflection in the military doctrines throughout the history
of the Soviet Union.
After the victory of the Red Army over the Imperial Army in the Civil War, the
newly established state and its armed forces needed a direction for its structure,
development and formalisation. On one side of the spectrum, there were veterans
of the Civil War, such as Mikhail Frunze and Mikhail Tuckhachevskii, who aimed

DOI: 10.4324/9781003351641-3
24 The conceptual component

to tear down any old bourgeois structures in the Armed Forces and establish
everything in a new ‘Red Army style,’ taking the experiences of the Civil War
and glorified successes of the Red Army as a model to follow. They wanted to
develop a new doctrine for the new Army. On the other side, the Commissar of War
at the time, Lev Trotsky, questioned in his 1921 article the very utility of having
any doctrine for the Red Army or any unified doctrine. He was also sceptical of
learning from the past, believing that past events and exact historical situations
could not be repeated.1
Besides the debate on the utility of doctrine and the path of transformation for
the Red Army in the inter-​war period, there was also a debate on the relevance
of offensive or defensive strategy and objectives for the armed forces in a future
war. Trotsky had a moderate view on the subject, supporting a balance between
offensive and defensive actions. In the inter-​war period, the Soviet Union went
through substantial societal transformation from the Tsarist rule to the rule of the
proletariat, which required merging contested classes of peasants and workers.
Both classes were needed to make the Soviet apparatus work, and any suggestions
for indoctrinated offensive revolution during demobilisation could undermine any
motivation for building communism2 and public support for the newly established
communist rule. Further conceptualisation of the balanced approach to offensive
and defensive actions was reflected in the work of A. A. Svechin, a former officer of
the Imperial Army and a military theorist of the time. He focused on the importance
of the economic strength of the rear for both offensive and defensive actions.
Furthermore, he distinguished between structural differences and the consequent
necessity of readiness and economic support for a war of destruction and a war of
attrition. The former was to be conducted through rapid operations using reserves
created during peacetime, while the latter was to include prolonged waves of attack
using the capacities of the industrial rear. Consequently, the first case required
substantial military expenses, while the second had a strong economic base to
sustain a war of attrition long term.3
One of the features of the Soviet regime and its history is that political leadership
had full control of decision-​making with an immediate effect on ‘disagreeable’
individuals. The volatile moods of the Soviet leadership and the inter-​party struggle
would often result in the military and other professional leaders being deported or
losing their lives in prison or by execution. Trotsky lost his influence due to the
party struggle; Svechin lost his due to the too realistic and critical assessment of
a war of destruction, while his opponents used more exaggerated estimations that
supported the Soviet political leadership and fit well with five-​year plans. Struggles
within different schools of thought at the General Staff Academy and the demise
of Svechin’s authority through various rounds of criticism in the 1920s and early
1930s gave rise to the idea of being offensive as the primary way of conducting war
and how the Red Army had to be structured.4
Despite the shift from balancing offensive and defensive conduct of war to a
major offensive one, Svechin’s contribution to the continuity of Soviet military
 The conceptual component 25

thinking of the time was the idea of a transitional stepping-​stone of war between
strategy and tactics –​ operational art for the Soviet context. Further, theorists like
N. E. Varfolomeev and Vladimir Triandafilov under the leadership and intellectual
influence of Tuckachevsky continued the conceptualisation of a new doctrine for
the Soviet Armed Forces, which would come into history as the doctrine of ‘deep
operation.’5
The core of the overarching doctrine of the Soviet military in the decades to
come and in the post-​Soviet times consisted of the following ideas. First, the trends
in the military affairs of the time suggested that gaining victory over the enemy in
a single decisive battle or a single blow was unlikely. Instead, success was to be
achieved by a series of sequential operations that would be more damaging to the
enemy than the Soviet side. Second, the success of the offensive action depended
on rapid assault that would not give the adversary a chance to organise a retreat and
regroup their armed forces. Hence, the rapid speed of penetration into the depth
of the enemy’s battlefield was to provide the same stunning, disorganising and
paralysing effect on enemy troops that the principle of surprise could provide at a
given time.6
This theory was then further formalised in the first official Red Army doctrine
Provisional Field Regulations 1929 (PU-​ 29), Temporary Instructions on the
Organisation of Deep Battle (PU-​33) and Provisional Field Regulations for the
Red Army (PU-​ 1936). In conceptual succession, Tuckachevsky’s ideas were
further developed by Gregorii Issersson in his work on operational art. He argued
that the challenge of Soviet operational art was to defeat the enemy through each
part of its defences in depth. He emphasised the threat of dissipation of force as it
was advancing into the enemy’s defence. Moreover, he argued that campaigns of
the time consisted of many successive operations that pierced the enemy’s thick
defence deep into the battlefield.7 These successive operations included temporal
and spatial integration of air, land and maritime efforts. This thinking was further
formalised by Triandafillov in The Nature of the Operations in Modern Armies
published in 1937 .8
Like many intellectuals during various eras in Soviet history, especially in
Stalin’s time, the forefathers of the theory of deep battle were not immune to the
change in political will in the Soviet Union, and they soon were labelled as traitors
and purged like their predecessors. The direct implication of their fall from grace
was that their thinking and concepts were abandoned in the formal documents.
However, as often happens with any suppressed ideas, they tend to arise in practice
since they were part of the organisational culture and teaching curriculum for a
certain period. The experience of World War II showed that the deep operation
concept and the offensive were to stay in Soviet practice and consequent thinking
for decades to come.
In the aftermath of the two World Wars, conceptual changes in the Soviet Union
were still driven by political leadership with varying degrees of acknowledgement
and learning from the past experiences, technological developments, previous
26 The conceptual component

strategic thinking of Clausewitz and the German doctrine of blitzkrieg, the external
international environment of the Cold War and internal trends within the Soviet Union.
From the doctrine development perspective, post-​War Stalin rule (1945–​1953) was
characterised by the development of doctrine to fight the last war. Hence, the focus
was on the protracted warfare of World War II, with support of the ground troops with
firepower from all other domains. Of course, surprise was at the heart of a successful
start. Unlike traditional Western doctrine that tends to evaluate the achievements
and shortfalls of various actions, Stalin’s doctrines would only glorify the successes,
without critically evaluating the costs of achievements and failures during 1941–​1942.
The victory was achieved through slowly moving fronts with frontal breakthroughs
occurring ‘by deliberating massing forces on a main axis of attack.’9
Khrushchev’s era (1954–​1964) was characterised by the greater conceptualisation
of nuclear weapons. The nuclear strike gained the function of surprise followed by
conventional means to achieve posed objectives. The focus had shifted from the
dominance of the ground troops and tactical aviation to the nuclear tool but mainly
as a preliminary means to destroy the enemy’s forces followed by assault of the
ground forces in the form of tanks and mechanised units. Thus, the principle of the
offensive and surprise prevailed with the addition of a pre-​emptive nuclear strike.
In Brezhnev’s era (1964–​1982), there was further discussion of nuclear warfare
with the potential for exchanging nuclear strikes, with the renewal of large-​scale
conventional operations in a full-​scale war. This shift was conditioned by the
strengthening of conservative narratives and KGB participation in the decision-​
making of Brezhnev’s Politburo and the external factor of the American shift in
nuclear policy from massive retaliation to flexible response.10
The revival of serious thought on strategic defence took place during
Gorbachev’s era (1983–​1989) with the realisation that pre-​emptive conventional
strikes could, in fact, result in nuclear escalation that, in reality, the Soviet Union
could not withstand. The new doctrine of 1985 emphasised the defensive phase
to be followed by a strong counteroffensive. While the regular force was given a
defensive role, the counteroffensive was reliant on mobilisation of reserves and
their follow-​up movement:

Once forces from the strategic reserve moved forward, they would exploit the
success achieved by the early front counterstrikes. Without fire superiority, the
surprise, manoeuvre, and decisiveness of the counterstrike were impossible.
Enemy deep fire systems and reconnaissance had to be destroyed, mostly by air,
so that the manoeuvre forces had freedom of action.11

Although this doctrine illustrated a somewhat balanced approach to defensive and

offensive approaches, Soviet military thinking of the time as reflected in various
publications showed a mismatch with a rather political doctrine. Offensive and
deep operation thinking were deeply embedded in the Soviet military mind and
were there to stay in the post-​Cold War era.
 The conceptual component 27

One of the elements of the Russian approach to surprise was deception

(‘maskirovka’). Colonel David Glantz in his work on Russian deception
during World War II argued that the Soviet approach to surprise addressed nine
areas: concealing one’s intentions, hiding plans, masking combat preparations,
employing new technologies and ways of combat, careful choice of the timing and
direction of the attack, surprise employment of all available forces especially those
with more kinetic firepower (air, artillery and armoured forces), rapid manoeuvre
and decisive action to pre-​empt enemy responses, the use of fake constructions
and communications and taking full advantage of the situational characteristics,
such as terrain, weather and seasonal indicators.12 In essence, Glantz argued that
elements of deception could be applied to five out of these nine points of surprise.
In the context of the Cold War, these elements were incorporated into every
aspect of Soviet foreign policy and the military, with constant concealment of
actual capabilities and their functionality. For the Soviet political leadership, the
perception of their Western counterparts was one of the major centres of gravity
to reach, and various means of deception with its multiple tools allowed them
to reach it.13 Deception was to be used at the preliminary stage and during the
entire duration of the conflict. It was then to be combined with the divide and
rule principle: ‘Disinformation, in this context, might have allowed the Soviet
leadership to exploit divisions within an opposing coalition whose members
lacked consensus on goals and methods.’14
The origins of the Soviet classical military thinking illustrate a few trends in
the overall Soviet environment of military thinking and doctrine development.
First, the connectedness between political and military leadership was far from the
traditional Western cooperation between policy objectives and using military means
to fulfil those objectives. The political regime of authoritarian or dictatorial rule,
depending on which segment of the Soviet era is discussed, restrained the extent
of innovative, critical and even unorthodox thinking among the military and many
other professionals in the Soviet Union. The experience with the development of
the deep operation illustrated the enduring struggle within the party and among the
General staff and officers for the supremacy of their ideas and approval from the
political leadership. While the former required accepting a theory and its formal
reflection in doctrine, the latter meant the simple necessity of survival in an
authoritarian regime with leadership that could purge anyone at any time. While
during the inter-​war period, a greater extent of military science and evidence-​based
thinking on the conduct of war could be observed followed by the development and
spreading of various theories, numerous purges during Stalin’s rule established a
tendency towards laying low and not taking initiative, since initiatives often would
punish initiators, as was the experience of Trotsky and Tukhachevskii. In general,
this trend of conformity before the ruling elite can be extended to the modern times
of Putin’s regime, the nominal utility of doctrines, their rudimental reflection in the
actual reforming of the Russian Armed Forces and the constant fear of the military
leadership falling out of grace.
28 The conceptual component

In this context, the second observation is disconnection between what is

written in formal doctrine and what is trained and performed on the ground. This
discrepancy might have seemed minimal during the inter-​war and World War II
periods, and the practical necessities of war would dictate relevant adjustments.
However, this dichotomy of what is on the paper and what exists in reality has
been haunting Soviet and post-​Soviet Armed Forces until today, with the current
war illustrating how wide the gap between formal papers, propaganda and real
capabilities, trained skills and adaptability is.
Third, innovative thinking requires some freedom, support from leadership or
at least a lack of punishment for unconventional approaches to solving a problem.
Although there was a relatively susceptible environment for this innovative thinking
in the inter-​war period, the reality of the Stalin regime showed the limitations on
innovative and critical thinking in the Soviet Union with a clear message of the
driving forces for any military thoughts and ideas –​political leadership is always
right even if it is not. In a way, this early military thinking and doctrine development
experience became formative for the entire Soviet tradition in the decades to come.
Fourth, all these factors in combination created an environment susceptible
to greater conformity in the conceptual component of the offensive tradition of
deep operation, which in its essence, continued throughout the entire existence
of the Soviet Union and in many post-​Soviet countries. Conformity and the fear
of challenging the thoughts of political leadership stimulated a single concept of
the offensive to dominate strategic thinking, doctrines and consequent practice in
the decades to come. An important feature of dogmatisation and indoctrination
of the Soviet ideas on the offensive was that although the formal documents could
switch from offensive to nuclear and then to balanced offensive and defensive
actions, these changes had little impact on the actual transformation of the Soviet
Armed Forces or the stimulation of any type of critical thinking and, hence,
flexibility and adaptability in the battlespace.
Finally, although Soviet theorists made extensive contributions to the
development of the concept of operational art and emphasised the significance of
flexibility in manoeuvre and its adjustments to the requirements of a given situation,
the rigid command and control inherent in Soviet Armed Forces would undermine
the very essence of the flexibility and agility that could be taken advantage of
in achieving operational art. As the Soviet actions in the Winter War illustrated,
the offensive approach and operational art had various shortfalls. First, the mass
approach of the offensive required the need for further coordination of action and
amassing of the effect of the attack; the obvious shortfall of aiming for attack alone
is the need to sustain the effect and further progress the offensive. Second, if not
as a major strategy, defensive action should at least be trained and prepared for in
case various stages or segments of war require it, especially when a deep battle
transforms into a war of attrition. Swift action does not guarantee an immediate
victory. Focusing on surprise as a means of taking operational advantage over the
enemy can achieve only so much, but it cannot guarantee anything after the first
 The conceptual component 29

stage of war and mobilisation of forces by the defending side. In the case of the
Finish Winter War, the Soviets had the benefits of operational surprise in terms of
timing, weight and location of their attack.15 Still the issue is always what happens
after the initial advantage of the surprise when the intended paralysing effect wears
off and the offensive has to be sustained over a prolonged time.

Ukrainian military doctrine and post-​Cold War reorganisation

In Ukraine’s post-​Cold War military reforms, doctrine had a slightly different
use than in the Western practice during the same period. In the Western tradition,
military doctrines refer to the set of principles for how the military conducts their
operations to achieve stated objectives. Doctrine is authoritative but requires
judgement in its application. There are different types of doctrines across levels
of warfare, services, operational environments and types of operations. Doctrines
are revised when various political, strategic and operational environmental
changes occur. Often doctrines in their respective hierarchy are driven by the
national strategy and objectives of the country’s foreign policy. Although doctrines
are authoritative, they normally are not equal to the normative act and are not
law-​binding documents. On the contrary, in Ukrainian post-​Cold War practice,
documents titled ‘military doctrines’ are part of the normative acts, which are the
main source of law in Ukraine.
The legal mechanism of doctrine establishment and enactment refers to two
main entities: the President of Ukraine and the National Security and Defence
Council of Ukraine (NSDC), which is a co-​coordinating body (state agency) to
the President of Ukraine in the sphere of national security and defence. Activities
of the NSDC are regulated by Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine.16 The
President of Ukraine chairs the NSDC, and its decisions are ‘put into effect
by decrees of the President of Ukraine’ (Art. 107, para 7). New decrees of the
President can abolish the previous ones, thereby changing the approach and
direction of the defence policy and the ways to achieve the objectives reflected
in military doctrine. Hence, it is important to emphasise that Ukrainian military
doctrines are styled and read as legal documents that establish both the direction
and the means of achieving stated objectives in the defence and security spheres,
with the Ministry of Defence responsible for enacting these principles and
reporting on their progress. In essence, the documents of military doctrine on a
strategic level are a formal estimation of the country’s national strategy, defence
and security policy, containing some elements of the Western-​style military
doctrines. Due to its prescriptive legal status, the documents outline the direction
in some detail, but are not as detailed as, for instance, British Defence Reviews,
which also identify the direction for the national Armed Forces to follow with
an assessment of capabilities within an estimated budget. There were also
documents on national strategy. Normally, the two documents would detail and
complement each other.
30 The conceptual component

Considering the formal specifics of documents called military doctrine in

Ukraine, it is essential to emphasise some observations on the doctrine’s purpose,
use and consequent content. First, due to the entwined nature of the NSDC and
the post of the President of Ukraine, military doctrines have often embodied a
President’s approach to national defence, security, Ukrainian foreign policy and
Ukraine’s place in regard to NATO, the European Union (EU) and Russia. Second,
since the country had to readjust its military posture from being a part of the Soviet
Union to a newly established independent state with its own military budget,
armed forces and consequent defence policy, various doctrines have addressed
military reorganisation, usually indicating the extent of numerical reduction in
the armed forces and shrinking military budgets rather than a conceptualisation
of defence and warfighting. Finally, most of the doctrines did not focus much on
actual warfighting or defence per se, but rather on the justification of inconsistency
between the military budgets, force reduction, a move from conscription to a
volunteer professional army and ageing of the capabilities. While some of the
doctrines that are further discussed tried to introduce systematic military reforms
to follow the Western model, others would scrap the achievements of the previous
ones, making the situation even worse. Thus, it can be argued that the reforms that
the military doctrines of Ukraine contained and promulgated were far from linear,
with various setbacks and multiple inconsistencies. Furthermore, most doctrines
were reactive, while only the last one in 2021 showed a proactive stance and
introduced the concept of Comprehensive Defence into Ukrainian national defence
and warfighting.
Leonid Polyakov defined three stages in the development of the Ukrainian
Armed Forces (UAF) in the post-​Cold War era: non-​alignment between NATO
and Russia (1991–​2000), reforms and NATO ambitions (2001–​2009) and from
non-​alignment to Russian aggression (2010–​2016).17 As the author of this book,
I would add the final period of NATO orientation and professionalisation of the
UAF (2014–​2022 onwards) during the eight years of low-​intensity war and full-​
scale invasion in February 2022.
Ukraine’s first post-​Cold War military doctrine was published in 1993. It
established the policy of Ukraine’s non-​alignment between NATO and Russia,
the defensive nature of Ukrainian foreign policy and Ukraine’s views on nuclear
weapons. This document addressed the general terms of the defensive approach,
military–​political aspects, the causes of military insecurity and Ukraine’s attitude
towards war, military–​ technical and military–​ economic aspects.18 In the light
of the enduring fear of Russian aggression in Ukraine since the first days of
independence, the non-​alignment and defensive nature did cause some debate in
the Parliament, with the focal point of discussing the nuclear status of Ukraine.
The adopted doctrine proclaimed that Ukraine had no intention of employing
nuclear weapons, but ‘it will not reduce its nuclear armament, unless others, too,
take “adequate steps” and unless Ukraine receives security guarantees from other
nuclear powers and world community.’19 As history has shown, these preconditions
 The conceptual component 31

to disarmament were fulfilled, and Ukraine gave away its nuclear arsenal, signing
the Budapest Memorandum on 5 December 1994.
The non-​ alignment period of 1991–​ 2000 depicted in the doctrine was
characterised by the process of denuclearisation of the country and reorganisation
of its Armed Forces. Further details of both were indicated in ‘the state programme
of Armed Forces Construction and development by 2005’ (January 1997), which
focused on the elimination of strategic nuclear weapons by 2002 and a reduction
in the Armed Forces to 310,000 by 2000; as of 1991, Ukraine had the largest
Armed Force in Europe with 800,000 personnel.20 Although further normative acts
followed, in reality the Armed Forces had to manage their reduction within the
constantly shrinking military budgets on their own. As a result, the main structural
reform was the numerical reduction of conventional strength to 400,000 personnel
in 2001. In terms of equipment, it had an ageing Soviet-​era arsenal with little to no
modernisation.21
Rather limited reforms to the Armed Forces in the first decade of independence
dictated the necessity of a more comprehensive approach. In 2000, ‘the State
Programme for Reforming and the Development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
by 2005’ was adopted. It demonstrated the usual trends of significant budgetary
cuts, closure of military bases and merging of the Air Force and the Air Defence.
The time was characterised by substantial malnutrition of the Armed Forces:

Estimates at that time suggested that, in accordance with standard requirements,

the armed forces had decreased to 300,000 military personnel, while over 3,000
tanks and over 500 aircraft required a much bigger budget to maintain their
readiness. However, the Ukrainian state budget of that time (2000–​4) regularly
allocated only 10–​20 per cent of the required amount—​about $500 million–​
$700 million. It was barely enough to feed the conscripts and to pay a low salary
to military officers.22

This grave situation substantially undermined not just readiness but also the
very existence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with their primary training and
operational skills gained in peacekeeping operations and international military
operations. In order to reorganise the military, in 2001, President Leonid Kuchma
adopted the concept of transformation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into a
volunteer/​professional force of 240,000 militaries by 2015. However, in 2002, the
number was adjusted to 180,000.
The end of the non-​alignment era is associated with President Viktor
Yushchenko and changes brought to Ukraine by the Orange Revolution. The
obvious reorientation towards the EU and NATO was embodied in the new
doctrine of 2005. Reforms were aimed to reorganise the military according to the
NATO standards: development of NATO-​style command and control structures;
finalising the merging of the air force with the air defence, thereby making three
single services instead of four; establishment of a Joint Operations Command;
32 The conceptual component

and movement towards volunteer professional armed forces. Furthermore, a more

Western model of military training, education and personnel organisation were to
be introduced. The target number for the Armed Forces was 140,000. Collaboration
within international programmes and contingent intensified in this period.
Although the implementation of this initiative faced numerous setbacks, such as
the economic crisis and the Russian invasion of Georgia, the direction for reforms
remained clear –​the professionalisation of military to the NATO standard.23
The linear progression of the reforms was scrapped by the new President –​pro-​
Russian Viktor Yanukovych. Hence, he made a U-​turn in the direction of Russia
and scrapped all previous reforms. The military doctrine published during his
presidency eliminated the NATO direction of the Ukrainian military and prioritised
a ‘constructive partnership’ with Russia. Moreover, he extended the contested
stationing of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea from 2017 to 2042 and labelled
the threat of regional aggression as unlikely. In essence, under Yanukovych’s
presidency, besides the obvious reduction of the armed forces to 130,000 personnel,
the overall readiness was further reduced not only by closure of various military
bases and support facilities but also by further deepening of corruption24 and
redirection of scarce military funds to non-​military procurements and activities.
Yanukovych followed the Russian example of that time and established numerous
anti-​riot police units and security services to protect his regime, which numbered
three times more than the regular Ukrainian Armed Forces. Hence, everything was
done systematically so that the Ukrainian military was in the poorest condition
possible for the Russian invasion in 2014.
The next doctrine was published in 2015 under the presidency of Petro
Poroshenko. It once again abandoned the policy of non-​alignment and reinstated
the NATO and EU direction of Ukraine’s foreign policy and military reforms.
Russia was identified as the primary adversary and threat to Ukraine’s security, with
its full-​scale invasion as the main scenario for which to prepare. The operational
experiences in Crimea and Donbas were reflected in NSDC’s Concept of Ukraine’s
Security and Defence Sector Development (2016), which prioritised the need for
intelligence capabilities, professionalisation of the military, ways of developing and
sustaining military reserves and strengthening of the territorial reserve. In practical
terms, these reforms increased the military to 250,000, with the intensification
of their combat training and logistics support and the establishment of the Joint
Operations HQ and the Special Operations Command.25
These four post-​Cold War military doctrines do not particularly illustrate the
traditional thought process on how to fight wars or the detailed conduct of a
country’s national defence based on an assessment of the strategic environment.
Instead, the military doctrines served as a means to formalise the country’s foreign
policy direction and its impact on defence, security and military reforms. While the
overall trend was most certainly a reduction in the military in the post-​Cold War
reorganisation due to a lack of funding and the obvious need for professionalisation
in the military, there was also the obvious tendency of pro-​Russian governments to
 The conceptual component 33

weaken the Ukrainian military, so that they would not pose such a great threat to
further Russian aggression.
‘The Military Security Strategy of Ukraine’ (25 March 2021) was developed
under the Presidency of Volodymyr Zelenskyy by the secretary of the NSDC Oleksiy
Danilov. Unlike any other document on military doctrine or national strategy in
Ukraine’s entire post-​Cold War history, this one introduced a clear concept of
how Ukraine’s military security should be approached and how defence should
be conducted in the case of a full-​scale invasion. Although this was a strategic
level document, it was more military and practice-​oriented than the previous socio-​
political doctrines and national strategies. The concept of comprehensive defence
(Vseokhoplyuyucha oborona) included the following measures:

-​ Preventive actions and persistent resistance to the aggressor on land, at sea

and in the airspace of Ukraine, countermeasures in cyberspace and against
imposing one’s will in the information space;
-​ Using the entire potential of the state and society (military, political,
economic, international-​legal (diplomatic), spiritual, cultural, etc.) to repel
aggression;
-​ Employment of all forms and methods of armed struggle against the aggressor,
in particular asymmetric and other actions in defence of Ukraine in compliance
with the principles and norms of international law.26

Comprehensive defence was to be built on three pillars: deterrence, resilience

and cooperation. Deterrence envisaged the readiness of all civilian and military
potential of Ukraine to counter various military threats and inflict political, military
and economic losses upon an adversary, forcing it to abandon escalation and
stop aggression. The second pillar is resilience, which entails the ability of the
governmental authorities, the Armed Forces, the national economy, infrastructure
and society to recover and adapt to the changes in the security environment in
repelling an aggressor and providing support for further effective activity of the
territorial defence of Ukraine, resistance movement and the conduct of various
types of operations, and renewal of the infrastructure and communication to
strengthen people’s livelihood. The third pillar is cooperation, which entails
coordination of actions within the country during the preparation of armed defence
against armed aggression, reconstruction activities in the post-​hostilities period
and the actions taken by the EU, NATO, international organisations and individual
states to support Ukraine.27
The overall narrative of this strategy (which substituted military doctrine and
other related normative acts of the previous president) is about systematic defence
of the country from aggression using all available means within the country and
abroad, with a clear identification of Russia as the main aggressor. Unlike any
other strategic doctrine or strategy previously discussed, The Military Security
Strategy of Ukraine suggested actual preparation for defending the country in the
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stock was obtained for the voyage. By means of an Indian language some
verbal intercourse took place between Orellana and his hosts, and from this
arose the name by which the river they were descending was destined to be
ever afterwards known. Further down the stream—so the Indians said—
there was a country inhabited by a tribe of female warriors. The Spaniards
made themselves another boat and descended the river, passing by the
mouths of numerous affluents and through the territories of many caciques.
They landed at several places, and formally took possession of them for
their monarch. They had at length to fight a battle, in which, it was
affirmed, ten or twelve females took part. These women, of whom,
according to the priest of the explorers, the Spaniards slew seven or eight,
were tall and well formed; they were of fair complexion; they wore but a
girdle; and they fought with desperation.
This voyage extended until the 26th of August 1542, when the
1542.
triumphant Spaniards emerged at the mouth of the river, and
courageously committed their frail barques to the currents and waves of the
sea. Steering northwards, they desired to reach the island of Cubagua. The
newly discovered river was at first named after Orellana, but soon
afterwards took its enduring name from the real or imaginary female
warriors,—“The Amazons.”
To return to Gonzalo Pizarro: After in vain awaiting during
1542.
several miserable weeks the return of Orellana, Gonzalo
determined to set out on the same journey by land; but two months were
expended in toiling through the forest ere they reached the spot of the
junction of the Napo with the Coca, which distance had been accomplished
by Orellana by water in three days. There they found Vargas, who had been
set on shore, and from him they learned that they had been deserted by their
comrades. Their situation was now indeed deplorable, but they did not give
way to despair, and after a toilsome return march, which occupied more
than a year, a portion of the wayworn band arrived again at Quito. Their
absence had extended over two years and a half. Their horses were no more;
their clothing was replaced by the skins of wild animals; and they
themselves from civilized beings had become transformed into wild men of
the woods, with wasted frames, blackened faces, and tangled locks. Of the
four thousand Indians who had accompanied them, one-half of the number
alone returned, whilst the three hundred and fifty Spaniards were now
represented by eighty.
 There is but one more event to be recorded in order to complete this
sketch of the origin of Spanish Peru. Among men of such hot blood and of
such lawless manners as were the conquerors, it was scarcely probable that
the followers of Almagro would await tamely whatever retribution for his
death might be exacted in Spain; and in order that Almagro’s youthful son
might be the more harmless, he was deprived by Pizarro in great part of his
property, and likewise of the government of Chili. A conspiracy against the
life of the marquis was the result, and the news of an appointment of a
colleague with Pizarro in the government gave confidence to his enemies.
The arrival of this officer being delayed by severe weather, the conspirators
resolved no longer to await for public justice, but to take the law into their
own hands. A band of eighteen formed themselves into a committee for its
execution. They attacked Pizarro in his palace, and, after a desperate
defence on his part and on that of the friends who surrounded him,
consigned him to the fate which formed the appropriate close of his stormy
career.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHILI.

1535-1550.

The authentic history of Chili, according to the Abbé Molina, does not go
further back than to about the fifteenth century. The earliest accounts of the
Chilians are contained in the Peruvian annals. The Incas had extended their
empire from the equator to the tropic of Capricorn and thence to the
desirable land of Chili, which extends for twelve hundred and sixty miles
along the Pacific Ocean. The chain of the Cordilleras, which bounds it to
the east, supplies it with an abundance of streams, moderating its climate
and fertilizing its soil. At the time when the devastating presence of the
Spaniards first appeared upon the land, the population is supposed to have
been numerous. It had not been without severe fighting that the ascendancy
of the Peruvians over this region was obtained; and, in like manner, the
early Spaniards had to feel the force of the arm of the native tribes. Chili,
indeed, had become divided into two parts; the one free, the other subject to
Peruvian domination.
According to the author above quoted, the Chilians at the date of the
Spaniards’ arrival were by no means so rude in manners as is usually
supposed. They had long since passed from the state of the hunter, which is
that of the Patagonian of to-day, to the more advanced state of the shepherd.
This second stage in civilization, too, they had surmounted, and were now a
race of husbandmen; they had not attained to the more advanced condition
of merchants. In a country where game was not abundant, and where
domestic animals were likewise rare, the transition to the condition of
cultivators of the soil was probably of necessity rapid. It will be
remembered that when Hernando Pizarro proceeded to Spain after the
capture of the Inca Atahualpa, the territory for two hundred leagues to the
south of his brother’s government had been assigned to Almagro, who had
undertaken the march across the Andes to Chili.
When the difficulties of this terrible passage had been surmounted,
Almagro and his men found themselves in a country supplied with
abundance of provisions. The Chilians in fact, we are told, possessed maize,
pulse of various kinds, the potato, the pumpkin, the pepper plant, the
strawberry, and numerous other elements of vegetable food. Of animals
they possessed the rabbit and the Araucanian camel, and, as tradition
relates, the hog and the domestic fowl. The country may be assumed to
have been well peopled, from the fact that one language prevailed
throughout it, rather than the various dialects of several separate tribes. It
possessed, in many parts, skilfully constructed aqueducts for watering the
fields. Of these one remains in the vicinity of the capital, remarkable alike
for its extent and solidity. The Chilians ate their grain cooked, either using
earthen pots for the purpose of cooking it, or roasting it in hot sand. They
likewise made of it two distinct kinds of meal,—the parched, which was
used for gruel; and the raw, from which bread and cakes were baked in
small holes formed like ovens. They made use of a kind of sieve, and they
were so far civilized as to employ leaven. They were also in possession of
several kinds of spirituous liquors derived from grain or berries.
The Chilians, having adopted a settled mode of life, collected themselves
into families in the districts best adapted for agriculture, where they
established themselves in large villages. These settlements consisted of a
number of huts irregularly distributed. In each village there was a chief
called Ulmen, subject to the supreme ruler of the tribe. This dignity was
hereditary, which argues a certain antiquity and likewise a peaceful rather
than a warlike mode of living, since in the latter state military ascendancy is
apt to overrule the hereditary principle. The right of private property was
fully recognized. Each man was absolute proprietor of the field which he
cultivated and of the product of his industry, which he could transmit to his
children. The houses, which were quadrangular and roofed with rushes,
were enclosed by walls of wood plastered with clay, and sometimes with
walls of bricks, the art of making which they had acquired from Peru. From
the wool of the camel they manufactured cloth for garments, using the
distaff and spindle. They were familiar with the use of the needle, and were
so far advanced in taste as to admire embroidery.
The clay of the country lent itself to arts of another description,—to the
production of plates, cups, jars, &c., for varnishing which a certain mineral
earth was employed. The Chilians likewise possessed vessels of hard wood
and of marble. The earth yielded gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead. From
their bell-metal they constructed axes, hatchets, and other edged tools; and
they alone of all the races or nations of America possessed a word for iron,
although it is to be added that no iron implements have as yet been
discovered in Chili. The natives likewise were familiar with the art of
extracting salt. They possessed dyes of all colours, not only from plants but
likewise from minerals; whilst in lieu of soap they employed the bark of the
quillai, and obtained oil from the seeds of the madi. From various
vegetables they manufactured baskets and mats, and from others thread for
ropes and fishing-nets. In fishing they employed baskets and hooks, and on
the sea-coast used floats of wood or of inflated seal-skins.
Hunting was to them, as to us, an amusement. In this pursuit they
employed the arrow, the sling, and the noose, together with snares of
several kinds. It is a singular fact that two races, living so far apart as those
inhabiting China and Chili, should have employed the same artifice for
entrapping wild-fowl on the water, namely, for a man to glide amongst
them, his head being concealed in a perforated gourd. They were familiar
with the use of numbers, their language possessing the words signifying ten,
a hundred, and a thousand respectively, and, like that of the Romans,
stopping at that number. Their transactions were noted by skeins of thread
of various colours, with a number of knots. They had not attained to the art
of writing, although their language contains a word signifying to sketch or
to paint. In the latter art, however, they were exceedingly primitive. But
their chief progress was in the sciences of physic and astronomy. Such was
the people who had been handed over by Charles V. to the tender mercies of
Almagro and his followers, whose presence came on them and their
promising civilization as the frost on the blossoms of spring.
The history of Chili, in so far as the connection of that country
1535.
with Europe is concerned, begins at the close of the year 1535,
when Almagro set out from Peru with a force composed of five hundred
and seventy Spaniards and some fifteen thousand Peruvians, the latter being
under the command of the brother of the Inca Manco. His march has been
already briefly described in the preceding chapter. His army, after many
conflicts with the natives, became entangled in the Cordilleras at the
beginning of winter, being destitute of provisions and ill-supplied with
clothing. The few mountain paths were obliterated by the snow. With their
accustomed intrepidity, the Spaniards surmounted the perilous heights; but
a hundred and fifty of their number, and, it is said, some ten thousand
Peruvians, perished from the cold. It is, indeed, computed that none would
have escaped but for the energy of Almagro, who, pushing on with a few
horsemen, sent back to his followers a timely supply of provisions, which
he found in abundance at Copiapo. The survivors of his army reached the
plains of that fertile province, where they were well received by the
inhabitants.
The Inca’s brother, Paullu, who seems to have had the Spaniards’
interests at heart as being identical with his own, was the first to point out to
them the importance of their conquest. He obliged the peasants to deliver up
to him all the gold in their possession, by which means he collected a sum
equivalent to 500,000 ducats, which he presented to Almagro. The Spanish
leader, imagining he had another Peru before him, made over this sum to
his followers. He was naturally of a generous disposition, and has been
lauded for his action on this occasion;[L] but if we reflect on the source
from which his largesse sprung, we are reminded of the old saying
respecting generosity at the expense of others. As, in addition to the plunder
with which he was already gorged, he had the prospect of ample riches
before him, his conduct may be compared to that of the chief of a foreign
force which we may imagine to be in possession of London, and who,
having shared in the spoil of the Bank of England, should liberally make
over the treasure at Messrs. Coutts’ to his followers, with the intention of
emptying the tills of Messrs. Drummond’s and other banks into their own
coffers.
At Copiapo Almagro imitated the conduct of Pizarro in Peru in
assuming the office of umpire between contending native authorities. The
reigning Ulmen, it appears, had usurped the government of his nephew.
Shocked at this instance of high-handed conduct, the worthy Spanish
freebooter caused the guilty chief to be arrested; and the natives were
simple enough to impute the re-settlement of their hereditary ruler to a
sense of abstract justice on the part of the heaven-sent newcomer.
Almagro’s followers soon recovered from their fatigues amongst the
beautiful villages of Copiapo, and being strengthened by reinforcements
brought up by Orgoñez, were soon in a condition to resume their march
towards the south. Meanwhile an incident occurred which showed the
confiding people that there were two sides to the character of the liberal and
just Almagro.
Two soldiers having left the army had proceeded to Goasco, where they
were at first well received by the inhabitants, but where they afterwards met
their death, which they had in all probability provoked, if they had not
richly deserved it. Their fate, however, showed the Chilians that the
invaders were mortal, and therefore caused concern to the latter’s chief.
Almagro, on learning it, proceeded to Coquimbo, where he summoned
before him the Ulmen of the district, as well as his brother and twenty of the
principal inhabitants, and the ex-usurping Ulmen of Copiapo. It was no
doubt right and reasonable on his part to institute an inquiry into the
circumstances attending the death of his two soldiers, and no one could
blame him for exacting due punishment on any persons who should be
shown to have deserved it in the matter; but it would be hopeless to look for
any considerations of justice in one so above all law as Almagro. The
twenty-three innocent men, who had had nothing whatsoever to do with the
soldiers’ death, were one and all committed to the flames. Such was the
Chilians’ first experience of the gratitude of their Christian invaders for the
hospitable reception they had met with. It is right to add that the greater part
of his army openly disapproved of this savage proceeding on the part of
their chief Almagro, who in his subsequent fate must be held to be beyond
the pale of sympathy.
In 1537 Almagro received a further reinforcement under Juan
1537.
de Rada, and he was at the same time urged by letters from his
friends in Peru to return to that country and to take possession of Cuzco.
He, however, pursued his march and passed the river Cachapoal,
notwithstanding the remonstrances of his Peruvian followers, who dreaded
to enter the country of the warlike Promaucians. As usually happened, the
aspect of the Spaniards, with their horses and firearms, struck terror into
their opponents. These, however, recovering from their surprise, regained at
the same time their wonted intrepidity. A battle took place on the Rio-Claro.
The Peruvians, who were in the front, were soon routed; and although the
Spaniards, after a furious struggle, which lasted until nightfall, remained
masters of the field, the enemy were in no degree dismayed. They were
prepared to renew the attack next morning; but the Spaniards had had
enough of fighting for the present, and resolved by common consent to
retreat rather than face a campaign before so warlike a people. A portion of
Almagro’s force would have formed a settlement in northern Chili; but it
was their leader’s object not to lessen his strength, and he accordingly
retreated with his whole band towards Cuzco.
Three years after the above-mentioned occurrences, when the
1540.
Pizarros, by the death of Almagro, were undisputed lords of
Peru, Francisco determined to renew an attempt on Chili. The enterprise
had been confided by the court of Spain to two adventurers, named
respectively Hoz and Carmargo. The former was to undertake the conquest
of the country to the north of the river Maule; the latter was to reduce the
territory southward of that stream as far as to the archipelago of Chiloë. But
Pizarro, for some undivulged reason, declined to confirm the royal
nomination, and appointed in his own name to the expedition Pedro de
Valdivia, an able and well-tried officer, and one devoted to his party.
Valdivia, however, was directed to take Hoz with him, and to satisfy him
with a liberal distribution of land.
Valdivia determined to establish a permanent settlement in the country to
which he was to proceed, and made preparation accordingly, taking with
him not only two hundred Spanish fighting-men and a large body of
Peruvians, but likewise several women, some monks, and a great number of
European quadrupeds. Instructed by the experience of Almagro in the
Cordilleras, although he pursued the same route, he took care to choose the
summer for his passage. He thus incurred no loss on his way; but he met
with a very different reception from that which had been accorded to his
precursor. The inhabitants of northern Chili were by this time aware that the
empire of the Incas was no more, and they accordingly no longer owed
subjection to their Peruvian conquerors. They attacked the invaders on all
sides, but with more valour than method. The Spaniards were accordingly
enabled to overcome them in detail, and traversed the provinces of
Copiapo, Coquimbo, Quillota, and Melipilla, and arrived with but little loss
at that of Mapocho, now named Santiago.
In this fertile province, which lies upon the confines of the
1541.
Andes, Valdivia determined to make a settlement, and with this
view he laid the foundations of the fair city of Santiago on the 24th of
February 1541. He laid out the city on the general Spanish colonial plan of
dividing it into squares of uniform size; and in order to protect the
settlement from attack, he constructed a fort upon a hill in the centre, which
has since received the name of S. Lucia. His proceedings were watched by
the natives with a jealous eye, and measures were concerted for getting rid
of the unwelcome intruders. Valdivia, however, discovered the plot against
him in time, and imprisoned the chief conspirators in his fortress, whilst he
repaired with sixty horsemen to the river Cachapoal in order to watch the
Promaucians, whom he suspected of being in league with the conspirators.
The natives of Mapocho, taking advantage of the absence of Valdivia,
fell upon the colony with inconceivable fury, burning the half-built houses
and assailing the citadel wherein the inhabitants had taken refuge. Whilst
these defended themselves bravely, a woman named Iñez Suarez, taking an
axe, beat out the brains of the captive chiefs, who had attempted to escape.
The battle, which began at daybreak, lasted until night, fresh assailants
constantly filling the places of those who fell. Meanwhile a messenger had
been despatched to inform Valdivia of what had occurred. He lost no time in
hastening back, when he found the ditch filled with dead bodies, and the
enemy preparing to renew the attack. Joining the besieged, he at once
advanced upon the main force of the Chilians, who were posted upon the
bank of the river Mapocho. There the struggle was renewed with equal fury
and valour on either side, but with the advantage of skill and arms on that of
the Spaniards. The natives, having at length lost the flower of their youth,
dispersed over the plain.
Notwithstanding this defeat and others which followed, this brave people
never ceased during six years (by which time they were almost utterly
annihilated) to attack the Spaniards upon every occasion that presented
itself, cutting off their provisions and compelling them to subsist on
unwholesome food and on the small amount of grain which they could raise
under the fire from the walls of Santiago. The once fertile plains in the
neighbourhood were now a desert, such inhabitants as survived having
retired to the mountains.
This prolonged and profitless fighting naturally disgusted the Spanish
soldiery, and at length a conspiracy was organized amongst them against the
life of Valdivia. That officer, however, having obtained information of what
was passing, took his measures accordingly. Some of the conspirators were
punished with death, and the soldiers in general were diverted by an
expedition to the valley of Quillota, which was said to abound in mines of
gold. The result surpassed their most sanguine expectations. Past sufferings
and present dangers were forgotten, and the longing to return to Peru no
longer existed. All were anxious to remain in the new El Dorado, and the
governor lost no time in constructing a frigate at the mouth of the river
Chile, which was to bear to Peru the news of his discovery, and to bring
him the necessary aid to enable him to prosecute it with success.
Meanwhile, however, the state of his affairs being urgent, Valdivia
likewise despatched to Peru two of his officers by land, who should take
with them six companions, whose spurs, bits, and stirrups he directed to be
made of gold, which he knew would speak more eloquently than any words
with a view to gaining him recruits. These messengers, although escorted
by thirty horsemen, were attacked by the archers of Copiapo, and of the
whole band only two escaped with life. These were the two officers Monroy
and Miranda, who were brought before the Ulmen, covered with wounds.
That prince resolved to put them to death, but was dissuaded from doing so
by his wife, who pitied their deplorable condition. Several of the horses had
been taken alive, and the Ulmena who had saved the Spaniards requested
from them in return the slight favour of teaching her son to ride. This
naturally suggested the idea of escape, which no one could blame the
prisoners for attempting. But it would not have been in harmony with all
Spanish conduct towards natives of the New World had they simply
contented themselves with escaping. One day whilst the young prince was
riding, escorted by his archers, and preceded by an officer armed with a
lance, Monroy suddenly attacked him with a poniard, inflicting mortal
wounds, whilst Miranda at the same time wrested the lance from the officer.
The pair having thus rewarded the kindness of the Ulmena, put spurs to
their horses and made their escape, in due time reaching Cuzco.
 Vaca de Castro, who on the death of Pizarro was now governor of Peru,
on being informed of the critical situation of his countrymen in Chili, at
once despatched to their aid a considerable detachment of troops under
Monroy, who on his return had the good fortune to escape the notice of the
Copiapins. At the same time De Castro despatched by sea a still greater
reinforcement under Juan Pastene, a Genoese. Both reinforcements reached
Valdivia about the same time, thus enabling him to carry his vast designs
into execution. Taking advantage of Pastene’s nautical acquirements, he
ordered him to make a complete survey of the sea-coast as far as to the
Straits of Magellan. On his return from this service Pastene was despatched
to Peru for further recruits, which were more than ever wanted, for since
the successful affair in Copiapo the natives had become even more
aggressive than before.
The inhabitants of the valley of Quillota had, by means of a
1544.
stratagem, massacred all the Spanish soldiers employed at the
mines. One of the neighbouring natives had brought to the commander a
vessel filled with gold, telling him that he had found a large quantity of the
precious metal in a neighbouring district. On this, all were impatient to
proceed thither to secure their share of the treasure, and falling into an
ambuscade were all cut off, with the exception of the commander and a
negro, who owed their safety to their horses. At the same time the frigate,
which had now been completed, was destroyed. On receiving news of this
disaster, Valdivia hastened to Quillota with his troops, and there built a fort
for the protection of the miners. Being reinforced with three hundred men,
he thought fit to establish a settlement in the north of Chili to serve as a
depôt and a protection for convoys. For this purpose he selected Coquimbo,
which was founded by him in 1544.
Two years later, Valdivia, having passed the Maule, proceeded
1547.
to the river Itata. Whilst there encamped at night, at a place
called Quilacura, he was attacked by the natives, who inflicted on him such
a loss that he thought it prudent to renounce his intended expedition and to
return to Santiago. Being disappointed by the non-arrival of the succours
which he expected from Peru, he now resolved to proceed thither in person.
As he was on the point of starting [1547], Pastene returned, but alone, and
bringing news of the civil war. This did not deter Valdivia from his purpose,
and the two set sail together for Peru. The part which was played in the
final struggle in that country by the conqueror of Chili is detailed
elsewhere. As a reward, he was confirmed by the President Gasca in the
office of governor of Chili, and was furnished with an abundance of
military stores. The president further put at his disposal two ships, in which
he might take away with him many of the turbulent spirits who could be
well spared from Peru.
During the absence of Valdivia, affairs in the south were by no means at
a standstill. In the first place, Pedro de Hoz, who, it will be remembered,
had been designated by the court of Spain for the conquest of Chili, was
accused, rightly or wrongly, of endeavouring to supplant Valdivia, and was
accordingly beheaded by order of the acting governor. In the next place, the
inhabitants of Copiapo, eager to avenge the treacherous murder of their
prince’s son, cut off some forty Spaniards who were proceeding from Peru
to Chili, whilst, at their instigation, the people of Coquimbo massacred the
whole colony which had been recently founded in their territory, razing the
city to its foundation. Aguirre was immediately sent thither, and after
various encounters rebuilt the settlement on a more advantageous situation.
Aguirre is considered by the inhabitants of Coquimbo as the founder of
their city, and many of the patricians of the place claim him as their
ancestor.
After a toilsome contest of nine years, Valdivia considered
1550.
himself to be so firmly established in that part of Chili which had
been under the dominion of the Peruvians as to warrant his partitioning the
land amongst his soldiers. Having by these means satisfied the ambition of
his companions, he set out anew for the southern provinces with a
respectable army of Spaniards and of Promaucian allies. After a march of
eighty leagues he at length arrived at the bay of Panco—already reached by
Pastene—where, on the 5th of October 1550, he founded the city of
Conception. This place, the situation of which is so advantageous for
commerce on account of its excellent harbour, is exposed to earthquakes, by
which, and by the simultaneous inundations of the sea, it has been twice
destroyed.[M] Its occupation by the Spaniards excited alarm amongst the
neighbouring warlike Araucanians, who, foreseeing that their turn would
come next, resolved to succour the tribes near Conception. Thus was
produced a fresh war, the details of which may be preceded in a future
chapter by some account of the remarkable people who have hitherto, even
to the present day, by their obstinate valour, alone amongst the native
inhabitants of South America, withstood the tide of Spanish invasion, and
maintained themselves independent in their mountain strongholds.

CHAPTER IX.

BRAZIL; FAILURE OF THE FRENCH AT RIO DE JANEIRO.

1510-1570.

In following the progress of discovery in South America it is necessary to

turn to another direction. The main centres from which discoveries were
made may for general purposes be set down as three, namely:—(1.) From
the Isthmus of Panama by the Spaniards; (2.) From the river Plata by the
Spaniards; and (3.) From Bahia, on the coast of Brazil, by the Portuguese.
We have now to turn to the last-named point.
The date at which the first Portuguese settler established
1510.
himself in Bahia was about 1510. The name of this pioneer was
Diogo Alvarez, the sole survivor of a crew wrecked to the north of that
beautiful bay. He made himself useful to the natives, and being the
fortunate possessor of a musket and some gunpowder, he so impressed their
imaginations that they presently made him their chief. After a time, taking
advantage of the visit of a French vessel, he was enabled to return to Europe
and to initiate a trade between France and the region in which his lot was
cast. He likewise desired that his countrymen should colonize the province;
but the Portuguese Government were disposed rather to lend assistance
towards establishing a trade between their own and distant countries than to
encourage agricultural settlements abroad. For this reason, Brazil, which,
from the nature of its population, offered but scanty inducements to traders,
was neglected for many years after its discovery. At length, however, it
became of sufficient importance to attract attention, and the system was
adopted, which had succeeded in other Portuguese settlements, of
apportioning it out into captaincies, extending, as a rule, each for fifty
leagues along the coast.
The first person who took possession of one of these
1531
captaincies was Martim Affonso de Sousa, afterwards governor
of the Portuguese possessions in India, and who had the distinction of
carrying St. Francis Xavier to the East. He has the honour of having
discovered the bay on which was to rise the future capital of Brazil, and
which, under the belief that it was the estuary of a river, he named Rio de
Janeiro, having discovered it on the first of January.
Having surveyed the coast southward to the Plata, he selected as a spot
for a settlement an island in the twenty-fourth degree of southern latitude,
and was fortunate enough to conciliate the good-will of the neighbouring
population through the medium of a ship-wrecked Portuguese sailor whom
he found amongst them. This colony soon removed to the island of S.
Vicente, from which the captaincy was named. Here Martim Affonso
introduced the sugar-cane, and reared the first cattle known to that region.
Amongst the other captaincies founded about this period were those of S.
Amaro, which adjoined S. Vicente, and Espirito Santo to the north. Next
came the captaincy of Porto Seguro, where Cabral had landed on first
taking possession of Brazil. Here sugar-works were established with
considerable success. Beyond came the captaincy of the Ilheos or Isles, so
called from a river with three islands near its bar. The town of old S. Paulo
was soon afterwards founded.
The coast from the San Francisco river to the point of Padram de Bahia
was granted to Francisco Coutinho, a distinguished Fidalgo, to whom was
likewise assigned that beautiful bay with its surrounding creeks and
hundred islands. It may be mentioned, as showing the mixture of
Portuguese and native blood which from the earliest settlement existed in
the Brazilian race, that two of Coutinho’s followers married daughters of
the first Portuguese settler, Diogo Alvarez, the mothers of whom were
native women. A son of one of the neighbouring chiefs having been killed
by the Portuguese, the savages attacked Coutinho, and after seven years of
hostilities compelled him to abandon his settlement and retreat to the
adjoining captaincy of the Isles. He was afterwards treacherously slain.
One other captaincy was established about this time—that of
Pernambuco, the chief town of which, from its lovely situation, received
the suggestive name of Olinda. The tribe occupying the vicinity were called
Cahetes, and have handed down to this day the remarkable wicker-work
catamarans, which those who have landed at Pernambuco are not likely to
forget. From this savage tribe, Coelho, to whom the grant was assigned, had
to conquer by inches what had been granted to him by leagues; he was even
attacked and besieged in his town. By degrees, however, and by the aid of
an alliance with another tribe, he at length established himself in his
captaincy.
The captaincy of Maraham was assigned to John de Barros, the
historian, who, dividing his grant with two others, undertook a scheme of
conquest as well as of colonization, sending out from Portugal an
expedition of nine hundred men. Fortune, however, did not smile upon the
enterprise. The fleet was wrecked on some shoals, and the survivors
escaped to the island which bears the above-mentioned name.
It does not lie within the compass of this work to go into the condition of
the native tribes in any part of South America previously to the arrival of
the Spaniards and Portuguese. It will be sufficient to indicate the materials,
whether European, native, mixed, or African, of which the several States of
South America were composed at the period of their declaring themselves
independent of Spain and Portugal, respectively. We therefore pass over
much that is interesting, as told by the early writers, of the condition of the
tribes as they were found by the settlers in Brazil, a résumé of which may
be found in the pages of Southey. There is not much of an active nature to
relate in the history of the several captaincies at this period beyond a tale of
successive little wars, in which the Portuguese were for the most part allied
with some one native tribe against another.
It was not until the lapse of half a century after the discovery
1549.
of Brazil that the Portuguese possessions in that region came to
be looked upon as being of real importance to the mother country. It then
began to be perceived that the system of having so many captaincies or
separate governments, under no supreme authority nearer than Lisbon, was
one likely to be productive of considerable inconvenience and confusion.
The lives and property of the colonists were at the mercy of the several
governors, and serious complaints of this state of things reached the king of
Portugal. It was resolved, therefore, to revoke the powers of the captains,
whilst leaving them their grants, and to appoint over them a governor-
general. The person chosen for this high office was De Sousa, who was
instructed to establish himself at Bahia, which place he was to put into a
state of defence against all enemies. He took with him the great Nobrega
and some other Jesuit Fathers, the first of their order who proceeded to
South America. A new town was now built at Bahia. A hundred houses
arose within four months, and De Sousa’s fleet was followed at no great
distance of time by another, bearing a number of maidens of noble family,
who were to be given in marriage to the officers and to receive dowries
from the royal property. Young orphans were likewise sent out year by year
to be educated by the Jesuits, who at once began the system of beneficence
towards the natives from which they never deviated; but they could not
here, as they had done elsewhere, engraft the principles of Christianity upon
the existing religion and manners of the country. It was impossible to come
to any compromise with cannibalism, and almost impossible to wean the
natives from this custom. The Jesuits, however, persevered in the face of all
difficulties; they built churches; they established schools for children; they
taught these to read and to write; and they made themselves acquainted with
the native tongues, into which they translated the prayers of the Church.
They had considerable difficulties, however, to encounter in reconciling
their teaching with the practice of their fellow-countrymen; for it must be
remembered that, during the half century that elapsed between the
discovery of Brazil and the arrival of the Fathers, the colonists had been
without religious guides. In one respect the Jesuits’ work was easy. The
youthful Brazilians showed themselves passionately fond of music, and
were in this branch of education eager and apt pupils.
The number of Jesuits soon increased, and in the year 1552
1552.
Nobrega received the title of Vice-Provincial of Brazil. Two
years later that government became the seat of a bishop, to whose arrival
Nobrega anxiously looked forward for support against the easy-going
priests, who, far from being imbued with the zeal of the Jesuits, connived at
their countrymen enslaving the Brazilians and making their women their
concubines. A Jesuit College was established in the plains of Riatininga,
about thirteen leagues from S. Vicente, to which thirteen of the company
were sent, and which received the name of S. Paulo, a name shared by the
town which arose adjoining it. The chief of this establishment, the
celebrated Anchieta, devoted himself by day and by night to the instruction
of the numerous pupils who came to him from the neighbouring
settlements, whilst at the same time he did his best to acquaint them with
the arts of civilization.
From the time of the discovery of Brazil the French had
1558.
occasionally visited that coast, and about the year 1558 they
attempted to establish themselves at Rio de Janeiro under Villegagnon, the
same who had conveyed Mary Queen of Scots from Scotland to Brittany,
eluding the vigilance of the English. He had obtained the permission of his
sovereign to undertake an expedition to America, having given his
assurances to Coligny that he would protect Protestants in the new colony.
He received two large vessels and a store-ship, together with all that was
necessary for the furtherance of his project. Being well received by the
natives at Rio de Janeiro, who were hostile to the Portuguese, he took up
his position on an island in the noble bay, not far from the entrance. Here he
erected a small fortification, to which he gave the name of Coligny; in
choosing a spot for a settlement, however, he had overlooked one great
disadvantage, the absence of water. His expedition had been badly provided
with stores; in consequence, his men were immediately on their arrival
made to subsist upon the food of the country, and the result was a
conspiracy against him. It was, however, thwarted by the fidelity of three
Scotchmen whom Villegagnon reserved as his guard. Coligny was
indefatigable in supplying the wants of the colony, but he had been
deceived by Villegagnon’s protestations of zeal for the reformed religion,
which had been feigned for the purpose of gaining the admiral’s influence.
In Brazil he threw off the mask, and those who had joined his settlement for
the sake of liberty of conscience found themselves even worse off than they
had been in France.
The Portuguese permitted the French colony to remain for four years
unmolested, and had it not been for the treachery and double-dealing of
Villegagnon, Rio de Janeiro might have remained a permanent French
settlement. Some ten thousand Huguenots were ready to emigrate, with
their arts, had they been sure of meeting with toleration; but the governor’s
arbitrary proceedings ruined the project. The court of Lisbon was at length
aroused by Nobrega to the dangerous rivalry of the French, and orders were
issued to destroy their fortifications at Rio de Janeiro, two ships of war and
a number of merchantmen being fitted out for the purpose. Two days and
nights were expended in battering the fortresses. The Portuguese, after
much waste of their resources, at length succeeded in carrying the largest of
the outworks, and likewise the rock on which the magazine was situated.
During the ensuing night the French and their native allies fled, either to the
ships or to the mainland. The Portuguese, not being in sufficient strength to
enable them to retain the island, demolished the works, and sailed for
Santos, carrying off the artillery and stores. The credit of this successful
expedition is entirely due to the indefatigable Nobrega.
During this decisive affair Villegagnon was absent in France, where he
proposed to raise a fleet for the purpose of destroying the Portuguese
settlements in Brazil; but his previous treachery stood in the way of his
effecting his purpose.
The history of the early Portuguese in Brazil is in some respects far more
satisfactory, if it be less exciting, than that of the Spaniards in Peru. They
were there for the legitimate purpose of colonizing and cultivating a portion
of a vast region where there was ample room at the same time for them and
for the tribes in their neighbourhood; and if the colonists, on the one hand,
were ever ready to enslave the natives, the Churchmen who followed in
their wake were, on the other hand, as ready to denounce the practice, and
to sow the seeds of real Christianity amongst the savages. The foremost
name in the records of this good work is that of Nobrega, than whom a
more sincere, self-denying, and enlightened missionary was never sent forth
by any branch of the Christian Church.
The Jesuits in Brazil began their efforts where all missionary efforts that
are to succeed must begin, with children. Their unprejudiced minds were
open to teaching, and they were at an age to acquire the Portuguese
language, and thus to become interpreters for the Fathers. The sick were
visited, and the death-bed was soothed. Nobrega and his companions
commenced their work with the tribes near San Salvador or Bahia. These
they tried their best to persuade to live in peace and to be reconciled to their
enemies. It may seem to us somewhat strange that while the Fathers are
recorded to have succeeded in inducing their converts to abstain from
excessive drinking, and to take to one wife alone, they should still have
found it impossible to induce them to abandon the supreme luxury of
feeding on the flesh of their enemies. In one instance a missionary is said to
have succeeded where others failed, by flagellating himself before the doors
of the cannibals until he was covered with blood, telling them that he thus
punished himself to avert the punishment of God upon them for their sins.
Being aided by a zealous governor in the person of Mem de Sa, the
Jesuits carried on their labours with considerable success, forming a number
of settlements of converted natives. But the character of their progress was
not unvaried. They had to contend with hostilities, which, though
originating in the proceedings of their countrymen, and in nowise in their
own conduct, still recoiled upon them. The small-pox, too, which spread
from island to coast, is said, though perhaps with some exaggeration, to
have carried off thirty thousand of the Indians who had been their converts.
In the face of these disasters, Nobrega proclaimed aloud that the
Portuguese were but suffering the righteous judgment of Heaven. They had
broken treaties; they had enslaved prisoners; they had connived at
cannibalism on the part of their allies. He was no mere eloquent declaimer.
His words were followed by the most signal and heroic proof that they
came from his innermost soul. He himself, with his colleague Anchieta,
resolved to put themselves into the hands of the natives in order to obtain
peace; and it speaks volumes for the character of the Fathers that, in the
face of Portuguese treachery, the habit of their order was a safe passport
amongst the savages.
It is true that twelve native youths were sent to S. Vicente as hostages;
but in face of the excitement and prejudice which prevailed, it is probable
that the two Fathers, who really deserved the name of holy men, owed their
safety, and what they valued infinitely more, the success of their mission,
rather to their own saintly and irreproachable conduct than to the guarantee
of hostages. They nobly refused to accept peace on the condition of
recommending their governor to give up three native chiefs who had allied
themselves with the Portuguese, and who had accepted Christianity: their
countrymen’s first duty, they said, was to keep faith inviolate, and if they
should betray their allies, how could they now be trusted? The reply of the
chief with whom they parleyed was, that if the Portuguese should decline to
give up these men whom, according to their code of honour, it was
incumbent they should receive, there should be no peace. A reference to the
governor was agreed upon on both sides; but Nobrega, with a patriotic spirit
which recalls that of the Roman Regulus, warned him emphatically against
concluding peace on disgraceful terms under the apprehension of what
might befall himself and his colleague. For two months the missionaries
remained in this position. At the end of that time Nobrega was permitted to
return, to consult with the governor, whilst Anchieta remained as a hostage;
but after three months thus passed by the latter, he too for the time failed to
win the crown of martyrdom; and a reconciliation was effected, chiefly
through the efforts of Nobrega.
 The small-pox about this period seems to have produced enormous
havoc in certain of the Portuguese settlements in Brazil, where some three-
fourths of the natives were carried away by it, or by the pestilence which
followed in its wake. Six of the settlements which had been founded by the
Jesuits had to be abandoned; and the Portuguese, we are told, profiting by
the misery of their neighbours, gave food in exchange for slaves. Certain
starving individuals sold their own persons, whilst others parted with their
children. But although the lawfulness of these purchases was not
questioned, the consciences of the purchasers were somewhat ill-at-ease in
the matter. They, it seems, really thought it unfair and unchristian-like to
claim men as their slaves, over whom they had no other right save that
acquired by giving them food to save their lives. Yet they were unwilling to
let them go free, if for no other reason than that their souls would be no
longer in the way of salvation. In this dilemma a compromise was hit upon
between God and Mammon; the slaves were told they were no longer
slaves; but still, that they must continue to serve their possessors for life, to
receive yearly wages. Should they escape, they would be pursued and
punished; but the masters were not to sell or otherwise part with them.
The Portuguese Government were not satisfied that the
1564.
possession of Villegagnon’s island at Rio de Janeiro should not
have been retained; and a good opportunity of regaining it seemed to offer
on the peace with the Tamoyos, which had been procured by Nobrega and
his companion. Accordingly, the nephew of the Portuguese governor was
sent to Bahia with two vessels, and with orders for his uncle to supply him
with the force requisite for this purpose. Estacio de Sa reached his
destination in February 1564, and in accordance with the advice of his
uncle, before commencing operations, summoned Nobrega to his councils.
They learned from a Frenchman that the tribe of Tamoyos had already
broken the recent peace, and were the allies of his countrymen. This
unexpected news completely upset the plans of the Portuguese commander,
for the French vessels were protected by the Tamoyos at every point where
an attack was possible. They declined to put out to sea, and, for want of
small craft, he could not attack them at close quarters. Under these
circumstances, and having learned that S. Vicente was beset by the savages,
he thought it prudent to proceed to the latter place; he was, however, driven
back by a storm to Rio de Janeiro.
 It was now resolved by Estacio de Sa, in consultation with Nobrega, to
proceed to Santos, where they found to their relief that those natives with
whom the latter had been a hostage remained true to their engagements; and
his presence and influence materially contributed to strengthen the force.
These preparations, however, consumed the remainder of the year, and it
was not until the following January (1565) that the expedition, consisting of
six ships of war with a proportionate number of smaller craft, was ready to
put to sea. But so unfavourable were the winds that, although they sailed
from Bertioga on the 20th of January, it was the beginning of March when
they reached Rio de Janeiro.
The troops were landed at Villa Velha, beneath the “Sugar Loaf.” Hardly
had they intrenched themselves when they were attacked by the Tamoyos,
who, however, were routed. The war was carried on with dilatoriness, a
quality which has not unfrequently distinguished the military operations of
Portugal and of Brazil. More than a year was wasted in petty skirmishes; at
the end of this time the governor, Mem de Sa, appeared in person on the
scene, exactly two years after the expedition had sailed from S. Vicente. On
St. Sebastian’s day the French stronghold was assaulted: not one of their
native allies escaped; two Frenchmen were killed, and five, who were made
prisoners, were hanged. The victors then proceeded to another fortress of
the enemy on Cat Island. After a bombardment this too was carried, but in
the assault Estacio de Sa received a mortal wound. Most of the French
escaped, and having with their allies been totally defeated, sailed in their
four vessels to the province of Pernambuco, where they took possession of
Recife. They were, however, attacked by the Portuguese governor of
Olinda, and were compelled again to have recourse to their ships. Thus was
Rio de Janeiro finally lost to the French. Those of the sons of France who
should have formed the enduring colony marked out by Coligny were,
through the treachery of Villegagnon, employed in bearing arms against
their countrymen in France.
According to his instructions, the governor’s first act was to lay the
foundations of a city, which, in honour of the Portuguese monarch and of
the saint on whose day the victory had been won, was called S. Sebastian.
The fortifications commanding the entrance to the harbour were completed
by the natives, under the eye of the Jesuits, without any cost to the state;
and it was but fair that the company should have assigned to it the space
within the city for a college, together with a donation sufficient for the
support of fifty brethren.
The French soon afterwards made an attempt to establish themselves at
Paraïba, where for some time they carried on a profitable trade, and where
they became allied with the natives; but they were not more successful in
maintaining themselves here than they had been at Rio de Janeiro, and
Paraïba too became a Portuguese settlement.
The Order of the Jesuits was at this time all-powerful in
1570.
Brazil, where they had indeed rendered great services to the
crown as well as to the Church; and a fresh accession to their strength was
despatched with the new governor, Luiz de Vasconcellos, who, in 1570, was
appointed to relieve Mem de Sa. The reinforcement which he brought with
him was headed by Azevedo, who was appointed Provincial. Nine and
thirty brethren embarked with Azevedo in the “St. Iago,” half of which
vessel was freighted for them, the other half bearing cargo for the island of
Palma in the Canaries. The vessel had halted at Madeira, and as the
passage to Palma was considered to be dangerous on account of French
pirates, Azevedo was entreated not to expose himself unnecessarily. For
himself he declined to take the advice given him, but he permitted his
comrades to exchange into another vessel. Only four novices, whose places
were quickly supplied by others, thought fit to do so; for the rest, the near
probability of the crown of martyrdom had an irresistible charm. On the day
after their departure five French ships appeared. Vasconcellos at once put to
sea; but the Frenchmen declined action, and stood off towards the Canaries.
The squadron was from La Rochelle, and was commanded by a Huguenot.
After seven days, Azevedo reached the island of Palma, at three leagues’
distance from the town, to which he was urged to proceed by land. The
advice was disregarded, with the result that, when he and his friends were
off Palma, the French appeared in sight. The Portuguese mariners made
unavailing resistance, and one alone of the Jesuits, being in lay costume,
escaped the death which for them had not only no terror, but seemed to be
an object of desire.
This catastrophe has been quoted with unlimited admiration, and the
martyrs have received all due posthumous honour; but if we look at the
circumstances from any point of view save that of a fanatic, our admiration
must be considerably qualified. Azevedo and his companions were
doubtless brave men; but they had been educated and sent out from their
country with the express purpose of converting the heathen; and it was
surely not their duty in any sense wantonly and recklessly to go out of their
way to seek premature death. If the crown of martyrdom was so dear to
them—if, in the language of certain writers, they were swallowed up by
other-worldliness—the prize might surely have been gained more
honourably amongst the savages of Brazil than at the hands of French
corsairs. Of the eight-and-thirty foolhardy men whose blood so uselessly
stained the waters of Palma, one might have proved a second Nobrega. To
an unprejudiced person it seems that, so far from acting for “the greater
glory of God” by provoking wholesale massacre, they were deliberately
doing the contrary, since they were thus cutting themselves off from a
sphere of vast usefulness. Nor can we greatly blame the commander of the
French squadron for his conduct on the occasion. It was but one scene in a
fierce religious war, in which the priests, not the Huguenots, were the
aggressors.
Vasconcellos set sail with the remainder of his fleet. When, after a long
and miserable voyage, he sighted the coast of Brazil, his vessels were
driven far to the north and were dispersed. At length his followers were so
reduced in numbers that one vessel might contain them all; yet not even this
one vessel was destined to reach its destination in safety. It was attacked by
a French squadron, and, after a hopeless resistance, the governor fell; whilst
fourteen remaining Jesuits shared the fate of the martyrs of Palma. Of sixty-
nine Jesuit missionaries who had set out with Azevedo, one alone reached
Brazil.

CHAPTER X.

PERU; SUPREMACY OF GONZALO PIZARRO.

1542-1545.

The conspirators who had assassinated Pizarro succeeded in

1541.
securing possession of Lima, and their next step was at once to
send to the different cities proclaiming the revolution and claiming the
recognition of the son of Almagro as governor of Peru. At Truxillo and
Arequipa, where it was emphasized by the presence of a military force, the
summons was obeyed; but in other cities it was received with merely
nominal assent, whilst in some it was disregarded. At Cuzco, where the
Almagro faction prevailed, the dissenting magistrates were summarily
ejected from office; but they were soon after reinstated by means of a
neighbouring military force commanded by one of Pizarro’s captains. The
conspirators had most to dread from the Licentiate Vaca de Castro, whose
commission to assume the post of governor in case of the death of Pizarro
had now come into force. De Castro was still in the north, but on being
advised of Pizarro’s death he quickened his steps southwards. He was in a
difficult position, having a very imperfect acquaintance with the political
state of the country, and he was neither a soldier himself nor supported by a
military force. He was, however, a man of courage, and had confidence in
his own resources, besides relying on the habitual loyalty of Spaniards to
the crown.
Without delay, therefore, he pursued his march towards Quito, where he
was well received by the officer who had charge of that place during the
absence of Gonzalo Pizarro on the Amazons. At Quito he displayed the
royal commission empowering him to assume the government, and thence
he sent emissaries to the principal places requiring obedience to himself as
the representative of the crown. But meanwhile the faction of the young
Almagro was gaining strength at Lima. His forces were commanded by
Rada, who obtained the necessary funds for preparing his soldiers for
service. Such of Pizarro’s followers as declined to be reconciled to the
ruling faction were permitted to depart from Lima, amongst these being the
Bishop Valverde, who, however, almost immediately afterwards fell into the
hands of the hostile natives of Puná, from whom he received the violent
death which was in harmony with the lawless scenes in which he had taken
part. As the young Almagro’s power was founded solely on usurpation, it
was of course a mere trial of strength between his rebel bands and such
loyal forces as might rally round the governor. His policy was to defeat
these in detail before they had time to effect a junction under De Castro. He,
however, sustained a severe loss in the death from fever of his Lieutenant,
Rada, which occasioned an ill-timed jealousy between his next principal
officers, and which thwarted his well-conceived plans. The result was that
the two chief bodies of the opposite faction succeeded in effecting a
junction, and he was compelled to fall back on Cuzco, in which city he
found no opposition.
 At Cuzco, however, the rivalry of his two chief officers again broke out,
with the result that they were each in turn assassinated. Almagro then lost
no time in providing for his men against the inevitable approaching
campaign; in which effort he was aided by the Inca Manco, whose
friendship was probably heightened by the circumstance that Almagro’s
mother was a Peruvian princess. The Inca likewise promised to support him
with a detachment of native troops. Before the final appeal to arms,
however, each side was willing to try the effect of negotiation, each being
aware that the result of the struggle was doubtful. The governor was
prepared to grant Almagro pardon, in consideration of his youth and
inexperience, provided that he should give up the leaders of the conspiracy
who had taken part in the death of Pizarro. To this proposition Almagro
could not with honour assent, and nothing was left but to await the ordeal of
battle. Meanwhile De Castro continued to advance southwards, and was
well received at S. Miguel and Truxillo. It was not till the early part of 1542
that he reached the scene where the contest was to be decided, and where he
showed remarkable skill in asserting his own supreme authority,
notwithstanding the pretensions of the two ambitious officers who
commanded the royal troops, and each of whom aspired to the chief
military authority. Having entered Lima, he was received with
demonstrations of joy, and obtained the necessary funds for the prosecution
of his enterprise.
The contest was decided on the plains of Xauxa, where the governor’s
forces amounted to no more than seven hundred men, being more or less
equally matched by those of the enemy. It was late in the afternoon of the
16th September when the hostile forces met. The combat was terrible, for
quarter was neither asked for nor given. Night had fallen on the combatants
long before the struggle was decided; but the victory at length declared
itself in favour of the royalists. From three to five hundred—an enormous
proportion—are said to have fallen on either side, and at least one-half of
the survivors of Almagro’s party were made prisoners. Their young
commander, who had performed prodigies of valour, escaped unhurt to
Cuzco, where, however, he was at once arrested, and where, having been
tried by a council of war, he soon shared the fate which had befallen his
father, meeting his death with the utmost courage.
The governor’s next care was called for by the proceedings of Gonzalo
Pizarro, who had arrived at Lima, where he loudly complained that the
government of the country had not been placed in his hands on his brother’s
death. It was reported that he now meditated seizing the capital; but against
this De Castro took the prudent precaution of detaching a force in that
direction, whilst at the same time he required Pizarro’s presence at Cuzco.
Such was his tact and conciliatory demeanour that the aggrieved chief
found no opportunity for quarrelling, and he thought it prudent to comply
with the governor’s advice that he should retire to his possessions in La
Plata, where he occupied himself to some purpose in working its mines of
silver.
The authority of the crown being thus fully re-established, there was no
lack of subjects to occupy the governor’s attention. As was natural, many of
the cavaliers who had assisted him in the struggle now demanded their
reward. He was happy to rid himself of their importunities by sending them
on distant expeditions, some being in the direction of the Rio de la Plata.
But his chief concern was to establish laws for the better government of the
colony. He did not neglect the Indian population, and established schools
for Christian education. He invited the natives to reside within the Spanish
communities, and required the caciques to provide supplies for the wayside
houses for travellers, thus facilitating intercourse and removing pretexts for
plundering. He braved considerable odium by reducing the proportions of
the repartimientos of Indians amongst the conquerors; but as his measures
were manifestly dictated by motives of justice, he was supported by the
general opinion of the community. Indeed, Vaca de Castro stands out in
most pleasing contrast to the military adventurers by whom he had been
preceded in Peru. With the disadvantage of being a civilian, unused to arms
or to military command, and being, further, on his arrival without funds or
troops, with the country before him in a state of anarchy, he yet never
quailed or shrank from his duty. He displayed not only the tact and
conciliatory disposition which might have been expected from the
circumstances of his selection, but further, high moral and personal
courage; and whilst he spared no pains to secure the interests of his
government and of his countrymen beneath his rule, it was his especial
honour to make the professions of his superiors in favour of the natives not
merely a declaration in words, but a reality in deed.
The spoils of the Peruvian empire, which had been so easily won by a
mere handful of Spaniards, were as easily dissipated in riotous living. The
provident arrangements of the Incas on behalf of their subjects were
suffered to fall into decay. The granaries were emptied; the flocks of llamas
were wantonly slaughtered; whilst the lives of the Indians themselves were
held so cheap that they were not only systematically worked beyond their
strength until they died, but were even occasionally hunted by blood-
hounds for the mere amusement of their conquerors. It is almost
unnecessary to add that for the young women of the country, from the
Virgins of the Sun downwards, there was no protection whatsoever. The
poor natives, destitute of food, and no longer warmed by the produce of the
fleece of the llama, wandered naked over the plains.
Yet fortunately there were not wanting in the colonies men who from
time to time raised their voices against the abuses and enormities of which
their countrymen were guilty, and made themselves heard even at the foot
of the throne. Nor must it be supposed that the enormities which have been
alluded to were in any way sanctioned by the emperor. It must be
remembered that the Spanish possessions in the New World were at an
immense distance from home, and that in those days the means of
communication were slow and irregular. It would therefore no more be fair
to charge upon the Spanish crown the responsibility for encouraging or
approving the caprices or pastimes of a set probably of the greatest ruffians
in the emperor’s dominions, than it would have been, in the days before
communication by steam and telegraph, to hold Her Majesty’s Government
responsible for the deeds of certain of Her subjects who were early settlers
in South Africa or Australia. The Government of Spain was ever desirous to
obtain information respecting the state of their transatlantic dominions, and
for this end relied not only on the regular colonial officers of the crown, but
from time to time deputed special commissioners for the purpose of making
inquiries. Yet even when impartial inquiries were made and full reports
written, all was not done; for the Spanish Government was essentially a
personal one, and the emperor was very frequently absent from that
kingdom.
Fortunately, however, for the credit of his reign and for the
1542.
existence of his transatlantic subjects, he visited his ancestral
dominions in the Peninsula in the year 1542, when the condition of the
colonies was strongly pressed upon his conscience. In the same year a
council of jurists and theologians was convened at Valladolid to devise a
system of laws for the American colonies. Las Casas, who had emerged
from his cell, appeared before it, when he powerfully pleaded the cause of
the oppressed. He showed that, putting aside natural rights, unless the
Government should interfere, the native races must be gradually
exterminated by the systematic oppression of the Spaniards, and he
maintained that it was against the will of God to inflict evil on the plea that
good might come of it. His arguments, as might be expected, were met by
much opposition, some even of those who sympathized with him deeming
that his views were Utopian and impracticable. His eloquence, however,
dictated by the best of motives and based upon the foundation of facts, in
the end prevailed, and the result was a code of ordinances for all the
American colonies, some provisions of which had immediate reference to
Peru.
The natives of Peru were declared vassals of the crown, and their
freedom as such was recognised; yet those of the conquerors who might
have become lawfully possessed of slaves might still retain them, though at
the death of their present proprietors they were to revert to the crown. All
slaves, however, should be forfeited by those who had shown themselves,
by neglect or ill-usage, unworthy to hold them. Those likewise were to be
free who were held by public functionaries, present or past, by ecclesiastics
and religious corporations, and by all who had taken a criminal part in the
feuds of Almagro and Pizarro. It was further ordered that the Indians should
be moderately taxed; that they should not be compelled to labour where
they did not choose to, or that, if this were necessary, they should receive
fair compensation. The repartimientos of land which were excessive should
be reduced; and where proprietors had notoriously been guilty of abuse of
their slaves, their estates were to be forfeited.
Taking into consideration the past troubles in Peru, and the necessity for
the crown being adequately represented there, it was resolved to send a
Viceroy to rule over that province. He was to be accompanied by a royal
audience, consisting of four judges, who should constitute a council to the
Viceroy, whose residence was to be at Lima. But it was not foreseen that
this sweeping legislation, which struck at the very foundations of colonial
society and property, might not be quietly acquiesced in by the colonists. It
raised, in point of fact, one of those sudden storms which we have in our
own time seen more than once break over our Indian Empire on the
announcement of some legislative measure affecting the relations between
Anglo-Indians and Asiatics which was not to the taste of the former, and its
results were such as fortunately we have been so far spared in our own
experience. When the tidings reached the New World men were astounded,
and saw before them only the prospect of uncertainty or ruin. In Peru in
particular scarcely one single person could escape being involved in the
provisions of some clauses of the new laws, if for no other reason than that
the whole Spanish population had on the one side or on the other taken part
in the struggle for mastery between the factions of Pizarro and Almagro.
The whole country was thrown into confusion; and loud were the
denunciations against the Government which had thus deprived at one
stroke the freebooters of so much of their ill-gotten spoil.
Nor did they stop at reproaches. There was but one step to menace. The
colonists had won their possessions with their swords, and they now
declared that by the same means they knew how to retain them. The
governor, Vaca de Castro, who had so admirably acquitted himself of his
duties hitherto, was now indeed placed in a trying situation. He was at
Cuzco, in the midst of a mixed population, and separated from Lima and
from the sea. He was appealed to by the colonists to protect them against
the tyranny of the court; but he did his best to dissuade them from violent
measures, prudently suggesting that they should send deputies to lay their
pleas respectfully before the crown. In his present trying position, as in his
previous conduct, he proved himself an able and judicious man; but it was
beyond his power to allay the storm that had been raised, even although he
suggested that the Viceroy on his arrival might take it upon himself to
postpone the execution of the ordinances until after the receipt of further
advices from Castile.
Such being the state of things, the discontented Peruvian colonists not
unnaturally turned their attention to Gonzalo Pizarro, the representative of
the conqueror under whose banner the country had been won. Gonzalo was
at this time at Charcas, the modern Chuquisaca, and was busily engaged in
exploring the silver mines of Potosí. He was not discontented at the turn
which things had taken, but was sufficiently prudent to provide the means
of warfare before rushing into action; and while he did not discourage the
malcontents, he was careful not to commit himself. In the latter course he
was confirmed by letters from Vaca de Castro, whose prudent measures
served at least to lull for a time the troubled waters.
The new Viceroy at length arrived. Blasco Nuñez Vela was a handsome
cavalier of the years of discretion; but unfortunately he proved wholly
unequal to cope with the difficult situation before him. It was not owing to
any disapproval of the measures or proceedings of Vaca de Castro that that
officer now found himself superseded; but intelligence of events travelled
so slowly that the full success of his policy was not at once apparent, and
the Government of Spain thought they were acting for the best in sending
out as Viceroy a person unconnected with the events that had passed. The
Emperor at the same time wrote an autograph letter to the ex-governor, in
which he thanked him for his services, and directed him, after having given
his successor the benefit of his experience, to return homewards to sit in the
royal council.
In January 1544 the Viceroy reached the Isthmus. Finding at
1544.
Nombre de Dios a vessel laden with silver from Peru, and which
was about to depart for Spain, he lost no time in putting his new edict into
execution by laying an embargo on the ship as containing the product of
slave labour. He then crossed to Panamá, where he caused some three
hundred Peruvians to be liberated and sent back to their own country. This
proceeding, dictated though it was by a desire to put the new laws into
execution without a moment’s delay, was obviously calculated to unsettle
the colonial society to the last degree; nor would the Viceroy listen to
remonstrances on the subject even from the most experienced persons. All
this augured badly for the prospect of peace, and the Viceroy’s progress to
the seat of his government only brought matters from worse to worse. On
the 4th of March he arrived at Tumbez, where his authority was proclaimed,
the inhabitants being overawed by the magnificence of his surroundings.
Still continuing to exhibit the policy which he had been sent out to initiate,
and which with Castilian pride he disdained to veil, he here liberated a
number of Peruvian slaves. From Tumbez he proceeded by land towards the
south, causing his baggage to be carried by mules when practicable, or, if
the services of Peruvians were necessary for this purpose, he took care that
they should be duly paid.
It is not surprising that the whole country should have been thrown into a
state of consternation by the proceedings of the Viceroy. “Indignation”
meetings were called in the cities; and it was even urged that the gates of
Lima should be closed against him, a course of proceeding which was
obviated by the remonstrances of Vaca de Castro. The colonists now more
than ever turned towards Gonzalo Pizarro, who was, as time passed, ever in
a better position to assume a leading part. That chief had indeed much to
render him discontented. His brother, the first governor, had been
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