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The southeastern Polish city of Przemyśl, with its elegant 19th century Habsburg-era train station, remains one of the principal gateways to war-torn Ukraine. I pass through it regularly on my way to Ukraine, never missing a chance to visit the statue of the good soldier Švejk on one of the town’s squares. Over a hundred years ago, in the first months of World War I, this at-the-time multinational city in the northeastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire became the center of military operations on the Eastern Front, site of the largest and bloodiest siege of the war, and an illustration of the upsides and downsides of dogged static, positional defense — the usual approach of the underdog — and that contingency is the ultimate arbiter of its effectiveness. It holds a valuable lesson for the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.
Przemyśl was the most important bulwark in the Empire’s East, with a single mission. In the event of war with Russia, it was meant to protect the passes into the Carpathian Mountains from which a Russian invader could march into the Hungarian plains, on to Budapest, and knock the Dual Monarchy out of the war. The idea was simple: Russia would have more men and materiel available and likely attempt to steamroll Austrian forces with its sheer mass and push back the frontline. In such an event, with the frontline being pushed back and Austrian forces retreating under pressure, Przemyśl was supposed to serve as a bulwark tying down significant Russian forces and buying Austria-Hungary time.
By and large, this plan worked during a short siege of the great fortress city, which took place from Sept. 16 to Oct. 11, 1914, during these crucial fall weeks. The tenacious defense of a ragtag garrison composed of middle-aged reservists from every corner of the empire — Austrian Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Czechs, Italians, Poles, and Ukrainians — prevented the collapse of Austro-Hungarian military power on the Eastern Front, as Alexander Watson argues in his magnificent book on the subject. It also destroyed any Russian hopes of a quick victory over Austria-Hungary, thereby guaranteeing that the war in the East, just like on the Western Front, would become an attritional contest.
However, a second siege lasting 133 days from November 1914 to March 1915 destroyed Austro-Hungarian military power in the East. Austro-Hungarian forces launched several ill‑fated counteroffensives through the wintry Carpathian Mountains to relieve the city, which cost them and their Russian opponents at least 1.8 million casualties in the course of a few months. Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary’s Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf, refused to authorize breakout attempts, judging the situation from his distant vantage as far more favorable than it actually was — contrary to the dire assessments of local commanders who understood the true severity of the garrison’s predicament. When Przemyśl capitulated in March 1915, preceded by one last-ditch breakout effort, over 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers fell into Russian captivity and dealt a blow to Habsburg prestige in the region from which it would never recover. At that stage, the professional officer corps and non-commissioned officers had ceased to exist. From that point on, the Austro-Hungarian military was a reservist force incapable of conducting complex offensive or defensive operations at scale for the remainder of the war, save in close cooperation with its German ally.
The two sieges of Przemyśl illustrate a fundamental principle about static defense doctrine: it can serve a legitimate strategic purpose when it creates time for operational maneuver or enables relief of the defending force, but it can become catastrophic for an overstretched military when political imperatives combined with an inflexible and centralized command structure override sound military judgement, preventing commanders from executing the tactical withdrawals necessary to preserve troops and operational effectiveness. This distinction holds vital lessons for the ongoing war in Ukraine, where a “no step back” defense posture by Ukrainian forces risks worsening the relative attrition rate between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
Historically, a static positional defense of urban terrain — or a fortress‑type defense posture — has been justified based on five main points: favorable casualty ratios, tying down enemy forces and preventing their deployment elsewhere on the front, buying time, allowing defensive preparations and mobilization in depth, as well as overall morale and political symbolism. Indeed, there have been many examples in history where such a defense made sense. Just think of World War II and Bastogne in December 1944. The defense of this Belgian town during the Battle of the Bulge was strategically rational because Bastogne controlled a critical road junction essential to German offensive operations. The Allied defensive effort bought time for Patton’s Third Army to relieve the garrison; the defenders were ultimately relieved, not destroyed; and the German offensive was defeated. Critically, Allied commanders recognized Bastogne’s operational importance: losing it would have enabled German armor to move freely through the Ardennes — not merely its symbolic value. The defense succeeded because it served a purpose beyond holding terrain for its own sake.
Yet Germany’s worst military defeat in the war demonstrates the catastrophic alternative. Similar to Austria-Hungary during the second siege of Przemyśl, Germany lost the bulk of its experienced personnel in the summer of 1944 in Belarus in part as a result of Hitler’s dogged insistence on the fortress policy (the “Führer Order 11”) , which ultimately doomed Army Group Center in the summer of 1944 and accelerated German attrition rates until April 1945. Hitler’s March 1944 Führer Order 11 mandated the creation of strongholds at the front — cities and towns ordered to allow themselves to be encircled and thereby tie up as much enemy strength as possible. It also barred military commanders from issuing any withdrawal orders unless they had obtained explicit authorization from Hitler himself. ”Operation Bagration, launched by the Red Army on June 22, 1944, exploited this rigid defensive doctrine to devastating effect. Hitler contributed to the destruction of Army Group Center by requiring it to hold its exposed positions and forbidding it from pulling back, despite requests from field commanders to withdraw to more defensible lines. The result was the elimination of a quarter of the German Army’s strength in the East — 28 of 34 divisions destroyed — losses from which Germany would never recover. When Wehrmacht strongpoints east of Minsk like Vitebsk and Bobruisk were surrounded, their garrisons were bottled up and destroyed rather than preserved through timely withdrawal.
Hitler’s fortress policy reveals a broader misguided trap: the uncritical conflation of terrain with military success at the tactical and operational levels — often driven by vaguely defined political objectives at the strategic level. This dilemma is evident today as Russian forces advance on Pokrovsk — a largely deserted eastern Ukrainian city with a prewar population of 60,000. Ukrainian units, now largely in a vulnerable pocket and facing severe challenges to resupply, rotate, and defend their increasingly porous positions, are pressured to hold ground primarily due to the weight of larger political objectives rather than operational or tactical necessity. While Pokrovsk’s capture would grant Russia tactical benefits as a drone launch site and eventually a supply hub, its principal value is political — a propaganda gain echoing past battles over urban centers like Bakhmut or Avdiivka. Crucially, defending the city is unlikely to yield favorable casualty ratios for Ukraine given the situation on the ground, which faces acute infantry shortages paired with expanding Russian drone warfare capabilities and cannot match Russia’s readiness to absorb losses. Nor would it decisively fix Russian forces, as Moscow maintains simultaneous offensives along other axes including on the Lyman and Zaporizhzhia fronts. Defensive efforts in Pokrovsk also cannot significantly delay Russian advances or facilitate critical Ukrainian preparations elsewhere, with Russian fire control already expanding beyond the city and Ukrainian lines stretched thin along multiple axes. By the five criteria above, Pokrovsk’s main value at this stage is as a political symbol rather than a military asset.
Indeed, what remains is stark political reality. Pokrovsk would be the largest Ukrainian city to fall since Bakhmut in 2023, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the offensive’s timing aims to secure Russian leverage before potential peace negotiations. As its operational significance is diminishing, the political imperative to hold it intensifies. This pattern has repeated itself across Ukraine’s frontline, in case after case where initial military justifications for holding urban terrain gradually evaporated while political reasons for continuing to fight persisted. This is evident in the recurring pattern where the Ukrainian General Staff must sign off on any tactical withdrawal or repositioning, thereby depriving frontline defenders of tactical flexibility. Similar patterns have occurred during the battle of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and during multiple other occasions including in Vuhledar in 2024 and Severodonetsk in 2022.
At Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces initially gained tactical advantage by forcing Russian attackers into costly frontal assaults. The Royal United Services Institute concluded that this attritional exchange served Ukraine’s interests initially — Russia suffered roughly four times the casualties that Ukraine endured. The calculus appeared sound until Russian advances extended their artillery range into Ukrainian supply corridors, fundamentally shifting the advantage. At that juncture, the logic for continued defense evaporated, undermining the Ukrainian General Staff’s argument that the defense was necessary to buy time for the rest of the force — time to prepare for the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023 — a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The strategic consequence was severe. Ukraine suffered approximately 10,000 killed and wounded — losses drawn disproportionately from its most experienced and professional personnel. Russia, by contrast, relied heavily on Wagner’s convicted criminal conscripts, a fundamentally different human resource calculus that allowed Moscow to absorb casualties much easier. Severodonetsk, fought earlier in 2022, had demonstrated this identical pattern: Ukrainian forces initially inflicted disproportionate damage before Russian encirclement forced a desperate fighting withdrawal that compounded losses.
Avdiivka saw a similar pattern. Russian forces spent months gradually encircling the city, restricting Ukrainian supply access and forcing defenders to choose between surrender and eventual destruction. The Russians lost at least 20,000 killed and wounded in the Avdiivka sector alone yet maintained operational pressure throughout late 2023 and early 2024. Ukrainian General Staff delayed withdrawal decisions until the tactical window narrowed dangerously. The eventual evacuation in February 2024 forced Ukrainian troops through a narrow corridor under concentrated Russian fire, resulting in significant losses including soldiers captured or missing in the retreat. Russia’s growing drone advantages mean that any future Ukrainian withdrawal under fire from Pokrovsk would occur in a far more lethal environment, with weather conditions — particularly fog that masks drone detection — potentially transforming a retreat into a rout. In all these cases — Bakhmut in 2023, Avdiivka in late 2024 and now Pokrovsk—it made sense to tie down Russian forces at the beginning. But in all cases, at some point, the defense became an attritional slugfest that put Ukraine at a disadvantage, with losses exceeding what would be considered favorable attrition rates vis‑à‑vis Russia.
The Kursk offensive in the summer of 2024 itself illustrates this dynamic and demonstrates Ukraine’s capability for rudimentary combined arms operations. Launched on Aug. 6, 2024, Ukrainian forces combined mechanized infantry and precision artillery to deliver a swift, well‑coordinated attack that caught Russian defenders off guard, capturing approximately 1,250 square kilometers including the strategically important town of Sudzha. The operation demonstrated Ukraine’s capability for rapid, coordinated maneuver and provided a significant morale boost. However, its strategic goal — forcing Russia to divert substantial resources away from the Donbas — largely failed. Russia maintained its offensives in eastern Ukraine, continuing to gain ground in critical areas while the strain on Ukrainian resources, already stretched thin, was felt even more acutely as troops and equipment were diverted to Kursk, leaving other vital fronts more vulnerable. By the spring of 2025, Ukraine had lost most of the territory it held in Kursk, with Russian forces inflicting heavy losses during a hasty retreat in which fiber‑optic guided drones played a pivotal role for the first time on the Russian side.
While static position defense is a double‑edged sword, an elastic more maneuver‑based alternative could prove superior. However, this requires a conception fundamentally different from the maneuver defense doctrine many U.S. and European military officers understand or have been trained on, exemplified by German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s famous backhand blow in 1943. Manstein’s application of elastic defense between Stalingrad and Kursk in 1942 and 1943 demonstrated its effectiveness even when heavily outnumbered. Rather than attempting to hold rigid lines, Manstein concentrated his panzer forces as mobile reserves to conduct powerful counterattacks against Soviet breakthroughs. By allowing tactical withdrawals and then striking overextended Soviet spearheads, he repeatedly destroyed Soviet armies while preserving German combat power. The Third Battle of Kharkov in February and March 1943 exemplifies this approach: Manstein withdrew from Kharkov despite Hitler’s orders, let Soviet forces overextend, then unleashed a devastating counterstrike that recaptured the city and destroyed multiple Soviet armies.
Yet that classical maneuver defense model is not directly applicable to Ukraine. On one hand, the fighting in Ukraine shows the limits of mass maneuver in the drone‑infested battlespace. This tactical environment fundamentally constrains the type of sweeping mechanized counterstrokes Manstein conducted. On the other hand, classic maneuver defense requires initiative and decision‑making at lower levels: Junior and non-commissioned officers must make rapid tactical decisions without awaiting orders from higher command. Despite progress since 2015 in developing a professional non-commissioned officer corps and embracing mission command principles, the Ukrainian General Staff has not delegated this authority. Furthermore, effective integration of infantry, armor, artillery, and air assets during fluid operations — combined arms coordination — remains a challenge. While Ukraine has shown capability in specific operations like the 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive and the initial Kursk thrust, it has demonstrated only rudimentary skills in sustained combined arms maneuver.
Moreover, unit cohesion during withdrawals and rapid repositioning without panic or disintegration poses significant challenges. This is the fourth year of the war. Ukrainian combat units have been depleted, and across the front, units are being detached and attached to others desperately short of personnel, leading to a steady fragmentation of the defensive effort and loss of cohesion. This patchwork grouping of forces must somehow hold an extended front. Ukraine’s counterintuitive decision to create new brigades instead of reinforcing experienced formations exacerbated this problem — new units proved generally combat ineffective and have been cannibalized to shore up veteran brigades. Finally, logistical flexibility remains constrained. Ukrainian forces have established a logistics system optimized for feeding a relatively static frontline, not rapid maneuverable forces. Pivoting to genuine maneuver defense would require wholesale reorganization of supply chains, transportation, ammunition distribution, and forward positioning — a luxury Ukraine cannot afford while Russia maintains relentless offensive pressure.
What, then, should Ukraine do? In short, implement a more flexible defense‑in‑depth posture and withdraw to the next prepared position when conditions on the ground make it necessary based on the judgement of local commanders. Importantly, this approach does not negate that places like Pokrovsk should be defended — it is not categorical in that way. Rather than Manstein‑style operational counterstrokes with massed armor, Ukrainian forces must implement what might be called tactical elasticity within operational rigidity, the inverse of Russia’s approach, which in theory achieves operational flexibility through tactical rigidity. This requires accepting the porous nature of Ukrainian defenses and recognizing the expanding “gray zone” where neither side maintains full control of the battlespace. To address this, Ukraine should establish multiple, prepared defensive belts composed of numerous, networked positions — roughly 360 in both urban and wooded terrain — equipped with pre-positioned supplies, pre-registered artillery firing points, and, critically, pre-surveyed drone operating sites to ensure overlapping coverage of the most likely Russian approach routes. Withdrawal from one belt to the next should be triggered by local commanders and specific, measurable thresholds rather than awaiting approval from higher command: when supply corridor vulnerability forces resupply to occur primarily on foot, when Ukrainian drone attrition rates worsen weekly, or when favorable casualty ratios deteriorate to parity or worse. Each defensive belt should be designed not for indefinite occupation but as a platform to attrit Russian forces for a defined period — days to weeks — before executing a planned withdrawal to the next prepared position. This approach accepts temporary territorial losses to preserve combat power, the inverse of the current practice of accepting huge personnel losses to delay territorial concessions. Commanders must view withdrawal not as failure but as a planned phase in a deeper defensive operation, especially as none of the towns currently in danger of falling to the Russians qualify as strategically significant urban centers in their own right, much as the first siege of Przemyśl’s garrison understood their role as buying time, not holding forever.
The dilemma for Ukrainian commanders at Pokrovsk in this regard remains both tactical and profoundly psychological. As Lawrence Freedman writes in a recent analysis:
A retreat, whether dressed up as a ‘tactical withdrawal’ or ‘redeployment to better defensive positions,’ is one of the most fraught military moves. It is an obvious sign of failure and therefore normally only considered when the alternative is an even worse failure: a full defeat with a force unable to escape and so doomed to annihilation or capture.
He notes that the moment when continued resistance ceases to be rational can be difficult to discern, especially as the sunk costs of a hard-fought urban defense accumulate. These costs are political as well as military, and they only grow as operational logic gives way to the imperative to hold on for its own sake. In the case of Pokrovsk, Russian forces are now threatening to cut the last remaining corridor for Ukrainian defenders with chances of annihilating or capturing Ukrainian forces in the pocket increasing. This danger is heightened by recent periods of poor weather, which have prevented Ukrainian forces from conducting effective battlespace ISR and drone strikes, giving Russian units an additional tactical advantage. All of this is further complicated by the immediate political context. When President Vladimir Putin claims Russian forces are on the path to victory and sensitive peace negotiations are underway, withdrawal risks undermining Ukraine’s negotiating position — even if operationally sound. As Lawrence Freedman put it in a recent War on the Rocks podcast, preserving trained forces often has greater long-term strategic value than holding specific settlements, but Ukrainian leaders must also consider domestic morale, Western perceptions, and the political symbolism of “not yielding.” This tension between short-term political imperatives and long-term force preservation captures the core dilemma: against an adversary like Russia trapped in an attritional fight, preserving combat power ultimately matters more than holding terrain, but the timing and optics of withdrawal can carry consequences beyond the purely military realm.
The imperative for timely withdrawal is therefore not only tactical. It acquires heightened importance in light of the broader logic of attrition and resource management in a war of exhaustion and its political consequences. As soon as unfavorable attrition ratios occur and the operational window closes, it should be time to withdraw. When it comes to these relative attrition rates, Lawrence Freedman is right to emphasize that the logic of sunk costs applies to both sides in this conflict. Putin’s dogged insistence on the costly, incremental capture of cities like Pokrovsk comes at a tremendous price for Russian forces. However, a crucial distinction remains: Russia’s far larger manpower base and recruitment systems allow Putin to absorb much greater losses without risking immediate domestic instability or operational collapse. Ukraine, by contrast, faces acute shortages in trained personnel and cannot afford the luxury of defending every inch of urban terrain in the Donbas. As Freedman notes, “the perversity of [Putin’s] choices can still be noted. Russia does not have unlimited manpower, and its forces are still far from achieving Putin’s political objectives.” Yet the differential impact of sunk costs on each side means Ukrainian leadership must adopt an even more relentless operational logic when deciding whether to defend or yield urban ground.
The flexible defense‑in‑depth approach described above would first and foremost require mission command‑type delegation from the General Staff to subordinate commanders. While Ukraine has made some progress in decentralized command and control, this advantage remains tenuous with the Ukrainian General Staff maintaining a rigid, inflexible command structure where every withdrawal has to be authorized by it. Even a partial implementation of mission command principles requires trusting subordinate commanders to make withdrawal decisions based on local conditions without awaiting approval from Kyiv. This is a fundamental change in how the Ukrainian General Staff operates, but it is essential for implementing flexible defense‑in‑depth. The top focus for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and General Staff should be the preservation of the force and as a result preventing partial frontline collapse. This could be accomplished through a more flexible defense‑in‑depth posture rather than attempting to hold every urban position to the last.
The lesson of Przemyśl is clear: the first siege succeeded because it served an operational purpose — buying time and attriting Russian forces while preserving the option of relief. The second siege failed catastrophically because political imperatives — Przemyśl had come to symbolize Austro‑Hungarian military prestige — and an inflexible command structure prevented the garrison from breaking out while it was still possible. Ultimately these factors overrode common-sense military logic, resulting in the needless destruction of forces that could have been preserved through timely withdrawal to fight another day. Ukraine’s challenge is to internalize this lesson before repeating Austria‑Hungary’s fate. Every trained Ukrainian soldier lost defending an operationally meaningless urban position is one fewer soldier available for the flexible defense‑in‑depth operations that could more effectively attrit Russian forces. The ultimate test of military leadership is not the willingness to sacrifice forces for strategically insignificant ground, but the wisdom to preserve combat power for those operations that can contribute to a more favorable termination of this grueling conflict, soon to enter its fifth year.
Franz‑Stefan Gady is a defense analyst, writer, and advisor focusing on modern warfare, military reform, and future conflict. He serves as an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Return of War and How the United States Would Fight China: The Risks of Pursuing a Rapid Victory.
Image: “The Austrian fortress of Przemysl surrenders after 5 months of fighting, officers led to headquarters,” by Achille Beltrame
