In 2022, Scott Sweetow wrote, “Of Roadside Bombs and Drones: Putin’s Looming Insurgency Problem,” where he argued Ukraine’s fight against Russia would rely on a combination of conventional and asymmetrical insurgent tactics. Four years of combat later, we asked Scott to revisit his arguments.Image: National Information Warfare Center PacificIn your 2022 article, you argued that Ukraine’s tech-driven resistance could rapidly evolve into an insurgency-style force. Four years in, how have those assessments held up? Could one argue that Ukraine today operates more like an insurgency in some respects than a conventional state military? Classic insurgencies pit asymmetric or guerrilla forces against organized, established governmental forces. In Ukraine, apt analogies would include heavily Russian-controlled areas such as the Donbas region, Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Some of these areas had been previously invaded by Russia in 2014 and occupied continuously through the February 2022 invasion. Because of significant Russian control in those areas, Ukraine is engaged not just in conventional military actions using regular military units (albeit with many asymmetric weapons such as aerial, seaborne, and ground drones) but also in more common insurgent tactics such as sabotage, targeted assassination, and improvised explosive device attacks.Ukraine is operating successfully as both a conventional military (with the attendant ground, air, and marine forces), and an insurgent force, not only in the Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine but also in Russia proper. They are doing so through the use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, shootings targeting Russian military leadership, and creative and highly asymmetric attacks such as Operation Spiderweb in June 2025, which destroyed or damaged a significant number of Russian strategic aircraft, including long-range bombers.This Ukrainian military duality, borne out of a necessity driven by a significant imbalance in conventional military forces at the start of the February 2022 invasion, particularly in equipment and manpower, has turned
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In 2022, Scott Sweetow wrote, “Of Roadside Bombs and Drones: Putin’s Looming Insurgency Problem,” where he argued Ukraine’s fight against Russia would rely on a combination of conventional and asymmetrical insurgent tactics. Four years of combat later, we asked Scott to revisit his arguments.Image: National Information Warfare Center PacificIn your 2022 article, you argued that Ukraine’s tech-driven resistance could rapidly evolve into an insurgency-style force. Four years in, how have those assessments held up? Could one argue that Ukraine today operates more like an insurgency in some respects than a conventional state military? Classic insurgencies pit asymmetric or guerrilla forces against organized,
