Three threads on the military situation:
Rob Lee @RALee85
Russia invaded Ukraine with 75% of its permanent readiness BTGs as well as conscripts and Rosgvardia troops. They had to stretch the military thin to achieve this, which meant there was never much of a reserve if things went poorly. It isn't about trust, it's about numbers.
Russia pulled units from almost everywhere. They're even using units from Kaliningrad, which is precarious at a time of high tensions with NATO, as well as South Ossetia. The ground component of the Russian military is ~350,000 or less, including conscripts and support troops. 2/
This is also why it was so important that Russia committed almost 100% of its forces near the border by the end of the second week. There wasn't much to pull from after that, and Russia has already been rotating units from the front lines to the rear. 3/
www.politico.com/news/2022/03/07/putin-russia-combat-forces-ukraine-00014699
Putin sends ‘nearly 100 percent’ of Russian forces at border into Ukraine
The question is which side suffers more from attrition of units already committed to the fight? Have Ukrainian units been able to rotate as often from the front? Not clear if Russia can attain a 3:1 or 2:1 numerical advantage in its offensives in the JFO area. 4/
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien
The Russian Army might be in worse shape than imagined (and Ive probably been about as skeptical about their condition as anyone since this started). It also looks like Putin doesnt trust forces that were not sent to Ukraine in the first place.
Why? There are signs that the Russians want to send the troops that have pulled out of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy into the Donbas quickly, including those responsible for the Bucha massacre.
Pentagon sources are saying that the plan is to send about two-thirds of the forces that the Russians have pulled out of the north and redeploy to the south and east.
If so, this is an army in terrible shape and running out of options. These troops have been worn down, defeated, lost much of their equipment and would under any circumstances be close to being combat ineffective.
www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/101-5-1/f545-aca.htm
Combat ineffectiveness is not a science, but throughout history unit performance has degraded considerably when these factors rise: losses of personnel and equipment, time in combat operations, battlefield failure. All of these are now high for the Russian forces being redeployed
Those troops in any rational system would be rested, re-equipped and allowed time before being sent to another stressful combat situation. That Putin is going to try and do it with these forces reveals these 4 things which show how difficult the long-war scenario is for Russia.
1) The Russians dont trust the rest of their armed forces. If they could, they would be sending fresh troops into combat not these that have suffered such losses.
2) They are willing to basically see the best part of their army wiped out in the first phase of the war. If for some reason they can get these troops back to other parts of Ukraine and they go into combat again, hard to see what would be left of them after a few weeks.
3) They dont care about the morale of their own forces. This is particularly toxic. If the Russian soldiers believe that they are basically cannon fodder for the leadership, their willingness to fight will decline below what it already is.
4) The Russians are out of ideas. If you are sending troops that have committed some of the worst crimes back into Ukraine, they will only motivate Ukrainian resistance (which has already shown itself to be effective) to even higher levels. Its a stupid idea.
What does it mean? Russia really does not want to fight a long war and Ukraine has a real opportunity. If the Ukrainians can be resupplied and redeployed to meet the Russian redeployments, they can basically waste the only combat force the Russian government believes in.
Thats why its so important to get help to Ukraine now. Give them the opportunity to destroy the Russian forces that will be redeployed from Kyiv and they can force Putin to take a choice he is clearly terrified to make. Fight a long war with conscripts or forces he doesnt trust.
An interesting point worth expanding this thread on.:
Sergey Radchenko @DrRadchenko
I am concerned that peace negotiations - such as we had - seem to have been derailed. We have calls for a war until bloody end on both sides. Important to realise, I think, that the horrors that we have seen are but a fraction of what may yet unfold.
Peace talks must be prioritised. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are likely to win this war. But dangers of escalation remain, and so does the potential for ever greater bloodbath. Peace talks do not preclude ongoing investigation of Russia's war crimes.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien
I’ve always tried to imagine a negotiated end to this war as there will have to be one (Ukraine is not conquering Russia). Reality now though is that negotiations are meaningless until we’ve had another test of arms in the Donbas. Putin is clearly trying to use military force to save something he can call a victory from the original failure. Until that contest is decided, negotiations can’t decide anything. So keep talking, yes But most importantly help Ukraine to militarily succeed in the Donbas by degrading the one force the Russian government trusts. Then negotiate.
Then finally:
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
Why Russia is losing this war?
First I'll discuss why Russia is losing. Then I'll give my version of how it could happen. The key to understanding lies in the Soviet/Russian military doctrine. It gives context for current events and helps to predict further Russian actions
As usual its another LONG thread. So I won't post it all.
To summarise,
First of all he points out the Russians changed tone about the Special Operation in maps and since 2nd April they stopped talking about 'successes' and changed to describing it as 'execution'.
Then he talks about how the Russians only ever managed to control the roads, the Ukrainians planned for this and used winter guerilla tactics to great effect, but they would perhaps have more advantage in summer with green cover from trees. The losses plus the change in season gave the Russians little choice but to rethink and retreat. He also points out there is a marked difference in the retreats from Kyiv/Chernihiv and Sumy. The Sumy retreat was much more organised and less hasty.
Then he talks about how the Russia army is just the Soviet Army and what that was set up for:
- Winning the nuclear war (effect on equipment design etc)
- Picking potatoes (used as labour to fill in gaps in agriculture when needed)
- Pacifying satellite states (think Eastern Europe - particularly Czechoslovakia).
He says about point 3:
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
It gives context for the logic of Z-operation. It wasn't planned as a war. They designed it as a pacification modelled after the Operation Danube, 1968. Russian sources are quite open about it. "Operation was designed as the Czechoslovakia-68. Enter from all directions, put the new government. It didn't work out. For an entire month we pretended everything's alright and tried to win with a small force not prepared for a full scale war on eight directions simultaneously"
While Russia aimed for a quick victory in Ukraine, it wasn't planned to be a Blitzkrieg. It wasn't planned to be a war at all. It was a copypaste of "Danube" when USSR pacified the dissident Czechoslovakia and finished the Prague Spring. I mean it literally and not as a metaphor
Both Danube and Z-operation started with VDV attacking airports. In 1968 a Soviet transport plane asked for emergency landing in Prague because of an "accident". They allowed it. Plane landed, VDV disembarked and captured the airport to allow other invaders to disembark smoothly
Although the land invasion 2022 was modelled after 1968, it was worse prepared. In 1968 Czechoslovakia was attacked by an enormous force of 500 000 coming in two echelons. First echelon of 250 000 pushes forward, second one come next, occupies territory and secures supply lines
Z-invasion proceeded with far smaller force. Only 160-190 thousand Russian soldiers crossed the border with Ukraine in late Feb. Like in 1968, they pushed forward. But no second echelon came to occupy territory behind the first and secure the supply lines. Because it didn't exist
We've seen this reported elsewhere: the aim was to take Ukraine in 4 hours, if not 3 days. Putin's plan was mired in Soviet mythological thinking.
Then Galeev talks about how Western analysts underestimated the cultural impact of Donbass in 2014 and how this lead to mass military reform in Ukraine which was largely unnoticed and how it changed the psychology of Ukrainians.
He gives a really interesting case example of what is rumoured to have happened in Mariupol:
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
Consider a case when two Ukrainian helicopters evacuating the wounded from besieged Mariupol were shot down by Russians. Russian sources suggest that this evacuation wasn't incidental. Ukrainians had been systematically supplying the besieged city by air, unnoticed by Russians
"They had an established route unnoticed by our air Defense. They were brining ammo to Mariupol and the wounded from it. They were flying on a miminal height around 10 meters. They were avoiding settlements, turning to the Above sea and then to the Mariupol seaport"
"They could bring up to 12 tons of ammo when going to Mariupol and evacuate up to 60 wounded soldiers on a way back. We don't know how many times did they repeat it. This time they were unlucky to accidentally meet a patrol with a man-portable air-defence system on a way back"
In fact, we do have the indirect evidence that this account of how the besieged Mariupol had been supplied is probably true. Consider this record of two Ukrainian helicopters going to attack the Russian oil depot in Belgorod on a very low height
And finally he talks about how the Russian army is essentially just a vehicle for career officers with no actual military experience / knowledge who are unable culturally to do anything but say how great they are doing because constructive criticism kills your career. So they were stuck in a constant positive feedback loop.
His conclusion:
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
It is striking how much did the Western analysts overestimate the Russian army. It's even more striking how deeply did they underestimate the Ukrainian one. The Ukrainian military evolution since 2014 went almost completely unnoticed by the world.
There is a danger that Western analysis will now underestimate Russia and overestimate how much Ukraine has left in the tank, but its striking how there is now a real sense of how fucked the Russian army is...