Russia is exposing weaknesses in its military by waging a major war against Ukraine. But a Russian victory would make a lot of this moot for Ukrainians.
I didn't anticipate Putin ordering a major invasion of Ukraine seeking regime change and real or effective conquest. But the way Russia's invasion has faltered in the first week validates my pre-war assessments that Russia is nowhere near as strong as its propaganda portrayed. I had a good reason to doubt the wisdom of invading. Putin either didn't see that or thought Ukraine's weaknesses would be greater. I did say more than two months ago that Russia would not have a short and glorious war against Ukraine.
This is what I've been saying and why I thought Russia wouldn't risk a major war. But I was wrong. Perhaps Putin believed his own BS. Russia still has the edge over far weaker Ukraine. But this war will tarnish the image of Russia's modernized military that Putin has banked on.
The British foreign secretary said Putin's war is not going according to plan: "He expected to take cities quickly. He expected Ukraine to retreat and he expected the West to be divided."
This article describes five reasons for the tough time Russia's invaders are having. One, it isn't surprising that many soldiers didn't know they were invading because Putin kept his decision so close to his chest that many of his generals didn't know they were going to invade. Two, the Russians didn't prepare for the war they train for. Three (and related to two), the Russians were over-confident. Four (also related to two and to three), the Russians held back much of their military power for the initial invasion. And five, Putin didn't expect the European harsh and rapid response. But given Europe's muted reactions after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine the first time in 2014, I'm going to give Putin an excuse for this one. Still, it's a reason.
I gathered my own reasons, mostly from the war posts. Sources include posts from here, here, here, and here.
First, Russia's military isn't as good as Putin wanted us to think. Maybe it isn't as good as Putin thinks.
One reason is that Russia's wonder weapons are propaganda. Russia has long used propaganda to create an image of what is in large measure a Potemkin Military.
Russia has perhaps 125 battalion tactical groups around Ukraine. That must be more than half of Russia's maneuver battalions in the army and airborne forces.
Given that BTGs scrape up useful portions of brigades, Russia can't possibly have much more to sustain an invasion. Heck, some of those deployed BTGs are likely crap.
And then there is the mystery of the air force that did not bomb in the night.
The mystery of the missing Russian air force. I've wondered about that, too. Too few precision weapons? Fear of friendly fire? Pilot inexperience? All possible contributors. I've wondered if Russia can't afford to use their air force on a large scale. The cost of fuel plus wear and tear on the aircraft--including accidents--might be keeping it grounded. Russian aerial supremacy hasn't stopped Ukraine from using its outnumbered aircraft.
More thoughts on the mysterious case of the Russian air force that did not bomb in the war.More generally, Russian nuclear threats are an admission of conventional military weakness. If Russia was rattling sabres on day four of Putin's invasion, hoo boy, how bad is it?
How bad? Anti-tank missiles are the scourge of Russian armor. But keep in mind that area bombardment is a useful countermeasure to destroying and suppressing infantry anti-tank weapons. And infantry working with the tanks and artillery. Where is the combined arms? Also, I guess Russian armor doesn't have effective active protection systems. At least not the light armor.
On the other hand, while Ukraine is destroying Russian tanks, Russia may have enough to shrug that off and keep going. Also, Ukraine's tanks aren't doing the killing. I've been wondering if Ukraine is preparing a counter-offensive because I have not seen Ukraine's armor in action. Is Ukraine letting Russia's forces advance, overextend, and then hit them back hard? Ukraine showed offensive capacity even at its military nadir in 2014.
I thought Russia had good EW capabilities but that they'd withhold some to avoid tipping off NATO. Still: "The official added that the Kremlin has not used the full scope of its electronic warfare capabilities."
Is Russian troop morale really this bad? And if so, can Russia supply the kind of firepower needed to overcome that kind of poor morale? Maybe the bad morale is the result of failure and not a cause of failure.
And behind the facade, Russia doesn't have the logistics. Russia's assumption of an easy victory may have led the Russians to have inadequate logistics support for the invasion troops. I didn't see this story on Russia's crappy logistics for supporting military operations away from Russia's railroads (tip to Instapundit). Apparently not much has changed since early 2014 when I wrote this:
Despite Putin's attempt to make his military look awesome, his military really isn't prepared to fight more than a small war with any type of skill.
Oh, he could send large formations into battle. But they'd suffer heavier casualties against any decent opposition and would achieve their objectives only with brute force.
And when the basic load of fuel and ammo in his vehicles went black, the resupply effort might be less than impressive. Which is why I think Putin's window to easily seize eastern Ukraine is closing.
Any victory with this force would not be pretty. And when you fight a small power, you need all the style points you can accumulate to avoid looking like a bumbling giant that simply overwhelmed a tiny foe with no business even being on the same battlefield.
Hmm: "Russian combat forces north of Kyiv have not advanced since Monday and have been running out of food and gas, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday." Also, 80% of Russian combat power--I assume this means the BTGs as a primary measure--are inside Ukraine now. Adding more troops into a theater already suffering supply shortages doesn't seem wise to me. Especially since I assume most of the troops left inside Russia initially were the worst of the lot.
More on the massive column: "The convoy appears to be hampered in several places by broken down vehicles." That's to be expected, however, in any large group of tracked vehicles moving under their own power.
This is interesting:
"Russians paused and re-grouped and are now traveling with fuel trucks
and not getting too far ahead of logistics chains." Ukraine may not have
many armed drones, but those fuel trucks should be the primary target
now. Well, my complaint earlier about opportunities to hit Russian columns on the roads isn't totally valid given "columns of [Russian] vehicles under drone attack while arranged in a neat line."
I still think that even with a Russian military plan that is more realistic, that going forward a major war risks either exposing Russia's army as hollow; or if adequate, of destroying that army in a hard fight with Ukraine.
Putin still frustrated at slow pace of war. The success of the Crimea operation--which had unique circumstances leading to success--has
raised his expectations. But the interesting part is that Putin took
the oligarchs with him to his Urals "bunker" so "no one will flee". Are
they cut off from communications? Or is it up to the military to take
Putin out--and neutralize Putin's National Guard. Is it really loyal to
him? Putin's impatience may create new errors. Russian television is in denial about the war. It is not eager to test Russian support for Putin's invasion. The media won't help Putin if he is in a bubble.
Note that even for the best Russian troops airmobile operations did not shine. For example, Ukraine seems to have shot down a second Russian transport plane near Kiev. This appears to be a air assault landing south of Kiev.
The result is heavy losses: "Senior Pentagon officials told lawmakers in closed briefings on Monday that Russian and Ukrainian military deaths appeared to be the same, at around 1,500 on each side in the first five days, congressional officials said." That's higher than my pure guess work. The point of the article is Russia's aversion to casualties. I've mentioned that.
But Russian errors won't win the war for Ukraine. Those errors just give Ukraine a fighting chance.
Ukraine needs to do two things. First, preserve their army as a fighting force. Second, kill Russian troops. This is the more basic core of my advice in 2014:
If Putin does escalate to openly waged warfare against Ukraine to take eastern Ukraine, Ukraine needs to do three things: preserve the Ukrainian army; wage irregular warfare in eastern Ukraine to stress Russia's still-inadequate ground forces; and strike Sevastopol.
The latter two above are all about killing Russians. So I've simplified the advice. Even earlier advice noted in that post for how Ukraine can resist invasion is still valid. And there is less pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine now.
And I still don't understand why Ukraine didn't strongly hold the Crimean isthmus. Russia's advance out of Crimea may completely strip Ukraine of its Black Sea coast. Even if a ceasefire in place is achieved.
I found an older post that may illustrate why Russia is having problems because Ukraine is resisting fiercely:
I never elevated [the 2014 "little green men" takeover of] Crimea into the template of Russia's strengths, preferring to count Russia's extensive troop presence and large base in Crimea as well as the complete lack of Ukrainian military strength to resist Russia in the early weeks of the new government that overthrew the Russian stooge.
I never got on board the whole "hybrid" war frenzy, preferring to see that as old methods that in fact highlighted Russia's inability to use large-scale conventional warfare to quickly gain the territory they wanted in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
I never go caught up in the near worship of Russian battalion tactical groups as revolutionary organizations of massive power. I prefer to think of them as the the only usable power of Russia's brigades scraped up from across the country. Rather than being great battalion task forcess, they are essentially weak brigades.
I don't worry about Russia's fleet and instead hope they put more resources into a blue water fleet to deprive the ground and air forces of needed money.
I can see that their "stealth" plane is at best a frontal-only stealth plane and not a reason to panic. If they can get it to work and put it into production.
The same applies to the new Armata super tank. Nice looking prototype. Try mass producing it and maybe I'll worry.
Heck, I wonder how many of Russia's nuclear weapons work given that I wonder how likely is it that their nuclear forces are uniquely well built and maintained amidst the mess of their military?
But Russia has a geographic advantage over NATO by being able to generate a high level of superiority over our NATO allies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (and old NATO state Norway for that matter in their far north)--and against neutral but NATO-friendly Sweden and Finland--that will last for many months before America and the rest of NATO can send troops to the east through the logistics infrastructure-poor new NATO states.
Yet Russia will win if it chooses to endure
casualties and sanctions--and uses firepower to overcome poor troop
morale. I didn't mention Ukraine in the above post, but the reasoning
applies. And unlike eastern NATO states, Ukraine doesn't have an entire alliance to ride to its rescue with troops. Supplies, intelligence, and non-military actions against the aggressor will have to do.
As an aside, while this is no defense of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I will say Russia has thus far been fairly restrained in its use of firepower. You may recall their fires capabilities. Again, no defense of the invasion. But if a country doesn't at least get credit for how they fight regardless of the awfulness of the reason to fight, it might not have incentive to refrain from maximum violence. Or we might find out more later that undermines my effort to be fair on this issue.
Is Putin's war against Ukraine his "Waterloo"? That is, his downfall?
That is just some educated speculation. But I too have wondered during
this crisis if the end result of a war gone awry could be Putin strung
up by his heels from a lamp post, as Mussolini ended up. Or maybe
Russians close to Putin could shoot him and say he died "with" Covid. So
sad.
Russia had a plan of action. But everyone has a plan for fighting until they get punched in the face. Even though Putin has apparently decided to win no matter the cost to his army or to Ukrainian civilians, this war will not enhance Russia's military prowess reputation.
Perhaps America's accomplishments against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 will be viewed more favorably. You had to look at details to fashion defeat from those victories. Russia's faltering is seen easily from a distance.
And perhaps Russia's experience will sober Chinese rulers who think their military is better than it is.
UPDATE: More discussion of the issue.
War coverage updates continue here.
