Russia's effort to look like an ever-expanding horde to demoralize Ukraine and the West took a hit. Is the base of Putin's war supporters the most shocked about this revelation?
In an effort to contain the Ukrainian August Kursk incursion, Russia has redeployed troops from other parts of the front. This alone is odd. One would think Russia has local reserves available. Apparently not.
Unless Russia is ruthlessly maintaining its reserve by taking risks at the front. Which isn't a bad risk given Ukraine doesn't have enough troops to advance anywhere significant, really.
An interesting effect is away from the front:
Nothing since the Wagner mercenary uprising in June last year has put Russian soldiers and the radical patriots close to them so much at odds with the Ministry of Defense and General Headquarters. The atmosphere is rank, and worsening.
The ranks of such radical patriots may be prone to excitable reactions that they quickly put online. Perhaps they will settle down as the front settles down and some ground is recovered. If so, Putin has non-military reasons to cope with Ukraine's incursion sooner rather than later if it was just a military question.
In that light, this is interesting, if true (via Instapundit):
Important Stories said a temporary motorized rifle regiment of Russia's Aerospace Forces has been deployed to Kursk, which borders Ukraine's Sumy region.
The unit, created between May and June, consists of personnel from security and logistics companies, engineers, mechanics, some officers, and servicemen from a Russian spaceport. There are also personnel from special warehouses of the Aerospace Forces and radar stations in Russia's Voronezh region, who were previously in charge of manning Russia's nuclear deterrent.
It doesn't necessarily mean disaster for Russia. In an emergency any army would scrape together support personnel to hold the line. Russia has already seemingly stripped the rest of Russia for combat units to send them to Ukraine. That takes risks where the troops are now gone, both internally and on the border.
There are also risks to taking troops presumably specialized and trained in their specialty to use them as infantry cannon fodder. Early in the war Russia scraped their training establishment for officers to replace high officer losses at the front. One would think that hurt the ability to train officers for a while. This kind of scraping will hurt the parts of the Russian military that aren't fighting.
What will the radical patriots think of the image of wrecking the Russian military in a war that is failing to defeat a much smaller state on its western border? When the Russians may need their entire military for a much bigger threat to its territorial integrity and sphere of influence?
But perhaps Russia has bloated non-ground force military units. That would be one place to hide from the war without fleeing. And bribes could be paid for a cushy Aerospace Force job far from the front.
Will we see Russian enforcers combing through the non-ground force military to grab those who are "quiet quitting" the war in uniform? If so, will that generate numbers of troops or will it be an opportunity to squeeze another bribe out of these troops who like the quiet life?
Or will the personnel raid go too deep and cripple the ability of the non-ground troop services to do their jobs? And how will the radical patriots react to a war that is wrecking the entire Russian military?
I don't know. But it does tell me that Russia is short of troops on the front, notwithstanding their continued grinding offensive in the Donbas. The horde is thinner than Putin wants us--or his radical patriot base of war supporters--to believe.
UPDATE (Monday): I've thought of Ukraine's Kursk operation as a raid. A raid that may
fall back to fortifications on the Russian side of the border, but a
raid nonetheless. But without a serious Russian reaction, Ukraine has
little need to end the raid. So while I'm not sure what Ukraine is
attempting, I'm still calling it a raid.
UPDATE (Tuesday): Belarus is massing troops on Ukraine's northern border:
A Belarusian invasion of Ukraine, or even Belarus' military involvement in the war, would degrade Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko‘s ability to defend his regime (and be very unpopular domestically), and ISW has previously assessed that Lukashenko is extremely unlikely to risk combat with Ukraine that could weaken his regime or drastically increase Belarusian domestic discontent.
If you had to bet you'd say that Belarus is using its skeleton units (they require reservists to bring them up to strength) to pin Ukrainian forces in place.
But if Lukashenko currently won't attack because of the risk to his regime you have to admit that his calculations could change overnight if Putin gives Lukashenko an offer he can't refuse. So I try not to assume Belarus won't join the war on Ukraine.
UPDATE (Tuesday): Is Ukraine's Kursk incursion going to trigger events that weaken Russia and lead to Ukraine's victory. Plausible but not likely to get that full result of a lot of conditional events flowing from the incursion.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Timely:
A third of the [Russian] military are more enthusiastic volunteers and conscripts. These staff the elite special operations, airborne, security and specialist units. In other words, while the government claims to have a million military personnel on duty, the reality is that there are only about 200,000 troops on active duty who are good at what they do and want to be in the military.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Per ISW, Russia is advancing at a satisfactory pace toward Pokrovsk in their Avdiivka salient. Indeed, Ukraine has pulled back in some areas. This remains a Russian priority. While Russia is stripping troops not on this front to deal with the Kursk incursion.
I'm biased because I've long looked for this. But could these developments indicate Ukraine is preparing a serious counter-attack to pinch off the Avdiivka salient when the Russian Pokrovsk attack culminates? Hopefully short of Pokrovsk.
UPDATE (Thursday): Strategypage paints a dire picture for the Russians in getting men into uniform. Russia hides their problems, of course. But is it that bad?
UPDATE (Friday): Could Russia really run out of troops to sustain their current loss rate?
Is it so bad that Russia can't afford to keep a relatively small number of men in Africa? "Russia is withdrawing 100 of its paramilitary officers from Burkina Faso to help in the war in Ukraine."
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
NOTE: I'm now on Substack, with The Dignified Rant: Evolved.