Russia’s Ill-Fated Invasion of Ukraine: Lessons in Modern Warfare
csis.org
csis.org
The opening comment makes its seem like this is now all in the past. I think its a bit early to comment on how much Russia achieves here - this is very much WIP with a lot dependent on the solidarity in the West and the reaction of the populations to the cost of the war and the war effort as it drags on.
It's fair to say though that Russia bungled the start and miscalculated the cost benefit of this war.
>The opening comment makes its seem like this is now all in the past. I think its a bit early to comment on how much Russia achieves here - this is very much WIP with a lot dependent on the solidarity in the West and the reaction of the populations to the cost of the war and the war effort as it drags on.
Essentially, the manner in which Russia will have to prosecute to the military side of the war to 'win' their military objectives, will make the political objectives that were the reason for the war in the first place, unachievable.
In the first few days of the war it was possible to imagine Russia achieving those political objectives. Ukraine might have given up the capital immediately. Huge parts of the country might have decided they preferred to join Russia. Europe might have decided not to respond. But it soon became apparent that those assumptions were wildly off. Any victory now will, at best, include absolutely massive quantities of troops perpetually kept in Ukraine at an incredible cost of resources and lives over future years.
They want the land, not the ukrainian people. Putin will gladly send them to Siberia.
"Russia's Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova: More than 190,000 children had arrived in Russia from Donbass by early May, including about 1,200 coming from orphanages in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics."
Russians themselves are bragging about kidnapping 190K children.
Western war propaganda is framing refugees to Russia as kidnapped and forcibly held.
Now, after the war broke out, many of these people needed to pick up sides. Are they with those who shoot at them from the East, that were supposed to be their own, or with those from the West, who are shooting their own? Many of them just didn't want to make this choice. Some decided to collaborate with the invaders, which is common in the eastern areas. Some decided they want to have nothing to do with the aggressors and are now starting to learn Ukrainian. I know people from each of these groups personally and it never occurred me to judge their choices.
Now, external observers tend to simplify everything into black-and-white game. I understand it's easier for the media to portray it like this, but it's inaccurate and basically untrue.
One example from two months ago https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-forcibly-moved-mariup...
But there is a link to an original article, so you can skip straight to it: https://www-newsvl-ru.translate.goog/society/2022/04/22/2085...
"children will be made to take Russian language classes" is the funniest piece of FUD considering Mariupol is predominantly Russian-speaking city. No support for "forced" relocation claims provided.
What I'm about to say maybe be totally shocking, but it's the truth. A few people have started to notice it, and it will be more apparent as time goes on, and there will be no reversal from this trajectory.
We are witnessing the total implosion of the Russian military force. The causes will be analyzed for decades (was it corruption? was it misguided doctrine?).
What's the basis for my claim? Some of the Russian (DNR and LDR, included) forces that are fighting currently (you can say conscripts or whatever, but they are troops in Uniform) are showing up with zero training. Zero.
Think about why that might be happening to the 2nd largest military in the world, that's not generally mobilized, fighting a small country in a "special operation".
This is disingenuous considering the entire Western World is helping Ukraine with weapons, intel, billions worth of aid, sanctions on Russia etc. Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine, but it's not just against Ukraine. In their view, they are fighting a war against the West in Ukraine.
US Lend Lease to Ukraine was what, $30B? And that money hasn't been even tapped yet. I don't know the current numbers today, but I'm thinking at least $5B has gone to Ukraine in arms, just from the United States. Ukraine's pre-war military budget seems to be about $6B. US is basically subsidizing UKR defense spending for the next 5 years.
Given the US defense budget is ~$1T, spending < 10% to drastically depleting the Russian military (without even using US forces) is an opportunity that will not be squandered.
Russia can complain all they want, but the truth is they can stop this war immediately by withdrawing. It's a war of choice that they can no longer withdraw from.
That said, I don't think the PLA is as corrupt and if they decide to have some exercises across the straits, they will probably be better prepared and equipped. so we had better have some contingencies for a second theater.
USA doesn't have a first theater yet--no troops have been mobilized into Europe.
The $1T/year US military budget is insanely large. Chucking a few $B to Ukraine is not deteriorating anything. Supporting Ukraine is basically a cheap way to tie up Russia and use up old equipment that would have been retired anyway.
US defense industry is known to keep making new stuff and retiring the old in order to keep production lines from dying. There is a very deep reserve for all that stuff. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CmXz8Qd9yw
As for Taiwan, after the war started, Biden made removed the ambiguity around US involvement. And Taiwan has been preparing for a Chinese invasion far longer than Ukraine preparing for the Russian invasion (mostly since 2014). At this point, it's clear that if China invaded Taiwan, they'd have to do it entirely themselves. I don't think they're ready to take that risk.
No, it doesn't, except in the sense that the conflict would have to shift to favoring Russia for it to be plausible for it to be “drawn out.”
Russia has already seen casualties that are probably on the order of those the (much larger) Soviet Union saw in its decade long war in Afghanistan, and significantly higher among senior officers—and that wars toll was a significant factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the toll on equipment which they have basically no way to replenish has been high as well.
> Last time I checked Russia had a 10/1 advantage in heavy artillery
Don't know when you checked, but Ukraine has been getting a flood of artillery from the West, with longer range guns than the Russians have.
> has not mobilized its army
They haven't done a formal mass conscription, instead doing a backdoor mobilization, but that's kind of irrelevant since they are running out of first-tier combat-ready equipment, pulling older stuff out of stores to send to the front.
> fighting with 1/5 of its available peacetime forces
Maybe in total manpower. One of the many reasons for the high casualties in senior officers (besides the inability to delegate in land forces) is that their combat-capable pilots are a narrow corps that is senior-officer heavy, and they have a similar issue with other critical specialty forces, and those can't be replenished on any reasonable timescale.
> has suffered massive casualties among its most capable forces.
Russia has suffered massive casualties both overall and among its most capable forces, and expended a lot of its most capable equipment, and no one is rushing them replacements.
Russia has many many more people, but it has shown hesitancy to do a general conscription. People don’t want to fight in this war.
Russia doesn’t have strong strategic bombardment capabilities, nor even air superiority. They’re also running out of military hardware needed to make use of. Their shitty 80 year old tanks are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Again, yes, Russia could go all out. They could launch nukes. But it’s something that would be very difficult. Putin may not survive if he tries to mobilize Moscow.
Which two objectives? They got their land bridge for Crimea and are almost fully in control of the Donbas. They also have ensured Ukraine can't join NATO now, unless they want to officially cede all of that land to Russia in exchange for peace, since a requirement to join NATO is that a country be in control of their borders.
From a logical standpoint, why would they want Kyiv and western Ukraine? 90% of the natural resources are in the east in addition to the reasons stated above for wanting control of those areas.
This was true before the start of the current war in February, and had been true since 2014.
Said war has made NATO making some sort of exception for rump Ukraine as member significantly more likely to happen.
You tell me. Russia certainly tried to seize Kyiv in the opening days of the invasion. I think that bloody action carries more weight as a statement of intent, than your question does. Also, I think you were aware of it.
It's not exactly unrelated.
> and there is nothing outside of our ... media to suggest they ever planned to occupy the entire country.
Except for you know, the entire invasion. This is sophistry, and weak as well.
Ukraine being able to (at least temporarily) push the Russians from Kharkiv was huge for them, while the attack on Kyiv always seemed like just a list of targets that Russia just wanted to take out early on. Of course, I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes so who really knows.
This claim is doing its rounds starting from the day one. This being the 100th day...
...maybe you're talking about the morale of all those dudes sheltering in Georgia and Turkey?
The fact that morale has been low since the start is not evidence that it’s higher now. Russia’s performance has been consistently poor
I don't think you are qualified to read Russia's military bloggers. They usually write things such as "in this and that division, there are such and such problems". How does that translate to your claim that morale (of whom? of everybody?) being at rock bottom (for how long?)
false
There's a strong argument that "the West" is supporting Ukraine to such an extent that Russia is at the disadvantage in the long game.
The Price of War - Can Russia Afford a Long Conflict? (Perun) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEpk_yGjn0E
Technological independence is easy to say and incredibly hard to do. Neither does independence means superiority or equality. Many forget that investment in technology takes time and comes at the expense of other things. China and Russia have budgeting constraints that will pull them away from investment in technology.
Also personally I don't want us to remove sanctions on Russia, ever. They are too dangerous for the world and will have to be defanged.
Probably true. But there's no situation in which Russia ends up richer for having gone to war than had they not bothered in the first place. Which is to say, everyone has lost already. It's a tragedy for all parties -- and it's Putin's fault.
But yeah the pre-2014 situation would be vastly better for all sides involved. Ukraine could have taken the Belarussian or Khazak trajectory.
Taking Mariupol will seem like a walk in the park compared to trying to take Odessa.
There's no way that Odessa falls to the Russians.
Russia is corrupt through and through and cannot built new companies. If the industrial capacity is bombed, it will be useless for them.
As for Belarussia? What trajectory is it to become Putins labdog?
That's largely false. The bottleneck is weapons, not people. That's not coming fast enough with Germany stalling or outright lying etc.
IT would take one small ($1 mil?) covert operation to blow up NS1 in two-three places to erase 40% of Russia budget revenue overnight. Sadly the only countries capable and crazy enough to do it seem to be leaning on wait and see approach (Israel) if not outright appeasing Putin (France).
This war was supposed to last 3 days. It is now day 101. Russia was supposed to take kyiv. It was entirely pushed back. It then tried to take Kharkiv, and was entirely pushed back. It’s now trying to settle for severodonestk in the east and it’s not clear that they will take it despite a very large manpower advantage in that area. Meanwhile their control of southern areas like Kherson is beginning to falter.
Already struggling to halt progress in the east seems like a wildly misleading claim. Significant advances have been completely repelled.
I want Ukraine to win quickly and decisively and every dollar we spend sending them stuff is well-spent. But I think it's going to be a slog. OTOH Ukraine will not back down and I think the Western backing is probably pretty deliberate, serious, and long-term. We want this to be Russia's second Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is about what I'm expecting.
Grimly, I am somewhat satisfied that Europeans are being reminded of the fury they must summon when an enemy arrives aiming to crush them like ants.
My primary takeaways from them recently:
* Russia is having serious problems getting troops
* their execution is terrible and all of their successes are very costly. Even Russian mil bloggers are complaining about this.
* the push for the east is coming at great cost but provides basically no strategic benefit
Recent news as of today has suggested significant Ukrainian success in severodonestk but let’s see. I expect the city will fall eventually. If it doesn’t then… idk, I feel like Russia has all but lost the war.
I am hopeful that Ukraine can grind some asymmetric attrition out of Severodonetsk. Maybe that is why we are beginning to see some good news out of the city. Maybe they hope to turn it into Stalingrad with Russia on the other side this time.
I think Ukraine is taking a beating from the currently superior Russian artillery and I suspect that's why they can't help but slowly lose ground right now. They need neutralizing weapons (on the way but needs to be quicker and more) and they need to leverage their many tactical advantages in urban warfare. Ukraine has an amazing fighting force but there's only so much they can do while being pounded by long-range artillery on the flat terrain of the Donbas.
These are Russian mil bloggers. The most pro Russian military needs you can get. Some of them are embedded with the troops. They have only recently started to be very critical of Russian military leadership. I think it reflects an inflection point. They’ve lost a lot of their officers. Their leadership is shit. Their units are disorganized, demoralized, and comprised of various half depleted units smushed together. Their logistics and intel are poor. I think its just a leading indicator of reduced fighting capacity.
The Ukraine is wise to stay away from the table and slowly grow stronger. I can't imagine a workable plan for Ukraine to keep Russian empire dreams from threatening it again in short order aside from keeping Russia politically trapped in military conflict until exhaustion. Hopefully enough of the west will support them even if they never go back to the table.
At the very least, at the end of this war, Putin must be persuaded that the cost of additional invasions is not worth the benefit. The West must arm Ukraine to the teeth and hope this is accomplished. I am certain he will try to take as much as he believes he can.
> Putin must be persuaded that the cost of additional invasions is not worth the benefit. The West must arm Ukraine to the teeth
So your plan for success as follows:
* Arm Ukraine to the teeth to fight Russia
* Ukraine loses anyway at a great cost of its human life
* Russia decides not to invade any more countries (success)
* (bonus) Ukraine now has to return these hopeless war loans
What's in it for Ukraine compared to just surrendering on day 3?
Or... could it simply be that Ukrainians hate the Russian invader as passionately as Russians still hate the Nazis today? Passionately and rightly, for invading their country and slaughtering millions of their people?
Putin, the delusional fool, has no idea the depth his evil imprint has forever laid upon Ukrainian-Russian relations. He thought that shared history, religion, etc. would excuse the oceans of blood, an entire nation's livelihood disrupted and destroyed. He thought he could brutalize Europeans into submission.
He was wrong, and now there is no turning back.
Ukraine is very diverse country. It still considers citizens of Crimea and LDNR of its own, but I'm pretty sure these are now hating Ukraine passionately. Especially after many, many acts of Ukraine bombing Donetsk in absense of any sensible military goal.
If the boys and girls from Kievan twitter hate Russia with passion, that is survivable.
That still leaves my same question. If their understanding is the same as yours, why did they not surrender on day 3 as you said they should?
Could it be that Putin has activated their national identity by threatening them into collective self-defense?
And now that they have held their own despite being brutalized, do you think they will forget their achievements and hand over their lives to their attackers? Perhaps they have gained more self-respect than that. Perhaps they see themselves as more than just collateral damage in some great power struggle.
> Ukraine is very diverse country. It still considers citizens of Crimea and LDNR of its own, but I'm pretty sure these are now hating Ukraine passionately. Especially after many, many acts of Ukraine bombing Donetsk in absense of any sensible military goal.
Unfortunately there is no one to tell us what Donbas Ukrainians think, free of propaganda. But it will become clear soon enough.
For now all I have is this poll [1], conducted in January, which says a plurality of Donbas residents prefer to be part of Ukraine. I can't imagine that sentiment towards Russia has warmed since Putin's horrific invasion. In fact, polls say it's overwhelmingly negative [2,3], which is hardly surprising given Putin has destroyed these people's lives for no reason.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/15/russia-uk...
The status quo for quite large part of that land is now "Russian military administration". That, combined with the fact that Ukrainian forces bomb civians such as the attacks on Kherson, allows Russia to try and keep it.
Also you: "People just support whoever most recently took over"
Seems like internal consistency is less important to you than asserting whatever Putin would like to be true.
Also, Ukraine loosing ensures russia attack other countries (using Ukrainians no less). That's why all the countries next in line are the most supporting Ukraine's defense i.e. Poland, Baltics, Sweden, Finland etc.
I hope you have heard that Ukrainian parliament had to fire Denisova, who was responsible for watching human right violations and was making claims out of thin air. A lot of western press quoted her fervently.
So unknown part of these allegations is compromised.
> forbidding language
Say ukrainians, who are working in limiting Russian usage for 30 years already.
If they were to surrender on day 3 they will get a puppet government (of ukrainians) and most of their country intact (no Crimea, but Donbass could be reintegrated). But that's mostly off the table now.
This is the grim destiny of those who submit to Putin's self-styled resurgent Russian Empire.
The military support west is providing will not win this war. Like with artillery and tanks - you can have weapons, but teaching properly artillerists and tank teams takes half a year at least.
It’s not me being pro-Russian, but trying not to underestimate the enemy and not to take him as a fool. It’s a good practise to be overly pessimistic and assume worst-case scenarios. Especially considering that in the second phase not a single city was retaken by Ukrainians, but only lost
Ukraine has a very effective artillerie, which with west supplied arms gets even better. The problem is quantities, with russia having tons of old deadly junk to throw and west arms coming in too slow.
However, right before retreat Russians were not in a disasterous state at the borders of Kyiv. In fact they were slowly closing the circle around it. If the focus were there, and additional forces were applied, it could have succeeded. Russians had heavy losses during deployments, but once positions were taken it all stabilised for them, so it was not as disasterous as many say. It was not that Ukrainian forces pushed Russians back, but more like Russians regrouped.
From what I see in the last weeks, Ukrainian artillery is not capable of achieving goals. It could have been different before, but now a lot of videos from Ukrainian brigades depict that artillery support is missing and they go to battles without any support.
This is a reasonable sounding theory and I've seen it elsewhere, particularly from French sources. I'm pretty sure it's wrong, though. This theory comes from looking at everything the Russians did at the start and trying to interpret it so that it all makes sense. The truth, I think, is simply that Russian planning was a disaster.
I think the idea of first stage was: 1. Put the pressure 2. Sign a peace agreement
And being honest, from todays perspective, it better should have been signed.
The point is, Russia needs to level up, before the world take them for a lame duck super-power and the West decides to bring some freedom and liberation to the siberian region!!
2 They have over 1000 (minus ~60 destroyed/captured) Orlan-10 artillery spotting drones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlan-10 They may look funny with PET bottle fuel tank and Canon DSLR, but they also have modern German/Swiss/US electronics and French 640x480 microbolometer (IR camera https://lynred.com/sites/default/files/2021-07/PICO640GEN2%2...)
Orlan-10 breakdown by supplier:
GPS u-blox, Switzerland.
Telemetry compass Honeywell, USA.
IMU Silicon Sensing Systems, UK.
Radio transmitter Municom, Germany.
Receiver AnyLink, Germany.
Antenna PPM GMBH, Germany.
Microbolometer - the only export restricted military grade part aka illegal AF to sell to russia after 2014 Lynred, France.
Daylight camera Canon, Japan.
Engine - Saito, Japan.
This may be bs, but I don't see it as unreasonable.
Russia’s performance has just been so poorly executed. Learning lessons on the general state of modern warfare would be a terrible training set.
... set an EU-wide tarriff on Russian gas. Subsidise EU energy independence with the proceeds: alternative natural gas sources, green energy production, energy savings, ... And make more structural social corrections to avoid energy poverty.
The Russian military has a lot of problems, sure. But the failure of the initial operation was because they were completely deluded about what to expect. If they had understood what to expect, they would have prepared differently. It is wrong to keep using "capabilities" as the explanation for the failure.
> Russia's failures will force the Russian military to fundamentally rethink its...
None of the Russian military's problems have come as a surprise to the Russians. Take the corruption, for example. It's been a major point of discussion for centuries. They will most likely continue to deal with these problems as they have always done.
> ...roughly a dozen Russian generals and other senior officials were killed on the battlefield...These firings and deaths may have exacerbated command and control problems that the Russian military was already experiencing.
This has already been discussed a lot online, that Russian military doctrine requires senior officers to lead from the front, so higher casualties among officers are expected. Some comments in this article indicate a poor understanding of Russian military culture.
> In practice, the BTGs were likely understrength and lacked sufficient infantry.
That's an understatement. The units initially sent in were at peacetime strength, which means they were lacking a major portion of their personnel. For example, armored units apparently deployed without any footsoldiers.
> ...Russian army...lacked a professional corps of noncommissioned officers.
This talking point has been overdone. European militaries traditionally had "commissioned officers" who were upper-class, and "non-commissioned officers" who were lower-class. You can't have that kind of class distinction in a proletarian society. Just because the Russian army doesn't have "NCOs" doesn't mean they don't have people with equivalent training and responsibilities.
> ...the tendency of poorly trained Russian forces to conduct massive bombardments of towns and cities in a war of attrition, rather than conducting basic fire and maneuver, will make it difficult to seize and hold substantial territory...
Observers of the war are increasingly admitting that artillery still rules the battlefield. Even President Zelensky recently expressed frustration that countries keep sending them missiles when what they really need is artillery. The front line, maintained by artillery support, has become pretty stable. Advance by either side will likely become increasingly hard.
> Russia has a recent history of attempting to grind out military victories.
Recent? Are you kidding? Doesn't anyone remember WW2? Anyone who thinks the Russians will eventually shrug it off and go home really doesn't understand their history/culture.
> The status quo is also unlikely to be acceptable for Ukrainian leaders...
The odd thing about this is that even before 2014, some Ukrainians were floating the idea that they should ask the Donbas region to split off. In interviews after 2014, Ukrainian politicians would privately say they would rather not reintegrate the Donbas. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30698057) So it seems that the Ukrainian leadership is forced to push for something that they don't really want.
> Over the past eight years, Moscow has seized larger portions of Ukrainian territory and tried to overthrow the government.
This ignores what the Kremlin's motivations have been. They didn't want to annex Donbas. They wanted to keep it integrated with Ukraine so the ethnic Russian population there could exert influence on Ukrainian politics. It is unclear at this point whether the Kremlin has given up on that.