Allied force vs whatever Russia is doing

In My Humble Opinion
1

Politics aside, from a strictly military point of view I have absolutely no idea what Russia is doing in the war, since it seems like it’s constantly doing things against it’s own interests.

Since I’m from Serbia, I can remember the NATO bombing campaign that lasted for 3 months. America had the most planes, but many countries such as Turkey, Denmark, Norway, France, UK, Belgium,etc. also sent their own fighter/bomber jets, mostly F-16’s and similar, so in total there was hundreds and hundreds of planes. Not including UAV’s, AWACS and other additional aircraft.

There almost wasn’t a single day where a rafinery, bridge, base or other strategic and/or military object wasn’t bombed, Lukashenko came for a visit one day and that was the only day in which there wasn’t any air sorties. The Serbian airforce had only around 12, 14 weaker export version MiG 29’s and even their nerfed radars and other systems weren’t in working condition on almost any of them due to years of sanctions and isolation, so not only was NATO in at least 10:1 advantage by pure numbers, not only were NATO’s planes firing missiles while the MiG’s weren’t yet aware of them, but the planes weren’t even functioning. An example that depicts the desperate state of the airforce was when a young pilot was supposed to fly a MiG 29, but then a senior pilot came, Milenko Pavlovic, he dragged the young pilot out and yelled “get out damn kid, you will not die, I will”. A group of 16 F-16’s was flying over the city of Cacak and Milenko’s MiG 29 stood no chance, the last words he said were “I have them, but they also have me”.

There’s no point even mentioning MiG 21’s from the neolithic period that were still used. Yet, despite all the advantage, NATO still sent hundreds of F16’s, F15’s, F14’s, Mirage’s,etc. to destroy every single plane or SAM site they could during the entire war. SAM sites weren’t in a much better state, only old and ineffective Neva and shorter range KUB missiles, which were turned for the shortest possible time to avoid detection by NATO bombers.

NATO also funded, trained and supplied the KLA ethnic Albanian rebels with weapons and in a way used them as proxies on the ground, though a NATO ground invasion was also planned, but for the sake of comparison let’s say the KLA was the ground force. Once again, there wasn’t a single day during which the KLA didn’t fight. The biggest battles were on the border of Serbia and Albania on the mountain of Pastrik, in which even B-52 bombers were used.

Russia on the other hand launches massed Kalibr attacks every few weeks or months for an hour or two and ocassionally launches small Geran kamikaze drones. The largest land operation they are undertaking for the last few months is the seemingly pointless meatgrinder in Bahmut, in which a PMC is used with a small support by regular units, there’s small scale fighting in other parts of the front, but that’s about it.

The border with Poland, Slovakia and Romania is completely safe for hundreds of tanks, IFV’s, APC’s and other equipment to pass through and despite not getting anything in return, Russia signed the Black sea wheat deal once more. No one is even talking about any Russian offensives anymore, but only about how Russia will defend from the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Abandoning tens of thousands of square kilometers in north of Ukraine when they were on the doorsteps of Kiev and Kharkov, and before Ukraine received 40+ billions of dollars in equipment is mind bogling, as is abandoning Kherson later on without a single bullet being fired.

In 1999 NATO completely destroyed or grounded every single plane of the enemy force and rendered the SAM sites useless, along with constantly putting pressure on the ground forces with B-52’s, A-10’s and AH-64’s, which roamed the border area the entire war.

In 2022/23 Russia is signing grain deals with it’s enemy and allowing it’s enemy to safely import hundreds of heavy fighting machines, it even goes further and ocassionally retreats and makes the job even easier for it’s enemy. An enemy which is incomparably much stronger and dangerous to Russia, than Serbia was to NATO.

How does that make any sense?

2

If I’m distilling your post down to a single question, I’m going to guess the question is “Why doesn’t NATO intervene to support Ukraine from Russia when it was so willing to intervene to support Kosovo from Serbia?”

If I understood correctly, my answer would be “because Serbia doesn’t have an intercontinental nuclear deterrent”.

NATO attacking Russia (or the converse) is the last guaranteed tripwire for old-school World War III.

3

Also, Ukraine is not yet a NATO member. Sending in those troops would be a lot like declaring war against Russia, or at least Putin would see it that way and probably feel no reservations about launching nukes. At this point, it’s a proxy war without official NATO blessing. Putin has gotten himself into something that he thought would be a walkover, but instead has turned into a vicious dogfight. Now he can’t just back out without huge embarrassment to himself. I’m hoping he will do some face-saving thing to bring a halt to this mess before it escalates.

4

What Putin started, figuring that Ukraine would bow down and let him walk in [based on earlier incursions] but Ukraine had other plans. At this point, Putin can’t back down - he has always tried to be the ultra macho uber alpha asshole - look at all the previous pictures of him running around hunting, riding horses, camping and all the ultra testosterone poisoning male posturing bullshit to indicate how huge his balls are. Well, asshat is now what 70 years old and his health is starting to fail, and his bid for Tsar/Stalin has failed but he can’t do anything about it. I would not be surprised if we got a report of him falling out of a window or being poisoned.

Russia has passed 200 000 dead, and innumerable assets [tanks, artillery systems, vehicles, his Black Sea flagship] are gone, ammo dumps have been blown up, his mercenaries are about to revolt. He has pretty much emulated Paulus and the 6th army in Stalingrad. Why he didn’t figure they would fight for their motherland, I have no freaking clue.

5

I think what the OP is actually asking is this. Why is Russia using the tactics it’s currently using, rather than the tactics that NATO used against Serbia? I don’t have an answer for that question, other than to say that Russian senior military commanders are all a bunch of idiots, but that’s my interpretation of what the OP is asking.

ETA. I have wondered why Russia hasn’t attempted a serious combined arms with massive numbers. They seem more than willing to send men into the meatgrinder, so why not do it all at once? Send several hundred thousand infantry, the few thousand tanks they have remaining, the several hundred fighter jets and helicopters they have, etc. and do one massive attack all at once towards Kyiv. From the Russian perspective I don’t see how the result could be any worse than the results they’re currently getting, and it might just work.

6

The might of the Russian military is largely a fiction. This became clear at the end of the Soviet Union.

The failure to take Ukraine is the latest example. The Russians are not holding back, they just can’t do it. A country or former province right in their own back yard. And they can’t do it. It has become Putin’s hobby war. The worries the West had when I was in school of the Soviets roaring through the Fulda Gap with thousands of tanks seems almost comical now.

7

Perhaps he saw another Poland, a poorly armed force that could only put up token resistance to the waves of Russian soldiers. To quote Gomer Pyle: Surprise, surprise, surprise!

8

If you read Putin’s manifesto from the summer of 2021, he makes it clear that he does not think there is such a thing as a Ukrainian people, nor a country of Ukraine. They’re all part of Russia. The only reason that Ukraine exist separately is because of the Western-allied leaders, the “Ukrainian Nazis” the Russians keep spouting about. Decapitate the Western puppet government of so-called Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people will embrace the Russian liberators.

As far as I can tell, sitting far away and with no expertise, he truly believes that, it’s not just a manifesto made up to justify the war. Rather, the manifesto requires the war, to liberate the oppressed Russian peoples of Ukraine, which includes all those who think they speak Ukrainian but really are just speaking a dialect of Russian.

9

I suspect they couldn’t support such an attack logistically, and if they did they’d be leaving the occupied areas open to the Ukrainian army and risk being surrounded. And one big defeat would risk utter chaos.
I’m with you on my sense of the OP. Russian forces seem poorly trained and motivated and getting less so as the experienced troops get killed. That’s why they are relying on the Wagner mercenaries, and from the Times it seems that the Wagner people are unsure that the Russians would try to save them if they got in trouble and vice versa.

10

IMHO, the problem with not intervening against Russia because of “they have nukes!” is that such a stance rewards nuclear ownership, or nuclear proliferation, and will only encourage other aggressive regimes to get themselves nuke-armed as soon as possible.

What I find strange is that some of the people who say we can’t intervene against Russia because of nukes, also advocate that the United States should intervene if China invades Taiwan. Doesn’t China have nukes too?

11

Sounds like this might become a Russian version of Pickett’s Charge. Kyiv, and the road to Kyiv, in particular, has been well-fortified or prepped for over a year now. It would just be Russia’s final dying gasp.

And yes I agree, the OP is apparently asking “Why doesn’t Russia wage war the way NATO does?”

12

When Russia invaded Georgia and Crimea, there was very little opposition and the West whined a bit, but did nothing. This created a false sense of confidence for Russia in their might.

After Crimea, Ukraine retooled its military to fight Russia, as it was the obvious threat to Ukraine’s continued existence. When Russia invaded, they faced real resistance for the first time. They also faced a west that was willing to stand up to them for the first time. This resistance revealed all the cracks in Russia’s military, government, and society for all the world to see.

Essentially, Russia didn’t use NATO tactics because it lacks the capacity to do so.

13

That’s a real trigger for folks in that area. Ukrainians were complicit in the murder of several million Jews by the Nazis, and I would suspect that’s a sensitive subject. Never mind that Russia has historically done more than their share of genocidal behavior. I’m actually surprised by Poland’s acceptance of Ukraine refugees, as the UPA was responsible for massacring up to 100,000 Poles in an ethnic cleansing effort during that same period. Memories are long in that part of the world.

14

Not any more than anywhere else in my experience living and working in Russia and Ukraine. No one living has any memory of the events of WWII. What they do have a memory of is Russian territorial aggression both as the Soviet Union and later as the Russian Federation.

Eastern Europe and the US have been trying to get the Western NATO powers to take Russian aggression seriously for years, but Western Europe has consistently been dismissive, until they weren’t.

15

I get that, but why would Putin use the word “Nazi” in his diatribes, if not to evoke that era to stir up old grudges?

16

Because fighting Nazis invokes the memory of the USSR beating an enemy. Linking a current enemy to an enemy you beat, even though 27 million of you died, both inspires loyalty and dehumanizes the other.

17

It means that Russia is the good guy in the battle against the « Ukrainian Nazis », just like they were the good guys against the German Nazis.

18

My understanding is that Poland and western Ukraine have had long cultural affiliations.

19

I kind of get the impression that the Russian Army can’t really engage in maneuver warfare much anymore for a number of reasons:

  • Inadequate logistical capability
  • Poor training
  • Poor motivation
  • Huge armored vehicle losses
  • Poor C3 capability

I get the impression that they’re trying to do something along those lines near Bakhmut, but they can’t break through and surround the city due to dogged Ukrainian resistance.

And from the Ukrainian perspective, that fighting around Bakhmut is probably very much to their advantage. They tie up a LOT of Russian troops, kill a shitload of them, and don’t have to commit their mobile units to achieve that, since it sounds like an infantry/artillery fight.

So when and if they decide to attack this spring, they can do so where they choose, and with fresh, better equipped troops, against (likely) second-rate Russian troops who weren’t committed to the main effort near Bakhmut.

20

Well, it’s a button that still works , but to decreasing effect and not at all outside of Russia and maybe Belarus (our equivalent is woke used by the far right). Ukraine, the Baltics and Poland see themselves as part of a modern Europe, while Russia is trying to cling to a former, largely fictional, period of greatness (again, the equivalent of MAGA).