I am not even remotely a military expert. But General Petraeus seems pretty unimpressed with Russian efforts, doubting they could even hold Kyiv. Though there may be some wishful thinking and a desire for optimism, to an amateur he seems as if he knows what he is talking about. I am wondering what armchair warriors and those who know a lot about combat think about this CNN article and interview. (Invasion reveals weaknesses in the Russian military).
Is it really a rule of urban warfare five attackers are required for every defender? Was this the case in WW2, or where does this come from?
I’m not as impressed with David Petraeus as a great strategist and thinker as many are, but on this the conclusion is so obvious that it is difficult to object to it. The Russian Army can probably take Kyiv, capturing or forcing the municipal government to capitulate (hopefully Zelenskyy does not make a last stand and retreats to set up government elsewhere), but given what we’ve see so far there is no way they can hold it indefinitely. Even discounting the will of Ukrainians to keep fighting and disrupting logistical chains, the fact that any figurehead the Russians install as “leader” will probably be assassinated in days, and the effects that sanctions will have on the Russian economy even if China or India come to their aid (at the cost of getting oil and mineral rights for pennies on the dollar), they just can’t support enough of an occupying force to maintain order much less rebuild the destroyed infrastructure. And it seems clear that the Russian Army is in now way trained or constituted in the small unit tactics required for urban pacification.
Trying to hold Kyiv would mean that the Army could not effectively go elsewhere, leaving them mired in the middle of a city reduced to rubble, in an agricultural country that will miss its planting season, with no real allies and opposition in every alley. If the Russians were smart at this point they’d retreat to Donetsk and Luhansk, hunker down and built up logistics, and declare a moral victory of ‘rescuing’ the Russian separatists from their Ukrainian oppressors, which is a bullshit sandwich but one that would at least let them save face domestically while the negotiate for reduction in sanctions. That they aren’t doing this already is indicative of just how committed they are to a flailing, Pyrrhic victor to satiate Putin’s desire to recreate Imperial Russia.
Stranger
I heard Clint Watts on MSNBC today say 10 to 1.
From a British Army urban operations report:
Another source:
In any case, everyone agrees that urban warfare is very tough and challenging warfare, especially for the attacker.
I agree. As ever, excellent post.
Urban warfare also need boots on the ground - infantry going building by building, block by block. Tanks and Armored Fighting Vehicles are particularly vulnerable to ambush by infantry with anti-tank weapons in urban areas as there’s lots of cover, which means they’ll need infantry surrounding and protecting them. The infantry will then be vulnerable to anyone with a gun or molotov cocktail.
I think the gameplan for the russian is not really to take Kiew. Heck, they aren’t even trying.
Their northern army has nothing to offer in terms of taking the capital.
My feeling is they are just there to bind up the majority of the Ukr. army around Kiew, while the southern rus. army is making decent progress (with working logistics support) and annexing the black sea coast. They will say that is all ours now, incl. Odesa and concentrate their armies there, offer free land to new russian settlers and say the won the special operation.
Not that this was their initial intent, but that seems the only way they can claim somewhat of a victory (and have something to show for the 1000s of deaths). Holiday for russian upper class in Odesa, instead of Monaco and Vlad may live for a couple of years longer.
When does this optimum ratio ever occur? A big city might have more than a million people. You did not really have ten million Taliban or Nazi or Roman or colonial soldiers in a given place. Yes, modern weapons are different and more is understood about guerilla tactics. Even assuming the city is well supplied, willing to fight, has no fifth column, has adequate food and can guarantee future supplies - I wonder how often these claimed required ratios have been achieved in practice?
It’s not a ratio of attackers to “people in the city”, it’s to “people defending the city”, which even now in Ukraine isn’t literally everyone.
My suspicion is that their original plan was to drive two spearheads for Kyiv- one from the general direction of Chernobyl, and one from the general direction of Chernihiv, and encircle Kyiv. They were also planning on using paratroopers to capture an airport so they could tie down some forces there.
So while the Ukrainian army fights to defend Kyiv, the other spearheads from the general Kharkiv and Melitopol directions would drive south and north and capture the Donbas region where the separatists are already. Then when all was said and done, they’d basically offer to withdraw, but keeping the Donbas region, or maybe leaving it as its own independent Russian-speaking country.
But the Ukrainians stopped them cold at Kharkiv and on the eastern side of Kyiv, curb-stomped the paratroopers hard who tried to capture Hostomel airport, and have been fighting steadily to slow the other spearheads.
I’m not sure what their end game will be; I think if they let up on Ukraine at all, they’ll rearm and attack as soon as they can; they seem to have the better trained army when all is said and done. So I don’t see them sueing for peace and thinking they’ll be allowed to keep the Black Sea coast.
From what I’m reading, it’s doubtful that Russia has the capability even to take Kiev, much less hold it. Their supply lines don’t seem capable, even remotely, of supporting the forces necessary to do so.
Actually, the thing that most seems to be lacking in the Russian incursion, aside from logistics, is training. The larger mass of the Ukrainian forces are civilian partisans and people rapidly recruited/conscripted into defense, but thus far Ukraine seems to have a cadre of people who are well versed in insurgency operations.
My crystal ball on what Russia will do has been throughly cracked since they decided to invade Ukraine and I have no idea how this will end up; I think if Putin were smart he’d pull forces back to Donetsk and Luhansk and claim the moral victory of ‘rescuing’ the separatist populations from Ukrainian oppression which is nonsense but could be sold to the Russian public. They certainly couldn’t be forced out of Crimea by Ukraine without outside help; the Russian Navy dominates the Black Sea, and while Turkey has been building and modernizing their navy they are at least numerically inferior to the Chernomorsky Flot, especially in submarine power. How well they would stand up in a shooting war is perhaps another story but it isn’t as if the Sixth Fleet is going to portage overland from the Med to come to their aid.
My greatest fear is that Russia will refuse to acknowledge that they can’t hold Kyiv even if they can take it, and instead tries to prosecute a war into the Baltics before realizing not only can they not support a thrust but they also can’t draw back their forces, leaving Russia exposed to conventional counterattack. At this point a desperate Putin with no real options may be seriously weighing the use of ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons to gain back some advantage, and that way madness lies. This line of thinking has literally kept me up at night, as I’m sure it has NATO planners, which speaks to the need to give Russia a face-saving avenue of retreat. As much as I’d like to see Putin on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity, I don’t want to see Central Europe—or even wider regions across the globe—turned into a radioactive wasteland over a fit of pique by a demagogue desperate for victory at any cost.
Stranger
Yes. Or by a dying man looking to commit suicide by cop… using nukes.
Pretty much everyone has been saying that Russia’s performance in this war has been utterly incompetent. Petraeus isn’t exactly going out on a limb, here.
I’m also not impressed with Petraeus, and most of what he says is pretty obvious.
However, I agree with him that the Russians have no hope of taking Kyiv.
Kiev is big. It’s larger than New York City, and it has a wide, deep river (the Dnieper) running through the middle of it.
If the Russians haven’t been able to take Kharkiv, or come anywhere near doing so – which is less than half the size of Kyiv, and far easier in all respects to capture – even after throwing everything they had at it during three weeks of intense fighting…
If they haven’t been able to capture Mariupol, despite surrounding it, bombarding it heavily every day, and doing their damnedest …
If they haven’t been able to capture Chernihiv, or Mykolaiv, or Sumy…
…then they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of capturing Kyiv.
Zero possibility. The Baltic states are NATO members for a start, and Putin has already bitten off far more than he can chew with Ukraine.
The Russians are losing, and they know it. Putin is trying to find a way of saving face in Ukraine before things get worse for him.
The worry is that he will get so desperate that he will resort to chemical or tactical nuclear weapons.
Nominally, I’d agree with you. But three weeks ago I said he wouldn’t actually invade Ukraine because it would be a losing proposition for him and would devastate Russia economically. I was correct (I think) on the consequences, but wrong about what Putin would do regardless of them. Now I’ve retired my crystal ball, and reading the tea leaves only gives me “Reply hazy, try gain later.”
Stranger
and things get pretty much worse for him on a daily basis, starting feb.24th
Keep “F5-ing” that bastard ball 
If you weren’t already aware, this may be of interest to you.
An invasion of the Baltics is always possible. Fortunately for NATO, the Russians would have to gradually build up their forces on the border, just as they did with Ukraine… and this time, everyone would know exactly what they were up to.
Currently, Russian troops on the border with Estonia are actually thinning out as some units are redeployed to Ukraine.
I have no opinion on whether Petraeus is an expert strategist. Obviously, his comments during an interview would be straightforward. The points may be obvious, but I had not seen them together in one place. Although I agree with them, I thought many Dopers could go into more detail and surpass them.
Phrased another way, what did Petraeus miss or leave out?