This Twitter thread https://twitter.com/BA_Friedman/status/1498097876970450946 posits that the Russian Army is not winning because it is bad at being an army. That they aren’t getting the basics right, such as logistics, or command and control. That analyst goes on to say it probably won’t matter to the end result, since Russia has so many people and things in the field.
I don’t have the experience to judge, so I’ll kick off this thread. Is the Russian Army bad at being an army?
The short answer is, no, they aren’t bad. They aren’t as well trained or lead as, say, the US military, but then no one really is. I think what gets lost in a lot of this stuff is how difficult an invasion really is, how many moving parts there are, and how many things have to get done and get done right for it to work. As your post indicates, a big one of these is logistics…and it’s one that’s a hell of a lot harder than people think it is.
All of that said, I think what we are seeing is Russia being cautious and also holding back, not going full out against the Ukrainians. There could be several reasons for that, PR, wanting to maintain tactical control, worry over excessive damage or civilian deaths, etc. But those decisions are at the strategic level, not the tactical level. So, if the strategy is bad, that’s on Putin and his generals and doesn’t really demonstrate that the Russian military is ‘bad’.
I think the big problem is morale. I don’t think the average Russian soldier has any doubt that they are the bad guys in this war.
Millions of Russians have friends and relatives in Ukraine, and millions of Ukrainians have friends and relatives in Russia. The languages are similar, and the countries have been linked one way or another for centuries.
The Russian soldiers see Ukrainians as ‘people like us’.
Not a perfect analogy, but how well would the American army fight if they were ordered to invade Canada?
Also, a large percentage of the Russian soldiers are conscripts serving a mandatory year in the army. They are not professional soldiers.
The big, weird thing that I haven’t seen explained is why they aren’t fighting as Battalion Tactical Groups. That’s how they’ve organized and trained for the past 15 years or so, but for some reason they’re instead organizing in smaller units that are more easily picked off. So that’s one mystery.
Another factor that many of these troops don’t know where they’re going or what their mission is. Some of the leadership only found out last week. I was surprised to learn that this has been SOP for Russia for some time now. It prevents desertion and information leakage (at the cost of readiness). They were told they were going on a training mission to uncontested territory, and find out they’re waging war in western Ukraine. I can only imagine how shocking, disorienting, and demotivating that must be.
Finally, it’s been a commonly known issue since Soviet days that while they have plenty of experienced commissioned officers, the enlisted ranks have so much turnover that they tend not to accumulate senior enlisted and NCOs, which are the true backbone of any professional fighting force. Not just to direct combat efforts, but to train and guide and mentor the junior troops, keep them properly fed and equipped and motivated.
So the bulk of the army is starting from a place of inexperience and absence of hands-on leadership. It’s compounded by the soldiers being completely ignorant of the mission and location - and worst of all, they’re not even operating under the same organizational groupings that they were trained to fight in. They were utterly failed by their leadership. Totally understandable to see them abandoning vehicles and walking home.
Equally, I like the idea of the Canadians apologising before throwing Molotov cocktails.
Then, being good hosts, offering to clean up the mess once the US go back home.
Don’t joke about that! We’ve been training our kids for years now!
I don’t know of anything in particular but, long term, well hidden, corruption would only really be seen in a war. It’s the final audit. If you Google “Russian military corruption” you get hits from 1995 through 2020.
From the article:
By Russian law, conscripts are not allowed to serve in BTGs outside of Russia; outside Russia, the troops of a BTG serve on a volunteer basis.
So maybe there’s something to do with using conscripts and BTGs that is forcing them to more of a traditional style organization.
I suspect that what we’re seeing w.r.t. leadership is the inherent conflict between needing a 21st century professional army to fight this sort of short-term, high tempo war, and having an army that’s essentially stuck in 1950 in terms of how it’s manned and led.
I’ve seen reports (unsubstantiated) that conscripts are being forced to sign contracts before crossing the border. Perhaps that explains some of the details being hidden from them.
But even so, Putin’s regime is pretty lawless. Would he really decompose his maneuver units to satisfy some obscure regulation that literally nobody can take him to court over?
I’d be shocked if that were the case, but then again lately I do spend a lot of time being shocked.
Interesting answers, everyone! It all seems to come down to failures of top leadership, in strategy, tactics, logistics, training, getting the populace on board, etc.
But aside from that, what have the Romans ever done for us?!??!
So what has struck me is how many images I’ve seen of Russian tanks operating with infantry support anywhere to be seen, even in cities.
That is a pretty fundamental no-no. I mean everyone learnt the hard way what a terrible idea that was by about 1944, hell the Russians were pretty early in learning this. Its the tanker’s equivalent of wearing bright red uniforms or cavalry charges.
Its difficult not to jump to the conclusion someone (or several people along the chain of command) involved in sending those tanks in without any infantry is really bad at their job.
“Is the Russian Army bad at being an army?”
At this point, after a month of revelations, I think we have to answer “Yes”, they really are just bad at their job.
Leadership failures that go beyond just not telling their troops anything, but involve actually lying to their troops about where they were going and what they’d be doing. Relying on conscripts with low motivation, while also not giving them adequate training and supplies. Fundamental breakdowns in every important military skill, including logistics, tactics, and strategy. Intelligence failures all around in their assessment of Ukrainian capabilities and resolve. Inadequate reserves of both men and materiel, so bad that we’ve now learned that an awful lot of the tanks they thought they had in storage as replacements have been stripped of essential equipment, without anyone in charge knowing this.
About the only thing they seem to know how to do correctly is shelling civilians, and that’s the one thing they shouldn’t be doing.
It’s almost like they didn’t learn anything from Grozny in 1994 or Grozny in 1996 - or Grozny in 1999. I think I might be seeing a pattern in how good the Russian Army is at its job in the post-Cold War era.
Yeah, they seem to have believed their own press or something, and learned the wrong lessons from Chechnya and Georgia.
I think they made a lot of big assumptions, that if they panned out, would have rendered the structural problems in their military irrelevant. Chief among these erroneous assumptions are that the Ukrainians would roll over, that the war would be over in a matter of a couple of weeks, and that the West wouldn’t do anything at all. All three of those were wrong- the Ukrainians are tenaciously fighting, the war is now more than a month in, with no significant progress by the Russians in the past two weeks or so.
So now they’re having to fight a real war, with all the logistical/sustainment, maintenance, manpower, leadership, and morale challenges that go with that. They weren’t at all prepared for a month of heavy combat, and it shows.
Whether or not they could have been prepared, I don’t know. I suspect not, but that’s just my layman’s opinion.
The argument I’ve heard is that Putin wants a weak military. A strong, independent, free thinking (aka a competent NCO class who can think independently), well equipped military would pose a risk of an internal coup. So a poorly equipped military with top down hierarchies and no freedom to independently plan is in the best interest of the dictator trying to hold onto power.
In the twitter feed they discuss the 40 mile convoy, but I recently read an article that 30 Ukrainian soldiers armed with drones pretty much brought the convoy to a standstill.
However there is also the fact that the Ukranians are fighting with cutting edge drones and rockets to shoot down armored vehicles and aircraft. Had the russians invaded a place that didn’t have drones and tens of thousands of the newest infantry weapons the war could be going totally different. Russia under Putin has been involved in several wars, but pretty much all of them against a much smaller, weaker, poorly equipped opponent. Keep in mind Ukraine has 450,000 soldiers in between active personnel and reservists, while Russia invaded with 190,000 soldiers. Plus who knows how many foreign volunteers and civilian volunteers are helping Ukraine too.
I thought the 1999 campaign (which was basically Putin’s doing) is generally considered a success (albeit an incredibly brutal one that was achieved by the basically leveling Grozny to the ground and killing huge numbers of civilians) where they didn’t rely on unsupported armor.
I have no doubt that is why the Ukrainians are performing so much better on the battlefield. Zelensky is a brilliant spokesperson and figurehead, but he isn’t the one making the military and strategic decisions. In fact, it appears that Ukraine has been preparing for this invasion a lot longer than Russia has; well before their current president was even elected. I’m not sure if it is a single strategic mastermind or a well-oiled committee, but whoever is directing Ukraine’s defense is unconcerned about personal glory, position, or recognition.
In other words, Ukraine has western style generals, while Russia, of course, has Russian (not Soviet) style generals.