There’s historical precedence for nations at war bringing in outsiders to command their forces. Russia planned for a quick decapitation and perhaps a prolonged insurgency; but nothing like the war they now find themselves in. I know the Russian military has more than just bad generals to blame for its failures on the battlefield, but assuming the Kremlin wanted to outsource military strategy the same way they are increasingly outsourcing arms, where would they find that kind of person?
Yeah, I know anyone smart enough to do the job wouldn’t take it, but still, who has the necessary bona fides for this kind war? (Ukrainians don’t count😀). Are there generals from the Iran/Iraq war who could teach them something about dislodging dug in troops? Do war colleges in China or India have experts in this kind of warfare that could turn things around? Could a disaffected officer from the Pentagon or other Western high command make a difference?
I suspect that the Russian problems at this stage aren’t seated in immediate military strategy, operations or even tactics, but rather in their doctrinal and larger scale decisions like logistical infrastructure and mobilization planning.
Outside of that, there are failures in grand strategy in that they didn’t plan for failure, or for any scenario outside their desired end state. Had they done so, they might have had a mechanism in place to allow some kind of graceful withdrawal while saving face. Instead, they expected to defeat Ukraine in a few short weeks, and once that failed, they’ve been fighting kind of aimlessly ever since.
I’m not sure that even if they managed to get a good general in charge of things that he could overcome the Russian situation. In fact I’m sure the Russian generals know what they’d like to do, but don’t have forces that are trained, equipped, or supplied well enough to pull it off.
Add in all the corruption, and yeah, no one would be able to pull off a win under these circumstances. At every level between the General and the people actually doing the heavy lifting, there’s a disconnect between orders going down, and information coming up. It’s like the world’s worst game of Telephone. No matter how brilliant the General is, if they’re basing their plans on faulty data, and the orders are being carried out by incompetent or corrupt subordinates, the plan is doomed to fail.
It’s possible that, like Nazi Germany, their problem isn’t their military but rather a wayward dictator. Hitler wouldn’t listen to his generals, which is why he started the second front against the USSR. It’s possible that Putin was advised by his military not to invade Ukraine but decided to do so anyway.
I have pondered whether or not a highly skilled general could have helped them at the start of the war. Someone like Georgy Zhukov, Ivan Konev, or Konstantin Rokossovky, to take historical Russian generals were they to insist on a Russian.
As far as someone today, I can’t think of any from Russian aligned countries who would have recent experience. Maybe a North Korean general who was taught based on the experience gained by one of their predecessors back in the Korean War, or an Iranian general who learned from their predecessors experience in the Iran-Iraq war. That’s probably the closest they would get.
At the risk of gently pooping on the OP, what do you mean by “strategy”? There’s really 4 levels mentioned in this thread so far, and IMO the OP unwittingly refers to 3 of them at once:
Grand strategy: what is our government trying to accomplish, and how best to do it? Using all the tools of statecraft and industry, of which the military is but one.
Strategy: what is our military trying to accomplish and how best to do it?
Tactics: what’s in our standard “playbook” for various situations? How do we play this game? Including up-front stuff like combat and back-stage stuff like logistics.
Operations. Which moves shall we make now and where using which of our tactics and which assets to implement our strategy in furtherance of the government’s grand strategy? Operations decision-making has the property that its repeated at increasingly finer grain in space, time, and details as you work down from the generals to the captains to the sergeants to the grunts.
The OP and subsequent posters talk about all of those. But not in a coherent framework. Assuming the OP really want to talk about generals, not sergeants, here’ my two cents worth.
A non-Russian genius general teleported into the situation today would be hard-pressed to make a difference. It takes time and training to change tactics used by a large dispersed force. So at least you’re mostly stuck running the plays your troops know, not the ones you may bring from your own experience in your own military. Yes, you can deploy those moves more adroitly, but only to the degree the underlying human organization accurately connects your hands on the bureaucratic control levers to the actual muscles doing the driving, shooting, occuppying, etc. And to the degree you can “feel” the feedback of what the muscles are seeing and accomplishing to guide your next push/pull on the levers of power.
Right now at the grand strategy and strategy level, the general is sandwiched between maximal demands from the civilian leaders and inadequate resources to accomplish those demands. Some of being a senior general is being a diplomat / politician between those two directions, selling the civil command on the art of the possible not the art of the wishful. That depends critically on having an advice-receptive civilian leadership. While meanwhile exhorting the military side to overachieve their own expectations / limitations. Which depends critically on a subordinate pyramid that’s both receptive and honestly communicative.
A good or great general can make a large difference in which large operations are run when and how. If permitted to make those decisions. The Nazis had some darn good highly experienced generals in 1944 leading quality skilled troops. Who got detailed incontrovertible orders from der Furhrer which converted them into messengers, not leaders.
Setting aside all that, where could they find somebody w relevant skills, even if the lucky winner of the talent search were doomed to failure themselves by the untenable situation?
You need somebody with combat experience and experience leading / managing a large headcount across a big area. I’d argue the former is more important than the latter. Pretty much that means somebody from the USA. The Brits and perhaps the French have folks who’ve led smaller formations in recent wars & skirmishes. The Israelis also have leaders with battle practice, albeit at much smaller scale.
Is this the situation, though? It seems like right now “dug in” better describes the Russian troops, whom the Ukrainians are trying to dislodge and push back.