Failed planning and command
The military campaign in Ukraine, as far as can be judged, took place for a long time without a single command and proper coordination between individual formations in different sectors of the theater of operations (theater of operations). In February 2022, the troops moved in nine operational directions at once without visible interaction as part of a common plan.
For a long time it was completely unclear who was in charge of the military operation. According to one source, the head of the National Defense Control Center, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev (recently appointed Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics), was doing this directly from Moscow. According to others, each military district received its own area of responsibility and acted there at its own peril and risk.
Anarchy was traced not only at the level of the general plan, but also in the actions of the main organizational units of the Russian armed forces – battalion tactical groups (BTG). A certain inconsistency is easily explained when commanders in a combat situation take the initiative and make independent decisions, but in the Russian army, BTGs are built into a centralized control system (which largely makes this way of using manpower and equipment meaningless).
In the initial stages of the war, the command was not able to ensure the integration of aviation and ground forces for any long period and on any noticeable scale in order to solve tasks such as protecting and covering mechanized columns and supply columns. Even after a significant reduction in the scope of the theater of operations, when the Russian side concentrated on the Donbass and the southern direction (Nikolaev and Zaporozhye), it was not possible to conduct a single successful major military operation related to interspecific interaction.
Scattered actions and planning errors have repeatedly led to completely unthinkable situations when police units of the SOBR and the National Guard, armed with small arms, batons, helmets and shields, came under fire from heavy weapons to disperse demonstrations.
Management chaos is well illustrated by the documented loss of senior officers. According to estimates based on open sources, since the beginning of hostilities in Ukraine, more than 1.1 thousand officers have died, including 300 people with the rank of major and above.
The Ukrainian military campaign gave dozens (if not hundreds) of examples of blatant disregard for the basics of military art and monstrous miscalculations in planning that made the names of the respective settlements a household word: for example, Belogorovka (a crossing over the Seversky Donets River, during which the Russians managed to lose about a hundred units (! ) equipment and almost half a thousand (!) military personnel) or Chernobaevka (an airfield near Kherson, which survived about three dozen (!) Effective Ukrainian strikes on equipment and manpower).
The defeat near Belogorovka is one of many examples of the outstanding incompetence of the Russian command in the war with Ukraine
The combination of poor tactics at the lower levels, limited air cover, lack of flexibility and inexplicable stubbornness in the approaches of the command, which is ready to jump on the same rake and repeat mistakes over and over again, led not only to high casualties, but also to systematic cases of failure to carry out suicide orders by junior officers.
The most surprising thing is that commanders who allow criminal losses of people and equipment are not punished. For example, the commander of the 1st Tank Regiment of the 1st Tank Army, Lieutenant Colonel Denis Lapin, managed to lose half of the list of T-72B3M tanks in three weeks of fighting. Instead of a military tribunal, Lapin received an award for courage and heroism shown during the operation in Ukraine. True, this award was presented by his own father, Colonel General Alexander Lapin, who, by a happy coincidence, was the commander of the Center group in Ukraine.
Will mobilization help? Hardly. During the war in Ukraine, those responsible for the operation, the commanders of individual groups, military branches have already changed several times, there are rearrangements at the level of the Ministry of Defense, but no fundamental changes are visible. The mobilization is not accompanied by organizational and staff measures that are noticeable to an external observer, which would indicate the opposite.
It is possible that the explanation for the failed command lies in the too deep personal immersion of President Vladimir Putin in making military decisions. According to The Guardian , the Russian leader determines the location of individual formations (the level of responsibility of a colonel or brigadier general). The New York Times claims that Putin recently banned troops from leaving the right bank of the Dnieper and surrendering Kherson, despite the serious risks of defeating these forces.
Logistics issues
Even before the invasion of Ukraine, social networks were filled with photos and videos of soldiers sleeping side by side on the border. The command did not take care to provide them with decent conditions, and did not even issue dry rations. Then it seemed that the exhausted and hungry soldiers were the best proof that the Kremlin was bluffing and was not going to attack Ukraine at all.
A noticeable proportion of sanitary losses in individual units at the initial stage of hostilities accounted for frostbite. According to a CIT source , in one of the units, only 20% of the personnel were provided with winter uniforms, and partly bought by contractors at their own expense. It is possible that many soldiers froze to death in the spring.
The problem was not only the poor performance of the rear units, but also the regular destruction by the Ukrainians of supply convoys – fuel trucks, trucks with ammunition and provisions, which followed without protection. By the summer, with the change in the nature of the war and the narrowing of the line of contact, supply columns ceased to be easy prey for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but difficulties with logistics (MTO) did not disappear.
Here are expired dry rations , and civilian navigators, and Chinese smartphones with mapping applications in the cockpits of fighters , and decommissioned rotten bulletproof vests with rusty armor plates , and even propaganda shells from the Chechen wars.
The saddest and, without exaggeration, deadly is the meager and hopelessly outdated contents of army first-aid kits and military field medical bags.
This is how standard Russian (above) and Ukrainian (below) soldier's first-aid kits look like
Will mobilization help? Rather, on the contrary. Calling up an additional 300,000 men (according to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu), and even more so, a million or more (according to independent media), will be a challenge to the army's already overburdened logistics system. In recent days, social networks have been filled with numerous videos where mobilized citizens are offered to buy uniforms, equipment, medicines at their own expense and are given useful advice , such as replacing hemostatic agents with hygienic tampons.
Heavy metal instead of secure communications
Under the conditions of a real war, it turned out that the Russian military does not have modern secure communications, and therefore they use Chinese-made civilian walkie-talkies (often purchased with funds raised by volunteers) and even ordinary mobile phones.
It is not surprising that Ukrainians easily listen in and intercept communications and jam communication channels with the help of heavy metal.
The main communication tool of the Russian military in Ukraine is the Chinese travel radio Baofeng
According to Ukrainian sources, high-ranking officers, unlike soldiers, do not hand over their mobile phones before being sent to the war zone, thereby making it easy to pinpoint their location and launch an artillery strike.
Moreover, the commanders, apparently, bear disciplinary responsibility for the loss of communications kits, so they do not find anything better than to collect regular communications equipment and carry them with them in command vehicles.
Will mobilization help? No. Solving the problem of secure communications, as well as building effective military communications and control systems, requires systemic changes in military planning, research and development work, and the work of specialized enterprises of the military-industrial complex.
Staff shortage
Before the invasion on February 24, 2022, Russia concentrated on the Ukrainian borders, including in Belarus and Crimea, from 150 thousand to 190 thousand people as part of 120 battalion tactical groups.
Apparently, for the entire duration of the conflict, the total number of groups involved in the Ukrainian theater of operations did not exceed 200 thousand people, including units and formations of the "LPR" and "DPR", the National Guard, volunteer detachments and private military companies (PMCs).
The Americans proceed from estimates of the loss of Russian forces at 80 thousand people (killed, wounded, captured and missing). The British agree with these assessments.
With such losses, it is not surprising that in secondary areas the Russian command used limited combat-ready formations, consisting of personnel units, volunteers and PMC fighters in various proportions. What this leads to was shown by the “regrouping” operation in the Kharkov direction.
The war with Ukraine as a whole showed an acute shortage of personnel for the BTG. The professionalization of the Russian army turned out to be half-hearted at best: there are not enough contract soldiers to fill all the positions in the staff list, hence the need to recruit servicemen of non-core military specialties and conscripts.
Despite repeated statements by Putin that conscripts are not participating in the war, it turned out that more than half of them were on the sunken flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the guards missile cruiser Moskva.
Already in the course of the conflict, Russian troops began to suffer losses not only of the “two hundredth” (killed) and “three hundredth” (wounded), but also the “five hundredth” – this is how they began to call people who refuse to go to the combat zone or submit a dismissal report (quite legally due to the legal status of the so-called special military operation).
According to CIT estimates, among the military personnel who visited Ukraine, about 20-40% refused to be nominated again for combat missions. The Wall Street Journal reported on the one-time dismissal of hundreds of military personnel from individual units.
Patch of one of the Russian PMC mercenaries killed in Ukraine
The large number of "five hundredths", in turn, made it impossible to rotate units in the combat zone. Including because the command was afraid to take the soldiers to Russia, where they could refuse to return and write a letter of resignation.
As far as one can judge, such measures as posting photographs of refuseniks on the boards of shame for the mass character of the phenomenon did not bring any result. In the end, stacks of statements refusing to fight were found on the front line – at the headquarters of the defeated Izyum group of the Russian Armed Forces.
The Ministry of Defense tried to compensate for the initial understaffing and current losses by transferring the military from the Caucasus and from Tajikistan , recruiting for short-term contracts (including among the homeless and through the site of a neuropsychiatric dispensary), and attracting volunteer regional battalions .
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported personally to Putin that 16,000 volunteers, principled opponents of nationalism and fascism, are ready to go to fight in Ukraine in the Middle East. Until now, nothing is known about whether any of the Middle Eastern anti-fascists got to Ukraine.
But the fighters of private military companies like PMC Wagner, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who recruited at least 6,000 prisoners in correctional colonies, and representatives of the Chechen law enforcement agencies, who received the collective name “tik-tok troops” in the press for a series of crazy staged videos in this spirit , definitely got there .
It is noteworthy that both the “Wagnerites” and the Chechen “tik-tok troops” primarily solve not military tasks, but provide PR support for the activities of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, respectively.
Will mobilization help? On paper, yes. But judging by how the mobilization is proceeding, in reality there will be more problems. So far, it is not clear that the subpoenas are primarily received by people with combat experience, scarce military registration specialties and with great motivation to fight.
A few hundred thousand recruits will in any case help create a defensive depth in already occupied territories. And with one million mobilized, you can think about the offensive. The question is the level of training and equipment replenishment.
According to Western estimates , in the Kiev direction in March, Russian troops had an advantage over Ukraine in the ratio of forces 12:1. In Severodonetsk, Russia achieved an advantage of 7:1. In the first case, they still had to retreat, and in the second, they managed to occupy the city only due to the overwhelming superiority in artillery.
Of course, sending random people to units at the front after one day of preparation , there is no need to talk about an offensive or creating a stable defense.
Obsolete equipment and ammunition
Since 2000, Russia has spent on military spending, according to various estimates, about $1 trillion. Putin said that the share of modern weapons in the army reached 71%, and in the VKS – 68%. The Ministry of Defense annually reported on the transfer to the troops of hundreds of units of new military equipment: missile systems, armored vehicles, aircraft and helicopters.
But on the battlefield in Ukraine, modern types of weapons and military equipment are not noticeable. Judging by the well-known photo and video materials, there are basically no new-generation vehicles on the Armata, Kurganets, and Boomerang platforms in the active troops.
Russian strike aircraft in the Ukrainian campaign rely on free-fall bombs and pitch-up fire, rather than precision-guided weapons like guided missiles and glide bombs.
The most striking illustration of the failure of the modernization of the Armed Forces is tanks. Back in 2015, the Kremlin-loyal Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies wrote :
The main Soviet tanks of the T-64 / T-72 / T-80 generation completely discredited themselves during the civil war in Ukraine with their low survivability and, as a result, high crew losses. As for the vehicles of the T-72 family, their low survivability on the battlefield and high crew losses (due to the tendency to detonate ammunition in the event of an anti-tank attack) were demonstrated in almost all conflicts involving these vehicles (including both Chechen campaigns) .
Is it necessary to say that the Russian troops use in Ukraine mainly "completely discredited" tanks of the T-72 and T-80 families? During the fighting, the loss of more than 1,200 tanks was documented , of which 90% accounted for various modifications of the T-72 and T-80.
The helplessness of Russian tanks in front of anti-tank weapons (Javelin, NLAW) is emphasized by attempts to make handicraft armored vehicles with logs, sandbags or stones, metal bars. Wooden protection is also found on other armored vehicles and trucks, and dynamic protection designed for tanks is placed on armored personnel carriers and armored vehicles.
This is how the wooden protection of Russian military equipment looks like
Even pro-government experts call the situation “shameful” when not a single combat tank of the Russian army in Ukraine has active protection systems, although such systems first appeared in the USSR.
As standard equipment is retired, the military has to reactivate long-decommissioned samples such as the Tochka-U OTRK, T-62 tanks, Giacint and D-30 artillery pieces.
Will mobilization help? Obviously not. At the Army forum in August 2022, the Ministry of Defense signed contracts for the supply of 3.7 thousand units of new military equipment. However, at the beginning of 2022, the department planned to transfer only 400 tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles to the ground forces. This is enough for about 10 BTGs, and 300,000 mobilized people are personnel for 400 BTGs.
It is unlikely that the Russian military-industrial complex, under the conditions of unprecedented sanctions, will be able to increase output by an order of magnitude. You should not count on the supposedly bottomless reserves and backlogs of the Soviet era. According to one estimate based on open data, Russia has only 6,000 tanks in storage bases, of which only half are in repairable condition. According to other data , there are even fewer mothballed tanks available for shipment to Ukraine.
Corruption
Проблемы с материально-техническим обеспечением в целом и средствами связи, в частности, а также хроническим некомплектом личного состава во многом объясняются банальной коррупцией.
Западные эксперты всегда подозревали, что весомая часть оборонного бюджета России расходуется неэффективно, но истинный масштаб воровства стал настоящим потрясением. Комментарий авторитетного британского Королевского объединенного института оборонных исследований (RUSI), выпущенный в мае 2022 года, начинается такими словами:
Коррупция в России вездесуща и широко распространена в ее оборонно-промышленном комплексе и вооруженных силах. Свидетельства из Украины дают основания полагать, что ее ценой становятся жизни российских солдат.
Война с Украиной показала, что в российской армии массово оснащали боевую колесную технику дешевыми китайскими шинами (вместо дорогих военных модификаций), солдаты шли под пули в форме на 1-2 размера больше, потому что ходовые размеры продавали на «Авито», совершали марши в обуви с отваливающимися подошвами .
Более серьезные примеры коррупционных практик — истории с беспилотным летательным аппаратом «Орлан-10» и радиостанциями «Азарт».
Из чего сделан российский беспилотник стоимостью $100 000
Украинцы сняли видео с «распаковкой» одного из попавших к ним в руки «Орланов». Так мир узнал, что в беспилотнике стоимостью около $100 000 за штуку вместо специального оборудования для съемки размещается фотоаппарат Canon, закрепленный на липкой ленте, а вместо топливного бака — обыкновенная пластиковая бутылка.
С радиостанциями «Азарт» вышло еще хуже. Передовые комплексы связи по цене 300 000 рублей за штуку вчистую проиграли конкуренцию среди военных китайским рациям Baofeng (цена — 2000 рублей). В главном военном следственном управлении Следственного комитета России расследуется дело о хищении 6,7 млрд рублей из выделенных на закупку радиостанций «Азарт» 18 млрд рублей.
Поможет ли мобилизация? No comment.
Неэффективность дальних средств поражения
С начала вторжения российские Вооруженные силы выпустили по Украине более 3500 ракет. Тем не менее, Россия до сих пор не сумела ни подавить украинские средства ПВО и ПРО и завоевать господство в воздухе, ни разрушить ключевые объекты транспортной инфраструктуры вроде мостов и железнодорожных узлов.
Одна из проблем — низкое качество разведки целей и целеуказания. Совершенно анекдотические примеры ударов по туалетам , паркам детских аттракционов , автобусным остановкам , теплицам с огурцами , гаражным кооперативам по крайней мере частично могут объясняться именно этим. Несмотря на очевидные промахи, такие удары, как правило, засчитываются Минобороны как поражение выявленных целей (так, например, произошло с ударом по супермаркету, расположенному рядом с Харьковским тракторным заводом).
Уничтоженная российской ракетой теплица с огурцами
Другое возможное объяснение — эксплуатационные характеристики российского ракетного вооружения. По американским оценкам , уровень отказов при запуске высокоточных крылатых ракет достигает 50-60%. Такие отказы не только мешают поражать цели, но и представляют опасность для самих расчетов.
Провластные эксперты признают , что из-за «нехватки массового дешевого высокоточного боеприпаса» российской армии приходится делать ставку на сверхконцентрацию артиллерийского огня, превращая территории, по которым наносятся удары, в лунный пейзаж без единого целого здания.
Поможет ли мобилизация? Нет. Решение проблемы требует перестройки всей военной машины. Помимо того, что ряд боеприпасов устарели или используются не по назначению, по некоторым категориям в распоряжении российской армии не оказалась вообще ничего. Скажем, ВКС не имеют на вооружении дешевого и массового управляемого авиационного боеприпаса, в идеале — аналога западной системы Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), позволяющей модернизировать неуправляемые авиабомбы старого образца. Кроме того, нет достаточного количества самолетов РЭБ и РТР, разведывательных и ударных БЛА, спутников космической разведки.
Недостаточный боевой дух
Попытка провести военную кампанию в режиме секретности и спецоперации сыграла злую шутку: судя по всему, значительная часть российских солдат действительно не готовилась воевать и не имела ни малейшего представления о целях и задачах на территории Украине.
Шапкозакидательские настроения в духе «возьмем Киев за три дня», если они и были распространены в войсках, довольно быстро сменились массовыми отказами воевать и разочарованием в военной службе как таковой.
Военнослужащий российской группировки в Украине
Постепенно появляющиеся в СМИ откровенные рассказы участников войны с российской стороны дают одну и ту же картину: организационный бардак, коррупция, некомпетентность офицеров, бытовая неустроенность, общая усталость и апатия военнослужащих.
Поможет ли мобилизация? Возможно. На первых порах новобранцы, особенно те, кто добровольно явился в военкоматы, способны поднять боевой дух, но насколько этого запала хватит, вопрос дискуссионный.
Низкий уровень подготовки и моральных качеств солдат
Украинская кампания продемонстрировала, насколько низким человеческим капиталом обладают российские Вооруженные силы. Многолетние практики отрицательного отбора и преимущественное комплектование за счет выходцев из депрессивных регионов, где служба в армии рассматривается как социальный лифт, привели к катастрофическим последствиям.
Об этом можно судить по местам, где российская армия побывала, и что она оставила после себя: речь не только об очевидных военных преступлениях вроде убийств гражданских лиц, изнасилованиях, мародерстве .
Множество частных домов и квартир на оккупированных территориях были разгромлены без всякой видимой рациональной цели, а на стенах оставлены оскорбительные надписи, изобилующие орфографическими ошибками.
Надпись, оставленная в одной из квартир в Буче
Фирменный почерк российских солдат — оставлять человеческие экскременты на видных местах. Работники Чернобыльской АЭС, вернувшиеся на рабочие места после ухода россиян, были немало удивлены, обнаружив кал буквально в каждом рабочем кабинете (об аналогичных посланиях можно прочитать в подборке «Медиазоны» с красноречивым названием «Где спали, там и срали»).
Поможет ли мобилизация? Насколько можно судить, нет. Судя по множеству видеосвидетельств с мобилизованными, моральные качества призываемых оставляют желать лучшего.
Неясное целеполагание
Российская военная кампания в Украине не зря получила славу «странной войны». Официально заявленные цели настолько расплывчаты, а действия на земле настолько оторваны от них, что понять, двигают ли военные успехи и неудачи политической риторикой или наоборот, — крайне сложно.
На начальном этапе российские силы вторглись в Украину сразу по девяти операционным направлениям, очевидно, рассчитывая молниеносными ударами ошеломить противника и вынудить его сдаться. Оперативный замысел по модели «шок и трепет» основывался на сочетании ударов высокоточным оружием, действий спецназа и аэромобильных сил и движения механизированных колонн.
Несмотря на успехи на южном направлении, где удалось без существенных потерь выйти к Николаеву и занять сухопутный коридор в Крым, с севера армии пришлось уходить в конце марта.
Второй этап ожидался как масштабная битва за Донбасс: при помощи переброшенных с севера частей планировалось окружить и разгромить самые боеспособные части ВСУ. Но битвы как таковой не вышло — российская армия крайне медленно продвигалась вперед за счет подавляющего превосходства (сверхконцентрации) артиллерии, уничтожив захваченную лисичанско-северодонецкую агломерацию.
На третьем этапе украинские войска сумели не только остановить вялое наступление противника благодаря дальнобойной западной артиллерии, но и перейти в контрнаступление, перехватив стратегическую инициативу на херсонском и харьковском направлениях.
Четвертый этап войны, который можно считать объявленным с началом в России частичной мобилизации, очевидно, будет войной на истощение в прямом смысле этого слова.
Никто до конца не понимает, в какой момент Путин сочтет, что цели СВО выполнены: когда российские войска полностью займут территорию Донецкой и Луганской областей? Или еще и Херсонской и Запорожской в придачу? Или требуется захватить Одессу, выйти к Приднестровью и лишить Киев выхода к Черному морю? А то и вовсе демонтировать сложившийся в Украине политический порядок? Судя по всему, Путин и сам этого не знает.
Поможет ли мобилизация? No comment.