Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 218

On September 11 2022 06:18 Artesimo wrote:


1. It is also in ukraines best interest that russia is not mobilising, which might have played into ukraines restraint when it comes to attacks on russian soil. Russias performance has been heavily impacted by their lack of manpower since the beginning of the war. The russian military is not supposed to fight a war without general mobilisation. Afaik, during peacetime they keep a bunch of units incomplete and they are supposed to get filled up through mobilisation. This is why we initially saw BTGs with no long range communication (missing their signalling platoon), units unable to bring enough fire support to properly advance (not having their full strenght of batteries attached to them), units lacking their logistical support elements etc.. Units that are not even aware that they are on a combat mission (some sources suggested this was caused by the US revealing the russian plans for invasion in advance. I saw claims by credible people that it caused paranoia in russias regime and influenced the decision of not telling large parts of the leadership on the ground until just before the invasion).

2. And moving parts of BTGs around to fill up an incomplete BTG leaves you with a BTG where the elements are not well adjusted to another and may lack in cohesion.
This is all caused by their complete wrong assumptions and their plan of a special military operation.

3. Though I am not ridiculing them as much for their initial plan as some do. An article about zelensky and what was going on during the first days of the war was posted here some month ago, and it revealed that at least parts of the russian plan came much closer to success than initially told. The article described the hideout of zelensky and ukrainain command in kiev getting assaulted by russian troops (probably infiltration units), which either came close to breaching the building or did breach the building at some point( I don't remember the detail, but either too close for comfort)... if they had succeed, things might have gone a lot more according to plan. But the absolute arrogance and incompetence of very obviously not having any contingency plan at all is just mind boggling... just as much as their little stunt of sending troops to an exercise in the middle of a war, just to keep up appearances.

4. Initially I waved aside claims of russian leadership being surrounded by yes men as gossip, but this string of what seems very obvious shortcomings and lack of judgement make it hard not to believe that there isn't at least some culture within the russian leadership, that makes it very hard for people to speak out against the ideas of some individuals. At this point it seems to common of an occurrence and on too big of a scale.

5. For their lack of manpower: In their desperate search for troops without mobilisation, russia has reportedly even deployed trainings personnel to the front. I sincerely hope they wasted so many of their instructors by now that even if they mobilised they would still only end up with mediocre troop quality on average. It would be the perfect conclusion of what seems to be one stupid decision after another coupled with with an adamant refusal to acknowledge their own mistakes.

On September 12 2022 18:39 Ardias wrote:
Definetly missed some good posts in a heat of previous discussion. Made a list in your post for the convinience of reply.

1. There you are mixing it a bit with Soviet system. USSR didn't have professional enlisted force, so it was relied heavily on large officer corps. Only most senior NCOs were professional ("praporschiks" and "starshinas", or "michman" in the Navy, comparable equivalent probably would be "master sergeant", "gunnery sergeant" and "ensign" in US military respectively). So USSR army was divided into readiness cathegories, with "A" category being frontline units (the ones in Europe, on border with Finland and some in Ukraine, Belarus and Baltics, most modern equipment, 90%+ personnel, regular drills, my father served in such a unit on FInland border) and "B", "C" and "D" (with "D" being token force around 5-10% active personnel, mostly officers, on T-55 and BTR-40) being further and further inside USSR. Mobilized troops in case of war would be filling those units to full numbers.
In Russia we were trying for many years to switch to professional army. It was somewhat done, of our 1 million army there were around 280 000 officers, 450 000 contract troops and 270 000 conscripts (high number of officers is due to many positions in Air Force, Air Defence, Navy being occupied by them, as well as in different rear service), hence it became common practice to create mixed contract/conscript units, with 2-3 battalions of the brigade being contract, and 1-2 being conscripted. Now, BTGs are the mishmash of the units from within the brigade, and since BTGs were to be formed only from contract troops, who comprised most of the complex units within brigades (Air defence, artillery, comms etc.), BTGs were severely lacking infantry (since that was left to conscripts). It was the worst for the BTGs of tank brigades, some of them having only one (!) infantry platoon (!!) per BTG (!!!). Which isn't even enough to man the guard duty for the unit, so tankers had to take this role themselves.
As for paranoia - yes, can confirm from the witness (person participating in Hostomel landing) - they didn't have any clear understanding what their objective is (at least on the level of regular grunts).
Regarding poor supply situation - I believe it to be mostly negligence and incompetence of those responsible for supply storage and maintenance, there were plenty of record of signal units recieving radios with completely outdated batteries, for example (like, few years outdated).

2. And even worse - often instead of fulfilling BTGs (or in case of LDPR, existing brigades and regiments) with fresh troops, they were instead sent to some newly formed units, where no one had any combat experience.

3. I'm still not sure about this attack on Zelensky, though in chaos and confusion of the first days anything could be possible, and he is surely a target. It's just I don't remember any info of this units being caught, and I doubt they could make out of the center of Kiev alive. My guess was that it was friendly fire incident (AFU was fiercly searching for infiltration units in UA uniform, which caused few incidents)
https://t.me/uniannet/66539
but it's hard to be sure.
And yeah, after the initial trust failed to subdue Ukraine, our command seemed to panic and made a lot of bad calls. As far as I heard (no source on that, just from people talking to me), that AFU had very thin lines in areas of Ugledar and to the west of it in March-early April, but AFRF command, despite local superiority, were afraid to exploit it, and instead threw those forces to the Mariinka and Avdiivka to assault AFU fortified positions head on.

4. There is a common russian motto for that system: "I'm the boss, you're the fool". And yes, it often has place in governmemts structure, especially in military with its rigid hierarchy and subordination.

5. There is still a foundation for training mobilized/volunteer personnel in the permanent bases of existing brigades/divisions, since most of them had conscript units with their officers left behind. However, there is some odd theme of creating new battalions based on regions, where, again, there seem to be no one with combat experience of the current war (though veterans of Chechnya could very well be). It's kinda looks like a money grabbing scheme from the expenses on creation and supply of those units from regional budgets, to be honest.

On September 12 2022 20:20 Artesimo wrote:


1: Thanks for the feedback, I knew that russia had made efforts to transition away from the purely conscript army, but was under the impression they had not managed to reach their goal yet. I should not have called it a conscript based army but one that still needs conscripts to effectively work at their full potential. For the supply, I think corruption also played a part. Sure stuff like vehicles seeming like they had not been proper maintained is negligence, but there is also the fact that most of my russian and belarussian friends tell me, that whenever there is a big military exercise, you can buy some cheap fuel. So there is also corruption/lack of discipline, plus all the other things mentioned in your post and mine.

3: I will have to do some more reading on that since all I know of it is from 1 or 2 atricles. They were from reputable sources, but they both also only used official ukrainian sources, which of course are not completely reliable. The timing of those articles made them seem plausible to me, as they got published well after russias forces had moved back from their positions in the northwest of kiev and ukraine had started to stabilize and was in a position to admit that things were closer than initially reported.

5: I have read reports on training personnel being send to the front as part of the search for manpower, but those might have been overstated. Unless it also happened to be from those poorer regions where recruitment efforts have much better chances at success due to the economic circumstances. Losing training personnel in any case is a huge blow though, since you lose a lot of knowledge and experience that would have been passed down to the recruits. You are probably right that it is not enough to hurt the russian war effort outside of massive full scale mobilisation. There are still going to be enough instructors around to handle a mobilisation except maybe in a few places.

On September 13 2022 01:09 maybenexttime wrote:
What's the share of DNR/LNR troops in Kherson? Perhaps Ukraine could offer them amnesty if they surrender? If their share is substantial, it could collapse the front.

On September 12 2022 14:59 RvB wrote:

That was never going to happen. Russia didn't have the capacity to produce them at scale anymore after the 2014 sanctions.

On September 13 2022 01:27 Ardias wrote:
https://defbrief.com/2022/09/12/us-mulls-sending-tanks-to-ukraine-urges-allies-to-do-same-report/
Took them long enough.

There are at least 3 DPR reservist regiments - 111th, 127th, 131st. How large each regiment is - hard to say, couldn't find exact orders of battle, but if it is called "regiment", it should be at least 1200-1500 men (I don't think that they are too large, since they are lacking heavy armament and don't need additional personnel to maintain it).
Estimations regarding overall numbers of AFRF forces near Kherson vary from 15 to 25 thousands. There are two divisions (7th Air Assault and 20th Motor Rifle), at least one brigade (126th Coastal Defence), Rosgvardia elements (though these are securing Kherson and other settlements along the Dniepr mostly) and Southern MD support units (artillery, air defence etc.). Plus aforementioned reservists.

In a Telegram post addressed to Russia, Zelensky asked: “Do you still think that we are ‘one nation?’ Do you still think that you can scare us, break us, make us make concessions?”

“You really did not understand anything? Don’t understand who we are? What are we for? What are we talking about?,” said the post, which published Sunday.

“Read my lips: Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you,” Zelensky wrote.

“Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your ‘friendship and brotherhood,’” he added. “But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food … and WITHOUT you!”