Running after Pack, Part 2

Having discussed the ‚fundaments‘ — the politics — in the ‘Part 1’, yesterday, it’s time to discuss military aspects of the first three months of the Ukraine War. I find this anything else than easy — because of all the absurdities surrounding this affair. Surely enough, over the last few days I’ve developed a number of beautiful formulations, wrote them down and this piece started coming together. However, at the second- and then the third look, it fell apart, and it did so because there are too many things simply not making any sense at all.

But, well, there is a war and a war is always a most serious affair. Thus, lets try, ‘nevertheless’, and start doing so by taking a look at Putin’s Russia and the official version of his ‘special military operation’. After all, there must be a reason for the President of the Russian Federation unleashing the full might of his armed forces upon a neighbouring country…

Now, along what one gets to hear from sources in Russia, goals of Putin’s special military operation were — and remain — insistently formulated as vaguely as possible. This is ‘typical Putin’: a cynical and perfidious character ruling ‘by vague directives’, not by orders.

Of course, recipients of his directives are obliged to understand his directives as orders, and thus formulate very strict orders and forward these to their subordinates.

Precisely that is the point about the way Putin rules: if something goes wrong, they’re to blame, not Putin; he told them to do better, but they have issued wrong orders…

From Putin’s point of view that’s ideal, because it’s is enabling him to remain flexible in regards of results, while avoiding own accountability — the primary reason why he launched this war.

Unsurprising conclusion is that this special military operation is making no sense, and is following no plan. That is a ‘big mistake’: every single Russian present in the social media can offer at least 15–20 different versions, and the winning version is usually the one expressed by the character that can swear better, offend other participants in a more profane fashion, or is in a position to threaten their security.

Along such lines, dear reader, please make no mistake: assault on Hostomel and the ‘Dash on Kyiv’ were all a big feint. A feint necessary to avoid the destruction of northern Crimea, to liberate historic Russians, correct countless historic mistakes, to disarm Extremists and Nationalists serving as Western lackeys, to prevent a NATO attack into south-western Russia, to effect a payback to Western Imperialism…it is a heroic enterprise to end the Anglo-Saxon dominance; a noble, pre-emptive effort to prevent homosexuals from taking over not only Moscow but Kamchatka, Moon and Mars… with other words: it is an aggression of NATO on Russia.

How do you mean, this sounds absurd? That’s what the Russians are fighting for, and even if not everything is going according to the (non-existing) plan, Father Putin is taking care about everything, everything is not just nice and fine, but simply fantastic, there are wonderful Potemkin’s villages everywhere, and Russia is short of saving the World from famine…

…sigh….

I’m digressing, obviously. Other analysists — whether in the USA or Europe — have prepared much more serious analyses. They know that the RFA is run by all sorts of corrupt incompetents; that Russian generals are shot away (and that is ‘good’) because they have to lead from the front in order to operate effectively; that the RFA is massively understaffed; severely underequipped in regards of its means of communication; and that the mass of its equipment is far less good than advertised, regardless how much glorified (usually by the very same analysists) over the last 20–30 years… Indeed, some are already going as far as to list all the experiences the RFA is going to learn and how much is it going to improve itself — during and after this war…

….sigh…

OK, enough of sarcasm. The problem is this: essentially everybody is telling us that in a country where no decision-maker dares tying his shoelaces ‘without permission from above’ — whether from members of the St Petersburger Club or Putin himself — Putin doesn’t matter? It doesn’t matter if he appointed his favourites in command; it doesn’t matter if he created an endemically corrupt system — yes, with wholehearted support from his supporters at home, but also plentiful of ‘fans’ abroad — and then launched a war aimed at avoiding accountability for this?

When one takes this into account, and then adds the fact that Putin was micromanaging the first two months of his special military operation, the miserable performance of the Russian Armed Forces is simply no surprise.

This is not so because Putin has no serious military education, but because he is ruling by extortion and scoring PR-points on the TV. The blackmail did not work, and thus he had to present himself as great strategist. For PR-reasons, he had to secure major urban centres — but he had to do so with a force developed, equipped and trained by the GenStab of the RFA to run high-speed mechanised warfare into the depth of enemy territory, but organised into battalion tactical groups custom-tailored for expeditionary warfare, while supported by air power operating along ideas dating back to the times of Second World War…

Actually, at this point there is no way around the conclusion that, yes, it doesn’t matter if the RFA is understaffed and under-equipped or not; it doesn’t matter if it is run by corrupt incompetents or whatever else. One could send the US Army into Ukraine instead and, considering this set of contradictions alone, it would fail as miserably as the RFA is doing.

Based on illusion about Ukrainian lack of will to fight, indeed, expectations that Ukrainians would accept Russians as liberators, and run by a combination of Spetnaz and Rosgvardia troops, which were to be followed by mechanised forces, the (mad) ‘Dash on Kyiv’ resulted in such massive losses that the 1st Guards Tank Army, the 2nd, 35th and 41st Combined Arms Armies de-facto fell apart. They suffered such losses in best troops and equipment Russia has to offer that even after several weeks of rest and replenishment prior to the re-deployment of their remnants to the East, they cannot accomplish their mission. All because Putin had to gain control over major urban centres of Ukraine, and because he remains insistent on such ideas. All for PR-purposes: so that he can brag on the TV. Meanwhile, the best regular units of the LNR and the DNR were squandered in three months of frontal assaults on best Ukrainian fortifications, while the VKS was ‘disarmed’ — especially of its cruise missiles — to the level where it is unable of more than sporadically effective operations at tactical level. For PR-purposes, once again.

With other words: while like the USA and allies lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because they spent 20 years fighting these for the purpose of corporate profits, so also the Russian Federation has meanwhile lost the war in Ukraine because it’s fighting it for the purpose of scoring public relations points for Putin. That’s the essence of the problem on hand.

Of course, Putin cannot afford any kind of defeat, and can’t care less about casualty rates. The only thing that matters to him is ‘victory’ - no matter what sort. This means that he’s going to continue pushing as long as there are troops, equipment, and ammunition left to keep on pushing. This is why the RFA (and consorts) is mobilising thousands of additional reservists, refreshing their training in a matter of few days, equipping them with obsolete weaponry and then rushing them to the frontlines; this is why they’re continuing with assaults — even if these are ever smaller in scale and scope, and minimal in regards of results.

The RFA artillery is still superior to that of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the firepower of the VKS is outmatching that of Ukraine by several magnitudes. This is why the Russians in Ukraine can still maintain semblance of at least something like ‘slow advance’. That said, my conclusion is that — short of an escalation to the nuclear option — the worst for Ukraine in this war is over: unless the Ukrainian Armed Forces make a major mistake, the times of Russian advances are over. Unless ‘somebody’ from the West forces Zelensky & Co into some kind of concessions, Putin and his Keystone Cops in Moscow cannot achieve any kind of success in this adventure, whatsoever: they can only cause additional deaths and damage.

Ironically: despite all of this, Putin can still stop this idiocy at any point in time and space, and declare a ‘victory’, like he did in Syria… three times.