May 18, 2022 02:28 AM
(May 17, 2022 12:02 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Satire aside, I guess Mariupol is a victory for the Russians. Up until then, detaining an American female basketball star was their biggest prize.
I guess that they can boast the semi-circle of occupied territory around the eastern end of Ukraine. And they now have a land bridge between Russia and Crimea.
But that's pretty thin gruel when you put it up against their failure to take Kyiv almost effortlessly in the war's first hours and quickly replace the Ukrainian government with people more friendly to Russia. And while Russia wanted the war to be a demonstration that Russia is back as a superpower, what's become apparent is that the Russian army has been humiliated and exposed in its ineptitude.
As somebody said, before the war the Russians were supposed to have the second strongest army in the world. But now it's clear that the Russian army is only the second strongest army in Ukraine.
It isn't clear how many Russian soldiers have died or how many hundreds of trucks and armored vehicles have been blown up, but it's pretty clear that it will take the Russian army years to recover from this debacle. Their formidable reputation that they've had since defeating Germany in 1945 is probably gone for good.
Quote:Sounds as if Putin never considered losing the war.
He probably didn't. It seemed like a sure thing. It wasn't just Putin, here in the US the Pentagon also thought that the Russians would win a quick victory. They out-numbered the Ukrainians by a big margin, they had more modern high tech equipment. It was hard to see how the Russians could possibly lose.
You know, this is a war that military scholars in war colleges around the world are going to be studying for years to come. How did Ukraine pull off what was seemingly impossible?
I'm certainly no expert, but it seems to me that Ukraine's biggest advantage might have been their Territorial Defense Forces. Local reservists called up to defend their own communities. Since they were fighting for their homes and families, they were far more motivated than the Russian conscripts they were facing. They were familiar with their home areas and knew all the back roads, while the Russians were often lost.
Another big lesson seems to be the big advantage that modern anti-tank guided weapons have opened up over even the most modern tanks. In the last few years the US Marine Corps has retired all of its heavy tanks. Many critics said that was crazy, but it turns out that maybe they knew something.
But a lot of it is just Russian ineptitude. Their lack of logistics that had columns of tanks running out of gas and being abandoned along the roads. Troops looting Ukrainian supermarkets because they weren't being fed. Armored vehicles driving down roads in long columns so that a few plucky Ukrainians with anti-tank rockets in the woodline maybe a kilometer away could easily pick off at their leisure.
The original air and missile assault on the first day of the war was much too small. It was anything but an American style "shock and awe" opening salvo. The Russians never put all the Ukrainian air bases out of commission and the Ukrainian air force is still in the air and is still effective, 80 days later. Getting control of the sky should have been the Russians' first priority.
And US military observers have remarked on the lack of large combined arms maneuvers. The Russians seem unable to combine multiple units into a single attack and instead have each small battalion sized unit fighting independently. That's probably why nothing has come of the many tens of thousands of soldiers the Russians gathered in the Izium area. They are just unable to coordinate that many soldiers in one World War II style offensive campaign with sufficient mass to punch through the Ukrainian defenders. Coordination of ground forces with air support from the air force has also been very poor. Just bad command and leadership all around.
Quote:Does a guy like Putin take advice or does he enlist the aid of close advisors, people too afraid to tell him the war won’t be easily won and that bordering countries will eventually join NATO out of fear of being next Ukraine? Surely there had to be some head shakers who knew better. How much of this war is the dictator’s personality?
You would think that somebody knew that the Russian army wasn't nearly as fearsome as it appeared on paper. But the generals (whose responsibility it was) probably didn't want to admit it to the boss.
Since it's been exposed so obviously to the watching world, I expect heads to roll when this is over. I'd expect the entire military command to be replaced.