Mick Ryan reports in Australian Broadcast Corporation:
The reality is there is no Russian general who can reverse the situation in Ukraine. The largest single cause of failure in the Russian invasion has been bad assumptions and a fundamental misalignment of desired political outcomes with the military means available. Putin assumed - based on slovenly analysis by his intelligence services - that the Ukrainian military would not fight, that the Russians would be welcomed as liberators and that the West would not intervene. Because of these assumptions, Russia invaded with a force that was too small, attacking on too many fronts in an uncoordinated way. All, in combination, are fatal for the "special military operation".In the past 24 hours, we have seen the Russian response to the attack on the Kerch Bridge over the weekend.
That attack, which destroyed two spans of the road bridge, and heavily damaged the railway section, occurred the day after Vladimir Putin's 70th birthday.
Not only was this a gross insult to Putin, it was also a failure by the Russian military to protect a bridge that possesses significant military and symbolic importance.
Perhaps inevitably, Putin and his morally bankrupt military leadership turned to their normal response to such “outrages” — bombing Ukrainian cities.
Back in July, the Ukrainian president described how over 2,900 Russian missiles had been fired at Ukrainian cities until that point. With the attacks over the past 24 hours in cities across Ukraine, this missile count continues to rise. It has become one of the awful certainties of this war; the Russians cannot defeat the Ukrainian military in the field and therefore resort to terrorising Ukrainians civilians instead.
A new round of sackings of senior Russian military commanders also occurred in the wake of the attack on the Kerch bridge.
The most important move saw the appointment of Colonel General Sergei Surovikin as the overall commander of Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.
His appointment was preceded by the removal of the commanders of the western and eastern military districts, as well as changes in the command of the southern grouping of forces and the deputy defence minister for logistics.
In military operations, one of the most important principles is unity of command. This means that all forces should operate under a single commander who has the authority to direct these forces in the pursuit of a common purpose.
It has been a principle that, until now, the Russians appear to have steadfastly ignored. The beginning of the invasion featured multiple advances in the north, north-east, east and south of Ukraine, all under different commanders and without any obvious coordinating mechanism.
The Russians tried to fix this situation in April with the appointment of Aleksandr Dvornikov, a brutal leader and veteran of the Russian campaign in Syria. But Dvornikov struggled in the bitter, attritional fight that was the Donbas.
Even with an overwhelming advantage in artillery, he was only able to wrangle a pyrrhic victory with the capture of Severodonetsk. Thousands of Russians were killed during the battle, and Dvornikov was replaced shortly afterwards.
The chief spokesman for the Russian ministry of defence subsequently announced that Russian troops were to be divided between the "Army Groups Center", commanded by Colonel General Aleksander Lapin, and "South", commanded by Army General Sergei Surovikin.
The series of reverses suffered by the Russians in both these areas over the past two months has obviously convinced the Kremlin to again try a single overall commander in Surovikin.
Bigger problems for Russia
The reality is there is probably no Russian general alive who can reverse the situation in Ukraine.
The flaws in Russia's battlefield performance are more deeply rooted than bad Russian command and control, the failed transformation program of the past decade, or poor battlefield leadership.
The largest single cause of failure in the Russian invasion has been bad strategy. At the heart of this poor strategy has been bad assumptions and a fundamental misalignment of desired political outcomes with the military means available.
From the beginning of this invasion, Putin has insisted that Ukraine is not a real state and is part of greater Russia. He assumed — based on slovenly analysis provided by his intelligence services — that the Ukrainian military would not fight, that the Russians would be welcomed as liberators and that the West would not intervene decisively.
And because of these strategic assumptions, Russia invaded with a force that was too small, attacked on too many fronts in an uncoordinated way, failed to gain any control of Ukrainian airspace and was behind the curve on strategic influence operations.
Any one of these would be difficult to recover from. All of them in combination are probably fatal for the Russian "special military operation".
Putin's crucial error
Putin had one opportunity to drag some perception of success out of the invasion mess in the wake of his speech on May 9.
In his Red Square address, Putin focused the conflict on liberating the Donbas. If he had stuck with that political objective and mobilised his military then to achieve this goal, we may be seeing a very different war now. The Russian military may have been capable of delivering something with these scaled back political objectives that Putin could have sold to the Russian people as a "victory".
But Putin procrastinated on mobilisation for months. And then his September annexation declaration to incorporate four more Ukrainian provinces into Russia once again expanded the political objectives for this war.
0 comments:
Post a Comment