Friday will mark the 100e day of the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine and one observation remains, despite Russian breakthroughs in the east of the country: Vladimir Putin’s army is struggling to achieve some of its fundamental objectives, in particular due to outdated techniques inherited from the soviet era.
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After weeks of heavy shelling, the Russian army now controls a large part of Severodonestk, a strategic city of 100,000 inhabitants in the Donbass region.
A step forward that looks like a consolation for Moscow, since the Russian leaders initially seemed to expect a quick victory that never came, recalls Éric Ouellet, professor specializing in strategic military command and decision-making at the College of Forces Canadian.
“From the beginning of the conflict, the leaders made quite significant errors of analysis. They expected a lightning victory and they were greedy in wanting to seize the whole of Ukraine, but their troops were really insufficient to occupy a country of this size”, he analyzes.
And even after having scaled back its objectives by concentrating on controlling eastern Ukraine, the Russian army continued to experience setbacks.
Soldiers used as ‘cannon fodder’
In addition to having deployed too few troops, the Russian leaders have outright sacrificed some of the soldiers at their disposal by using them as “cannon fodder”, argues Professor Ouellet.
“It’s a tactic used by the Soviets during the Second World War: they send their weaker units to attack in order to wear down the enemy. Once the enemy is exhausted, they send in their best units. But to employ such a strategy, one must have massive forces. However, they do not have the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in reserve to be able to carry out such operations successfully”, he maintains.
The Russian army has lost more than 30,000 soldiers since the start of the invasion on February 24, according to the Ukrainian intelligence services.
Heavy vehicles left to fend for themselves
The Russian forces also suffered numerous ambushes which cost them dearly in equipment, especially in heavy vehicles. Until recently, Russian armor and other combat vehicles appeared to be advancing rapidly into enemy territory, without infantry support. A serious mistake, notes Éric Ouellet.
“There must be a symbiosis between the different forces, it has been well known since the Second World War. If a tank squadron detects enemies armed with anti-tank missiles, they send in infantry to neutralize the threat. Once the path is clear, the tanks can move forward. Otherwise, they become vulnerable. The Russian battalions did not do this, and they lost a lot of vehicles for this reason, ”he explains.
Technical manufacturing details, including the arrangement of ammunition in some of the best Russian tanks, also made them particularly vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks.
AFP
A destroyed and abandoned Russian tank in Ukraine.
Oryx, a military and intelligence blog that tallies Russian losses in Ukraine based on photographs sent from the war zone, reported that Russia had lost more than 664 tanks and about 3,000 other armored vehicles as of 13 last May. The American intelligence services estimate the losses at more than 1,000 tanks.
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A weak chain of command
“When a problem arises on the ground, the Russian army is slow to adapt, because decision-making is very centralized. Soldiers must ask permission before reacting and it must be granted at a very high level. By the time order returns, the situation on the ground has [pu] change or […] degenerate,” explains Éric Ouellet.
This ensures that once entangled in a dangerous situation, Russian forces cannot get out of it as quickly as they would like.
At the beginning of May, two Russian battalions made up of a hundred vehicles and more than 1,000 men tried to install pontoon bridges to cross the Donetsk river, in the Donbass region. Exposed to Ukrainian artillery fire, the Russian troops suffered a humiliation there. They lost several men and about 75 military vehicles there.
In such a situation, Western armies show enough flexibility so that soldiers and officers on the ground can adapt, argues Mr. Ouellet. This is not the case with the Russian army.
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Rusty logistics, abandoned vehicles
On March 3, Western intelligence services announced that a huge Russian convoy made up of several hundred military vehicles and 64 km long had come to a standstill 30 km from Kyiv, due to numerous logistical problems – in particular a lack of fuel – and punctures.
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A Ukrainian man posing in front of an abandoned Russian tank.
Russian soldiers have been forced to abandon their vehicles several times in a similar context since the start of the operation on Ukrainian soil, continues Mr. Ouellet.
By mid-May, the Oryx blog estimated that more than 336 Russian trucks and vehicles, as well as 283 tanks, had been abandoned or captured in Ukraine.
Inexperienced and demotivated soldiers
Vladimir Putin used many conscripts to invade Ukraine. However, these soldiers, in addition to not being as motivated as the volunteers, are very little trained before being sent into combat. This would harm cohesion within the various battalions and limit their ability to achieve simple objectives, argues Mr. Ouellet.
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All of these factors would lead Vladimir Putin, aware of the setbacks of his army, to involve himself more and more in military decisions on the ground, which Western analysts see as a serious mistake for the rest of the things.