The SVO is apparently boring for some people, No big battles between large armies. No tank battles. No dog fights in the air. I mean, how can Hollywood make a movie about this?
The war in Ukraine is now mostly drone warfare and relatively small groups of (Russian) soldiers infiltrating and taking one village were occasionally town after another. Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian power stations are often at night and we don’t get really good video footage.All you get really is Ukrainian footage of schools and the like damaged by Russian missiles, which do not target such facilities. The damage is from Ukrainian AD missiles shot off and missing.
What goes up, must come down.
On the other hand, those strikes make for great graphics.
OK, so Ukraine is in the “Dark” Ages — literally. No electricity.
Still, the Ukrainians insist they are winning and forcing the Russians to take extreme measures. Or:
Russian soldiers, allegedly disguised as babushkas, are infiltrating Pokrovsk (the Ukrainian name for Krasnoarmeysk). They allegedly “infiltrate” the city disguised as “various clowns,” either alone or in small groups of two.
This is according to former Ukrainian Armed Forces fighter Yuriy Mikulyak, who previously commanded the Storm special forces battalion.
According to him, the “infiltrated” Russian military personnel in the guise of “baba-yezha” and “old men” allegedly hide somewhere in houses, and then the same “fairytale characters” deliver ammunition to them and weapon.
Really? The “Storm” battalion is a NeoNazi unit. For some reason, the NeoNazis compete with each other for the most outlandish stories. And it justifies killing old people — not to mention women and children.
Otherwise,it’s the dreary stories of Kievan defeats, desertions, and surrenders. Supplemented by videos of the Azov’s gunning down their own for attempting to flee — and then fleeing themselves.
As I said, boring…. But not only that …depressing.
On Facebook or was it X I saw a post—I think it went— “Where are the generals? Where is Montgomery? Where is Rommel?” Something like that. I didn’t pay attention at the time.
Buti later it occurred to, the question applies to the Russians. Where is their Patton?
I know that’s George C Scott. Patton never existed .
Prigozhin was closest you got to “interesting” and he was a businessman, not a general,
Kadyrov is better-- he has a beard but the Russians don’t glorify the military leaders. And Kadyrov likes to stay out of the limelight. He also has his own republic to run.
In any case, Putin’s emphasis, in case you haven’t noticed, is on ordinary soldiers. Putin talks of them as “heros”, these young men who volunteer to fight. He sees them as role models.
This is partly to encourage mobilization of course,also to uphold values in what Putin believes is a fight for certain principles and integrity. Also, it’s personal.
And the “drone wars” have put the emphasis on what the Germans called Auftragstaktik – a concept I wrote about a long time ago—which, among other things emphasizes the agency and integrity of the individual.
Auftragstaktik appeared in the 19th-century Prussian army, under Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, to overcome the slow reaction times of a rigid, top-down command structure.
The idea was that generals and those in command could not micromanage every detail in a combat situation, particularly in a confused battlefield. Rather, it was better to set up general strategy and goals, communications, support and logistics, and empower soldiers in small groups to determine the best way to attack or defend, allowing room to innovate and even deviate from orders. Individual agency of course required training and principles.
Western “mission command” is very similar but puts more emphasis on trainig,military education, and command management from above while also trying for a certain flexibility. But, of course, the culture, including the military culture, is different.
The Russian version today is a result of conditions in the SVO— smaller groups, UAVs, the need to avoid civilian casualties and the like. It does not replace the “Gerasimov Doctrine” which focuses on careful planning and coordination between different forces within the context of an overall strategy in modern hybrid conflict—rather it is a response to the evolution of warfare as General Yuri Baluyevsky talks about in the article I gave you recently.
Western analysts see Russian doctrine in terms of Soviet military strategy in WWII. But with the fall of the USSR, the Russians had to do more with less, and that has led to new thinking, greater flexibility, and— as we are constantly reminded —amazing innovation.
So decentralized command—Auftragstaktik—is one result — a response to unusual conditions in a war that it not acknowledged as a war. Decentralized but still coordinated.
Since the Russian army lacks many NCOs, the command structure is subtly different with young officers taking over the role that American NCOs would occupy or with leaders emerging naturally from squads or platoons on the basis of trust and competence.
Russian volunteers by and large are better educated than their counterparts in the West and motivated differently. .
Drone warfare puts the emphasis on individual squads and cooperation as well as on technology — so flexibility is the key.
As I said, this “war” is not a “war” It is an SVO.!
The Russians prioritize the human factor. One goal is as few casualties on the Russian side as possible —both military and civilian.
So…a boring war in terms of Hollywood templates.
On the Ukrainian side, the generals and Nazi commanders make all the decisions and conscripted soldiers are just cannon fodder. So the Ukrainians have lost as many as 2 million dead [some say — conservative estimates are 1 million]. Ukrainian estimates of equal Russian casualties are propaganda.
Right now, the Russians are losing 1 soldier for every 15 to 20 Ukrainians.
Ukrainians try to make up for this with stories and lies. “No, the Ukrainians are not surrounded anywhere. There are more than 60 Russians in Kupiansk”.
Kievan stories are stuff is picked up by the Western media –and also unfortunately by the alternative media who report it as though it were worthy of consideration or implies something of consequence or had some meaning beyond smoke and mirrors.
That said, some of the media, particularly the German media are spreading stories about discontent in the Ukrainian military about Zelensky. Most of this seems to come from various ambitious NeoNazis. Zelensky is incompetent militarily. But the NeoNazi command just below him are not any better.
The NeoNazis:
are angry because he hasn’t gotten the support, money and weapons from the West he was supposed to… (what use is he then?)
want his position Nazis love power.
Tactically and strategically, I can’t see much difference. Zelensky and the Nazis are the same.
Ukraine is run by a lot of crazies and psychopaths And Europe, which is run by the same, s finally getting tired of Zelensky.
Don’t waste your time reading stuff published in either Europe or on the Ukrainian side.
The fact of the matter is Ukrainians are losing and things are getting worse and worse and the Nazis are getting desperate. That’s all that those stories from Kiev mean – desperation.
Speaking of clowns, Mikulyak looks like the only thing he would be good at, especially militarily, would be a One-Man Meat Assault. If he survives, I see a future for him as the Incredibly Obese Vanka Vstanka in a Cirque du Soleil show called "The Fantastical Banderists!"
Speaking of clowns, Mikulyak looks like the only thing he would be good at, especially militarily, would be a One-Man Meat Assault. If he survives, I see a future for him as the Incredibly Obese Vanka Vstanka in a Cirque du Soleil show called "The Fantastical Banderists!"
"But later it occurred to, the question applies to the Russians. Where is their Patton?"
He was killed by a drone after 7 minutes of the attack, sitting in his personal personnel carrier twiddling his pearl-handled revolvers.