Why Avdiivka Proves the Russian Army Has Learned Nothing And Is Beatable
Massed attacks with exposed armor and human waves of 'expendable' troops. Hundreds of vehicles and weapons destroyed, thousands of troops killed or wounded, to the point where citizens are making internet pleas to address body bag shortages. All reported by Russian sources. This is the smarter, adaptive Russian army?
The reality is that Russia continues to focus on political rather than military victories, because it knows it cannot win militarily so hopes a narrative of undiminished strength will cause NATO to give up. But any successful strategy relies on some connectivity between narrative and reality. Which is missing here. Catastrophic Russian losses weaken their ability to defend against the Ukrainians. The Russians are beatable - and they know it. JL
Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:
One of the most efficient ways for Ukraine to weaken the Russians, is to have the Russians make it easier for them by attacking. Every time you see the Russians launching operations like this,
and suffering such losses, it brings a Ukrainian victory closer. This
seems to be exaggerated because of the Russian desire for political
victories not strategic. They seem willing to lose a great deal of
resources to take the remains of cities with no economic - strategic
purpose (see Bakhmut). The narrative of Russian learning (Russia becoming a smarter) is wrong. Avdiivka seems to be another example of this. This Russian military is beatable
Its rather hard to believe that Ive now written 50 of these weekend updates on Substack. They started on Twitter March/April of 2022 as an afterthought, when I began putting together some longer tweet threads over the weekend which highlighted what seemed to be the important developments/stories of the week. I then turned to Substack last November when it it was clear Musk was hellbent on turning Twitter into the nasty piece of work that it has sadly become. I would never have thought that approximately 19 months after starting these with a few tweets it would now become a regular part of my weekend (apologies to my family!) Its been so gratifying to see that more than 31,000 people have subscribed to the Substack and on average each weekend update is now viewed well more than 40,000 times and sometimes closer to 50,000 times.
I’d like to thank you all for reading it and I’d like to thank Substack for providing such a brilliant platform for delivering it. For those of you thinking of starting your own online writing, I cant recommend Substack highly enough. It just works—a perfect interface for writing and a brilliant way to connect to readers. In many ways its been transformative. So thanks to you and thanks to Substack.
This weekend there are two main stories that I thought I would concentrate on—the different recent announcements on what kinds of aid Ukraine is/will receive, and the Russian offensive around Avdiivka, which seemed to cause a momentary panic or a wee sense of triumphalism by those who have invested alot in arguing for Russian power. I also wanted to point out, so that everyone realizes, how Ukraine is really trying to fight this war by respecting the laws and conventions of war. In this time of violence, when attacks on civilians seem to be getting normalized, what the Ukrainians are doing after years of having their people killed, their children abducted and their civilians attacked indiscriminately—is worthy of recognition and praise.
Russian Armor destroyed near Avdiivka: https://mil.in.ua/en/news/armored-groups-of-invaders-defeated-near-avdiivka/
Looking at the Aid Ukraine is Receiving and What it Means
There has been a recent flurry of announcements about new aid deliveries for Ukraine, in particular from the USA and Germany. They are worthy of some comment because of what they mean for both how the war is progressing (what matters) and how Ukraine’s partners are trying too much to micro-manage the fighting. As such they provide useful summaries for where we are in the war.
United States Announcement
The US package announced this week covers approximately $200 million.
The White House press briefing on the subject made it clear that this aid was specifically designed to help the Ukrainians in the ongoing counteroffensive (more on that below). On October 11 the White House spokesperson, John Kirby (former Pentagon official who knows his stuff on defense) went into some interesting detail on the package itself.
Now, if I could switch to Ukraine just quickly. Today, the Secretary of Defense announced at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting over in Europe that the United States is announcing a new aid package, which includes air defense munitions; ammunition for U.S.-provided artillery and HIMARS; counter-UAS equipment — unmanned aerial systems, sorry — to help Ukraine protect their people against Russian and Iranian drone strikes. We’re also announcing additional anti-armor capabilities and more than 16 million rounds of small arms and ammunition.
As Ukrainians continue to wage a very tough counteroffensive and as winter now fast approaches, we believe it is absolutely imperative — you heard me say before time is not our friend — that we continue to do everything we can to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield and claw back some more of their own territory from Russian units on the ground there.
So what do we see that matters when it comes to the continuing figthing—ranged fires (HIMARS) and the ability to counter drones (counter-UAS equipment) and the capacity to continue to destroy Russian armored vehicles. Its a package to keep fighting the artillery-UAV war that the Ukrainians opted for in late June when they discovered that direct assaults were too costly—and to keep eroding Russian vehicle strength. In that way its a clear confirmation of what matters in the ground war these days.
The State of German Aid
The aid that Germany is giving might be the most extraordinary in that is is both quite extensive and at the same time still particularly limited in its capabilities. The German Goverment released details of its most recent package this week, and in many ways it really is quite generous.
What stands out is that very impressive amount of aid that has been given for Ukrainian air defense. In this category the Germans really have handed over some very valuable equipment and have made Ukrainian air defenses more robust than any other Ukrainian partner than the USA. It includes everything from thousands of hand held MANPADS, to a large amount of ammunition for Ukraine’s Gepards, to some of the most advanced anti-air systems that the Ukrainians possess (its Patriot batteries). Here is a list of what they have handed over so far so you can see its depth.
Air defence
86,122 rounds ammunitions for self-propelled anti-aircraft guns GEPARD (from Bundeswehr and industry stocks*)
3 air surveillance radar TRML-4D*
PATRIOT missiles
2 IRIS-T SLS launchers*
2 PATRIOT launchers
46 self-propelled anti-aircraft guns
2 air defence system IRIS-T SLM*
IRIS-T SLM missiles*
air defence system PATRIOT with spare parts
4,000 rounds practice ammunitions for self-propelled anti-aircraft guns
500 Man Portable Air Defense Systems STINGER
2,700 Man Portable Air Defense Systems STRELA
A German Gepard Anti-Air system.
And these matter. The Gepards for instance (see picture above) give Ukraine an important cost-effective way to shoot down Russian UAVs.
Air Defense has become an intricate cost-effective contest in this war. What the Ukrainians dont want to do is have to use some of their most effective (and expensive to fire) systems such as the Patriot against Russia’s cheaper, mass produced systems such as the Shahed UAVs (originally supplied in large numbers by Iran, but now being supposedly produced in large numbers in Russia).
On the other hand, when it comes to the offensive war, Germany is strictly limiting its aid to what might be best termed as range-limited offensive weapons. These are armored fighting vehicles of a wide variety, lots of protective equipment for soldiers, trucks to support the army, etc. Again all of this is important, but it is also the kind of aid which supports Ukraine doing direct assaults.
What Germany is not doing is giving its long-range fires, such as the now well known Taurus cruise missile, which the Ukrainians very much want.
Ive gone on at great length about both the importance of giving Ukraine greater ranged systems and the importance of not allowing the Russian policy of escalation bluff to win—and the Taurus might be the greatest example of both in action. The Taurus’ missiles are not of any use to Germany now, but could be of great aid to Ukraine in its campaign to weaken the Russian hold on Crimea. However, the German government refuses such ranged aid and confirms the Russian bluff policy byexplicitly and openlyconfirming that it wont send Taurus because of fears of Russian ‘escalation’. Just the other day Chancellor Scholz said this openly.
Even if he believed it—the idea of saying it out loud (and thus confirming to the Russians the value of their escalation-bluff policy) was misguided, to put it kindly. Its also a shame, and this points out the yin-yang of German aid. If Germany is generous in what it is handing over, it is also handing over aid one of the impact of which will be to make the war a longer and bloodier one. It is helping Ukraine defend itself and preparing Ukraine to launch attacks against the Russian army—neither of which is the way to help Ukraine win the war quickly.
Moreover, the escalation argument is not really a believable argument for the German government to make any more. All the larger powers, including now the US with ATACMS on the way and F-16s training being undertaken, have now made it clear that they no longer accept the escalation bluff in the ranged weapons area. The UK and France, Germany’s closest European equivalents, have long ago called the bluff with Storm Shadow/Scalps. Smaller European states such as Holland and Denmark are helping with F-16s. In other words, the Germans are still desperately holding on to a destroyed paradigm.
Ultimately, while I’m sure the German political leadership doesnt look at it like this, Germany is aiding Ukraine for a longer, bloodier more destructive war. Its the opposite of restraint.
This week there was a Russian offensive action to try and encircle the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka (which has been a Russian target for a year now). When the offensive was launched it was first reported as a sign of Russian recovery, improvement and success. The Russians were supposedly now efficiently integrating combined arms warfare including AFV advances, EW, artillery counterbattery fire and even airpower.
This fit very much into a constant narrative of the last few months about Russian tactical improvements and how the Russian military was learning and improving.
However the more the information came out, the more this narrative was walked back. Actually Russian losses seemed once again to accelerate rapidly, it suffered a huge number of AFV losses in a short period of time, and Russian soldiers fighting quality seemed still panicky and not well trained.
Russian losses, using both Ukrainian claims and reliable open source, accelerated greatly from October 11 onwards, to being some of the the largest in the war. When it came to military equipment, Russian losses skyrocketed.
When it came to Russian soldiers lost, Ukrainian claims grew significantly once the Russians started attacking Avdiivka, with more than a 1000 losses per day for a while (this morning the claim is still very high at 880).
Overall its hard to see this as anything but a significant drain on Russian strength for what is, like in BalVideo of a Russian column being hit. Pretty similar to the thing we’ve seen over and over again when the Russians make armored assaults.
This fits into a pattern recently of growing relative losses for the Russians. Over the past 30 days, Russian photographed losses seem to be running at approximately a rate of 3 to 1 in comparison to Ukraine’s.
Of course its a good thing in general for Ukraine when Russia goes on the offensive. If we’ve learned anything over the last year its that on the offensive, the attacking force is extremely vulnerable and usually suffers significant losses. One of the most efficient ways for Ukraine to weaken the Russians, therefore, is to have the Russians make it easier for them by attacking. Indeed, every time you see the Russians launching operations like this, and suffering such losses, it brings a Ukrainian victory closer. This seems to be exaggerated because of the Russian desire for political victories not strategic. They seem to be willing to lose a great deal of resources to take the remains of cities with no economic/strategic purpose (see Bakhmut). Avdiivka seems to be another example of this.
Maybe the most important thing so far is that, using one assumes specially selected and prepared troops for an offensive action, the Russians once again opted for ‘wave’ assaults which cost them mass casualties for little ground. In a prepared battle they have not shown the ability to adapt in any significant way, even though we have been hearing for months about supposed Russian military learning and improvements.
Turning to Kirby again, here is how he described the Russian actions at Avdiivka.
"As was the case during Russia's failed winter offensive last year, the Russian military appears to be using a wave attack tactic where they throw masses of ill-trained soldiers directly onto the battlefield without proper equipment," Kirby said.
Now, Ive been asked why I often try to pour cold water on stories of supposed Russian improvements as a learning military and stress that Ukraine maintains its advantage as a flexible and adaptive force. The Russian army remains formidable, but more because it still retains a large weapons base and is fighting from prepared positions and using its soldiers without much regard for their lives. Its not, I would argue, because the Russian military has become a reflective, learning institution that many have been trumpeting.
This distinction, I would argue, is important. The narrative of Russian learning (Russia becoming a smarter force while Ukraine regularly blunders) is not only to me the wrong narrative, it will actively erode support for Ukraine. Again, even from those who say they want to help Ukraine, such a narrative is actually going to achieve the opposite.
This Russian military is beatable, that needs to be understood, and that is why Ukraine needs the aid to beat it.
Ukraine sending a message to the world
War is terrible in so many ways. Perhaps its must depressing impact is how it dehumanizes populations and leads to the committing and justifying of atrocities. It leads towards hatreds against the other side on a epic scale and that hatred ends up justifying horrors of all kinds in the minds of those at war.
Ukraine, however, is doing the best to keep these horrors and hatreds under control. And the Ukrainians have suffered horrifically in the last 19 months (and longer). The have had tens of thousands of their people (many of them civilians) killed. They have seen their children abducted, their people raped and tortured, their land desecrated and destroyed, their lives scarred in unimaginable ways.
Through all this, Ukraine has been doing its best to follow the laws and norms of war. Though they have the capacity to attack Russian civilians and do great harm, they do not. Indeed they are doing this at real harm to their own war effort. Russia seems unconcerned with defending its own borders, which means it can concentrate its forces in Ukraine.
So Ukraine is actually harming its war effort by trying to be humane. In this horrible world, this deserves enormous credit. It is just another reason why the Ukrainians deserve all the help they can be given. A Ukrainian victory will make the world a more humane place.
As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance. Learn more...
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