"Frantic Assaults, Comprehensive Troop Neglect" Causing Russian Army Disasters

The Kremlin is racing against economic collapse, political unrest and military incompetence in hopes of being able to claim some gains before Trump takes office and seeks to impose a ceasefire. 

The problem is that the Russian military is not organized or led to be effective at achieving precise objectives. The result is massacre of its soldiers and armor by Ukrainian forces. JL

David Axe reports in Forbes:

The Kremlin is desperate to get ahead of a dropoff in industrial capacity and a long period of political chaos by capturing as much of Ukraine as it can, as fast as it can. That explains frantic assaults that end in bloody disaster for poorly trained, poorly led, poorly supported Russians. The war-ravaged Russian military isn’t ready for what the Kremlin is asking of it. when a column of  the Russian 3rd Motor Rifle Division, rolled toward the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade at Novovodyane. When the dust and smoke cleared, the Russian assault force was smashed. Dead infantry littered the road. Russian forces “are not competitive against precise lethal systems"

With the Russian economy in freefall and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump just two months from taking office, the Kremlin is desperate to get ahead of a potential dropoff in industrial capacity and a possible long period of political chaos by capturing as much of Ukraine as it can, as fast as it can.

 

That explains the Russians’ costly but not totally unsuccessful efforts to squeeze the Ukrainian-held salient in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, their painful but steady advance toward the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine and their risky but effective flanking maneuvers around the ruins of Vuhledar, south of Pokrovsk.

It also explains frantic assaults that end in bloody disaster for poorly trained, poorly led, poorly supported Russian formations. Overall, the war-ravaged Russian military isn’t ready for what the Kremlin is currently asking of it.

Consider what happened when a long column of Russian vehicles, possibly belonging to the 3rd Motor Rifle Division, rolled toward the positions of the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade just west of Novovodyane—on the border of Donetsk and Kharkiv Oblasts—on Nov. 21 and dropped off seemingly dozens of infantry, who then advanced on foot.

The 3rd Assault Brigade’s drones and artillery harried the vehicles, destroying or damaging several, and then turned their attention to the dismounted infantry. Explosive first-person-view drones barreled down. Bigger bomber drones hovered overhead dropping grenades. Cluster artillery popped open, scattering scores of lethal submunitions.

When the dust and smoke cleared, the Russian assault force was scattered and smashed. Dead infantry littered the road and fields. The luckiest Russians made it just a thousand feet from their apparent start point in Novovodyane. At no point did they significantly threaten the 3rd Assault Brigade’s positions.

 

The Russians are going for broke—and accepting massive casualties. Daily tallies of dead and wounded Russians now routinely exceed 1,500. Total Russian casualties, after 33 months of wider warfare in Ukraine, are somewhere between 600,000 and 730,000.

Many of the deaths are the unavoidable price Russia pays for being on the offensive along much of the 800-mile front line of the 33-month wider war. Exposed attackers almost always suffer greater casualties than dug-in defenders.

But other losses are preventable. Consider that the Russian assault group that tried to make it out of Novovodyane on Nov. 21 apparently didn’t benefit from significant artillery or air support. It didn’t even bother popping obscuring smoke as it advanced—a simple but effective defense against drones.

Nick Reynolds, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute in London, explained the Russian armed forces’ underlying problems in an October essay for The National Interest. “The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a bruising debacle for Russia’s ground forces,” Reynolds wrote. “Despite staving off outright defeat in 2022 and 2023, the quality of its units degraded due to attrition.”

The best-trained and most experienced Russian infantry are concentrated in a few elite units, while under-trained new recruits under ambivalent leadership fill out the bulk of front-line formations. The few good units are effective, Reynolds wrote, but “the way they are currently used does not scale well.” When those new recruits attack en masse, they tend to get massacred.

 

The same goes for armored forces, which “are not currently competitive against the mix of precise lethal systems that are fielded by both sides in Ukraine,” Reynolds explained. Tanks might work as improvised howitzers, firing from the relative safety of positions miles from the enemy, but they “suffer when brought closer to the front line.”

“Due to Russia’s military culture and comprehensive neglect of its personnel,” Reynolds concluded, “operations are at best unwieldy and more often simply unimplementable with the force available.”