Former US Ambassador Michael McFaul penned an op-ed article that’s worth a read, it’s Titled Putin has already lost the war. In it he listed the myriad Putin failures since the invasion started. Putin failed to capture Kyiv and annex Ukraine whole. He failed to capture of kill Zelensky and install a Russian puppet government. He failed at destroying the Ukrainian army. And he failed to deNazify the country and make it more Putin friendly.
McFaul went on to point out something I noted a couple of days ago, Putin’s change of rhetoric. In the run up to the war, Putin rallied the Russians against the Ukrainians, calling them Russians who spoke with a funny accent. They weren’t a real country. But now, when both Putin as well as Russian media talk about his Special military operation, the only purported purpose is the defense of the Donbas region. News Flash, folks. When you’re invading another country, you had better goddamn well not be defending anything! You’re supposed to be conquering, you dumbass.
One of the problems in the initial invasion, which I wrote about, was that Putin put politics over strategy. He delayed his initial invasion for 15 long days so as to not step on Xi’s toes as he ran his Olympics. This allowed the spring thaw to start, and as a result, Russian heavy vehicles couldn’t travel in the fields without getting mired down, they had to use the roads. But if the armor is clogging up the roads, how do the supply vehicles get through? Tanks and trucks ran out of gas, troops ran out of ammo and MRE’s, they abandoned their vehicles, Ukrainians came in with gas cans, and drove off with the hardware. Stand up and take a bow, fool.
Look, as a former tactical gamer, I bow before the altar of logistics. Crazy shit happens in a war. And under ideal circumstances, it’s hard enough to supply formations 100-200 miles in enemy territory, even if the army is leaving screening forces along the way to keep the supply route clear. But the Russians never did that, mainly out of stupidity, and circumstances never gave them the chance.
It was almost a month ago that Putin’s vaunted invading army had to snivel away with its tail between its legs, all the way back over the borders of Russian and Belarus. A battered, bloody disheartened mess. It spent that month retooling and re equipping the Russian army with older, less efficient shit, and taking the long, overland trip all the way along the Ukrainian border, careful to stay in Russian territory, before finally launching their second invasion for the defense of the Donbas region.
And they didn’t learn a fucking thing! I heard a report tonight that made my eyeballs want to fall out. The report said that the Russian troops fighting in Donbas were making slow, often erratic progress in heavy fighting. But then the report blew me away. It said that one of the problems the Russian army was having was the same one as in the initial invasion, supply chain problems!
How is this possible? I already admitted a couple of paragraphs ago that stretching out a supply line hundreds of miles into enemy territory can be a dicey proposition, but one that must be dealt with. But for sweet Christ’s sake!, I looked at a map, as best as my eyes allow, and it appears to me that there is only about a 30 mile difference between the Russian-Ukrainian border to the already Russian friendly Donbas region. How in the hell is it possible that a major power army can’t control a 30 mile no-mans-land from a friendly border to a friendly region, without getting its shit blown up?
I can only think of one way. First, a very brief tutorial. In supply logistics, the supply trains don’t go to the army, the army goes to the supply train. They set up stay stations in safe places close to the contact. The field commanders rotate units in and out of the line to go to the supply train, fueling and arming the armor, and bringing supplies back to the infantry. That way your supply train is secure, and the troops get the fuel, arms, and food they need. Think of a school that rotates its lunch hour so that the cafeteria doesn’t get clogged up.
But from what I can see, the Russians are bone stupid. They sent a tightly massed armored army into a tightly constricted space. And it’s clear that they’re paying a steep price, they’re taking heavy losses for minimal progress. But their formation is creating a logistical nightmare.
Because, as tightly as they’re packed, and in mostly heavy contact, there is no way for anybody but the rear fringe and peripheral lines to break away to refuel and re-equip! There simply isn’t any room for any of the units jammed into the middle or the front to disengage and to replenish. Especially when they’re under heavy fire.
I’m no general flag officer, and I didn’t go to the war college. But if you enjoy military tactics and simulations, it isn’t hard to see what happened here. Putin thinks only in terms of pure brute force. And so he sent a large mechanized force into a constricted area to scare the shit out of the Ukrainians. But the Ukrainians don’t scare easily, they’re too professional and battle hardened. They’re using their tanks, artillery, and Javelin missiles to knock out the leading rows of russian armor, making it almost impossible for units behind to go around and advance. And almost nobody can break off to refuel and re-equip. And when the US 155mm howitzers arrive, the Russian positions are going to resemble a Chinese open air wet market. What a tragic waste.
Ahh but the tactic is that they make the Ukrainians destroy the vehicles instead of capturing them and use the tanks, APCs, etc against them.
Right…But the ones behind them will be sitting there fat, dumb, and happy, waiting for the plucking when the disspirited Russian troops flee the field…
So? It does nothing to solve the subsequent problem of yet MORE equipment they can’t replace easily, if at all. And that’s BEFORE you get into how the Ukranians are going to be getting superior gear from another source in the near future.
They really can’t…They’re already down to pulling old shit out of mothballs from the 80;s and 90’s…And with the sanctins and inefficiency of Russian manufacturing, it would take them forever to build repolacements, if they could even get the raw material…
The may 9 military parade in Moscow this year might be somewhat short.
It’s not so much the Russians that didn’t learn anything about running a war, it’s Putin himself who’s a complete insane madman who’s surrounded himself with FSB agents who are essentially “yes men” with little ground war military experience. Last time Russian was involved in a ground war was when they pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989 after 10 years of that military conquest failing too. Most of the Russian Generals from 33 – 43 years ago from that war who might have been able to provide expertise on ground invasions (if Putin allowed them into his inner circle) are long dead. In 1989 Putin was a KGB agent in Dresden, East Germany behind the iron curtain. His expertise was never in ordering large scale military ground invasions.
Most Russians don’t want Putin (all his elections have been rigged/hacked to make sure he’s the Supreme leader for life).
Most Russians don’t want war either, but they know to disagree in the slightest with Putin and you’re dead, tortured or on the Stolypin to one of the Gulags.
Putin, like trump, is 100% about himself. He trusts no one and wants to rule the entire world with an iron fist like Hitler wanted. He has no qualms about sacrificing Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, anyone, so long as it advances him personally, giving him power, control and money. And he has no qualms about using nukes if everything else fails. The ones he moved into Belarus that he planned on using against Poland after he gained complete control of Ukraine are still there. He hoped to bomb, bomb bomb Ukraine until it surrendered much like Iraqi soldiers did under heavy US bombing and slowly move his troops and supply lines through Ukraine.
Putin is now in regroup mode. Looks like he’s planning to launch a new frontal attack to gain control of Transnistria where there is a huge cache of Russian weapons, and then use Transnistria as a pathway to attack by land sea and air Ukraine from a new direction – the Southwest or possibly first attack Moldova before going into Ukraine from the Southwest.
One thing is very much not on Putin’s side: Time. He’s been sick and pale, most likely from cancer treatments. Waging a losing war as a Dictator while battling cancer is never a winning proposition. Figure he has somewhere between 1 and 3 years left on Earth which frees the world from this insane madman. Hoping he’s taken out way before that. Every day he continues to live translates into more chaos, death and destruction in Eastern Europe.
Let’s hope he has 1 yr. left … or less .