Russia and Ukraine

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's difficult to imagine that Russia's strategy all along was to turn this into a long, drawn-out war.  They're struggling to keep enough troops, vehicles and command officers in the field for what they imagined would be a short, intense conflict. Furthermore, the unprecedented level of sanctions has already cratered the Russian economy - they simply can't afford to fight a long insurgency, even if they restrict their activities to the eastern portions of the country.

Boru

edit: Just saw a video (which I can't post for stupid internetty techy reasons) of Russian troops handing out humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol.

Maybe the next time they do this, they should remove the UKRAINIAN labels from the UKRAINIAN products they're passing out, so people don't get the idea that these items were either stolen from aid convoys or looted from UKRAINIAN stores and warehouses.

It has not been the initial strategy.     I think Russia’s initial strategy is east to understand by looking the deep battle doctrine that the Soviet military first propounded in the 1920s and the implemented in 1942, and followed with great success in 1943-1945.  

Deep battle emphasize opening at battle with a style of practical military deception operation called moskirovka.   Moskirovka presumes Soviet forces had begun with numerical superiority.  Moskirovka sets  the stage for the main decisive attack by first simultaneously attacking the enemy along multiple widely separated axis that makes it difficult for the enemy to know where the main attack axis lay, and also makes it difficult for the enemy to be able to position its reserves so as to be able to advantageously meet Russian attacks on several axis at once.    This forces the enemy to guess which axis is the main one, and commit their reserves prematurely.    Only when it becomes clear where the enemy has committed their reserves, would Russian select the primary axis of attack to avoid enemy reserves.   The Russian army would then commit its own reserve to achieve a breakthrough by effectively push against an unlocked door.   During the late 1943-1945 period, the Soviets implemented moskirovka with tremendous success against the German army.    Despite later soviet portrayals of great soviet heroics in beating the german army, the Soviets didn’t do much out fight the Germans as out deceived and out maneuvered the German army.    

Moskirovka remained an integral part of soviet operating doctrine through the Cold War.

It looks very much to me like the Russians in the current Ukrainian war also attempted to implement a version of moskirovka.   The problem is the Russians didn’t start the battle with any numerical superiority.    So the Ukrainians were able to check each of Russia advances and stop all of them from making decisive breakthroughs.    If the Russians had done it right, then Russians would attack with so much force that each of its 5 attack axis could potentially break through into Ukrainian hinterland, and Ukraine must gather the balk of its reserve to meet apparently there most threatening one or two.    Since the russian thrusts are widely separated, once committed Ukrainian reserved could not be easily maneuvered to meet other attacks.   Once the Ukrainians have committed to meeting a Russian attack, the Russians would then throw in their own reserves into an attack that the Ukraine did not deploy their reserves to meet, and break through.    

They obviously failed.

They began the war by following an tried and true operational doctrine that relies on numerical superiority, and attacked with a numerically inferior force instead that is further weakened by wide dispersal.

Short version: Russia, through incompetence, fucked up.

On a even brighter note, there are reports that Ukraine is beginning to employ roadside bombs.

Boru