A few notes on the shitstorm that is Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
If you were a conscript in a military hierarchy that lied to you about your mission and led you into a meat-grinder in which you were expected to slaughter fellow Slavs, how would you react? Maybe like this:
Russian troops deployed to invade Ukraine are undermining their own offensive by rejecting orders and destroying their equipment, including aircraft, according to Jeremy Fleming, the head of British intelligence agency GCHQ. [snip]
“Short of weapons and morale,” the Russians downed their own aircraft by mistake, he added. Fleming also confirmed that Moscow has deployed mercenaries and foreign fighters as part of its operation. [snip]
Russian forces are enduring many more casualties in their ongoing bid to capture the strategic port city of Mariupol, according to a March 30 assessment of the war from the Institute for the Study of War think tank in Washington.
“Russia is withdrawing some elements of its forces around [the Ukrainain capital of] Kyiv... for likely redeployment,” analysts Mason Clark, George Barros and Kateryna Stepanenko wrote. “But Russian forces will likely continue to hold their forwardmost positions and shell Ukrainian forces and residential areas.”
The purported withdrawal/ redeployment of Russian troops around Kyiv could well result in a further shitstorm for the incompetent army:
An army executing a fighting withdrawal must (among many other things) reverse half of its logistical train without screwing up the other half, maintain rigorous control of its road and rail network, carefully and thoroughly brief officers at all levels over secure and robust communication channels, perform an orderly disengagement and reconfiguration of the larger part of its forces from “attack” to “withdraw” modes—making them combat-ineffective—and designate, deploy, and coordinate a rear guard tasked with force protection that continues to fight, covering the withdrawal, constantly receiving supplies, echeloning in orderly fashion as they withdraw, giving the enemy the big “bugger off” while the rest of the force packs up and leaves.
Does any of that sound to you like a set of achievable goals by the Russian army as we have come to know it over the course of the past five weeks? Yeah, me neither.
The good news is that the Russians are on their heels in large areas of Ukraine (the south and Donbas regions are more of a bloody stalemate at this time). The bad news is that when the Russians are frustrated in achieving their objectives, they shell and bomb indiscriminately in order to bludgeon a population into submission. So, as they redeploy, it's easy to predict more wanton killing and destruction from Putin's invaders.
BONUS:
To highlight the significance of the past week, here is a gif showing changes compared to a similar map I made last week. All the areas circled in blue are where Ukrainian forces have gained territory, in red shows where Russian forces have.
— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) March 31, 2022
(ignore the changing colour scale) pic.twitter.com/qDNAEx0OMs
(Photo: Where all Russian armor belongs/Anatoli Stepanov/ AFP via Getty Images)
