Ukraine war – part 3. Missed opportunities and strategic blunders.

 

When studying past wars, with the benefit of hindsight, there are often single political decisions that have influenced the course of the war, more than any battlefield decision. Decisions that were hailed as genius, could easily have had a different outcome, because there was no Plan B.

Take for instance Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, which strengthened his position in Germany. If he had been stopped then – and France was easily in a position to do so, it might have been the end of Hitler’s regime.
Similarly, Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, was a bloodless coup, carried out by a small force, though a much larger Ukrainian force was present in Crimea. If they chose to resist, the invasion would have ended in a fiasco and in all probability, Putin might have been removed from power.

It was a repeat of Crimea that I believe Putin was banking on when he started the special military operation. I think the speed extent of Western sanctions and the Ukrainian determination to resist as well as its full mobilization came as a surprise and must rank a catastrophic intelligence failure. It was similar to Hitler being genuinely surprised that his invasion of Poland in 1939, led to Britain and France declaring war. Dictatorships (where the leader takes all major decisions on his own) lack the checks and balances of mature democracies and the invasion of Ukraine is a good example of a sudden an ad-hoc decision to go to war, with hope as a strategy.   

The 190,000-man invasion force, comprised about 100 Battalion tactical groups (BTG), which were under-manned since they lacked the conscripts, who normally comprise about 25% of a BTG and are by law not allowed to serve abroad. Adding larger formations of paratroopers, artillery, and the Donbass Militia, the combat strength of the invasion force was about 120,000. They comprised about 600 men per BTG, 30,000 in the Donbass militia and 30,000 from the parachute divisions and artillery units. Half these were in static formations in the Donbass region, while the other half (about 60,000 men) were deployed in 5 division sized thrusts across Ukraine – towards Kiev from the West and from the East, across the Dnieper to Kherson, to Sumy and towards Kharkiv.

Facing them, Ukraine had initially mobilized 23 its standing army of 23 brigades and its national guard of another 23 brigades. At approx. 4000 men per brigade, the 180,000 men in combat formations outnumbered Russia 3:2 

If Ukraine did not capitulate in the first week of the invasion (a repeat of Crimea), there was no way an outnumbered force, operating without adequate planning, with tenuous supply lines could capture and hold territory, against a superior defending force, with equal firepower per unit.   

Russia did indeed take heavy losses in hardware, by sacrificing prudence for speed. Columns advanced on roads (rather than on a broader front going off-road), without adequate reconnaissance and without enough infantry protecting tanks. Maintenance and medical support lagged advancing columns, leading to damaged tanks being abandoned and more of the wounded dying than may have been the case with faster medical support. Nevertheless the speed of advance in the first week, was comparable to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, before the Russians got bogged down in attritional warfare, against prepared defenses and a numerically superior force defending their country. At that point, it was a battle they couldn't hope to win.   

An indication of the Russian lack of preparation for war was the freezing of Russian foreign currency reserves of over $ 500 billion. If sanctions were anticipated, this amount could have been withdrawn in days. Similarly, most of the large warships of the Black sea fleet (the only Navy formation able to fight Ukraine) was not in the Black sea, but operating off the coast of Syria – as a result, the cruiser Moskva, which was probably too old to be at sea in a combat situation, was sunk.     

The number of combat aircraft deployed against Ukraine was roughly the same as the Indian air force (with Soviet aircraft) had in the 1971 war against Pakistan. While the IAF flew 400 sorties a day for 14 days, the Russian air force managed only 200 (ramping up to 300 /day after a month) presumably because a large portion of its fleet was not made airworthy enough for combat. 

Similarly, if an armored personnel carrier operates with 6 infantry (because its 2 conscripts were not present) instead of its standard 8 men, in 2 teams of 4, its effectiveness greatly reduces.

The resulting losses might have been an acceptable price to pay if Russia achieved its objectives.
Rather than assume the Russian general staff were stupid, I favor the alternate explanation, that having decided on war, the Russians had an objective, which was to project enough power (by reaching the fates of Kiev) to get Ukraine to the negotiating table. Russia did succeed in that objective – with talks in Istanbul at the end of Mar 2022, which appeared have bridged differences.
Except that it didn’t.

The talks were called off at the urging of the US and UK, based on the assumption that Russia could be defeated, based on its performance in the first month of the war.  
 
An analysis of the Oryx website (which purportedly shows photographic evidence of losses) is useful to understand the composition of losses in various categories and the trend of losses.

The numbers themselves have been disputed (analysis of `armchair warlord' on twitter for e.g.) https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1510054419299065859 suggested Russian losses to be considerably inflated.

Tank losses are a useful proxy for all Russian hardware losses. 
In the first 10 days of the war Russia reportedly lost 320 tanks.
It was a total of 693 for the first 80 days. (up to 1 Apr 2022).
A total of 2146 tanks after 515 days and a rate of 3 per day throughout 2023.
Thus losses dropped from 32 a day, or, (if one takes the first 80 days) from 8.6 / day, to 3 tanks a
day in 2023. This trend is mirrored by figures of Russian losses from the Ukraine ministry of Defense (with higher numbers).
Interestingly, the fall in loss rate comes after a surge of NATO anti-tank weapons, based on an assumption that Ukraine could win the war.

Russia started the war with just 2920 tanks in active service (T-72, T-80 and T-90). Another 10,200 were in reserve, as were an unknown number of older T-62/64 and T-55 tanks. Domestic production had been discontinued, with T-90 tanks being exported and small quantities of older tanks refurbished. It was believed that only a fraction of tanks in reserve could be made operational and even that would take time. India has more T-90 tanks than Russia and more tanks overall in active service, than Russia had in Feb 22.

The observed loss of 8.6 tanks /day, (For the first 80 days) would have meant the Russian tank force would have ceased to exist in a year – with the only tanks available being obsolete tanks, or older versions of the T-72/80 in reserve and with Russia lacking the capacity or electronic sub systems to refurbish them, or even make them operational. The appearance of Russian T-64s in Ukraine, in mid-2022, invited derision from the Western media and seemed to confirm the view that Russia was running out of tanks and would in a matter of months, also run out of missiles and aircraft.

This was consistent with the view that Russian losses (see part 1 of the Ukraine war blog), would eliminate the entire combat strength of the Russian army in under a year, leaving conscripts with low morale and obsolete weapons to face the NATO trained Ukraine army, which when fully mobilized,
would outnumber the Russians. This, coupled with the effect of crippling sanctions, would cause the collapse of Russia though internal revolution and a defeat on the battlefield too big to hide.   

This was a strategic blunder as bad, if not worse, than Russia’s.

In what I would call phase 2 of the war, Russia redeployed the units that had advanced too far (ceding territory in the Kiev, Sumy and Chernigov regions), in favor of an advance in the Donbass. While most of the media termed this a big Russian defeat, I think a planned withdrawal of an outnumbered force, under enemy fire, with minimal casualties, is a difficult feat. Russia pulling it off (as they would again later in the year) indicated a fair amount of operational competence.

Russia attacked as per their doctrine. Carefully planned assaults with a lot of artillery preparation. With a significant advantage in artillery, Russia was able to take the cities of Mariupol, Slavyansk and Lisichansk.
However, the Russians were again outnumbered – particularly with more Ukrainians mobilizing. They could only launch attacks - against prepared defenses, by reducing numbers elsewhere. By the end of July, the attack had reached its culminating point. The Russians had achieved what they had by thinning out the front in Kharkov and West of the Dnieper and were no longer capable of offensive action.

The result was a Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov which regained a lot of lost territory and a withdrawal across the Dnieper and from Kherson by Russian forces. Russia announced a mobilization of 300,000 reservists and the incorporation of 4 Ukrainian provinces into Russia, following a referendum. One interpretation was that Ukraine’s offensive was the start of an irreversible process of liberating its lost territory and that Russia’s mobilization was to replace casualties with lower quality manpower and hardware. NATO doubled down on its intent to defeat Russia in Ukraine, rather than a negotiated peace. Russia on its part also doubled down on its resolve, by declaring 4 provinces to be a part of Russia – requiring the use of nuclear weapons, if they could not be protected by conventional means.         

Apart from the battle of Bakhmut – where Russian losses of mostly ex-convicts from the Wagner group were traded for a larger number of regular Ukrainian soldiers, Russia’s losses as per Oryx fell sharply from Sept 22 onwards. The general indication from open sources is that the loss ratio between Russia and Ukraine also moved in favor of Russia, particularly after the battles of Bakhmut and the Ukrainian counter offensive from June. One reason was the Russians fighting from prepared defensive positions and, when attacking, doing so as per doctrine, with a significant superiority in artillery.      

The other reasons for the change in loss were several innovations from Russia such as:
- Electronic warfare that disabled or spoofed drones and HIMARS rockets.
- The Penicillin acoustic based artillery locating system, coupled with better artillery fire control.
- An exponential increase in the number of Russian drones. In Jul 22, lancet drones were reported to have hit 10 targets, In Jul 23, it crossed 100 targets hit.  
- Modifying `iron’ bombs into medium range semi-guided bombs, which significantly increased the
effectiveness of the Russian air force. Coupled with this, the degrading of Ukrainian air defenses, which enabled Russia to have air superiority. Ka-52 attack helicopters reappeared on the battlefield in June 23.

At the same time, Russian armaments production was stepped up. In tanks for e.g. a closer look at losses shows that a lot of tanks destroyed in the first phase of the invasion were old T-64s, whereas all new tanks being supplied are either T-90 or modernized T-72/ T80s. The announcement that Russia has been able to raise and equip a corps sized formation, suggests that it has more than replaced hardware losses.

In the middle of 2023, NATO finds itself raising the same question about Ukraine as it assumed about Russia a year earlier – will Ukrainian manpower and NATO weapons replace losses? Or will the advantage in manpower and firepower swing increasingly towards Russia.

While I believe in the longer-term NATOs armament production capability will vastly outstrip Russia’s, a bigger constraint will be Ukraine’s manpower reserves. As I speculated in the first part of my blog, Russia has a window of opportunity this summer, to exploit their advantage relative to Ukraine.   

My other posts on the Ukraine war:

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/07/ukraine-war-understanding-numbers-part.html

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/07/ukraine-war-understanding-numbers-part_18.html

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/08/ukraine-war-part-4-ukraines-counter.html

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2023/09/ukraine-war-part-5-how-russia-fights.html