Why the Russians Are Struggling

 By Mark Antonio Wright February 26, 2022

As the sun goes down in Kyiv, the city has not yet fallen to the Russians. This is unquestionably a defeat for Vladimir Putin. It’s important to not get carried away here: The Kremlin is still favored to win this fight. But the last three days of combat should put a serious dent in the reputation of this new Russian army. We should, however, try to understand why the Russians are struggling. First, the Russian army’s recent structural reforms do not appear to have been sufficient to the task at hand. Second, at the tactical and operational level, the Russians are failing to get the most out of their manpower and materiel advantage.

There has been much talk over the last ten years about the Russian army’s modernization and professionalization. After suffering severe neglect in the ’90s, during Russia’s post-Soviet financial crisis, the army began to reorganize and modernize with the strengthening of the Russian economy under Putin. First the army got smaller, at least compared to the Soviet Red Army, which allowed a higher per-soldier funding ratio than in previous eras. The Russians spent vast sums of money to modernize and improve their equipment and kit — everything from new models of main battle tanks to, in 2013, ordering Russian troopers to finally retire the traditional portyanki foot wraps and switch to socks.

But the Russians have also gone the wrong direction in some areas. In 2008, the Russian government cut the conscription term from 24 to twelve months. As Gil Barndollar, a former U.S. Marine infantry officer, wrote in 2020:

Russia currently fields an active-duty military of just under 1 million men. Of this force, approximately 260,000 are conscripts and 410,000 are contract soldiers (kontraktniki). The shortened 12-month conscript term provides at most five months of utilization time for these servicemen. Conscripts remain about a quarter of the force even in elite commando (spetsnaz) units.

As anyone who has served in the military will tell you, twelve months is barely enough time to become proficient at simply being a rifleman. It’s nowhere near enough time for the average soldier to learn the skills required to be an effective small-unit leader..........To Read More....

• Ukraine Crushes Three Great Myths About Russia  - By Tadas Klimas - The world has been fundamentally changed by Ukraine. This is true, although nearly all Western coverage has been scaredy-cat and daft. Russia expected to waltz in to Ukraine. It didn‘t. Russian forces have failed in all their objectives. A thousand Russian soldiers die each day of the assault. In the four days prior to this writing, 4,000 have died. This is twice the number of American deaths in Afghanistan over twenty years. (And no, Kyiv was never surrounded, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lives. Indeed, the airport near Kyiv was retaken by local Ukrainian forces; in essence state-level reservists, who retook the airport from Russian elite troops.) What this means is that the myth of Russian might has been broken for all time. It doesn't matter if the war isn't over. This is evident from the last four days. And there really are no reserves to be thrown in. They would have been thrown in already...........What will happen next? Russia will lose. It has run out of many types of munitions -- and fuel. Its soldiers go unfed and without ammunition. The war is costing Russia unsustainable sums. The freezing of its central bank reserves along with other economic sanctions taken by the West is beginning to create unheard-of inflation. Hundreds of tanks and armored carriers blown apart or abandoned line the road north of Kyiv............To Read More

My Take - Russia has a serious demographic problem. I don't know what the numbers are now but about five years ago they only had enough manpower to defend three of their seven defensive gaps.   And that all important 15 to 50 age group is rife with drug use, alcoholism, drug resistant TB and AIDS.  I think the author is correct in there are few or no reserves that can be thrown in.

 

Russia has Forgotten the Hard Lessons it Learned Invading Finland - March 1, 2022 By Ned Barnett -  Russia learned some hard lessons when it invaded Finland in November 1939.  Today in Ukraine, it’s become clear that those lessons didn’t “stick,” at least not among Russia’s decision-makers. In the winter of 1939, Russia – having just conquered half of Poland after Germany had already knocked that country out of the war – decided that war was good business. So they invaded Finland.  In Poland, the Soviets re-took land that had been under the control of Czarist Russia for two centuries before it was divided away from Russia at the treaty of Versailles.  Repeating that strategy, on November 30, 1939, Russia attacked Finland, intending to recover land that had also been part of Czarist Russia before Versailles.  Like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Finland was a Baltic state that had existed for centuries, before becoming a Czarist vassal state.  But unlike Poland, Finland had a strong army which had not been defeated in battle.  In the Kremlin, the Soviets decided the time was right to take that territory back, thinking it would be another piece of cake, like Poland had been two months earlier..........To Read More     

Russia, Ukraine, and the war for heritage -  March 1, 202  By Alex Gordon - On the territory of Ukraine, there is a war for the Soviet inheritance, for the imperial legacy of the Soviet Union, for the status of the Soviet empire, which is claimed by its successor, the Russian Federation. This war was started by Vladimir Putin. The name Vladimir means "he who owns the world."  The president of Russia acted as the ruler of the world. He announced that he began the fight for the "security of Russia."  But the "security of Russia" is very similar to the insecurity of Europe, and possibly the world, since threats to use atomic weapons mean the first step toward World War III............. To Read More...

 

But this isn't all roses and champagne for America's military.  

 

We are not a serious country (5)  The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo reports: “As Russia Wages War, US Army Trains Officers on Gender Identity.” Subhead: “Mandatory military training program pushes soldiers to undergo gender reassignment surgery.” Kredo’s story opens: While Russia wages a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army is putting its soldiers through training on gender pronouns and coaching officers on when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery, according to an official military presentation ,,,,,,,,,,,To Read More....

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