Ukraine Blog 56 – On Unity of Command
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
Holy cow! I
was preparing to write a small blog today on a topic that we will eventually
discuss, but first we have to discuss the roller coaster of events that
happened in past 48 hours. Events that are all related to each other and makes
me confident to say that just as with the unnoticeable start of the Russian
“offensive” in January, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has already started
around 1,5 weeks ago. However, as opposed to the failed Russian offensive, the
horror that the Russians endured over the past 48 hours, is only the start.
So where to
start? The start for Ukraine’s approach as it is unfolding right now, has
likely been the Western intelligence leaks about Ukraine’s counteroffensive
plans. Although nothing operationally has been leaked, there was sufficient
information about units, fronts and timeframes. Based on what I have seen,
Ukraine is taking the following steps to completely close off and confuse the
Russians. They will be so confused that even when the place of the breakthrough
becomes leaks, the Russians will be too suspicious to believe it .
1. Counteroffensive actions near
Bakhmut: Over the past two days, Ukraine liberated around 17 km2 of land around
Bakhmut. My WhatsApp exploded with messages from many of you guys, inquiring
whether this was THE start of the counteroffensive. Well, it already started long
before that. And although the counter offensive didn’t start with a major “bang,
” a ton of interesting observations can be made from the Bakhmut action
nevertheless.
a. The counteroffensive actions were performed by units that have traditionally been involved with the defense of Bakhmut. This means that NONE of the new NATO trained and equipped units have been involved in these actions and just these units have been able to cause complete panic and routs in the Russian trenches. By just looking at the video below: if this is what Ukrainian regular troops are able to do, let alone what a battalion of Leopard II’s and Bradley AIFS’s can do.
Ukraine troops rout Russian soldiers near Bakhmut in intense POV footage - YouTube
b. It’s known to you guys there’s a lot of verbal bickering between an increasing factional Russian command brass. This was supposed to be the main topic of today. Before we dive into the Kremlin drama, we first need to put into perspective what it means for the Ukrainian counter offensive actions near Bakhmut. While Wagner PMC boss Yevgeny Prigozhin brags that only his troops are responsible for Russian successes near Bakhmut, the commander of the attacking Ukrainian forces actually states that Wagner troops were the first to run and only regular Russian soldiers made an effort to defend.
Ukrainian commander: Russian Wagner fighters ran away in Bakhmut - YouTube
I would not be surprised. Russia is currently suffering a complete fragmentation of the command structure. More and more armed groups appear with their own commanders and the relation between them is very bad. This means that on the battlefield they are no longer communicating with each other and In typical Hitler fashion, Putin is likely facilitating this on purpose to keep his own position secure. The problem with this, is that it may work very well to have a factional set of commanders in a dictatorship not in a warlike state, it’s disastrous if you want to play superpower in an offensive war. It’s just this simple violation of the basic rules of war I know the Russians will now lose the war pretty soon. For those who need a reminder: this is the wisdom of Sun Tzu, 400 BC from his famous book “The Art of War”:
“Unity works because it enables you to win every battle you fight."
More than 2400 years later, the Russians prove that failing to apply this, will make you lose wars. I read “The Art of War” more than 10 times. Every time it amazes me how applicable its lessons still are today. For the noobs here: the other two books you need to read are “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz and Che Guevarra’s “Guerrilla Warfare.”
c. So what’s the purpose of the Ukrainian actions near Bakhmut? First of all it’s to relieve pressure on the remaining 10 percent of the city under Ukrainian control. However, I really think the Ukrainians are pinpointing what kind of resources they need to move on Russian defensive lines in other areas. The Russian troops in the Bakhmut sector have been the most active. In case they can be defeated using standard echelon Ukrainian troops, the Russian defense lines in the other parts of Ukraine will have a serious problem. Where in my previous blog we talked about the potential effectiveness of the TM-62 mines and Russian ATGM teams, over the past couple of weeks it has become clear that the Russians are facing serious problems on the defensive lines they built. The main problem here is that they have to man a 2000 kilometer long front with 400.000 soldiers (it’s actually far less and their skill level is highly questionable). This leaves a maximum of 200 soldiers per kilometer that needs to be defended. Trust me, the Ukrainians gained very useful knowledge in the Bakhmut raids.
2. Storm Shadow: The last blog had a British touch. This one tops it. For the past year, the Ukrainians have been begging the Americans to deliver ATACMS missiles with a 300 kilometer range. Where the Americans always had the safety of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the British suffered the full brunt of European warfare via German Gotha bombers in World War I and the London Blitz in World War II. For those who need to remember, the British were once the last bastion of Western democratic freedom in 1940. Politicians like Ben Wallace did not forget about this. Only a couple of days ago the delivery of British Storm Shadow missiles was announced to Ukraine. Over the course of the past two days they already have been deployed with devastating effect (confirmed thanks to lousy Russian Operations Security or OPSEC).
For me it’s very clear what Ukraine is trying to
do here. All the logistical targets that were outside of HIMARS range are now
being targeted without delay. Less then 24 hours after the delivery of Storm
Shadow missiles was announced, the devices have been put into action with
devastating effect twice. Interestingly, it appears the Storm Shadows appear to
have been deployed in conjunction with the American ADM-160 MALD. For starters:
this is a very light weight attack decoy that can essentially emulate any
flying object from the Wright Flyer to a B-52. If you combine the MALD with the
Storm Shadow you essentially create enormous problem for the Russians. If Storm
Shadow attacks continue, it will likely have the same effect on Russian logistics
HIMARS had at the beginning of August 2022.
3. When I was just about to write the
next blog, this happened: An insane amount of aerial activity happened in the
Russian province of Bryansk. In a span of just three hours two MI-8
helicopters, one SU-34 and one SU-35 got shot down. Twitter is going wild with
claims that Russian friendly fire shot down these four! aircraft. Despite all
the panic, Russia’s air defenses are more than capable. Two things might have
happened here:
a. Friendly fire: The Ukrainians also
deployed the earlier mentioned ADM-160 MALD decoy to Russian territory. In this
case, the Russians really had no idea what they were shooting at and they are
(lucky for us) destroying their own air force. This must be incredibly scary to
them. They have absolutely no way of telling what’s in Russian airspace.
b. It could have been a possibility that Ukraine brought the Patriot batteries to the border. However, I’m skeptical of this option, since the Ukrainians didn’t include the two helicopters and planes in their destroyed Russian equipment report.
So what’s
happening in short: Ukraine is killing long range logistics, closing down
Russian! Airspace and making battlefield gains with second echelon troops. I hopefully
don’t need to tell you what’s going on here. Yes, to make it more tangible: the
Ukrainian counteroffensive will produce visible results in less than one week.
You don’t perform these kind of actions in order NOT to capitalize on them. Whereas
I think the original plan was to force one giant breakthrough in one or two
weak spots in the Russian line, I think Ukraine switched the plan to instigate
more chaos in the Russian ranks. Therefore I expect that current actions will
gradually evolve into a “visible” counteroffensive.
So now back
to Russia’s main problem (and what I think will make them lose the war), the
increasing lack of unity of command. There’s a lot at play here. I think the
different factions involved, Shoigu/Gerasimov, Prigozhin, Kadyrov (who is now
also at odds with Prigozhin), realized the war is lost. The Russian army became
combat ineffective according to Western standards after the Kharkiv offensive
in September. Under such a condition it’s by Western standards not even recommended
to perform defensive actions. Yet, Gerasimov chose to go on the offensive in
January/February. The factions are now preparing for the fight that’s going to take
place after the war in Ukraine, but they need as many as possible resources for
that. Resources that are now being send to Ukraine only to get destroyed. The
problem is that still nobody in the command structure besides Prigozhin has the
balls to tell the Bunkerführer that he needs to get the Russian army out of
Ukraine before it’s too late. This in my opinion is what the Russian army command
wanted to illustrate to Putin on the laughable May 9th parade where
only one ancient T-34 tank was shown, no modern tanks, no artillery, no tracked
armored vehicles. It’s not the case there are no tanks left for a parade. I
watched footage from other cities and there were plenty of tanks and self-propelled
howitzers there.
I think
this was a message of the Russian army command to tell Putin in an indirect way
that it’s time to move out of Ukraine. Nothing happens in Russia for no reason.
In case they would still believe in the war, they would have brought out every
movable tank to the Red Square to show. It might be me, but telling from the
footage, Putin was genuinely not positively surprised:
Then we
have Prigozhin’s unprecedented direct outbursts against Putin. Many people
think he will soon fall out of a window. I think the opposite is true. Prigozhin
smells weakness in the political establishment and is in a still important
enough position to make such statements. I said it before: this is how the war
most likely is going to end. The factions will move their forces out of Ukraine
on their own initiative to fight each other within Russia. They will likely do
that before Ukraine finishes liberating their territory. No warlord wants to
see their entire force destroyed.
Слава Україні!
Niels
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