Ukraine War, Early August 2022, Part 2
Good evening everybody!
Good evening everybody!
Today I’ll discuss the most important developments and experiences of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) from the last few weeks of the War in Ukraine.
Note: in general, as of early August 2022 it’s hard to describe the situation of ground forces of any of parties involved in this war without using words like ‘tired’, ‘exhausted’, ‘short on troops’, ‘critically short on trained (not to talk about “skilled”) NCOs and junior officers’, ‘in need of rest and re-organisation’ etc. Modern-day wars are dominated by firepower (so much so, this is hindering manoeuvre) and when intensive combat lasts as long as in this one (5.5 months, meanwhile), they are resulting not only in far higher ammunition expenditure than expected, or massive losses in equipment and vehicles — but, they are rapidly exhausting humans, first and foremost. With other words: ever more of troops on both sides are not only ‘dead tired’, but emotionally exhausted, meanwhile. That is where the similarities between the Russians and Ukrainians are ending, though.
Ground Forces: Russia
Amid all the Ukrainian-, Western-, and few Russian reports (not to say ‘bragging’) about Putin’s ‘problems with replacing severe losses of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) through finding enough volunteers to fight in Ukraine’, my impression is that he’s actually got no problems to do so. That is: quantitatively, he’s got enough troops.
The reason is that over the last 22 years, the Fool in Kremlin took care to build up a huge pool of paramilitary organisations, followed by a large pool of private military- and security contractors to mobilise from. Arguably, original idea was to safeguard his own regime, but now this huge organisation is coming handy.
What do I mean with ‘huge’?
For the start, consider what I call the ‘Putin’s Pasdarans’: the Rosgvardia. This is a armed body of about 340,000 outside the chains of command of the Ministry of Defence and/or the Ministry of Interior. The Rosgvardia is responsible to Putin only. Arguably, Rosvgvardia is not really trained for frontline duties, but primarily serving as guards of installations of strategic importance in Russia. However, it has large units (including an entire division for special purposes) capable of conducting combat operations, too.
The groups naming themselves the Russian Cossacks are including another 600,000 trained troops — thousands of which are already serving in the VSRF, which has its own Cossack units and Cossack military educational facilities, too.
Then add the Russian Union of Paratroopers: that’s another 300,000 veterans, renowned for their ‘cohesion’. So much so, over the last two months entire battalion tactical groups of the VDV have been rapidly ‘re-filled’ by their veterans from 5, 10, 15 years ago.
Then add another 40,000 or so from the OMON (subjected to the control of Rosgvardia), and another 40,000 from the SOBR….
….and don’t forget over 600,000 Russians working in the Russian private security sector alone.
….yes, now you’ve got the picture.
That’s when it becomes obvious that the Fool in Kremlin needs no ‘general mobilisation’ — not even when this is ‘demanded’ by few of his talkingheads. Despite immense losses in the first five months of this war (RUMINT has it that over 70,000 VSRF troops have been killed by now), the Russian armed forces can maintain the numbers at levels necessary to continue fighting.
(BTW…Ironically, while the Ukrainian and Western media is still preoccupied reporting about Ukraine ‘losing 200 troops a day’ — and thus influencing the Russian mass- and social-media into fantasies about an ‘exchange rate’ of 30 Ukrainian troops for every 1 Russian killed — actually, this loss rate was valid for few days back in June, only. On average, Ukrainians are losing about 20–25 killed a day. On the contrary, it’s the Russian formations that are losing about 300 troops killed or badly injured a day, and that already since the start of the war. The rate of losses in Separatist units is particularly terrible: most of these are lacking computers, and thus many of unit commanders can’t even say how many troops they’ve lost because there is no computer-supported registration: people get killed in droves, are shot away — and nobody knows they have ever served…)
Thus, the quantity is neither a problem for the Fool in Kremlin, nor for his Keystone Cops.
Quality is. Lots of Russian troops arriving in Ukraine over the last few weeks are 40+ years old, and thus in anything than ‘good shape’. Still, the VSRF (re-)filling the ranks and bringing dozens of battered BTGs back to their strength. In few of worst cases, the GenStab had no problem to reorganise 3–4 battered BTGs into one or two ‘new’ units. Yes, sure: all are short of their nominal complement, but this was the case already at the start of the war. Means, there’s not much difference in this regards: as soon as any BTG is reformed, it’s sent back to the frontlines. Results are nowhere near as obvious as in the Kharkiv and Kherson areas, where the Russian frontlines were significantly bolstered over the last three weeks.
Where the quality is at least ‘maintained’ (even if ‘not improved’) is the sector of private military companies (PMCs). Lots of Russian PMCs are directly linked to regular VSRF units (even based adjacent to their bases) and were recruiting from them for years already. Others recruit from the GRU, FSB, and VDV. Unsurprisingly, RUMINT has it companies like Wagner and Redut/Redut-Antiterror/Antiterror have seven BTGs involved in operations in Ukraine, each; and Turan at least one, if not two. That’s 15–16 BTGs of the Russian PMCs alone — and then a factor largely ignored in the West, while: the more the efficiency of VDV and VSRF-regulars is decreasing, the more is the importance of PMCs increasing — as demonstrated in Lyman, in Popasna….and, lately, in Pisky.
Over the last five months, it was outright ‘fascinating’ to watch the inability of the Fool in Kremlin and his favourite generals to realise the effectiveness of Ukrainian artillery: this is why even the last few weeks the latter had it — relatively — easy to continue ripping apart Russian units well before these were reaching the frontline. Unsurprisingly, over the last few weeks have read not ‘just two-three’ Russian (and Separatist) sources stressing the mass of their infantry never fired a single shot at an enemy soldier — before being pulverised by Ukrainian artillery. Similarly, there are regular complaints in the Russian media from VSRF’s tankers, because most of fighting is taking place at ranges over 2,000 metres (outside the range of their main guns), and the majority of their tanks is knocked out well before they can ever open fire in combat. Indeed, several Russian tank-crews have already complained about ‘the lack of tank-vs-tank combat’…
Where the VSRF — but especially Separatists of the ‘LNR’ and the ‘DNR’ — has/have a major problem is replacing losses of non-commissioned officers and junior officers. Already back in April-May — during the fighting for Rubizhne (the one north of Severdonetsk) — losses in Separatist units from the ‘LNR’ have reached such proportions that the mass of their platoons and companies had no commanders: there were no lieutenants left to do the job. The situation only worsened ever since because — especially during the fighting for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk — VSRF-commanders tended to rush Separatist infantry forward, as ‘cannon fodder’, or ‘means of reconnaissance of Ukrainian positions’: their own troops followed only well to the rear.
Because of this, the VSRF launched a number of crash-courses for junior officers: training of new sergeants has been shortened to few weeks and that of lieutenants has been shortened to four months.
Mind: along the Russian doctrine, not much more is necessary, because junior officer-ranks are of secondary importance. In Russia it’s ‘generals’ who are supposed to think and command units in combat (not necessarily from the frontline, of course): lower-ranking officers have the duty of making sure their trooops follow the orders.
What’s actually keeping the Russian side of the frontline ‘glued together’ is the artillery. No doubt, this is feeling the effects of attrition, meanwhile — so much so that after replacing much of its 122mm pieces (due to losses to counter-battery fire, wear, but the lack of shells of that calibre, too) - the GenStab was forced to start replacing self-propelled artillery pieces calibre 152mm by towed pieces of the same calibre. This is the reason for increased presence of such pieces like Giatsint-S and 2S7.
Now, exact details about Russian artillery losses are actually non-available. Sure, there are online instances counting every single loss documented on photos or videos, like the Oryx blog. However, the mass of the Russian artillery losses is never documented that way. Moreover, Russian military documentation captured back in late March has shown that the VSRF tank units have suffered heavier losses than documented by Oryx. Thus, at most, such instances can be used ‘for orientation purposes only’. That said, gauging by the number of Russian artillery pieces counted by Oryx as ‘destroyed’…. sorry, the conclusion is on hand that this is far too few.
One way or the other: while, no doubt, the artillery of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (ZSU) is causing it growing problems, the Russian artillery remains the factor dominating this war. Should there be any doubts, ask Ukrainian civilians and troops in the Kharkiv area, troops in Donbass, or civilians in Mykolaiv. This superiority is felt even stronger because of the fact that in order to counter major Russian attacks, the ZSU has meanwhile withdrawn all of its artillery from ‘less-threatened’ sectors. I.e. there are large segments of the frontline where there is no Ukrainian artillery at all.
With US and NATO deliveries remaining meagre, this is unlikely to change any time soon. On the contrary, the Russians are known to have meanwhile assembled the complement of at least one, if not two full artillery brigades by pulling stored 2S7 self-propelled howitzers calibre 203mm from the 94th Arsenal, near Omsk (see the photo below). Unsurprisingly, at Pisky they have clearly demonstrated what they can do when focusing the fire of two or three artillery brigades on an extremely narrow section of the frontline: they’ve saturated an area of about 1.000 by 300 metres with 6,000–7,000 shells, on 1 and 2 August alone (this is something nobody can survive).
Finally, contrary to the situations from back in February-April, nowadays, such concentrations are well-supported by UAVs and forward artillery observers (FAOs), and these are well-connected to headquarters and artillery units with help of an ‘application’ with the literally-translated designation ‘Unified System for Managing a Tactical Unit’ (Единая система управления тактического звена, ЕСУ ТЗ).
For simplicity purposes, I am abbreviating the designation of this app as UTCS (for Unified Tactical Control System). Essentially, it’s one of sub-systems of the Constellation automated tactical management system, which top command nodes of the VSRF — from the National Defence Management Centre (NtsUO), via the HQ South in Rostov-na-Donu, down to HQ of combined arms armies — are using to command and control operations of all of units involved in operations in Ukraine (another such sub-system is used to control the work of air defences, but that’s a different story). The UTCS is as important because it proved highly flexible, and very efficient in coordinating the work of UAVs and artillery units: to quite some luck of Ukraine, so far it has not been deployed by VSRF’s tank- or motor-rifle troops, nor by the VDV.