Russian army in Ukraine: six weeks of Berezina

We are at the end of February 2022. Within three days, the Russian army will crush Ukraine. At least that’s what the whole world believes… except the Ukrainians, who, six weeks after the start of the invasion, are resisting, counter-attacking and commanding admiration. For the Russian army, on the other hand, it is Berezina. Out of 190,000 soldiers engaged, Moscow has already lost between 7,500 and 17,000. If the high estimates of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense are correct, this means that Vladimir Putin has lost more soldiers in a month and a half than the Army red in Afghanistan in a decade – 14,400 dead from 1979 to 1989. And we must add the wounded: there are generally two wounded for every soldier killed.

On the material side, the losses are abysmal, with 1,625 armored vehicles (about half) and 561 tanks (idem) destroyed. Ukraine claims to have shot down more than 100 helicopters and dozens of planes. A warship and six boats were destroyed. Once considered the most powerful in the world after that of the United States, the Russian army rather evokes the memory of that of Saddam Hussein in 1991, then presented as “the fourth on the planet”. “The Russians are incapable of waging a large-scale war”, recently decided in L’Express General Ben Hodges, former commander of the US Army in Europe.

This fiasco questions all the experts in the world, including the Finn Tomas Ries. At the Försvarhögskolan war school in Stockholm, Sweden, he created his own analysis grid to conclude that “all human capacity, including military, is based on three factors: the will (the morale of the troops), the skills and the equipment used. On these three points, Moscow is failing,” he says.

The morale of the troops? “It is very high among Ukrainian fighters, ready to fight to the death”, admits ex-General Patrick Lefebvre, of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies, who nevertheless wants to be nuanced: “It is too early to sell the skin of the Russian bear, whose wear strategy must be understood over the long term.” Be that as it may, the morale of the Russians is at half mast. “The information filtering out of Moscow indicates disagreements at the top of the military hierarchy and within the political elite”, resumes Tomas Ries.

Lowest quality truck tires

“Furthermore,” he continues, “on the ground, desertions and testimonies of demoralized Russian prisoners are multiplying. As for the society itself, which today supports Putin, its morale will decline in six weeks to two months, when ‘she will discover that Ukraine poses no threat to Russia, that Russian losses are high and that this unnecessary war is weakening their country.” Ultimately, the analysis of the Finnish expert joins the famous statement of Napoleon Bonaparte: “There are only two powers in the world, said the emperor, the saber and the spirit: in the long run, the saber is always conquered by the spirit.”

What’s more, the Russian army seems incompetent. Nothing she has done since February 24 has worked as planned. The original Blitzkrieg? It failed due to lack of coordination between infantry and cavalry. According to a basic military rule, tanks and infantry must advance together in towns and villages. Instead, armor advanced alone, at the mercy of infantry with anti-tank missile launchers. Logistic ? It’s even worse. The 62 kilometer long armored column blocked north of kyiv for weeks is a textbook case: the staff had not properly calibrated its fuel and food supplies!

Another problem: the rigid and vertical structure of the Russian command, almost devoid of non-commissioned officers who, in all the armies of the world, constitute the essential transmission belt between the staff and the troops. “In the American army, the sub-offs are the key to efficiency, explains the specialized media Task & Purpose, which devoted an article to this aspect of the conflict. In the field, it is those who, concretely, interpret and implement the orders of senior officers. And this, with a great capacity for personal initiative.”

In the vocabulary of the Russian army, “personal initiative” is a non-existent concept. This affects combat effectiveness. This is why the generals ended up, in an unusual way, by going to the front line in order to unblock the machine. As a result, seven of them, out of twenty in Ukraine, died.

“Corrupted, the Russian state has spawned a corrupt army”

“Sociologists know it: the armies reflect the qualities and the defects of the countries from which they come”, wrote in a recent article Eliot A. Cohen, a former member of the Bush administration. “But the Russian state is based on corruption, lies and the absence of laws. It has therefore created an army at the mercy of bureaucrats, contractors and corrupt soldiers.” In short: part of its budget has been diverted. As a result, the soldiers’ rations are out of date – hence the looting of stores by the military – and the truck tires are of the lowest quality. Hence an incredible increase in punctures.

During a recent military parade on Red Square, the equipment of the Russian army seemed to prove the modernization of the army undertaken by Putin around 2010. The ultramodern T-14 Armata tanks (unit cost of 5 million euros ) caused a sensation. Few in number, they were not deployed in Ukraine. Lest they be destroyed?

“A single man with a Javelin anti-tank missile launcher can easily destroy a tank,” says John Schaus of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This American bazooka, which costs 100,000 euros each, is wreaking havoc on the Russian side. The real star of the conflict is him”, he concludes. In Moscow, Putin’s generals could perhaps ponder this reflection by boxer Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan… until ‘he gets punched in the face.