HS analysis How miserable is the Russian armed forces, or are they miserable at all?

Russian The large-scale offensive war in Ukraine has not progressed nearly as originally planned, and major mistakes have been made since the initial assumptions, virtually all Western experts say.

Last Wednesday, the British Ministry of Defense estimatesthat Russian troops are barely moving through the Ukrainian terrain and are concentrating on moving along the road network. The bridges destroyed by the Ukrainians in particular have slowed the progress of the Russians.

According to the British Ministry of Defense, Ukrainian forces have skilfully exploited the narrow wedges of attack by Russian troops and largely thwarted attempts by Russian troops to advance. At the same time, Russian troops have suffered heavy losses.

Over the past week or so, Russian forces appear to have focused mostly on the use of artillery, missile and rocket fire, largely against civilian targets. Progress seems to be non-existent, with the exception of some directions in southern Ukraine.

National Defense College assistant military professor Antti Parosen according to the Russian operation, even after the first week of fighting, it was seen that “the war where it is now was not the war the Russian operation was aiming for or even preparing for”.

Paronen justifies the view by the fact that as many as 80 percent of Russia’s immediate readiness forces, or “roughly estimated 200,000 soldiers,” were concentrated on Ukraine’s borders. These set off very quickly with almost all the force at the same time from different directions of operations, and no centralized force was seen anywhere.

“It started with a quick, hijacking operation.”

It would either have acquired new conditions for a further onslaught or plunged the president very quickly Volodymyr Zelenskyi and the power of his administration and planted in Kiev a pro-Russian regime.

The hijacking was unsuccessful, and “after three weeks, that crop will be reaped” as Russian troops across Ukraine appear to be on some sort of operational break.

Also major logistical problems were reported, especially at the beginning of the war. Hundreds of pictures and videos of abandoned Russian tanks and other vehicles tell of big problems in either logistics, the will to fight, or both.

According to Paronen, the war in Ukraine has shown that previous information about the operation of the maintenance of Russian troops, mainly through the railways, still seems to be true. With rubber wheels, maintenance only works for a relatively short distance, a few tens of kilometers.

“The most significant battles are fought where there are railway junctions. Without them, the attack has no preconditions for further action. ”

Another of Paronen’s conclusions about three weeks of warfare for the Russian armed forces is that the much-talked-about pattern of Russian military art still seems to be somewhat true, even though there was as much talk about its development since the previous battles in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine.

“The schematic was evident in the invasion of Kiev, where in the first days troops were fed there according to the first battle plans, without a clear reason to feed the troops. The initiative could not be captured, the defense was not broken. Instead, they probably went there because the original plan of the regional or local commanders said so, ”Paronen estimates.

Further According to Paronen, there are few conclusions about the capabilities of the Russian armed forces.

“This is a war that has started in a very different way than one would expect when a number of defensive forces have been able to thwart the Russian invasion. The fire would then be used more, there would be more troops, and the concentration of troops would be different than it is now. The landing forces would hardly be used to the extent that they have now been repeatedly used unsuccessfully. ”

All in all, for Russia, “many things that could have gone wrong have gone wrong, even though something has certainly been achieved”.

Russian major reforms were initiated in the armed forces after the 2008 war in Georgia. Researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute Jyri Lavikainen in fact, all researchers have considered the reforms a success.

Russia has acquired the ability to strike on a large scale with cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, has invested in air defense, and modernized nuclear weapons with huge amounts of money. According to Paronen, investing in “nuclear weapons triad” has also been so important that improvements have certainly been made.

Money for the renewal of the land forces, on the other hand, has not been reduced in the same way. Still, that too has got a lot of new equipment. At the same time, efforts have been made to raise the social status of soldiers.

Russia has therefore invested enormously in reforming its armed forces, but at the same time nothing has been done about the political system. The result has been that pervasive corruption has spread to the armed forces and contributes to the poor success in Ukraine, Lavikainen says.

Is it is impossible to say how true the allegations of, for example, food packaging of troops sent to Ukraine that are more than ten years old or the sale of night vision devices in the dark are true. In addition, Russia’s ex-Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev claimedthat a large part of the military budget has just been stolen and invested in mega-yachts in Cyprus.

However, there are so many different information and claims that there must be something behind them, Lavikainen says. According to Lavikainen, the presence of conscripts in Ukraine also speaks of really profound corruption.

“The matter was resolved on the basis of various information by pressuring conscripts to sign contracts that would instantly make them contract soldiers. This is a typical corrupt way to straighten the curves so that the provisions of the law are met. ”

From Russia’s point of view, the current war is probably the most important since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the Russian administration itself had to admit that, apparently, conscripts also left.

In other words, on paper, everything looks good, but the reality is, at least in part, something completely different.

“The war in Ukraine has failed far more than the planning of the operation. The system itself has failed, ”says Lavikainen.

Antti Paronen is on the same line with regard to corruption: it haunts the Russian armed forces where the entire administration and business life in a way that is impossible to understand or even properly perceive in Western countries and in a society free of “everyday corruption”.

However, the reforms of the Russian armed forces have been so extensive over the past 14 years and concrete reforms have also been documented to such an extent that it would be simply wrong to say that they have completely failed because of corruption, Paronen recalls.

Something however, it is said that the reform of the armed forces was originally led by the Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov was fired in 2012 due to a corruption scandal. He was caught in a raid on the Chief of the Asset Management Department of the Department of Defense suspected of embezzling up to $ 100 million. Yevgeny Vasilyev to the apartment. According to media reports, Serdyukov opened the door. The secret relationship had been going on for some time. Separate real estate corruption charges were filed against Serdyukov in 2013.

Originally, Serdyukov was promoted to Minister of Defense specifically to fight corruption and inefficiency in the armed forces, and this caused constant friction.

Because the Russian administration is thoroughly corrupt, anyone can be accused of corruption. So the reason for Serdyukov’s fires could actually be too good a job against corruption. Maybe he finally stepped on his too big toes. As early as 2012, a researcher at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, among others, speculated Maria Lipman To The New York Times.