Once again, the Russian Army adapts

Russians go old school to counter the Ukrainians' numerical superiority in infantry

Once again, the Ukraine War didn’t start last year, and the ongoing changes in the Russian Army go back as far as Ukrainian independence.

The old Soviet Red Army was designed to overwhelm an opponent with an all-out combined arms attack consisting of dozens of tanks, hundreds of rapid-fire artillery pieces, at least a couple thousand infantry, plus a few aircraft hitting an opponent hard in one place, with the action repeated up and down a line.

This was the general strategy that broke the back of Hitler’s Wehrmacht. It’s the same strategy NATO countries sought to counter during the entire Cold War.

After the Soviet Union broke up, the Russian Federation completely restructured its army into a more Western model of a relatively small number of troops backed up by massive and accurate firepower. It made sense-fewer personnel, and all-volunteer armies are politically popular in Russia no less than they are in the United States.

In February 2022, this all-volunteer army with advanced equipment intervened in Ukraine’s civil war. It was built around the principle of a relatively small number of well-trained troops employing sophisticated and accurate firepower being able to move rapidly, and to hopefully demoralize, an enemy army with less firepower but three times the number of infantry as that of the invaders.

The Ukrainians responded to the invasion in a fashion anyone who has seen Enemy at the Gates will recognize, with less firepower but lots and lots of infantry being thrown into the line to first stop, and then push back the initial Russian advance along wide sections of the front.

Last year, the Ukrainian quantity of infantry outweighed the Russian Army’s advantages in firepower and were able to halt its advance in all but a couple of places the Russians thought critical, like Mariupol. Putin’s operation had failed to meet its announced objectives. and the war stagnated into something reminiscent of trench warfare in World War I.

It kind of figures. Historically, the Russians have a tendency of either being unprepared or of underestimating opponents at the beginning of wars. In fact, they usually do that. They also usually figure things out and adapt.

And that is what is happening right now.

According to data I think really was leaked from Mossad a few weeks ago, the Ukrainians had already suffered at least 120,000 dead, and a lot more wounded. Russian casualties were estimated to be around 18,000 dead.

There, ladies, gentlemen and others, is the price demanded by that Stalinesque quantity as a quality strategy. It can work, but it can only work for so long. In Stalin’s case, it bought the Red Army time to mount effective counterattacks that cost the Germans far more than the Soviets.

In Zelensky’s case, there is no Zhukov to throw the Russians back, but there is a new version of that old combined arms attack model of army forming in eastern Ukraine right now. The Russians only needed to partially mobilize to adapt.

They’re not there yet, but there will come a time where there will be sufficient Russian infantry to sustain an attack and a breakthrough. For now, they seem content to slowly encircle Bakhmut while taking a defensive posture along the rest of the front.

Meanwhile, the newly mobilized troops are being integrated into new, larger infantry brigades similar to the old Red Army model that can effectively support combined arms attacks.

At best, even if NATO countries don’t run out of either the actual weapons or the will to keep sending them to Ukraine, Russia’s new old-school model army will be online in no more than a year. If another country sends troops to Ukraine, the Russians are no doubt preparing to mobilize a lot more troops and personal weapons if necessary.

Joseph Stalin once observed that quantity has a quality all its own. The Ukrainians applied this lesson first, and it worked for them in its invariably bloody fashion. At first. Now the Russians will come back with the old Russian solution of more fuel, more troops, and more firepower until the enemy relents. They have the manpower reserves. The Ukrainians and any neighboring countries foolish enough to intervene don’t. It really is that bloody simple.

Which isn’t so different from the American strategy the last time this country actually won a major war, come to think about it.

The only way Ukraine can survive as an independent country in any way, shape, or form is by a negotiated settlement with Russia. Those who egg the Ukrainians on and think displaying blue-and-yellow flags will somehow magically let them win are either tragically mistaken or bloodthirsty maniacs, take your pick.

If you care about Ukrainians, you must call for peace A-effing-SAP.

Thank you for reading. Good night, and good luck.

Sources: Scott Ritter, Big Serge at bigserge.substack.com, reporters on the ground in Donbass and others on the Ukraine Government Kill List(including Jackson Hinkle), Pentagon leaks, and my favorite retired career US military officers.