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| Adrienne Surprenant/MYOP for The Wall Street Journal |
Classic military operations and nimble battlefield decision-making are exploiting the incompetence and top-down command of Russian forces
Eight months into Ukraine’s war with Russia, its emerging strategy is combining classic military operations with opportunism on the battlefield to exploit the incompetence of Russian forces—and is changing the course of the battle.
Ukraine’s command structure encourages junior officers to make in-the-moment battlefield decisions, an authority that they have used to seize opportunities and quickly take advantage of enemy weaknesses.
Russians, by contrast, have been slowed by a Soviet-era decision-making structure, in which orders trickle down the chain of command from Moscow, and troops at the front lines take little initiative.
In weeks, Ukraine has cleared Russian forces from thousands of square miles in the Kharkiv region of the country’s northeast. Its forces are now advancing south toward the occupied city of Kherson, a regional capital.
Rather than directly engaging with the grinding artillery exchanges and tank battles that Russia favors, Ukraine has sought instead to surround Russian forces and cut off supply lines. It has effectively integrated Soviet-era equipment with long-range precision Western artillery and rocket systems to starve its enemy of fuel, ammunition and other supplies.
A Russian-built bridge to Crimea critical to supplying Russian forces on the peninsula was seriously damaged in an explosion Saturday that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he would strike back, hours after his forces launched a barrage of missiles hitting civilians and energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities. Russia has denied targeting civilians and residential infrastructure.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia’s military “strategy and goals are not changing.”
Mr. Putin has responded to the battlefield setbacks with a politically risky military draft of hundreds of thousands of civilians and appears to be digging in for a long campaign. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Getty Images |
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has raised the stakes in his war against Ukraine, and he may be paying the price.
By announcing the mobilization of conscripts on Sept. 21 and the illegal annexation of more Ukrainian territory on Sept. 30, he increased domestic instability in Russia.
People who were content to watch the invasion as a reality show on television are reluctant to wage war and risk being killed. Others are disappointed with Russia's repeated defeats during Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson, Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk oblasts.
As a result, public discontent is growing, and fewer people are happy about Putin's leadership.
Russia's illegal and unrecognized annexation of Ukraine's Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts, which Russia has partly occupied, is also seen as a watershed moment that solidified the country's status as a pariah state.
Yet opinions differ on Russia's further prospects.
Some predict that a coup d'etat against Putin is more likely than ever. Others argue that Putin's regime is stable enough to crush dissent and prevent a coup or an uprising.
Mobilization backfires --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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