Ukraine crisis: Is Russia ready to move into eastern Ukraine?

BBC Europe ^ | April 8, 2014 | Jonathan Marcus

[wetphoenix]

With Nato assessments that there are some 40,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border ready to move at a few hours' notice, the heightening war of words between Moscow and Kiev raises a genuine prospect of conflict.

If Russia requires a pretext to move into eastern Ukraine, then many of the elements of that narrative are already in place.

But what of the Russian military's capabilities? What can be deduced from what we have seen so far of Russian operations in Crimea?

Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC), a group specialising in Russian military affairs, notes that "this is a very different Russian army from that seen during the Georgia war of 2008".

Despite the apparent easy victory in Georgia, serious deficiencies in Russia's military performance were obvious.

This "was a post-Soviet army, not much changed from the 1980s, and designed for a very different form of combat", he says.

"Serious lessons were learnt in terms of organisation, command and control, equipment, and especially inter-service co-operation.

"Communications between ground and air units were a major problem, due to a lack of effective forward air controllers properly embedded with ground units, and several of the Russian air losses were apparently shot down by their own side."

[wetphoenix]

CAS aircraft from both sides were of the same type (Su-25 Frogfoot), including Georgian-made in Russian inventory.
That is why ground troops were shooting at their own airforce.

[elhombrelibre]

We can only hope that the Ukrainians will kill lots of Russian terrorists and invaders anyway possible. Use every asymmetrical warfare technique possible.

Plant mines and fake mines. Set them off to kill the maximum number of Russian invaders.

Throw Molotov cocktails at all of their unguarded equipment, especially food, ammo, and fuel supplies.

Destroy Russian invaders' equipment anyway you can (sugar in gas tanks, nails in their tires, anything to show that Russian invaders that they're hostile takeover by the Putin dictatorship is unacceptable.

Do whatever you can to drive up the cost in money and material to this unnecessary assault on a weak and poor nation.

Use snipers to kill Russians but avoid any pitched battles.

Feign cooperation and then poison Russian invaders food and water.

Lure Russian invaders off task and kill them anyway possible.

Always use your imagination to raise the cost in men and materiel of the Russian invaders.