Is this the type of person who worked at the CIA? There is partial truth in what he said about the Red Army. At the beginning of the war, the Red Army was a rather blunt weapon. A large part of this was due to poor training for the officers and ranks. But the Red Army learned and trained. Ivan was able implement their pre-war doctrine of Deep Battle and Operations. The apex of this was Operation Bagration where Army Group Center was annihilated.
Zhukov was probably the most ruthless of the top Soviet generals. He did not give a damn about casualties. The two most notorious examples were Operation Mars and the Berlin campaign. In the first, Zhukov tried to pinch a salient where the terrain favored the defenders. The Berlin campaign Zhukov wanted to reach Berlin before the Western Powers and his own comrade Konev
Looking back at Russian military history they tend to do poorly when asked to invade some country without any pretext against a competent opponent. Napoleon was able to repeatedly smash the Russians until 1812. The Japanese inflicted a major defeat on Imperial Russia. The Soviets were defeated outside Warsaw, the Finns inflicted severe losses of men and material, and Afghanistan.
Where Ivan does remarkable well is defending the Motherland.
One thing I have read is Russian still has the rigid top down leadership structure where subordinate commanders have very little leeway in trying to meet objectives.
If one is interested, there is a tremendous amount of revisonist histories on the Ostfront published over the past thrity years; thanks to the opening of the Soviet archives. Some of the authors I have read include Dan Glantz, Prit Buttar, and David Stahel.
Tanks and APCs are useless..........................
Many a great leaders have found out the hard way the lesson of ignoring this.
Spin, spin, spin...
In reality, Putin is being very restrained about it. On purpose. Avoiding unarmed civilians.
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I suspect that the US government does not see itself when it looks in this mirror.
Imagine leftists lecturing us on military tactics. Taking a country intact is much more difficult that blowing everything up!
The bigger danger here is that we are not the only one watching the Russian struggles.
China has an advantage that their military is starting from a blank slate. They are seeing what it is useful to invest in in modern war (drones, special forces, anti-air) and what it is not (armor, conscripts)
We are 30 years ahead of Russia, but could soon be 20 years behind China.
Well, don't leave us hanging, Buddy! Just how did "Operation Mars" exemplify Zhukov's contempt for casualties?
Regards,
Lesson 1. You can get rid of some of the “snow” in the picture if you wrap some tin foil around the “rabbit ears”.
Excuse me... DUH! China’s the threat.
Shocking Lessons U.S. Military Leaders Learned by Watching Putin's Invasion
After we did so well in Afghanistan.
After just one day of fighting, Russia's ground force lost most of its initial momentum, undermined by shortages of fuel, ammunition and even food, but also because of a poorly trained and led force. Russia began to compensate for the weaknesses of its land army with more long-range air, missile and artillery strikes. And President Putin resorted to a nuclear threat—a reaction, U.S. military experts say, to the failure of Moscow's conventional forces to make quick progress on the ground..
U.S. intelligence sources pointed out to Newsweek that while the Russian ground forces have been surprisingly sluggish and uncoordinated, they were also severely constrained in their initial attack by the Kremlin's strategy and objectives.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claims in three days of fighting that some 700 Russian vehicles were destroyed, disabled or had been abandoned, including 150 tanks. Some 40 Russian aircraft and helicopters were shot down (and some crashed). In one incident, a Ukrainian Su-27 "Flanker" fighter jet shot down a Russian transport plane carrying occupation troops into the country. By the end of Day Three, Russia claimed that the number of Ukrainian "aimpoints" at targets attacked had doubled to 820, including 14 airfields and 48 air defense installations. Russia also claimed that 87 Ukrainian tanks "and other targets" were destroyed on the battlefield.
One thing I have read is Russian still has the rigid top down leadership structure where subordinate commanders have very little leeway in trying to meet objectives.
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Which sounds like most every organization, military or otherwise, on the planet. Rigid top-down completely describes the panic response to Covid in the U.S.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, about 1,000 Russian troops have been killed or severely wounded each day of fighting. Ukrainian military deaths are estimated to be the same (about 3,000 total), demonstrating the intensity of the ground fighting at the forward edge...Russia's nuclear threat lurks behind all of this—a threat that no one in Washington conceived of, and one, according to defense experts, that has now spooked the administration. -https://www.newsweek.com/shocking-lessons-us-military-leaders-learned-watching-putins-invasion-1683625
Bkmk
Please... first its “NEWSWEAK”...
Second, Russia may haver thought they could just march into Kiev in a few days, assuming little to no resistance, and that may not be what’s happening, but the idea that they are “in trouble” is comical.
It’s clear, that for whatever reason Russia has not utilized its air superiority in this campaign, and for whatever reason is trying its best NOT to just level the Ukraine.
All it would take would be a few bombing runs to flatten Kiev, clearly this is not what Russia wants to do... but claiming because they didn’t do this, and are for whatever reasons slowly marching toward the capital on the ground vs just obliterating forces through the air, does not mean that Russia is not capable.
I have said this before, and I’ll say it again...
EVERYTHING, and I do mean EVERYTHING your are reading, seeing or hearing is PROPAGANDA regarding this situation by one side or the other.
True, but what they lack in skill and ability they make up for in willingness to destroy everything in their path and kill every civilian the come across.