Posted on 01/15/2023 8:51:08 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday that his country wasn't ready for the partial mobilization order that was announced by President Vladimir Putin in September.
Shoigu, during a discussion between Putin and Russia's top military officials, acknowledged that his ministry faced difficulties after the Russian president ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine.
"With the beginning of partial mobilization, the Russian Defense Ministry encountered certain difficulties," the minister said in Moscow.
According to Shoigu, sudden changes had to be made to the organizational and staffing structures of military command and control bodies, formations and units.
"The mobilization training system itself was not fully adapted to the new economic relations. Therefore, with the beginning of partial mobilization, we encountered difficulties in alerting and calling up citizens who were in reserve. All the shortcomings had to be corrected on the go," Shoigu explained.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Yeah, I can kinda see how Russia might have been taken by surprise! After all, it isn't as though they were already engrossed in a massive land invasion of a peaceful neighboring country, involving thousands of tanks and aircraft, the sinking of its capital ship in the Black Sea, thousands dead, etc.!
Seems like that "Partial Mobilization Order" came outta nowhere!
Maybe Putin should have ordered a partial partial mobilization order first, so they could slowly get used to the idea!
/mordant sarcasm
Regards,
Meanwhile, with a continuing flow of NATO weapons and training, the Ukrainian military is gaining in combat power. The most logical Ukrainian strategy is to attrit the Russian formations where possible, and then, when Russian attacks are exhausted, make a determined attack and strike deep at one or more decisive points.
Everybody’s responsible except Putin. Putin should be tried for war crimes.
I don’t know if that will work. I hope the Ukrainians win, but Ukrainians surviving seems like a more realistic goal.
I think the war has meant two things to the Russian military:
1) a massive blood letting in men and equipment
2) a serious set of problems that have sparked real demands for military reform - reforms that can only be accomplished with major societal, governmental and economic reforms. If Russia accomplishes those reforms - I’m not so sure it can - Russia could be transformed.
I remember reading Viktor Suvorov’s book on the Red Army (real name Vladimir Rezun, born 1947, a member of Soviet Intelligence until his defection in 1978). He related some great stories about how the red army could be amazingly efficient with some things and horribly inefficient with others. I think the Russian army is similar. But now that there is no communist party to put absolute fear into people it generally slides toward the inefficient and lazy and incompetent.
As in the past, the Russian army today lacks a modern, professional NCO and junior officer corps, which are essential to US and NATO military organization. The Russian military command method is for centralized decisions instead of the Western practice of expecting officers and men on the scene to exercise initiative and be flexible in accomplishing their objectives.
In recent years, the Russian Army tried to adopt modern Western personnel practices, combined arms tactics, and smaller brigade formations. They could not make the transition due to internal resistance, poor training, weak leadership, and a lack of modern communications gear and methods. In addition, much of the funds appropriated for military reforms and better weapons and equipment were stolen or wasted.
I too read Suvorov's book and it was a revelation for me. Other accounts in that era also told of the similarly dismal performance of the Russian air force and navy and of the Russian economy and society as a whole. To a greater degree than the public realized, Reagan knew that the Soviet Union was vulnerable to being pushed into dissolution. His administration's written strategy -- which has been declassified -- aimed to generate lethal economic and political stresses. It worked.
Ukraine's best hope of victory is to take Crimea by severing its supply lines, which may then trigger a Russian military or political collapse. Alternatively, Putin may be ousted because the Russian economy goes into deep recession due to sanctions and the burdens of their war effort.
Might communist ideology and methods rescue Russia? I think that was a one time thing. Communist regimes have about a maximum 70 year run and then collapse. Putin and his cronies may pine for the days of the USSR, but it and its methods are no longer viable.
What are the things the Soviet Army were amazingly efficient at, according to Suvorov?
“What are the things the Soviet Army were amazingly efficient at, according to Suvorov?”
One example he used was about training soldiers to use a special way of sleeping with a blanket in the snow so the soldiers would not freeze to death.
Apparently, this method was not taught much after WWII. Then, on an exercise if I remember correctly, several soldiers froze to death because they did not know how to do it properly. Once the red army command was made aware of the problem, they ordered every soldier to immediately receive the necessary training. In a very short time, every single soldier received that training. All of them. Hundreds of thousands. That was the efficiency of a pure top-down command structure backed by a top-down command society dominated by the communist party.
That system also produces terrible inefficiencies, however, because the soldiers had almost no initiative of their own. Western armies are often much more motivated toward initiative because of strong NCOs. Russia/Soviet Union has never had strong NCOs as a real part of their military. This fact, and its inherent deficiencies has shown up in Ukraine a number of times,
What was said method???
“What was said method???”
Sadly, I don’t know. I don’t recall if he explained it in the book.
thx
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