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The problem with the Russian Army using what you refer to as a "grind approach" is that it brings severe casualties to the force using it and is being relied on now because of the Russian Army's fundamental inability to engage in modern combined arms and maneuver warfare. Even as Putin and his circle demand the use of brutal attrition tactics in the hope of generating gains, there are highly regarded Russian military thinkers who recognize the dismal results.

As reported in the Daily Mail, a retired Russian general has made similar criticisms in public. In slightly edited form:

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Top retired Russian general says Putin is leading his country to defeat and humiliation in Ukraine and blames the President for uniting the West with disastrous invasion

• Retired army colonel-general Leonid Ivashov has been a vocal critic of Putin

• Now, he has said the carnage in Ukraine has been worse than he imagined

By WILL STEWART and CHRIS JEWERS FOR DAILY MAIL ONLINE -- 14 February 2023

Vladimir Putin is leading Russia to defeat and humiliation in Ukraine, according to one of Moscow's most respected military figures, who also blames the President for uniting the West with his disastrous invasion.

Retired army colonel-general Leonid Ivashov had called for the president's resignation a year ago before the war started over a 'criminal' policy in 'provoking' an 'artificial' conflict, foreseeing it would trigger disaster. Now he says the carnage across the border is worse than he imagined.

Ivashov, chairman of the independent All-Russian Officers' Assembly and a former top aide to a famous Soviet defence minister, lambasted Putin, declaring: 'We did not expect such a series of mistakes, wrong actions during this military operation.'

'What happened in the end? Basically what we expected, but much worse,' said the general, a key figure in the Soviet-era Red Army and later the Russian military, in an interview with Republic independent media.

Retired army colonel-general Leonid Ivashov last year called for Vladimir Putin to resign, saying he had been pursuing a 'criminal' policy in 'provoking' an 'artificial' conflict in Ukraine. He has now said Putin is leading Russia to defeat and humiliation in the war.

'At the operational-tactical level, we did not think that within a year we would not be able to liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 'We did not think that there would be such heavy losses, although I then said there would be tens of thousands of dead on both sides. 'But everything turned out to be much worse.'

Some estimates say the losses on both sides are now over 200,000, and rising fast. Russia alone is estimated to have lost as many as 140,000 since February last year. 'It was not expected that there would be such destruction: in fact, entire small towns and villages were demolished to their foundations,' Ivashov said. 'Further, I wrote that we would find ourselves a pariah state, but, frankly, I did not think that we would not have a single ally that has serious influence on the political, economic or military-technical level.'

Ivashov blames Putin for triggering a new alignment between the US and China, and expects this to bear fruit with the pair holding the major sway in the world. 'Russia in such a picture of the world is not mentioned at all as a political player,' he said. 'So now they will create a bipolar world, but without our participation.'

Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine had 'saved NATO' with Finland and Sweden due to join, he continued. 'We have delivered the whole of Europe into the hands of the Americans…' due to Putin's ineptness. There was no Collective West before, there were a lot of contradictions there. And today we are creating this Collective West with our own hands.'

Ivashov said Putin blundered by not properly seeking other solutions in Donetsk and Luhansk, before launching his invasion. 'Did we raise this issue at the UN General Assembly? No! We immediately moved tanks there. Every problem has multiple solutions. And most importantly - do not choose the worst. But we, unfortunately, chose the worst.'

He also scathingly criticised Putin for the use of private armies in the conflict, stressing it leads to confused command structures. Putin deployed the Wagner Private Military company in Ukraine, which has played a large part in the seven-month-long battles raging around the city of Bakhmut - a major target for Putin's invading troops. Wagner has claimed to take towns in the region singlehandedly, publicly embarrassing the Russian Armed Forces.

'As for the [regular] army, there is the problem of destroying professionalism,' Ivashov said. Russia is paying the price for the Putin era's demoting of military professions and instead bringing in secret services cronies and even alcohol and furniture experts to key military positions,' the retired general said. 'To go to war with such an army is more than a crime,' he said.

He forecast failure if Putin forces through a new mass mobilisation, and as a hardliner he berated the dictator for seeking to gag his critics. 'If you shut someone's mouth, it does not mean that you have become stronger,' he warned. 'If sober-minded people are silenced, then you only become dumber and more corrupt, but not stronger in any way.'

Using intellect is the way to victory, Ivashov said. 'In our country, instead of intellect, people are twisting their arms, intimidating, imprisoning. In such a situation, the country always loses and does not live long. We have already experienced a systemic crisis, and what will happen next, I cannot say, I can only speculate.'

Ivashov, 79, was senior aide to Soviet defence minister Marshal Dmitry Ustinov. Later he headed the military cooperation department at the Russian defence ministry, and later was president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems.

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As for Russian "human wave" attacks in WW II, there are issues of definition and circumstance, with a mass infantry attack and the more extreme tactic of a "human wave" attack being different things. Strictly speaking, a "human wave attack" is a frontal assault by a dense infantry formation against an enemy line without trying to obscure their movement or shield them from enemy fire.

Think of a WW II Japanese banzai charge and the most reckless WW I infantry attacks in 1914 into the teeth of machine guns as "human wave attacks" at one extreme, with the standard US infantry assault tactic in WW II being another.

On the attack, US infantry in WW II was trained to try to flank enemy units, keep them under aimed rifle and heavy weapons fire, and to try to use terrain, darkness, or smoke as cover as they closed to grenade and melee range in order to consummate the attack.

Even under the best of circumstances, infantry attacks tend to be costly, but as reporters and foreign observers saw at the time, Russian infantry attacks by minimally trained troops in WW II tended to rely on mass and lacked the caution and combat craft of Western armies. The Russian method was close to the WW I tactic of sending infantry over the top to attack enemy trench lines. The term "human wave attack" might be rejected, but not by much.