Why the Russian military is bogged down by logistics in Ukraine

The Washington Post ^ | March 30, 2022 | Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha

[MinorityRepublican]

Ambushed convoys and broken tanks. Generals killed close to the front. Expired rations. Frostbite. The Russian military was built for quick and overwhelming firepower, experts say, but its weakness is logistics. And on the roads of Ukraine a month after the first invasion, that weakness is showing.

‘The tyranny of distance’

Many analysts say the Russians assumed they would quickly capture the capital city of Kyiv and force President Volodymyr Zelensky out of power. Whatever the strategy, that outcome did not happen, and Russia has been bedeviled by an inability to keep supplies flowing to troops in a longer ground war.

After weeks of little success except in southeastern Ukraine, despite relentless shelling and thousands of military and civilian casualties, Moscow said during peace negotiations on Tuesday that it would “drastically reduce” military activity in the northern part of the country, near Kyiv and Chernihiv.

After a surprisingly fierce Ukrainian resistance, “we can suspect” that Russians “did not properly organize the logistics necessary for an effective Plan B, which was to have an actual, serious fight in what is the largest country in Europe outside of Russia,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a think tank in Virginia.

The sheer size of Ukraine is a problem.

[mcshot]

Interestingly, Ukraine manufacturers most of the stuff Russia uses. The UK can fix everything Russia leaves behind.

[Lurker]

The Russian logistical tail is a nightmare. And it’s bleeding them white.

But the root of the problem is that the entire Russian society is built on lies. When communism fell that set of lies was replaced by a different set of lies. Everyone lies to everyone else about nearly everything. Communism demanded it.

So they’re inured to it because they’re all participating. Dalrymple nailed it.

L

[mrsmith]

Bizarre isn’t it?

But repairing Rus equipment takes time.
Not sure eastern Ukraine has that time.

[marktwain]

Thank you for the thoughtful analysis. Well done. We could use more like it on Freerepublic.

[Mr.Unique]

Operators tend to ignore logistics.

[Zhang Fei]

[Did Putin really not know the truth because he was in an Ivory Tower surrounded by “Yes Men”? ]

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Re information - the reason he is withdrawing these units from around Kiev is because he understands the alternative is death or capture, if they stay where they are. So he is getting decent updates. The big reason he invaded is because he thought psy ops would prevent him from having to fight much of a war. If the % of Ukrainians who supported him matched the % of Freepers who do, he’d have achieved his victory on the timetable he set out early on.

[mrsmith]

Great reply.
Very informative.

[CarolinaReaganFan]

WaPo is trash.
You should be embarrassed that you must sink so low to find fake news just to support your troll narrative,

[jntrees]

Agreed. Good reply.

[Zhang Fei]

[Did Putin really not know the truth because he was in an Ivory Tower surrounded by “Yes Men”? ]

---

There might also be an element of maskirovka involved in the way Zelensky got Putin to send his light forces ahead to attempt to link up with his supposedly bought and paid for collaborators. Remember the way Zelensky kept saying the Russians weren’t going to invade? That may have been a way to catch the Russians off-guard re Ukrainian preparedness. There’s no way the Ukrainians could hold them off in face-to-face battle with large conventional armies on both sides, given the hardware disparity. What they needed to do was deprive the Russians of mass, which they did, by letting them in. Giving ground to get the Russians to disperse and make themselves vulnerable was extremely costly for Ukrainian civilians and the cities they lived in that were captured, but for large Ukrainian formations to face the Russians en masse would have been suicide.

[tlozo]

Perhaps that's true; perhaps it's not. UKR/NATO propaganda has been so thick

Every strategist I've heard has said that dividing the attack into 4 columns was the biggest mistake Putin made. Its why Putin hasn't taken all of Ukraine's southeast.

[meatloaf]

The stalled columns were attacked early in the melee using drones and ambush tactics. Russia was never able to gain air superiority.

The next few weeks will be interesting.

[Jimmy Valentine]

He’s a fan of nerve toxins like Polonium.

[MinorityRepublican]

Russia was never able to gain air superiority.

Are their planes that crappy? If so, the only thing they have is 6,000 nukes to protect them.

[Drew68]

I doubt Russia intended to lose hundreds of armored vehicles and tens of thousands of casualties in

The Russians haven't suffered tens of thousands of casualties. That's propaganda. There's a good chance the Ukrainians have though. Their army in Mariupol is wiped out.

The Russians tried a strategy of negotiation and it didn't work out. Watch in these next two weeks what's going to happen. It's over for Ukraine.

Watch this video. And if you can't watch it all, watch the first 10-20 minutes. Scott Ritter knows his stuff.

Is Russia Losing the War in Ukraine? (Featuring Scott Ritter)

[Drew68]

The next few weeks will be interesting.

Yes, they will be interesting but not in the way a lot of people think it will.

[larrytown]

A line that screams for a meme!

[Always A Marine]

I've seen Russian field accounts of orderly redeployment of RUS units of all types via road and rail through southern Belarus and Russia toward eastern Ukraine. Equipment runs the gamut of combat (e.g. armor on lowboys, towed artillery, etc.), combat support (transport, engineer, etc.) and combat service support units. While there is propaganda on all sides, Ukrainian reporting seems jingoistic and almost desperate in tone while Russian reports and briefings are calm and to the point. Something tells me that the lockstep reporting we've been getting doesn't match reality, but we'll see.

Another thing that doesn't square with the conventional assumption (that Russia intended to capture Kiev) is the small size of the attacking force (est. <200,000) relative to the 600,000-man strength of the near-peer defender. This is exactly opposite the normal 3:1 offensive ratio, and supports my opinion that Russia's opening-phase objectives were more limited than many believed. Further, Russia's tactics have thus far mimicked the Maneuver Warfare strategy that the USMC developed in the 1980s -- with speed and confusion exploited by a smaller force to shape an eventual, decisive battle to occur when, where and under the conditions it deems most advantageous.

If my reading is accurate, Russia has accomplished the following:
(a)fixed UKR's best combat units on a long eastern front;
(b)drawn most of UKR's reserves to defend Kiev;
(c)largely destroyed UKR's air force; and
(d)steadily degraded (via air campaign) UKR's ability to reinforce its forces in the east.

The next logical step in this scenario is rapid buildup of RUS forces to encircle UKR forces east of the Dnieper River and force a decisive end. In that phase, we are likely to see the unleashed, pounding offensive tactics that most observers expected Russia to employ at the outset.

Time will tell if my speculation is correct...

[Jewbacca]

I tried to link a picture from Blazing Saddles but HTML is not working from my phone today. I’m assuming fat fingers.

[17th Miss Regt]

I read it. It is a fair article. It makes clear that the Russians are weak in logistics and support. A study of history teaches us that this is something endemic to the Russian army. Some things don’t change.