Article

2023-11-03 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Ukraine's Top Commander Makes Surprising First-Time Admission

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Besoeker 2023-11-03 04:33|| || Front Page|| [17 views ] Top

#1 Copy of Economist article text:

Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometres”. Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable–and thus change Vladimir Putin’s calculations, forcing the Russian president to negotiate. It has also undercut General Zaluzhny’s assumption that he could stop Russia by bleeding its troops. “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.” But not in Russia, where life is cheap and where Mr Putin’s reference points are in the first and second world wars in which Russia lost tens of millions.

An army of Ukraine’s standard ought to have been able to move at a speed of 30km a day as it breached Russian defensive lines. “If you look at nato’s text books and at the maths which we did [in planning the counter-offensive], four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” General Zaluzhny says sardonically. Instead he watched his troops and equipment get stuck in minefields on the approaches to Bakhmut in the east, his Western-supplied equipment getting pummelled by Russian artillery and drones. The same story unfolded on the offensive’s main thrust, in the south, where newly formed and inexperienced brigades, despite being equipped with modern Western kit, immediately ran into trouble.

“First I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” says General Zaluzhny. When those changes failed to make a difference, the commander told his staff to dig out a book he once saw as a student in a military academy in Ukraine. Its title was “Breaching Fortified Defence Lines”. It was published in 1941 by a Soviet major-general, P. S. Smirnov, who analysed the battles of the first world war. “And before I got even halfway through it, I realised that is exactly where we are because just like then, the level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor.”

That thesis, he says, was borne out as he went to the front line in Avdiivka, also in the east, where Russia has recently advanced by a few hundred metres over several weeks by throwing in two of its armies. “On our monitor screens the day I was there we saw 140 Russian machines ablaze—destroyed within four hours of coming within firing range of our artillery.” Those fleeing were chased by “first-person-view” drones, remote-controlled and carrying explosive charges that their operators simply crash into the enemy. The same picture unfolds when Ukrainian troops try to advance. General Zaluzhny describes a battlefield in which modern sensors can identify any concentration of forces, and modern precision weapons can destroy it. “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other,” he says.

This time, however, the decisive factor will be not a single new invention, but by combining all the technical solutions that already exist, he says. In an article written for The Economist by General Zaluzhny (see here), as well as in a full-length essay shared with the newspaper, he urges innovation in drones, electronic warfare, anti-artillery capabilities and de-mining equipment, including new robotic solutions. “We need to ride the power embedded in new technologies,” says the general.

Western allies have been overly cautious in supplying Ukraine with their latest technology and more powerful weapons. Joe Biden, America’s president, set objectives at the start of Russia’s invasion: to ensure that Ukraine was not defeated and that America was not dragged into confrontation with Russia. This means that arms supplied by the West have been sufficient in sustaining Ukraine in the war, but not enough to allow it to win. General Zaluzhny is not complaining: “They are not obliged to give us anything, and we are grateful for what we have got, but I am simply stating the facts.”

But by holding back the supply of long-range missile systems and tanks, the West allowed Russia to regroup and build up its defences in the aftermath of a sudden breakthrough in Kharkiv region in the north and in Kherson in the south late in 2022. “These systems were most relevant to us last year, but they only arrived this year,” he says. Similarly, f-16 jets, due next year, are now less helpful, suggests the general, in part because Russia has improved its air defences: an experimental version of the s-400 missile system can reach beyond the city of Dnipro, he warns.

Yet the delay in arms deliveries, though frustrating, is not the main cause of Ukraine’s predicament, according to General Zaluzhny. “It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” he insists. “They will inevitably lead to delay and, as a consequence, defeat.” It is, instead, technology that will be decisive, he argues. The general is enthused by recent conversations with Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, and stressed the decisive role of drones, and of electronic warfare which can prevent them from flying.

Posted by Mullah Richard 2023-11-03 09:10|| 2023-11-03 09:10|| Front Page Top

#2 As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, this makes the top Ukraine general a Kremlin shill...

Posted by M. Murcek 2023-11-03 09:41|| 2023-11-03 09:41|| Front Page Top

#3 Which is the Pyrrhic victory and which the Pyrrhic defeat? Assuming Russia wins against Ukraine, how much of a military machine will they have left to go after the rest of the Former Soviet Union?

Posted by trailing wife 2023-11-03 14:27|| 2023-11-03 14:27|| Front Page Top

#4 Ukraine, how much of a military machine will they have left to go after the rest of the Former Soviet Union?

(a) The numbers from Ukrainian sources are, somewhat, exaggerated.
(b) The Baltics will get the hint.

Posted by Grom the Reflective 2023-11-03 14:56|| 2023-11-03 14:56|| Front Page Top

#5 Putin has been in power for how many years now? Thirty? Something like that. If his goal is to reestablish the Soviet Union, you must at least admit his patience is admirable. I believe his goal in Ukraine is to keep NATO out of there...to keep Biden from establishing a US Naval base in Sevastopol. Biden has no more business in Sevastopol than Putin does in the Baltics.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2023-11-03 18:25|| 2023-11-03 18:25|| Front Page Top

#6 Biden has no more business in Sevastopol than Putin does in the Baltics.

But Russia does have business in the Baltics - that was Peter's greatest achievement, the access to north seas.

Posted by Grom the Reflective 2023-11-03 18:33|| 2023-11-03 18:33|| Front Page Top

#7 Not No More

Posted by Frank G 2023-11-03 19:50|| 2023-11-03 19:50|| Front Page Top

#8 ^Russians disagree.

Posted by Grom the Reflective 2023-11-03 20:14|| 2023-11-03 20:14|| Front Page Top

#9 A friendship with Russia's a thing
Much to wish for, our Russophiles sing.
"Sevastópol? A base?!?"
[apoplectic red face]
"But, tovarishch, what harm could it bring?"

Posted by Dopey Oppressor of the Giants2769 2023-11-03 20:33|| 2023-11-03 20:33|| Front Page Top

#10 Unconsensual commerce. A drape
Blown apart lets the Baltics escape
"Muh Peter's achievement!"
[Volodya's bereavement...
a pimp peels poor Putin... a grape]

Posted by Dopey Oppressor of the Giants2769 2023-11-03 20:40|| 2023-11-03 20:40|| Front Page Top

21:06 trailing wife
20:53 Seeking Cure For Ignorance
20:40 Dopey Oppressor of the Giants2769
20:33 Dopey Oppressor of the Giants2769
20:14 Grom the Reflective
19:51 Frank G
19:50 Frank G
19:49 Frank G
19:48 Airandee
19:46 Frank G
19:25 Dopey Oppressor of the Giants2769
19:20 Frank G
19:20 Grom the Reflective
19:08 Dopey Oppressor of the Giants2769
18:58 Frank G
18:55 irish rage boy
18:54 Super Hose
18:54 irish rage boy
18:49 Super Hose
18:42 Abu Uluque
18:41 Frank G
18:41 Frank G
18:40 Super Hose
18:38 Frank G