To cut through the propaganda of both sides and understand what is really going on in Ukraine, one has to have an understanding of the basic principles of warfare.
The most important is understanding that there are two basic types of large scale, high intensity warfare:
- Wars of Manoeuvre; and
- Wars of Attrition.
Manoeuvre Warfare
Manoeuvre Warfare is:
the use of initiative, originality and the unexpected, combined with a ruthless determination to succeed, seeks to avoid opponents' strengths while exploiting their weaknesses and attacking their critical vulnerabilities and is the conceptual opposite of attrition warfare. Rather than seeking victory by applying superior force and mass to achieve physical destruction, maneuver uses preemption, deception, dislocation, and disruption to destroy the enemy's will and ability to fight.
Source Wikipedia
Manoeuvre Warfare is generally favoured by smaller combatants without the resources to win an attritional war.
Classic practitioners are the Prussians, the Germans, the South in the US Civil War and the Israelis (from 1948-1973).
Manoeuvre Warfare is much more exciting and intellectually fascinating, the stuff of movies and computer games.
It is also much more dangerous if the Manoeuvre goes wrong and can lead to the attacking force becoming encircled and defeated.
Attrition Warfare
Attrition warfare is
a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel.[1] The word attrition comes from the Latin root atterere, meaning "to rub against", similar to the "grinding down" of the opponent's forces in attrition warfare.
Source Wikipedia
Classic practitioners of attrition warfare are the Russians, although most long wars eventually end up as wars of attrition.
While it is much more fun to analyse Wars of Manoeuvre, Wars of Attrition are actually much more common.
If you want to understand more about these matters I recommend the Big Serge Blog,
The Russian invasion of Ukraine
Phase 1 - Initial Invasion
The initial Russian invasion of Ukraine was, quite uncharacteristically for the Russians, a competent example of Manoeuvre Warfare.
With relatively small forces (~150k) they rapidly penetrated deep into Ukraine, captured smaller cities with large Russian populations and surrounded Ukrainian force concentrations preventing them coalescing.
The Russians conspicuously did not attack Ukrainian infrastructure. The internet, trains, electricity, water and other indicia of modern life were unaffected. Many Ukrainians were posting on Hive and YouTube from Kiev and Kharkov during Russian attacks. This was quite strange given that the first thing the US has always done in its many invasions of and attacks on foreign countries (Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya etc) is to destroy or disable infrastructure.
The purpose of this early stage of what was then a "Special Operation", appears to have been to push Ukraine to the negotiating table, without creating either infrastructure damage or civilian casualties that would make absorbsion of annexed areas more difficult.
However this tactic was unsuccessful because the Biden administration ordered its puppet Zelensky to fight total war against the Russians and provided the weapons and support to allow this to happen as well as promises to encourage Ukrainians to fight to the death.
Ukraine's military had 600k men before the war and early on all men between 16 and 60 years of age were called up. This raised the size of Ukraine's military to over 1 million men.
Phase 2 -Tactical Withdrawal
Once that decision was taken, Russia clearly had inadequate troop levels to hold the areas it had taken and took the militarily sensible (but politically embarrassing) decision to withdraw to more defensible lines and to call up 300,000 reserves to bolster its forces.
These tactical withdrawals were generally carried out with good military competence and low losses of men and material, although the withdrawal from Kharkiv did leave behind valuable military equipment.
The withdrawal from Kherson city to the eastern side of the Dnieper River was the final act in the tactical withdrawal phase and was implemented superbly, leaving nothing of value behind and so surprising the Ukrainians that they initially thought it was a trap.
Well it was a trap, but not in the way they thought.
Phase 3 - War of Attrition
With the completion of the tactical withdrawal and the slow buildup of larger forces, the Russians completely changed posture and engaged in a war of attrition against the Ukrainian military itself and Ukraine's infrastructure.
Progressively, more and more of Ukrainian infrastructure was targeted, starting with the electricity grid, and destroyed while the focus of Russian military efforts was to maximise the destruction of Ukrainian men and material while minimising Russian losses.
This played to Russia's substantial advantage in artillery and Ukraine's penchant for fighting to the death for every inch of ground (which sounds brave but is actually militarily stupid.)
Russia was able to consistently lure Ukrainian forces into extremely costly and unsuccessful counter-attacks against well entrenched positions backed by massive artillery.
In Kherson, the withdrawal enabled intelligence gathering equipment to be left hidden in the city to give the Russians complete visibility and with the precise sighting of artillery, Russia was able to make Kherson a complete death trap for anyone to enter with relatively small artillery forces. Ukraine has been unable to actually build up substantial forces in Kherson because anyone entering gets blasted by artillery from across the river.
In Bakhmut, the Russians devastated the defending Ukrainian forces there but did not immediately seek to take the city or encircle it.
Instead they allowed Ukraine to bring forward reinforcements and pulverised them as they advanced from rear areas across open ground reminiscent of WWI no-man's land to attempt to relieve and reinforce the city.
Instead of taking the militarily sensible (but politically embarrassing) decision to withdraw from Bakhmut they Ukrainians have continued to run down their reserves by driving them into the meat grinder.
The Russians are adopting a rinse and repeat strategy while the Ukrainians obliging send their troops forward to be slaughtered by massive artillery and mortar barrages.
Source: Pinterest (photo is clearly out of copyright)
The Russians say that the Ukrainians are losing 2 battalions a day (600+ men) around Bakhmut
and reports from independent observers of hospital entries support this figure.
I have seen credible estimates from a highly decorated US Colonel that the Ukrainians were down to 190k effective soldiers a few weeks ago.
At this rate of attrition, Ukraine's military will be below 150k by the end of February 2023, at which point Russia will have the 3:1 advantage generally needed by an attacking force to ensure victory in offensive operations.
Phase 4 - Renewed large scale offensive operations?
At some point it is likely that Russian forces will have sufficiently attrited Ukrainian forces and built up sufficient new forces of their own that they will engage in large scale offensive operations. Perhaps they will use elements of Manoeuvre Warfare or perhaps they will just attack exhausted and hollowed out Ukrainian forces across the whole front. Perhaps they will just continue the War of Attrition until there is no one left to fight them.
Risks for Europe and the world
The risks to the EU from all this go beyond destroying its economy by sanctioning its main energy supplier and thus driving up the costs of manufacturing industry and consumers while making its Chinese and Indian competitors get cheaper energy.
Europe faces the real possibility that within 12 months there will be victorious, combat blooded and competent Russian army of around 750k - 1 million men on NATOs border. This comprises 500k Russian army (200k regular + 300k reservists), mercenary forces such as Wagner, and Belorussian forces.
Before the massive sanctions on Russia, the blatant racism against private Russian citizens, the outright theft of private citizen's assets (eg yachts) as well as national assets (Russian reserves held in foreign banks), Putin did not have the political support to engage in large scale military call ups. Many Russians liked The West and thought that The West liked them.
Now most Russians have united behind Putin and see the existential threat to Russian sovereignty posed by US and EU policy that only Putin and his leadership circle saw before.
The opposition to Putin is from people far more aggressive and extreme than Putin.
NATO does not have sufficient forces in Europe to defend against such a large force as Russia is currently assembling for offensive operations in Ukraine. Without substantial and rapid US reinforcements, there is a possibility that such a Russian force could conquer the whole of Europe.
But substantial and rapid US reinforcements depend on heavy sea-lift capability to transport tanks, IFVs, artillery and the massive baggage train that US armies cannot fight without. This depends on deep water ports operating and very substantial transport capability.
Russia has already demonstrated the ability to quickly destroy fixed infrastructure by long range missile (including hypersonic) strikes. If Russia decides to go to war with NATO then the European ports will be quickly destroyed followed by the airfields and airport and then the electricity infrastructure, just as the Russians have done to Ukraine.
The US will be left unable to assist with ground forces and NATO forces will be badly outnumbered and outgunned.
In response to this inferiority of conventional forces, the US may then resort to "tactical" nuclear strikes, as its new nuclear weapons usage policy allows.
Suffice to say the Ukraine War is a complete debacle for The West and may harbour its demise.
It certainly marks the end of the unipolar world we have lived in since the USSR collapsed in 1989.
Please vote for my Hive witness. (KeyChain or HiveSigner)
If we end up in such a scenario in which Russia attacks NATO I'd rather choose the Russian side, cuz if it wasn't for NATO and America(the country involved in probably the most wars in our history) we wouldn't be having any damn war right now.
In this situation the best option is to stay neutral and quiet and maintain good relations with all sides and support the winning side when it becomes fairly obvious who it will be.
I'm pleased that this is now clearly the policy of the country I live in - Israel.
Much of The Art of War by Sun Tzu was devoted to manoeuvre and everything associated with it (especially asymmetric warfare, deception, and spying). Manoeuvre is also a hallmark of the US Marine Corps given its numbers and association with the US Navy.
In the US all I hear about is Ukraine going on the offensive and Russia being incompetent in how it wages its operations in Ukraine. News coming out of Russia is blocked, and news coming out of Ukraine feels like propaganda. Even worse, western news outlets are fed news by Ukrainian media experts who excel in public relations. What's really happening there? I know it's not what we're being led to believe.
Given what's been happening here since at least 2008, I question this coverage even from sources I find favorable. I kept hearing
"Why were Russian forces unable to capture Kyiv/Kiev?"It's because that was never the mission.During the Cold War there was respect between enemy nations and their governments. Even if they wanted to blow each other to bits, they were measured in how they planned for that and in how they related to each other as peers. MAD had its advantages. Since then, western leaders have grown sloppy in their thinking and conduct. They acquired the habit of poking the bear, then they wonder why the bear swipes its claws at them.
Please forgive me for the tangents here. I just thought they were related in how we're being presented the War in Ukraine. As bad as it is, let's hope it stays confined to those belligerents.
Yes, manoeuvre warfare is more sexy and the subject of much more learned discussion and analysis. Indeed until recently I had considered attrition warfare a lesser form of warfare (probably influenced by Sun Tzu and my particular interest in Israel's wars).
Unfortunately the way things are heading, the Ukraine War is not going to stay confined to Ukraine and Russia. Indeed with so many non-Ukrainian fighting for Ukraine and so many NATO weapons flowing to Ukraine it is arguably already a Russia v NATO war. Russia certainly considers this to be the case.
In latest headlines I see Finland talking about sending tanks to Ukraine. Are they complete idiots!? Every tank they send to Ukraine is one less they have to defend Finland with. They only have 200 to start with. Russia could start another front by invading Finland.
Manoeuvre is definitely "sexier" than attrition, but it gets more attention because it is more economical in time and treasure than attrition. Whether its the American Revolution in 1776 or the Israeli War for Independence in 1948, manoeuvre was the strategy of choice of underdogs since they lack the resources of the acknowledged world power of the time. The greatest maxim of Sun Tzu can be restated as "The cheapest war to fight is the one never started." (Yoda said something similar, too.)
Had Russia wanted to reclaim any of the former republics of the USSR, it could have done so at any time since 2000-- especially the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Today they are members of NATO who border Russia, but even before they were these 3 countries were left alone. Same goes for pieces of Georgia. Ukraine is where the red line has been drawn, and it's been there for decades.
I remember when (H.W.) Bush promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move another inch closer to the USSR if it permitted the reunification of Germany. Bush had kept that promise. Clinton broke it when he had his dealing with Yeltsin, and both Bush (no-H W) and Obama continued that trend. I can't say if the trend stopped with Trump, but I don't recall any movement then.
Biden is POTUS, and we are where we are. It's almost as if he has a death wish with all he has said about both Russia and Ukraine. He could also be blinded by greed given his connections to Ukraine going back at least to his terms as vice-president.
Even if Russia enjoys being a "gangster country," it's more interested in money than in control of land. It can get what it wants through trade and commerce even if it acts like a bully. Ruling an empire as was done before 1914 isn't as fun as it used to be.
Finland may be foolish in sending tanks to Ukraine when they are needed more to defend Finland. More foolish is the US sending equipment and personnel when quantities of both dwindling. This makes his lack of foresight regarding withdrawal from Afghanistan even more painful: If he insists on sending resources to Ukraine, he could have rerouted the hardware left behind in Afghanistan. Thanks to his lack of foresight (or that of his advisors), he lost that option. The best I can say about him is that he knows how to protect his 1967 Corvette.
Yes, I think Biden is so senile he though he was swearing to defend and protect The Corvette rather than The Constitution!
LOL, that's very likely, too!
His day will come, that I can tell you. The question is, will be be too late for us by then?
Very interesting read, thanks a lot for putting out.
Certainly something completely different than what you are fed by Western media.
A very interesting analysis, which contains information not readily available in the west.
Good article, thank you for the thorough explanation. 🖖
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Hey man, I wanted to reach out to you on discord but I couldn't find you on the LEo Finance server. What's your discord handle?
Its same as my Hive handle but I'm not very active on Discord. I'm on PeakD and Hive and Splinterlands servers but not LeoFinance. Send me a friend request or else use email andrew at jpbliberty dot com.
I just sent you this message from my personal account @anomadsoul hahaha
This is better and in-depth than what the state-sponsored news keeps circulating. Now I understand it better. Thanks for the info
This is a rough estimate based on various sources I follow.
I actually forgot to mention the locally recruited Russian militia forces fighting for their homes.
Super interesting article you linked to re Afghan commandos. https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/russia-afghanistan-taliban-us-afghan-commandos-ukraine-war/
From my perspective its far better they fight for Russia than for Iran or terrorist groups. The disaster of the US rout in Afghanistan continues to reverberate.
I agree that NATO stockpiles are dangerously depleted and will continue to deplete unless the EU and US move their economies to a war footing. Also, I'm not sure how much NATO can surge its armaments production given that most of the US civilian manufacturing has been outsourced to China and the EU is suffering massive energy and raw material shortages and price inflation.