Author: John Hanno

Insider

The army Putin spent 2 decades building has been largely destroyed in Ukraine, and Russia’s ‘strategic defeat’ could threaten his regime

John Haltiwanger – September 14, 2022

• Russia’s military will have to be rebuilt as a result of the war in Ukraine, experts say.
• The war has “dramatically” altered perceptions of Russia’s military strength, one expert told Insider.
• Putin’s regime could also now be in jeopardy, as it faces rare examples of dissent.

Over the roughly two decades that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in power, he’s dedicated a lot of time and money to building up and modernizing Russia’s military. In the process, Putin garnered a reputation as a force to be reckoned with and was widely viewed as one of the most powerful leaders in the world.

But the war in Ukraine has decimated the Russian military that Putin spent years building, while raising questions about his grip on power, Russia experts and military analysts told Insider.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic defeat. So far the Kremlin has not been able to achieve its strategic level objectives and it has incurred significant costs. Russia’s military is going to have to be rebuilt,” George Barros, a military analyst with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), told Insider.

“The conventional ground army ground force that the Kremlin has spent the last two decades on creating — seeking to create a modern military — that force has been just largely degraded and in a large part destroyed in the past six months of war in Ukraine,” Barros added. “It’s very true to say that the conventional Russian ground force has taken a significant beating in Ukraine. It will have to be rebuilt.”

Though it’s difficult to confirm death tolls with the fighting ongoing, US military estimates last month put Russian casualties as high as 80,000. Among the dead have been senior officers, including generals.

Barros said that it will likely take “a generation to recreate” the Russian officer corps, which is “definitely going to have a long-term strategic impact on the net assessment for Russia’s conventional military.”

And though Putin has so far avoided declaring a general mobilization to make up for significant troop losses in Ukraine, the Russian leader in August ordered the military to increase its ranks by 137,000 starting in 2023, an ambitious goal seen by some as unachievable and one of many signs that the Russian military is being hollowed out by the war in Ukraine.

A recent intelligence update from the British defense ministry said that the elite 1st Guards Tank Army and other Western Military District units have suffered heavy casualties, indicating that “Russia’s conventional force designed to counter NATO is severely weakened.” The ministry added that “it will likely take years for Russia to rebuild this capability.”

The Russian military has also seen the damage, destruction, and abandonment of astonishing amounts of equipment in Ukraine. It is estimated to have lost thousands of armored vehicles since the war began in late February. These losses have forced the Russian military to resort to pulling obsolete, Soviet-era equipment, such as T-62 tanks, out of storage.

‘Not nearly as powerful as we thought’

Russia’s military has generally been ranked as the second most powerful in the world — surpassed only by the US.

But Russia’s disastrous performance in the Ukraine war is “going to change the assessment of Russia’s military strength dramatically,” Robert Orttung, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University whose research focuses on Russia and Ukraine, told Insider.

The Russian military is “not nearly as powerful as we thought it was,” he said.

A few years ago, Russia appeared to be winning the war in Syria and “Russian strategy seemed to be outsmarting Western strategy in the Middle East,” Orttung said, and it provided a major boost to Moscow’s propaganda about its military strength.

“A lot of their ability to make their propaganda effective was based on their actual battlefield prowess, which seemed to be quite strong in place like Syria,” Orttung said. “Now, basically unable to achieve their goals, unable to show that there’s integration between the guys fighting on the ground, the air force, and the other units — it’s definitely going to knock them down. The fact that they haven’t been winning in the field is going to make their propaganda much less effective.”

Before the invasion began, Russia was expected to conquer Kyiv in a matter of days. But Ukrainian forces, with the help of Western-supplied military equipment, put up a far stiffer resistance than Moscow anticipated. Russia’s forces failed to take the Ukrainian capital and instead turned their attention to the eastern Donbas region. Though a war had raged in that region between Kremlin-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces since 2014 — the same year that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea — Russia only made gradual progress in its campaign to take over the Donbas.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in recent days, pushing the Russian forces into retreat and retaking an astonishing amount of territory in the country’s south and east. The Ukrainian government said its forces have recaptured around 3,000 square miles in September so far.

‘Wouldn’t write off Putin now’

Between devastating troop losses and Russia’s forces now being on the run, Putin is in an increasingly precarious position.

“Strength is the only source of Putin’s legitimacy,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin, told the New York Times. “And in a situation in which it turns out that he has no strength, his legitimacy will start dropping toward zero.” Gallyamov told the Times that if Ukrainian forces “continue to destroy the Russian army as actively as they are now,” then it could “accelerate” calls from elites for Putin’s successor to be chosen.

Some Russia watchers now believe Putin’s regime is in jeopardy. Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, on Wednesday tweeted, “Putin overreached in Ukraine. It’s the beginning of the end for Putinism in Russia.”

Local Russian lawmakers are calling for Putin to be removed from power over Ukraine, taking the potentially fatal risk of openly criticizing a leader with a reputation for ruthlessly squashing dissent. Even the Kremlin’s propagandists on Russian state media are struggling to continue offering positive assessments of how the war is going.

“You’re starting to see rumblings — both on TV and at the local grassroots level — of discontent with his leadership and a realization that the war is not going in Russia’s favor,” Orttung said. Taken together, Orttung said these developments “raise question marks about [Putin’s] image among the people and his ability to exert that image of competence.”

Despite such challenges, and the damage done to perceptions of Russia’s strength, Orttung is not convinced that this is the end for Putin.

“I wouldn’t write off Putin now,” he said. “A lot of people, including me, have been predicting he’s going to leave power or his demise is imminent. But he does have a lot of strengths — the main strength being that he’s eliminated any possible, reputable alternative to him.”

“It’s not clear who would replace him and all the people around him — they depend on him being in power for their own power. They have a stake in him staying there. And he survived more than 22 years fighting in a quite difficult environment, which is the Russian political scene,” Orttung added, underscoring that “most of the elites think that they’re probably better off with Putin there.”

Daily Beast

Surrender Fever Sweeps Through Putin’s Troops After Russian Collapse in North

Philippe Naughton – September 12, 2022

Picture this: You’re a Russian soldier, stuck in Kherson, waiting for a Ukrainian assault. Your supply route across the Dnipro River has been cut off by rocket attacks. Your ammunition dumps keep getting blown up. And you’ve watched thousands of your colleagues flee the battleground after a stunning Ukrainian offensive in the northeast of the country.

You could stay and fight—but why risk your life for a war that’s not even officially a war? Or you could take President Volodymyr Zelensky at his word when he promises that all Russian soldiers who surrender will be treated with respect, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

A Ukrainian Armed Forces spokeswoman, Natalia Humeniuk, reported Monday that a number of “separate” Russian units around the southern city of Kherson had begun suing for peace and were “trying to negotiate with the Ukrainians on surrender and transfer under the auspices of international law.”

With morale seemingly at rock-bottom in Vladimir Putin’s exhausted, hollowed-out army, her claim was entirely credible. The question is how many Russian troops in the Kherson pocket might follow suit and what happens to Putin’s war if his forces in Kherson melt away or give up like those in Kharkiv and the Donetsk region. Could the experts who predicted a long and grinding war over the coming winter, and beyond, be proven wrong?

The Kharkiv offensive, which has seen Ukrainian forces recapture thousands of square kilometers of territory in just a few days, has been a stunning success. Ukrainian forces are said to have reclaimed a further 20 settlements on Monday as Russian forces desert ever greater swaths of occupied land and flee back across the border. Soon Ukraine, whose forces have already reached the Russian border at some points, will be threatening areas held by Russia since Putin’s first invasion of the Donbas in 2014.

Once again, as when they foiled the original advance on Kyiv in February and March, Ukrainian commanders have made fools of the Russians. The Guardian newspaper reported over the weekend on how the long-rumored Kherson offensive, and the way it was repeatedly foreshadowed by Ukrainian officials, had been a “big special disinformation operation” designed to lure the Russians into reinforcing positions around Kherson. Once that had happened, Ukraine unleashed its newly acquired HIMARs rockets on the bridges across the Dnipro, cutting off the Kherson grouping from reinforcements and supplies.

That Kherson would be top of the list for a counteroffensive was entirely believable. It is the biggest city and only provincial capital captured by the Russians in six months of war. For the Russians, it was the gateway to the port of Odessa, the city the Russians most craved. For the Ukrainians, control of Kherson would open the path to Crimea.

Ukraine’s Southern Command confirmed the start of the Kherson offensive on Aug. 29, but urged people not to report on or speculate about its progress for reasons of “operational security.” For the first time, journalists were banned from the front lines.

But while the Kherson offensive was not quite a complete “feint”—fighting did pick up pace—the real action was about to unfold hundreds of kilometers away, where a well-armed, well-trained Ukrainian force launched a surprise assault on poorly defended Russian lines, capturing key strategic towns such as Balakliya, Kupiansk, and Izium over the space of a few days. Hundreds of Russians were killed and thousands reportedly captured in the assault.

The Washington Post reported Monday on how Russian forces were stealing cars and bicycles to make their escape, after having first stolen civilian clothes to fool Ukrainian drone squads.

“They just dropped rifles on the ground,” said Olena Matvienko, in Zaliznychnye, a village outside Kharkiv captured by the Russians in the opening days of the war but from which they fled in panic after the Ukrainian offensive.

“They came into our houses to take clothes so the drones wouldn’t see them in uniforms. They took our bicycles. Two of them pointed guns at my ex-husband until he handed them his car keys,” Matvienko said.

The Russian collapse has thrown Putin’s TV propagandists and warmongers into chaos, uncertain who should take the blame, and Putin himself refuses to acknowledge the crisis.

“The special military operation continues and will continue until the objectives that were originally set are achieve,” his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Monday.

USA Today

‘Situation more difficult by the hour’: Ukrainian forces break through to Russian border. Live updates.

John Bacon, USA TODAY – September 12, 2022

The Ukraine military’s stunning offensive gained momentum Monday, reclaiming several more northeastern villages and forcing the retreat of overwhelmed Russian troops from the region.

A Russian-installed official in the Kharkiv region said Ukrainian forces outnumbered Russian troops by 8-to-1 and had broken through to the Russian border. Vitaly Ganchev told the state-owned Rossiya-24 television channel on Monday “the situation is becoming more difficult by the hour.”

Kyiv’s sudden surge comes after months of little movement, save Russia’s small gains in the Donbas region. The encouraging counteroffensive has lifted morale and prompted criticism within Russia of President Vladimir Putin’s so-called “special military operation.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked 200 days since the war began by lauding the efforts of his military.

“The world is impressed. The enemy is panicking,” Zelenskyy said. “Ukraine is proud of you, believes in you, prays for you, and is waiting for you.”

Important developments:

►The Ukrainian military said its troops had freed more than 20 settlements in 24 hours – the British Defense Ministry said Kyiv’s forces have captured territory at least the size of greater London in recent days.

►The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Monday that Ukraine and Russia appeared interested in creating a security protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and that talks were underway.

Dissent against Russian ‘impossible’ war strategy seeps into media

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya, and Boris Nadezhdin, a former parliament member, were among prominent Russians to publicly criticize the war strategy.

“Mistakes were made,” Kadyrov said in a Telegram post. He said that if a change in strategy was not made soon “I will be forced to turn to the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, the leadership of the country to explain to them the situation that is really happening on the ground.”

Nadezhdin told NTV that Putin aides who convinced the president the military would be fast and effective got it wrong.

“We’re now at the point where we have to understand that it’s absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine using these resources and colonial war methods,” Nadezhdin said.

Liberated city of Izyum in ruins

Ukraine forces, reclaiming the city of Izyum in Kharkiv province, said more than 1,000 residents had been killed by Russian shelling. About 80% of the infrastructure had been destroyed in the city that was home to 45,000 residents before the war began. Less than 10,000 remain, City Council member Maxim Strelnikov said.

“As throughout the occupied territory, the Russians committed war crimes and tried to cover them up.

Institute for the Study of War: Ukraine ‘routing’ Russian forces

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War issued an assessment Monday saying the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv was “routing Russian forces and collapsing Russia’s northern Donbas axis.” Russian forces are not conducting a controlled withdrawal but rather “hurriedly fleeing” southeastern Kharkiv Oblast to escape encirclement around Izyum.

“Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to (45 miles) in some places and captured over 1,150 square miles of territory in the past five days since Sept. 6 – more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April,” the assessment says.

Ukraine claims to make gains in Donbas

Russia military officials have repeatedly said that forces have been moved away from Kharkiv and other cities to support its effort to control the eastern, industrial Donbas region that it claims has been its goal all along. But now Ukrainian officials say they are making gains in the two Donbas provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk as well. Serhii Haidai, head of the Luhansk military administration, said in a Telegram post that the city of Lyman in Donetsk had been liberated by Ukrainian forces and that now “it is our turn.”

“I want to let locals know that liberation is close,” he said. “If you hear sounds of combat, remain in shelters. We cannot name settlements but locals will understand.”

Russian leader of Crimea threatens pro-Ukrainian protesters

Sergey Aksenov, Russia-appointed leader of occupied Crimea, said organizers and participants in pro-Ukraine rallies will “be held accountable.” He complained that videos from public events in Crimea show residents chanting pro-Ukrainian slogans and singing nationalist songs. That could lead to prosecution and dismissal from jobs, he said in Telegram post. He suggested they leave Crimea voluntarily.

“It would be rational and logical for those who support the Ukrainian regime to leave for the country they love so much,” he wrote.

Russian official: ‘Total surrender’ of Ukraine forces might be demanded

A former president and prime minister of Russia on Monday dismissed reports of Ukrainian gains and warned the Kremlin might ultimately demand “total surrender” of the Kyiv regime. Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of his nation’s Security Council, alluded to Zelenskyy’s refusal to conduct a dialogue “with those who put forward ultimatums.”

“The current ‘ultimatums’ are a warm-up for kids, a preview of demands to be made in the future,” Medvedev said. “He (Zelenskyy) knows them: the total surrender of the Kiev regime on Russia’s terms.”

Natural gas prices in Europe reach 7-week low

European natural gas prices fell to their lowest level in seven weeks on Monday. ICE Dutch TTF gas futures for October, the European benchmark, were down 7.3% to about about $195 per megawatt hour. That’s down more than 40% from the all-time high of around $350 less than three weeks ago.

Analysts credited Europe’s efforts to stock up ahead of winter, proposed caps on Russian gas prices and a more positive outlook on the war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman vague on Putin’s confidence in military

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked whether the country’s military leadership continues to enjoy Putin’s supports, said only that “the special military operation continues and will continue until all the goals that were initially set are achieved.” Peskov declined to comment on reports that the commander of the Western Military District had been fired, saying that was an issue for Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Russian Defense Ministry announced Sunday that the “regrouping” of Russian troops in the Kharkiv region to step up efforts in the Donetsk.