Heavy losses cast doubt on Russian offensive

They come in waves and die in droves. In minefields, by artillery and Ukrainian anti-tank fire or a hail of machine gun rounds. The frontal attacks by the Russian forces to conquer more Ukrainian territory are not only unsuccessful, but also costly due to the extreme losses of life and equipment.

For example, this week it became clear how two Russian marine brigades, the 155th and the 40th, which passed for elite units, behaved in an almost amateurish way. slaughtered during their frontal assaults near the strategic mining town of Voehledar. Within a week, 130 vehicles, including 36 tanks, were lost on the Russian side and hundreds of soldiers were killed.

The open terrain with a clear field of fire, minefields and the availability of Ukrainian firepower and accurate fire control made short work of the uncoordinated frontal attack. Video recordings from Ukrainian drones, now independently verified, show Russian tanks driving on mines, being hit by GPS-guided grenades and trying in vain for cover in a disorderly tangle as soldiers run back and forth in panic. You can see it on other videos – including Russian ones how dozens of burnt-out tanks and other vehicles were left behind. According to British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, more than 1,000 Russian soldiers were killed in two days in those attacks. It’s just a logical consequence, he told the British channel LBC“of a [Russische] president and general staff who deny the reality, and who simply don’t care how many of their own people they kill, let alone the people they try to oppress.”

An anonymous Russian marine, quoted by The New York Times, told Russian news website 7×7 that eight soldiers from his company (100 men) survived the attack in Voehledar. And those survivors, he said, “are considered deserters.”

New offensive

Such losses form a pattern. Ukrainian sources believe Russia has lost 200,000 soldiers to death or wound since the invasion began on February 24 a year ago. Materially, the situation for Russia is also precarious. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which is leading this week Military Balance presented, Russia has lost 1,100 tanks, half of its most modern models, in a year and now has to pull obsolete – and even more vulnerable – types from storage.

It leads Western military analysts, and critics on the Russian side, including military bloggers, to skepticism about the quality of the Russian military and political leadership. And about whether Moscow is capable of the offensive it is believed to be ready to launch in full force. “Russian material and personnel reserves to successfully sustain a major offensive in eastern Ukraine have been significantly diminished,” noted the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington this week. The British Ministry of Defense believes that even after deploying the vast majority of its available army units to Ukraine, Russia “has not assembled a force large enough to push through the lines.” According to Secretary Wallace, combat power has decreased by 40 percent due to losses of men “of World War I level”.

Meat grinder

The comparison with the ‘meat grinder of Verdun’ is sometimes made. And that is mainly because of Russia’s modus operandi, based on the power of numbers – Russian military doctrine for centuries – and the lack of respect for ‘own’ lives, such as the thousands of poorly armed, untrained recruits with whom Russia fills its thinned ranks .

General Mark Milley, the top US military officer, said this week at NATO in Brussels that he saw “no special art of maneuvering” on the Russian side. “These are frontal attacks in waves, with a lot of artillery and with extremely high casualties, especially on the Russian side.”

The New York Times how the so-called human waves, ‘people waves’, work. Inexperienced groups mobiles as the newly mobilized are called, or the ex-detainees fighting for Wagner’s mercenary army, are sent to the Ukrainian trenches as ‘moving targets’ in a first wave, so that their positions become visible to the Russian artillery.

Then, after fifteen minutes, a new wave follows. The idea is that if enough follow, they will eventually overwhelm the enemy trenches. “Such orders were normal, so our losses were huge,” said Sergei. The more experienced Russian soldiers follow in a final wave and they literally have to climb over the corpses of their predecessors. Gain of terrain: sometimes not more than a hundred meters.

A Russian Wagner fighter said earlier that an attack at Soledar, just north of Bachmoet, required no less than fourteen consecutive waves of eight men. “Obviously there were survivors, but there were a hundred victims, or more.”

Improvisation

Casualties on the Ukrainian side are also high (neither Ukraine nor allies provide numbers) and this week US sources suggested that in places like Bachmut, without any real strategic importance, Ukraine should retreat rather than hold out, leaving it with more reserves for the future.

Then their strengths will also come into their own, which is partly due to a decade of training by NATO teachers: improvisation, flexible and mobile operation using modern, Western technology and with great responsibility for the middle management (non-commissioned officers). The exact opposite of the Russian ‘style’, which belongs to an autocracy where everyone is afraid to do something without permission and mistrust rules at every level.

What a Russian offensive looks like is the question. There is speculation about another attack from Belarus, or an amphibious one near Odessa, or the deployment of tens of thousands more reservists for the final ‘birthday blow’ at Bachmut. And with attacks by the Russian air force, which so far have shown little like the Financial Times wrote this week.

But then fighter planes and helicopters have to work closely with artillery and ground troops, so-called combined arm operations to the Western model. And if Russia has shown anything since the early days of its invasion, it is that it cannot. General Milley: “From Kharkiv to Kherson, the front line is quite stable. I don’t think the Ukrainians just fall over or bend.”