re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Sharing from a friend with a background in us intelligence.

My take so far:
Russia is fighting a 1970s era war against a small but early 2000s era enemy. 

What I mean by 1970s: limited precision strikes, followed immediately multiple lines of armored advance (3 as Soviet doctrine commands, plus a 4th from the separatists who appear to be fighting alone). Offensive. Advances conducted by easiest routes possible - roadways - with avoidance of set battles en lieu of encirclements. Air assaults via helo/paratroopers to seize key C2 sites. Air Dominance if possible but not planned. This is Deep Strike War. 

What I mean by early 2000s:
Widely distributed high-value small arms and light weapons, dispersed command. Defensive/occupying. Population center control and casualty consciousness. Air Superiority as ultimate goal with total annihilating of enemy C2 AND force composition prior to any ground movement. This is Air-Land war a la 73 Easting. 

What does this mean?
Russia, despite its overwhelming size and inevitability of their goals in this situation, is incredibly out of date. Within the first 6hrs they stopped precision strikes (likely out of munitions) and began ground movement into contested air territory. 

Their deep strike air assault attempts thus far have been repulsed at Kyiv’s main airport, as well as in Mariupol and Odessa. Air dominance is still not even ensured nor were precision strikes fully successful in eliminating anti-air capabilities, also hindering their air aslt. Their air-to-ground attacks have already diverted to unguided bombs in large part. Ukraine, despite the hopelessness of their fight, are outfighting the Russians who claimed 2 days to total victory. Is this intended? I don’t think this is doctrinal carryover, but rather capability-dictated-doctrine. In other words, this likely a financial/industrialization issue. 

They lack the volume of precision guided missiles/etc to decapitate, so they were forced to commit to an air assault before achieving even air dominance. Their ground troops are surprisingly mired on the outskirts of every city as they struggle to capture them, largely due to advanced anti-tank capabilities. 

Does the doctrine fit reality?
From a capabilities perspective, there was little choice. From an objectives perspective, no. Defenders in cities are forcing the Russians to siege them out, which is counter to deep strike’s method. Modern army sizes are not capable of siege anymore especially in open terrain — millions of combatants on either side of single cities in Stalingrad/Moscow during WW2; hundreds of thousands across the entire theatre in Ukraine today. Unguided munitions used on defended civilian areas will result in high casualties and possible insurgency. 

What can we learn from this?
Russia is utterly incapable. Ukrainians resisted hybrid warfare and forced conventional conflict. Their doctrine does not fit modern warfare’s objectives. This is likely due to their limited material capabilities. The internal damage to Russia will not be worth it, and their poor showing will do more to embolden their regional counterparts rather than cow them. The longer Ukraine survives the worse it looks and the more damaging it will be from a game-theoretic regional view. This is the modern equivalent of the Winter War and will likely encourage Finland and Sweden to join NATO, and unnerve the Serbs as to the veracity of Russian support. 

End game:
Russia wins in a week or so but continues to face an insurgency, more virulent the longer the active phase of war goes on. Ukraine is forced to sign a Versailles style dearmament treaty and is forced into a Belarus-style vassal state situation. Zelensky waits in exile but is likely assassinated in an obscured fashion but that will take a few years. Russia becomes increasingly ostracized and isolated until Putin’s death, especially within their region. The US steps up covert armament of Taiwan. 

Long term:
The fricking French conventional army would mop the floor with Russia by the look of this. The Russians cannot fight a modern war and their bullying capability is limited, and would be ineffective against NATO’s air power alone - something easily deployed from distance, though I’d expect more NATO allocation of forces near Russia after this anyways. This is a death-spasm, the fever breaking, and Russia’s decline is pretty much locked looking at this, simply from seeing how they fight. A US-Russian war would look like Iraq ‘91, both by overwhelming asymmetry and by multilateral coalition backing. 

Another thought addendum:
Russians are currently trying to hold the airport after they took it briefly, but they do not control it. 

Great insight in this event alone:
Deep Strike doctrine focuses on overwhelming an enemy across every front but with relatively limited concentration, and awaits for one of many avenues to break through so that then they can double down on any successes. Enemy capability is hindered by rear actions and strikes to reduce their logistics and C2, increasing odds of small successes to capitalize on. What happens when you don’t find any successes and your rear actions fail? That’s quite a slog of a fight, and while Soviet size armies were capable of working through it anyways, modern Russia can’t nearly as easily. 

That all said, who knows how much man power Russia has committed thus far vs Ukrainian man power — if we are seeing only 30% of Russia’s force thus deployed, maybe there’s a lot more on the table. Alternatively, can Russia afford to deploy more than 30% of 90% of its active force (current in western theatre) anywhere ever? Leaves one awfully defenseless…If they fully commit to Ukraine and NATO decides to strike at Kaliningrad / Japan the Kuril Islands / China upper Manchuria / Georgia Abkhazia / etc etc etc. Truly an animal backed into a corner. Deep War theory is famously successful in tabletop exercises due to an odds game (rolling a dice for each battle front means that more battle fronts = more chance of success, and a strategy of using even small successes further encourages this game-reality miss match) 

Adding bc this keeps coming up in comments: Nukes don’t make sense here strategically or tactically, unless Putin is trying to provoke war with all of NATO and this literally is WW3

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