5 surprise revelations about the Russian Army in Ukraine

Just weeks before the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the Polish press echoed the results of a very disturbing simulation exercise. Designated “Zima-2020” (Winter 2020), it showed that a Russian offensive against Poland would see the fall of Warsaw in only 4 days, and all the key points of the country in only one week. Four weeks later, the Russian forces leading the offensive on Kyiv were blocked in the suburbs of the city, and suffered very heavy losses from a very combative but still poorly equipped and disorganized Ukrainian army. A month later, Moscow decided to withdraw its force in the north of Ukraine, to try to turn towards Donbass and Kharkiv which continued to resist brazenly the successive offensives carried out by the Russian troops and their auxiliaries from Donbass, and the south of the country in order to seize Mariupol and thus make the junction with the Donbass on the one hand, and to seize Odessa on the other. Today, we know that only Mariupol ends up giving way after a fight of rare heroism, while the Ukrainian forces have launched, for a few days, vast offensives to retake part of the territory lost in the Donbass as against Kherson .

Obviously, the perception of Russian military power held by experts, whether military or civilian, was largely erroneous. The behavior of the Russian troops in Ukraine, but also the efficiency of the equipment and that of the command, called into question many certainties that existed before this war. Among these discoveries and surprise revelations, 5 of them deserve a closer look: the failures of planning and intelligence, the difficulties of combined arms action, the weakness of air power, the inefficiency of the naval force as well as as the resilience of the country and the armies in the face of losses.

1- Failures of Russian planning and intelligence

Until February 23, 2022 in the evening, many military experts, as well as a majority of intelligence services with the notable exception of the United States, considered that a Russian offensive against Ukraine was improbable, even impossible. At worst it was, according to them, a new deployment of forces on the Ukrainian borders to influence negotiations with Europe and NATO. For these experts, it was not a question of naivety vis-à-vis the Russian regime, nor of misplaced complacency for its president, but of a factual analysis of the situation. Indeed, the military force deployed by Moscow, a little over 200.000 men, on the borders of Ukraine, seemed much too limited to ensure victory over the some 300.000 Ukrainian defenders, even taking into account the superiority then assumed Russian command, materiel, firepower, airpower and troops.

Moreover, if the offensive were to fail to achieve its objectives in a few weeks, the Russian armies could then find themselves severely handicapped in their maneuvers by the thaw in the north and east of the country. In other words, the Russian armies did not have the means to calmly carry out an offensive as geographically broadened as those which the deployments of forces might suggest. The rest, of course, we know. The Russian offensive was halted in Kyiv, Kharkiv and the Donbass, and only the southern front enabled the Russian armies to make substantial territorial gains. The arrival of the thaw at the end of March forced the Russian General Staff to withdraw its troops from the north of the country, unable as they were to maneuver effectively, while suffering increasing and heavy losses from units lighter and very mobile Ukrainians.

Clearly, the Russian military operation had suffered from serious shortcomings, both in planning and in intelligence. The Russian strategists, in the first place of whom Vladimir Putin adorned with all the virtues including the talent of a grand master in matters of chess, had obviously not been able to anticipate the setbacks to which the armies were going to be exposed, and had seriously underestimated the fighting spirit and the capacity for resistance of the Ukrainians themselves, as well as of their leaders. To this day, we still do not know the reasons for such errors, which nevertheless appeared obvious to Western analysts. It is likely that, as is often the case, several concomitant factors have generated such a failure, ranging from the pressure exerted by the power to the over-evaluation of the operational capacities of Russian units against a background of endemic corruption, as well as the serious under-evaluation the potential for resistance and mobilization of Ukrainian power. The fact remains that, obviously, the strategic and tactical superiority of the Russian armies, still assumed at the beginning of the year 2022, has been largely undermined by an army made up of conscripts and reservists, and it is likely that if "Zima 2020” were to be replayed today, the results would be very different.

2- Difficulties of Russian units in terms of combined arms action

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