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First published on July 4, 2023
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It is astounding how stupidly (sorry) the West has expected that it could just “roll-over” Russia in the planned Ukrainian “biggest counteroffensive” in the south of Ukraine.
The Western stupidity (sorry) has been everywhere, from Biden to Stoltenberg, to US media, and down to every single Ukrainian foot soldier – as witnessed here by the New York Times.
They all believed that Ukraine could just punch through at least three layers of extremely well prepared Russian defenses and merely roll down to Melitopol or the coast of Crimea.
This reveals that hubris, self-affirmations of false beliefs, and incompetence reign deeply in the West. This is very dangerous for the World, because this substitution of realism for a false ideological delusional “view” of the entire World as inferior induces the West to overreach.
Having said that, I must concede that Russia has surprised even me with how high Russia’s capabilities are in the war.
I had expected Ukraine to be able to at least breach Russia’s first lines of defense and seriously press on the second lines. But Ukraine could not even do that. Russia has completely devastated Ukraine even before the first lines of defense, in what Russian doctrine calls the “flexible zone”. After about a month of “counteroffensive”, Ukraine has not even once broken Russia’s first line. Ukraine has only taken a handful of insignificant villages in the flexible zone, most of which were in fact fire bags and death traps prepared by Russia into which Russia sucked in the pressing Ukrainians by pretending “softness”.
Russia’s superiority is the summation of excellent Russian competence at all levels and domains.
Great morale, motivation, and excellent training and preparation of Russia’s fighting soldiers, as witnessed by the New York Times article.
Excellent Russian NCOs and officers in the field. You see great tactical Russian work, like how Russia has designed fire bags with minefields, lures the Ukrainians forward, destroys their columns, forces them into minefields, and turns them around – after which the Russians send rockets with mines that mine the return–road which the Ukrainians had once demined, and destroy the rest of them.
Excellent Russian strategy, thinking, planning, operations, and execution in the Stavka (High Command with Kremlin).
The Russian excellence goes on. The industrial-military committee coordinating the war production has in record time not only ramped up the quantity to levels the West cannot match even over a couple of years – Russia has also lightning fast reacted to the needs for new weapons and made cheap, effective glide bomb systems for existing bombs, and longer range anti-ground missiles eg. for helicopters, keeping Russian helicopters and bombers safe from Ukrainian air defenses. Also, Russia has developed a swarm of cheap drones which overwhelm and deplete even the West’s advanced Patriot systems. And Russia does not only rely on technology, but on humans. For instance, Russia decided for a manual human targeting of some drones to reduce jamming countermeasures. Clever. Clever.
The war in Ukraine is very different today from when it started on 24 February 2022. Russia has intelligently adapted doctrine, leadership, strategy, procedures, weapons, training, motivation, industry, economics, everything to the war. NATO has not. See this.
All this is directed by a competent top, incl. Putin, Medvedev, Shoigu, Gerasimov, Patrushev, while Mishustin and Nabiulina help keep the economy safe and Lavrov builds friendships abroad.
Wagner has played only one role in the whole picture, the role defined by Putin, Shoigu, and Gerasimov. Wagner did that important role very well and took the heavy casualties associated with it, but Wagner has not been indispensable or even the main driver in Russia’s current success. Had it not been for Wagner, somebody else would have done it. Wagner simply solved the task in the most convenient and effective way as planned by the Stavka.
When you work with hazardous substances, always be prepared to contain and deal with any mishaps. Russia’s top showed that ability too, when some in Wagner tried to move in a wrong direction – it was defused before it could do any serious harm, and the events were even turned into advantage for Russia
Why is the rebellious part of the Wagner force allowed to assemble in Belarus?A good guess is that they have all been told to roll their dice again: Participate in a new offensive with 50% casualty-expectation where you can redeem yourself of your mistakes. If this assumption is right, we may once again see the Stavka solving tasks in the most effective and convenient way.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is by Karsten Riise
