For a “Klauzewitz scholar”, it’s amazing how narrow and narrative-driven this article is. It fails to understand what the strategy in 2022 was - and what was the main goal of the campaign that year, how the strategy was changed in 2023 and later on. The author does not understand that throughout the conflict Russia always had strategic initiative - being able to execute and pace operations at the time and place of its choosing. The rest follows. Another armchair general without an army or a staff. Wouldn’t be trusted with a platoon.
Мы с Вами на брудершафт не пили, поэтому тыкайте своим шалавам. Стратегия в 2022 была очевидной - доступ к Крыму по земле (достигнута) и принуждение к переговорам, которые были успешны, но сорваны Джонсоном, после чего пришлось уходить в оборону и проводить мобилизацию.
Если за 3 года Вам этого не стало не ясно, не могу помочь. Тогда попробуйте что-нибудь проще, раскраски или ребусы.
Мы тебя мигом на три года в лагеря. У тебя даже выбор будет: в МАГАдан, на Колыму, Воркуту, Норильск или просто на СВО с..охнуть. Выбирай, русофобская. Ты уже седьмые сутки на сухом пайке карандаше.
The Russian military is well aware that "war is a continuation of policy using military force" and that all military objectives are completely dependent on and are secondary to the state's political objectives.
IMHO, the history of SMO clearly shows what were the political objectives. The first flamboyant phase of flinging ~90-100K troops against UA's standing ~300-400K army resulted in unsustainable territory gains for a large part of which Russians had no intention of holding onto. From a military perspective, one could see that Russia stayed out of major cities everywhere except the "land bridge" territories, where they captured Mariupol (and almost by chance Kherson). So territories in Sumy, Kiev and Chernigov regions were quickly given back as a "good will" political gesture, while territories in Kharkov region were never properly reinforced, and UA managed to take them back in the Fall 2022 offensive (dunno if it was Russian SNAFU, or for some political reasons Russia decided that Kharkov region is off the table - after all some Russian commentators still wonder why no referendum was held there in 2022). The western bank of Dnepr in Kherson was also quickly seen as an area "with no strategic prospects," allegedly (c) general Surovikin and the Russian troops were pulled out of that region too after inflicting great losses on UA troops (I still remember a "Times" article in May-June 2023 where UA's company commander confessed 260% (with a 0) losses suffered by his company on the right banks of Dnepr in Kherson region in the fall of 2022.
But the UA offensive of summer 2023 was met with an extremely tough defence and thoroughly defeated. So I think that UA tried to take territory that RF was considered worth defending at all costs.
Which in turn gives us insight into the original SMO planning.
This is the problem with armchair warriors like you, who know Fuck All about the war in the Ukraine, not having served a day in active military combat, to understand the hurdles the Russians have overcome against an intrenched enemy, and retained a record breaking extremely low casualty ratio.
Fuck off you Moronic Idiot believing the Western propagandist Bullshit!!!
If the Russians ate so inept, how is it that they hold between 20 and 25% of Ukrainian territory for a loss ratio of only 1 Russian for every 10.34 Ukrainians, in a conflict by all accounts according to conventional military wisdom should have resulted in a loss of three Russians per every one Ukrainian.
Furthermore the Ukraine has lost three times the volume of military hardware that the Russians have, with the latest joke being that the Russians now have more Javelin missiles in their possession than the whole British army has in inventory.
I said they were winning asshat - so your feckless meandering over stats you supply no backup for shows you yourself are an armchair warrior trying to impress whomever. Fact is Russia has 4x the population, a larger industrial base, natural resources readily available, proximity to the battlefield, indigenous allies in the East, etc. Based on these rudimentary facts they should have finished off Ukraine in a year. Now, if you know anything of Russian history, which you obviously don’t, you will see a recurring pattern in which the Russian military fails miserably in the early parts of wars because the military leaders are political hacks not warfighters. Once they are cleared out the army is able to better exploit their advantages and defeat their enemy. This is particularly evident in the Napoleonic Wars, the wars of conquest to enlarge Russia and WW2.
Whats more you Shit Brained Moron there is Not one line if defence in the Ukraine as you Moronically imply, it is trench set after trench set, after trench set, and village after village with buildings and basements for the Ukrainians to hide in.
But being the Fucking Clueless Moron you are with Zero military experience, you're too Fucking Stupid to understand what clearing this entails.
I know you Fucking Cunt I have been in an Officer in an active Combat unit in a war, and it wasn't half as complex as what the Russians are facing, given that drones didn't exist.
You Clueless Fucking Idiot, and armchair warrior, go back to playing your stuoid computer war games, and shut the Fuck Up, about matters you don't have a Fucking Clue in regard.
You're the typical Fucking American Idiotwho knows nothing about anything but thinks you know every about everything.
That's why your Cuntry is a Broke Shit Hole and hasn't won a war since WWII, which was actually only thanks to the Soviets who hauled your asses out of the fire.
Is everyone who’s leaving a comment on here a Russian plant or a troll because it sure sounds like it!
As Sun Tzu said, “ victorious Warriors win first and then go to war while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”.
Russia‘s economy is collapsing. They’re having to borrow troops from other extremist countries that support Russia,their armament producers can’t keep up. Russia is losing the war and a lot of the Russian troops who have been captured as prisoners are all defeatist and were before they even set foot in the Ukraine.
Looks as though I got my comments mixed up, and responded to the wrong one. My "Except that it didn't happen" was meant to refer to a comment about how Russia was defeated.
Sorry about the mistake - best to ignore my comment.
Not sure Ukraine was as wonderful as you claim: reality being more ironic than fiction, the current President produced a TV Series which now bears the name of his political party that satirically sent up Ukraine as perfectly corrupt.
Furthermore, the economy was in such dire straits that it was a major debtor to the IMF even before the war, and had the startling percentage of citizens working overseas.
More than a year on from when you wrote this, it looks like
No One Should Have Been Surprised By Ukraine's Defeat in Ukraine.
I state this sadly, because the history of Ukraine since 1991 has been one of fending off Russia's unabashed approaches. The West simply isn't interested, nor has it the military-industrial base anymore, to fight a total war.
Do you write for the Guardian by any chance? 😄 That's an awful lot of words all in the name of supporting the West's version of events. I didn't bother to finish reading. The text is riddled with all the clichés and misinformation inflicted onto us by the MSM these last 3yrs. Comparing Iraq with the Ukraine story is the first failure of this article. It goes into regurgitations thereafter...
Apart from the 4 armies of Ukraine destroyed and 50 odd countries supplying the keiv regime with every thing from Internet to money to missiles Ukraine is being defeated as we speak. A war of attrition is a slow tactic especially when 50 countries are supplying weapons that never cease arriving but are slowly being destroyed.
Regardless of how many times one reads this piece, it puts forward an empirically wrong conclusion, postulating Russian defeat in the very title of the article. In fact, Ukraine has already lost the war. Conflict can continue for a time, but Ukraine is already profoundly undermined, and the only open question is how bad the end-spiel defeat is going to be. Facts may not have been apparent to those less informed in 2023, but should be clear as day by 2025. No need to be smug.
Where did this Fucking Bullshitting Moron come from???
Reading this Shit is a Fucking Joke!!!
The Russians turned the tables on All Conventional war theory in regard to losses, being that the attacker against a dug in army requires a three to one numerical advantage to achieve success.
Russia has turned that on its head with the Ukrainians who are dug in suffering a 10.34 loss ratio that that of every 1 Russian.
Russia has outsmarted the Ukraine and its Western allies time and time again, taken ground and limited their losses, the Ukraine has done nothing but lose men, equipment and ground while foolishly thinking that the Russians were in a hurry to die.
How Idiotic!!!
Russian strategy in the Ukraine will go down in history as one of the landmarks of brilliant military strategy, which militarily and financially exhausted a continent and then some, while attriting at least two generations of Ukrainian males.
If that isn't Cum Lauda success then I don't know what is.
A case in point being the Ukrainian supposed multi- seasonal counter attack which had a propaganda budget bigger than the Ukrainian army, and turned out to be a wet fart, followed by a plethora of strategic Ukrainian losses, one after the other, with virtually no ability for the Ukraine to launch any meaningful counter offensive.
The piece de resistance of Ukrainian failure has to be the Kursk incursion, which has become a kill box in which the Russians continued to allow the Ukrainians to pump their best men and mercenaries into, to die, of which there are literally hundreds of video's confirming the outrageously high Ukrainian loss of men and materiale.
The Russians ate about tp end this game they have been playing with the Ukies in Kursk since August 2024, by cutting off both supply and exit routes from Kursk, which will in all probability result in between 20 and 30 thousand Ukrainian troops being trapped in the kill box.
Yep, absolutely no question. Russia is thoroughly defeated on the battlefield, and that is the reason why the mighty US is pulling out of the war, EU "leadership" frantically tries to get another 800B euros to re-build atrophied military industry and mighty Great Britain and France are begging for some form of the US security guarantee to deploy a "force" (or rather "farce") that would number something like 5% or less of the UA's remaining army as far from the battlefield as possible.
And glorious AFU allow their troops time to sip coffee in Yalta and play in gentle Azov sea surf in Mariupol...
For a “Klauzewitz scholar”, it’s amazing how narrow and narrative-driven this article is. It fails to understand what the strategy in 2022 was - and what was the main goal of the campaign that year, how the strategy was changed in 2023 and later on. The author does not understand that throughout the conflict Russia always had strategic initiative - being able to execute and pace operations at the time and place of its choosing. The rest follows. Another armchair general without an army or a staff. Wouldn’t be trusted with a platoon.
Ну ты ври, ври, но не завирайся. Сам, генералушка, с кресла-то слезай.
Ты ещё скажи, что ты знаешь, какова была стратегия и цели в 2022, и какими они стали потом, двоечник.
Мы с Вами на брудершафт не пили, поэтому тыкайте своим шалавам. Стратегия в 2022 была очевидной - доступ к Крыму по земле (достигнута) и принуждение к переговорам, которые были успешны, но сорваны Джонсоном, после чего пришлось уходить в оборону и проводить мобилизацию.
Если за 3 года Вам этого не стало не ясно, не могу помочь. Тогда попробуйте что-нибудь проще, раскраски или ребусы.
Ты млять русофобская ещё какую муйню кроме Джонсона скажи, посрав в дырку себе
Давай, возвращайся обратно на Россию, нах сбежала ты от частичной мобилизации? В страну НАТО, небось свалила, да?
Берегите себя. Я понимаю, что бывает сложно начинать разговор с незнакомыми людьми вежливо, но со временем у Вас получится. Я уверен. Всего доброго.
Мы тебя мигом на три года в лагеря. У тебя даже выбор будет: в МАГАдан, на Колыму, Воркуту, Норильск или просто на СВО с..охнуть. Выбирай, русофобская. Ты уже седьмые сутки на сухом пайке карандаше.
Я вижу Вы по воспитанию - украинец. Сразу оскорбления, угрозы и неадекватность в общении. Удачи Вам, скоро настанут сложные дни.
Я Вас заблокирую, не обессудьте, время своего жалко.
Russia is winning the war, it is just taking longer due to their ineptitude.
This is another neocon proxy war in which their pathological world view is promoted at the cost of many lives other than their own.
Russia could have pulled a page from NATO's operations manual and ended the SMO much sooner, with many times more Banderan civilian deaths.
The Russian military is well aware that "war is a continuation of policy using military force" and that all military objectives are completely dependent on and are secondary to the state's political objectives.
IMHO, the history of SMO clearly shows what were the political objectives. The first flamboyant phase of flinging ~90-100K troops against UA's standing ~300-400K army resulted in unsustainable territory gains for a large part of which Russians had no intention of holding onto. From a military perspective, one could see that Russia stayed out of major cities everywhere except the "land bridge" territories, where they captured Mariupol (and almost by chance Kherson). So territories in Sumy, Kiev and Chernigov regions were quickly given back as a "good will" political gesture, while territories in Kharkov region were never properly reinforced, and UA managed to take them back in the Fall 2022 offensive (dunno if it was Russian SNAFU, or for some political reasons Russia decided that Kharkov region is off the table - after all some Russian commentators still wonder why no referendum was held there in 2022). The western bank of Dnepr in Kherson was also quickly seen as an area "with no strategic prospects," allegedly (c) general Surovikin and the Russian troops were pulled out of that region too after inflicting great losses on UA troops (I still remember a "Times" article in May-June 2023 where UA's company commander confessed 260% (with a 0) losses suffered by his company on the right banks of Dnepr in Kherson region in the fall of 2022.
But the UA offensive of summer 2023 was met with an extremely tough defence and thoroughly defeated. So I think that UA tried to take territory that RF was considered worth defending at all costs.
Which in turn gives us insight into the original SMO planning.
Just my $0.02 of a couch "warrior" :).
Ineptitude by As you Ignorant Git!!!
Facts are facts, you Git. Try not lapping up the propaganda and you won’t look the fool.
This is the problem with armchair warriors like you, who know Fuck All about the war in the Ukraine, not having served a day in active military combat, to understand the hurdles the Russians have overcome against an intrenched enemy, and retained a record breaking extremely low casualty ratio.
Repeating your bullshit doesn’t make it more right the second time around.
You Stupid Fucking Loudmouthed Yankee Cunt, shut the Fuck up for once, and nobody else will know what a Fucking Clueless Bullshitting Moron you are.
When you've served in an active combat unit in a real war, as I have, as an Officer, come back and talk to me Shit Head.
Really - what war and what unit?
Fuck off you Moronic Idiot believing the Western propagandist Bullshit!!!
If the Russians ate so inept, how is it that they hold between 20 and 25% of Ukrainian territory for a loss ratio of only 1 Russian for every 10.34 Ukrainians, in a conflict by all accounts according to conventional military wisdom should have resulted in a loss of three Russians per every one Ukrainian.
Furthermore the Ukraine has lost three times the volume of military hardware that the Russians have, with the latest joke being that the Russians now have more Javelin missiles in their possession than the whole British army has in inventory.
I said they were winning asshat - so your feckless meandering over stats you supply no backup for shows you yourself are an armchair warrior trying to impress whomever. Fact is Russia has 4x the population, a larger industrial base, natural resources readily available, proximity to the battlefield, indigenous allies in the East, etc. Based on these rudimentary facts they should have finished off Ukraine in a year. Now, if you know anything of Russian history, which you obviously don’t, you will see a recurring pattern in which the Russian military fails miserably in the early parts of wars because the military leaders are political hacks not warfighters. Once they are cleared out the army is able to better exploit their advantages and defeat their enemy. This is particularly evident in the Napoleonic Wars, the wars of conquest to enlarge Russia and WW2.
Whats more you Shit Brained Moron there is Not one line if defence in the Ukraine as you Moronically imply, it is trench set after trench set, after trench set, and village after village with buildings and basements for the Ukrainians to hide in.
But being the Fucking Clueless Moron you are with Zero military experience, you're too Fucking Stupid to understand what clearing this entails.
I know you Fucking Cunt I have been in an Officer in an active Combat unit in a war, and it wasn't half as complex as what the Russians are facing, given that drones didn't exist.
Trench warfare - yes that is new is it?! The more you scream the stupider you become.
You Clueless Fucking Idiot, and armchair warrior, go back to playing your stuoid computer war games, and shut the Fuck Up, about matters you don't have a Fucking Clue in regard.
You're the typical Fucking American Idiotwho knows nothing about anything but thinks you know every about everything.
That's why your Cuntry is a Broke Shit Hole and hasn't won a war since WWII, which was actually only thanks to the Soviets who hauled your asses out of the fire.
Again - no facts just ignorance on display.
The Soviets survived because of Lend Lease.
America is broke because are corrupt politician have wasted our money defending others across the globe because they couldn’t defend themselves.
Is everyone who’s leaving a comment on here a Russian plant or a troll because it sure sounds like it!
As Sun Tzu said, “ victorious Warriors win first and then go to war while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”.
Russia‘s economy is collapsing. They’re having to borrow troops from other extremist countries that support Russia,their armament producers can’t keep up. Russia is losing the war and a lot of the Russian troops who have been captured as prisoners are all defeatist and were before they even set foot in the Ukraine.
This aged like milk. Western analysis at its best. Stop believing the propaganda you're fed by western neocon-media
Ты и есть пропоганды безликая русофобская
This aged well.,.
Excellent essay.
Except that it didn’t happen.
Ну а ты-то откуда знаешь?
Looks as though I got my comments mixed up, and responded to the wrong one. My "Except that it didn't happen" was meant to refer to a comment about how Russia was defeated.
Sorry about the mistake - best to ignore my comment.
OK, now I see what went wrong. My reply was directed at the title of the article, "No One Should Have Been Surprised By Russia's Defeat in Ukraine".
Which, as I mentioned, didn't happen.
Great article, among many great ones.
Not sure Ukraine was as wonderful as you claim: reality being more ironic than fiction, the current President produced a TV Series which now bears the name of his political party that satirically sent up Ukraine as perfectly corrupt.
Furthermore, the economy was in such dire straits that it was a major debtor to the IMF even before the war, and had the startling percentage of citizens working overseas.
More than a year on from when you wrote this, it looks like
No One Should Have Been Surprised By Ukraine's Defeat in Ukraine.
I state this sadly, because the history of Ukraine since 1991 has been one of fending off Russia's unabashed approaches. The West simply isn't interested, nor has it the military-industrial base anymore, to fight a total war.
It is wonderful enough.
Do you write for the Guardian by any chance? 😄 That's an awful lot of words all in the name of supporting the West's version of events. I didn't bother to finish reading. The text is riddled with all the clichés and misinformation inflicted onto us by the MSM these last 3yrs. Comparing Iraq with the Ukraine story is the first failure of this article. It goes into regurgitations thereafter...
Ну а кто ты такое, русофобское?
Thanks for the reply, but I can't copy the text to translate it 🫤
Apart from the 4 armies of Ukraine destroyed and 50 odd countries supplying the keiv regime with every thing from Internet to money to missiles Ukraine is being defeated as we speak. A war of attrition is a slow tactic especially when 50 countries are supplying weapons that never cease arriving but are slowly being destroyed.
Lol, lmao even
This article did not age well.
I would suggest reading it.
Regardless of how many times one reads this piece, it puts forward an empirically wrong conclusion, postulating Russian defeat in the very title of the article. In fact, Ukraine has already lost the war. Conflict can continue for a time, but Ukraine is already profoundly undermined, and the only open question is how bad the end-spiel defeat is going to be. Facts may not have been apparent to those less informed in 2023, but should be clear as day by 2025. No need to be smug.
А ты вообще кто такое?
Where did this Fucking Bullshitting Moron come from???
Reading this Shit is a Fucking Joke!!!
The Russians turned the tables on All Conventional war theory in regard to losses, being that the attacker against a dug in army requires a three to one numerical advantage to achieve success.
Russia has turned that on its head with the Ukrainians who are dug in suffering a 10.34 loss ratio that that of every 1 Russian.
Russia has outsmarted the Ukraine and its Western allies time and time again, taken ground and limited their losses, the Ukraine has done nothing but lose men, equipment and ground while foolishly thinking that the Russians were in a hurry to die.
How Idiotic!!!
Russian strategy in the Ukraine will go down in history as one of the landmarks of brilliant military strategy, which militarily and financially exhausted a continent and then some, while attriting at least two generations of Ukrainian males.
If that isn't Cum Lauda success then I don't know what is.
A case in point being the Ukrainian supposed multi- seasonal counter attack which had a propaganda budget bigger than the Ukrainian army, and turned out to be a wet fart, followed by a plethora of strategic Ukrainian losses, one after the other, with virtually no ability for the Ukraine to launch any meaningful counter offensive.
The piece de resistance of Ukrainian failure has to be the Kursk incursion, which has become a kill box in which the Russians continued to allow the Ukrainians to pump their best men and mercenaries into, to die, of which there are literally hundreds of video's confirming the outrageously high Ukrainian loss of men and materiale.
The Russians ate about tp end this game they have been playing with the Ukies in Kursk since August 2024, by cutting off both supply and exit routes from Kursk, which will in all probability result in between 20 and 30 thousand Ukrainian troops being trapped in the kill box.
Yep, absolutely no question. Russia is thoroughly defeated on the battlefield, and that is the reason why the mighty US is pulling out of the war, EU "leadership" frantically tries to get another 800B euros to re-build atrophied military industry and mighty Great Britain and France are begging for some form of the US security guarantee to deploy a "force" (or rather "farce") that would number something like 5% or less of the UA's remaining army as far from the battlefield as possible.
And glorious AFU allow their troops time to sip coffee in Yalta and play in gentle Azov sea surf in Mariupol...
This article is brought to you by NATO "brain" trust and USAID slush fund for modern warfare and strategy and approved by Gen. Petreaus and Hodges
bwahahahahaha