The Russian #military is well-suited to short, high-intensity campaigns defined by a heavy use of #artillery. By contrast, it is poorly designed for a sustained #occupation, or a grinding war of attrition, that would require a large share of Russia’s ground forces, which is exactly the conflict it has found itself in. The Russian military doesn’t have the numbers available to easily adjust or to rotate forces if a substantial amount of combat power gets tied down in a war. Their big assumption was that in the event of a #crisis with #NATO, political leadership would authorize mobilization to raise manning levels and deploy staffed-up formations.
Enter Putin’s “special operation,” which meant launching a major war in #Europe, against the continent’s second largest country, with a force operating at peacetime manning levels. #Putin assumed that Ukraine would quickly surrender, and a regime change operation could be conducted without the need to plan and organize for a major #war. The resulting debacle, which will be studied for decades to come, proceeds from the intersection of terrible Russian political assumptions with those of the armed forces regarding the forces that would be made available for a war of this scale (as conceived in the design).

https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/not-built-for-purpose-the-russian-militarys-ill-fated-force-design/ #ukraine #military #grozny #politics