Glitches in the Russian War Machine

Military commands do not want to tell the truth about their successes and losses, unless they are having a lot of success. Nothing is published that might help the enemy. And yet—it does seem that there must be severe problems with the Russian military machine.

Some trends are emerging that might explain the situation. No New Tanks

First off, Russia has not been able to deploy the much vaunted new T-14 Armata Tank. Russian media have been boasting about it for a long time, but there are only about 20 in existence. The long lines of tanks we see in Pravda’s coverage are almost all T-72 tanks with their 50-year-old design, which features no flushing toilet, and whose crew must still sit on top of the ammunition. Many of them are extremely elderly vehicles. The mind boggles at engineers trying to coax their old machines to turn up on time at the battlefield. Communications Failures

One of the most gobsmacking reports from the battlefields of Ukraine is that as the Russian Army has advanced, they have systematically destroyed cell-phone towers, because of all the potential they offer for communications between their enemies on the ground. Unfortunately, their state of the art encrypted communications system, Era, works off 3G/4G networks. Oops.

The story is that the Russian communications have been talking to each other via unencrypted radios, and Ukrainian ham radio operators are easily able to intercept their conversations. The degree of disorganization and lack of coordination made evident in the Kyiv debacle suggests that this might indeed be a crippling factor in their plans. The Problem of Drones

It seems that Russia is not using drone technology much in Ukraine.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has invested heavily in drones. Its go-to killer is the Turkish Bayraktar TB2, which can knock out a tank. Ukraine also appears to be using modified off-the-shelf drones to good effect for surveillance. And the USA has promised supplies of its tiny but deadly Switchblade “kamikaze” drones.

This would explain the pictures of smoldering tanks that have been filling Western media. Bomb-carrying drones combined with four-kilometer-ranged Javelin missiles would explain why the armored push on Kyiv faltered and failed. The Moskva

Russia has one of the most powerful navies in the world. It is hard to explain, then, how a country with no ships at all could sink the Moskva, the most advanced guided missile cruiser of the Russian fleet.

Ukraine had lost all its navy when the Russians took over Sevastopol in Crimea. The naval assault from Russia was therefore unchallenged. Led by the flagship Moskva, their undisputed superiority on the sea facilitated the early successes of Russia in the south-east of the country.

Moskva was a public relations marvel—protected by the latest anti-missile technology. To make assurance doubly sure, it carried an ultra-rare and very holy relic from the Orthodox Church—a fragment of the true cross of Christ. I find that a little bewildering, this being the world's leading communist power, where religion is routinely derided. I suppose sailors are superstitious, though, and the authorities felt they should be humored.

However, there must be some doubt about the authenticity of the relic. The Ukrainians slipped a couple of R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles into her, and she sank in the Black Sea. High Casualty Count

Too many Russian soldiers are getting killed in action. That may sound odd, since armies characteristically regard soldiers as expendable pawns. According to Russian military media, however, on one weekend recently they lost 800 men, and evacuated 1,600 wounded soldiers, along with the loss of “62 tanks, 101 armored personnel carriers, 129 vehicles, 24 artillery pieces, 8 anti-aircraft batteries, 7 airplanes, and 40 killer drones” (Atlamazoglou, 2022).

That is not to say that the Ukranians haven’t suffered losses. They are admitting to 3000 killed and 10,000 wounded for the war so far, but, as with the Russians, that is a debatable military wartime report. The issue is, many Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.

I do not think that the generals expected to take on so many casualties. And speaking of generals, it appears that the Ukrainians have developed a way of reaching those who have traditionally been shielded by foot soldiers. Russia has reported the deaths of 40 high-ranking officers in Ukraine so far—Lieutenant Colonels and Generals and the like.

Perhaps if Ukraine can hold out against the odds for long enough, Russia might be forced to back down, unlikely as that might seem under Putin. If the war gets too costly, though, Putin will cease to be a factor.