Arestovich's rather insightful analysis of the tactical reasons Ukraine's counter-offensive not only did not achieve results but failed catastrophically.
TL;DR: Battalion Tactical Group retards BTFO by Soviet large-scale combined arms doctrine.
>aTranslated Interview START1. - Avdiivka was stormed by three Russian armies + a tank division
*.
These are permanent units with a unified logistics and management system.
With us, everything above the brigade is assembled management bodies.
2. We saw elements of operational camouflage when creating a grouping/outfit of forces.
Deception and cunning are in the best traditions of the Red Army.
3. Massing of forces and means.
The Russians are strengthening the artillery capabilities of their formations and associations - even before the creation of artillery brigades as part of the combined arms army.
The number of cabs used is growing every month.
In the Avdiivka defense area, 250 units arrived in one day.
The irretrievable losses of the Russian group during the capture of Avdiivka are ~ 30% of the group.
At the same time, they took the fortified area.
Soviet norms are 12-20% for an army operation.
Avdiivka is their first success at the operational and tactical level, associated with the drift towards the Soviet system.
The deadlock at the front, which Valery Zaluzhny spoke about in the article "Economist", has been overcome not by technical methods, but by organizational ones.
When they fully enter the Soviet system, we can expect that they will begin to gain success at the operational level, because it is ideal for this type of war - under their given initial conditions. And they need about five such operations in order for us to lose the entire Left Bank.
They are increasing their capabilities and reducing the time between operations, which a year ago amounted to up to six months for concentration and preparation, will be reduced to four months or less if there are no strategic black swans (you need to plan based on what will not happen). I am not the only one who has been saying since the very beginning of the war that Russia's problem in this war is that they set Soviet goals without having Soviet capabilities. And now they are gradually pulling up the possibilities to the Soviet ones, as far as possible.
And all our (and their, by the way) dreams about Western structures, Western technology and Western strategy are complete fornication. We currently have neither Soviet nor Western capabilities, but they are catching up to the Soviet ones. What is our answer?
Valery Zaluzhny was never allowed to form divisions and armies - formations and associations of permanent personnel, with their own logistics and permanent management bodies, capable of solving the task of breaking through long-term, layered enemy defenses and creating/maintaining such defenses.
"This is against NATO standards!"
Idiots, instead of creating a national military school, under our specific conditions, choosing the best from different systems, are killing the army under a concept that:
- we will never see,
- which is not suitable for large-scale wars on its own.
In the near future, we will see the consequences these "… NATO standards" in full.
>Translated Interview END As he bitterly explains, NATO standards aren't for fighting peer countries, but inferior militaries with quick precise shock and awe strikes and with minimum expenditure, a policy that began with the Vietnam fiasco and influenced US (and so NATO) doctrine for decades to come. However, even against an inferior military, if they can pull NATO forces into a protracted conflict, NATO will not be able to establish control. In essence NATO tactics are pure Aufstragtaktik autism.
All this is without even mentioning Ukrainian criticisms of Western tech being either inferior to Soviet contemporaries/equivalents or being ill-suited to the Ukrainian environment, with the best tech having little difference to Soviet tech, only with Ukrainians have to train to readjust to NATO standard equipment as opposed to Soviet standard.
>>3900Ukraine recently received a batch of M1117s. Several have already been destroyed and have basically no superiority to the much older BRDM-2. Even the Abrams gets such criticism, and the F-16 is already seen as such, with Ukrainian pilots that have flown them calling it inferior to the Soviet Su-27 and a glass cannon, an opinion even the USAF shares.
https://southfront.press/us-pilot-warns-kiev-regime-about-f-16s-deficiencies-calls-it-prima-donna/ https://topwar.ru/238635-silno-ustupaet-sovetskim-ukrainskie-voennye-raskritikovali-amerikanskie-tanki-abrams.html https://southfront.press/ukrainian-pilot-find-performance-of-western-fighters-inferior-to-russian-jets/ This isn't even going into the fact that Ukraine does not have the facilities to repair Western tech, being forced to ship Leopard 2s and Bradleys back to Germany and the USA, if they can recover them at all.
>>4486 *See
>>3915