With the annexation of four former Ukrainian regions namely Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, into the Russian Federation, Kremlin claims to have achieved the objective behind the special military operation (SMO) which began on February 24 when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “demilitarise and denazify” pro-NATO Kyiv regime.
After seven months of SMO Ukraine’s military infrastructure has been degraded. The stocks of enriched uranium stored in Europe’s largest Zaporizhia nuclear power plant have been captured. Likewise, Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics the two Russian-supported breakaways are under Russian control. Similarly, Zaporizhia and Kherson besides giving Russia land access to Crimea which merged with it in 2014, but has made the Sea of Azov bounded by Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea – seem like an internal lake – almost like the Soviet days.
Already some 300 thousand odd reservists have started pouring in to defend the new Russian borders and repel Ukrainian forces. President Vladimir Putin had warned the West that Moscow will use all the available means, including nuclear weapons if it faces an existential threat. This is likely to lead to an escalation of fighting in the next few days or months.
Clearly, this is not what Russia had planned. To start with in the initial stages Moscow had seriously believed that it would be a quick and swift military operation and would last just a few days or weeks. No one imagined that the war would drag on for more than eight months with no end in sight.
According to local defence experts, about 300 thousand reservists who have previously served in the Russian army could be deployed by the end of this year. It is not ruled out that a total of one million reservists may need to be mobilised by the next summer if no agreement is reached to cease the hostilities. The reservists cannot be immediately deployed in Ukraine as they will need to first go through refresher courses and training to be made familiar with the “special military operation”.
The much talked about 64 KM long column of armoured vehicles, tanks, and towed artillery moving towards the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the capture of key military installations around it by Russian Special Forces had led President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to participate in peace talks with Moscow and publically declare that Ukraine would not join NATO and was ready to discuss the status of Crimea and Donbas. Accordingly, two rounds of talks were held in neighbouring Belarus with a large number of agreements in a subsequent round of foreign ministers’ level parleys in Turkey. However, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson threw a spanner in peace efforts by visiting Kyiv and telling Zelenskyy to continue the war. He even offered military and financial support to defeat the British Empire’s past rival.
Soon Moscow found itself at the receiving end of the growing number of western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian troops. It is always easy to start a military campaign than to wind it up. After Boris Johnson’s visit, the British and US military establishments found themselves in the driver’s seat. NATO hawks kept prodding Volodymyr Zelenskyy the Ukrainian President to keep fighting and offered more weapons and resources to defeat Putin’s military. The net result was that Kremlin had to brace itself up for a do-or-die situation and a long-drawn war — at any cost.
The rapid advance by the NATO-trained Ukrainian army in the south and east rattled the Russian military establishment. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechnya leader and Putin loyalist even went to the extent of openly criticising the Russian army’s leadership which appeared to be caught off guard by Ukraine’s fight back for retreating from the key town of Lyman in east Ukraine. Adding fuel to fire Putin already sacked Army General Baranov who was in charge of logistics. More changes are expected in the Russian military leadership in the near future as some retired officers have heavily criticised Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was the head of the Civil Defence and Disaster Management Ministry.
The biggest lesson to be learnt from all this is that — a “lean and mean” army equipped with the latest smart weapons, but without sufficient manpower is useless. A one-million-strong armed force is simply not enough, for a country which has the world’s largest land mass and a thousand-mile-long coastline, especially for a Ukraine-like campaign. The Russian Army over the years was trained to fight against terrorists in anti-terror combat, but not for fighting against a well-equipped regular army. As a result Russia which swiftly captured two nuclear power plants in Ukraine with the help of its Spetsnaz Special Forces and private contractors like the Wagner group eventually got bogged down due to a shortage of ‘‘boots on the ground”.
Many great powers in past decades have been focusing on quick reaction armed forces equipped with hi-tech smart weapons against a weaker adversary with obsolete arms.
However, one should not forget that just like the Russian Army, the Ukrainian Army too is an offshoot of the erstwhile Soviet Army and both have a common martial heritage, Ukraine has some of the best military colleges, which were set up on its soil during the Soviet rule.
Moscow today is finding itself at the receiving end of the growing number and variety of western weapons. Irrespective of whether it likes it or not Kremlin has to be prepared to fight a long-drawn-out war. It has no option to choose — what, where or when?
-The writer is a Moscow-based independent analyst. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
