INTRO – putere de lupta – concept cheie – cumulat – combinatie de factori

Plan si executie slaba; armata – structural mai slaba

Putere de lupta
„Capacitatea Rusiei de a influența a fost mereu bazată pe coerciție decât atracție, în
pofida tentativelor sale de a dezvolta o putere 'soft'. Marea sa putere se bazează în
multe feluri pe capabilitățile sale militare. Și toate acestea au fost zdrobite de către
umilirea forțelor armate rusești în Ucraina”, explică Deyermond.
„Ca regulă generală, ar fi corect de zis că dacă te aștepți să cucerești orașele cheie
în 3 zile dar 6 luni mai târziu ei afișează tancurile tale rablagite în centrul capitalei lor
nu ești tocmai forța militară care credeai că ești”, afirmă Ruth Deyermond,
profesoară în cadrul Departamentului de Război al King's College din Londra.

La începutul invaziei, opinia generală la Washington era că Kievul va fi copleșit în

câteva zile, situație care ar fi fost urmată de o campanie lungă de gherilă și de
insurgență din partea ucrainienilor aflați sub ocupație.
Vladimir Putin’s initial miscalculation that he could overrun Ukraine in a matter of
days was a classic case of informational asymmetry; it was also a classic instance of
a repressive regime being fed poor information by its own people.
Everyone agreed that we were faced with a “classic” credible-commitment problem.
Russia claimed that it could not trust Ukraine to not become, in essence,
a NATO state; Ukraine, for its part, had no reason to trust a Russian regime that had
repeatedly broken promises and invaded it in February with no provocation.
For Mr Putin, the gamble may be worth it. Better to start a war now, despite the
attendant costs, than risk a Ukraine bristling with foreign troops in a decade. Thirty
years ago Robert Jervis, a political scientist, applied prospect theory, a branch of
behavioural economics, to war and peace. The theory notes that people tend to run
greater risks when they feel they are losing. “Wars will then frequently be triggered
by the fear of loss,” he wrote. “When states take very high risks it is usually the case
that they believe they will have to accept certain losses if they do not.”
There is also the matter of Putin getting the West wrong. We in Washington hardly
have a monopoly on misguided assumptions being a driving factor in international
affairs. Many indicators suggest, in fact, that they were a major reason that this war
happened. Putin not only failed to understand that Ukrainians would stand and fight
against his aggression; he also failed to foresee the U.S. and its nato allies
remaining united and funding the Ukrainian resistance. Moscow’s bogus annexation
of more Ukrainian territory seems likely to produce only more Western sanctions—
and the possible extension of the war that Putin looks increasingly like he is losing.
“The problem is, of course, us misreading him, but also him misreading us,” Hill
observed.
ladimir putin’s epoch-changing miscalculation over Ukraine was the outcome of a trio
of mission-defining misjudgments. One was that Ukraine’s government would

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collapse quickly. Another was that his modernised army would be dominant. The last
was that America, in irreversible decline, was no longer capable of leadership.

Russia has not fought a large-scale offensive involving infantry, armour and air
power since the climactic battles of the second world war. Countries under attack
can just as easily stand firm as fall apart. 

În schimb, spre surpinderea experților occidentali, războiul dintre Ucraina și Rusia s-

a transformat într-un conflict convențional, în care o masă de forțe combinate de o
parte luptă cu o masă de forțe similare de cealaltă parte.
Reiter, the author of “How Wars End,” was intrigued by the fact that the conflict in
Ukraine was such an old-fashioned war. There was very little cyber warfare, and
Russia had used just a few hypersonic missiles. He said that, on the Russian side,
“it’s artillery, armor, infantry, brutality against civilians. That’s the twentieth century.”
And on the Ukrainian side it was the same: “They have reasonably sophisticated
weapons, coupled with enough training, coupled with a lot of bravery. Things have
not changed as much as we had thought.”
„Cea mai importantă parte a războiului nu sunt aceste puncte geografice, pentru că
acum este un concurs de voință, ci și un concurs material, despre cine va rămâne
mai întâi fără echipament și muniție și cu cele mai bune unități ale lor”, a spus el.
„Este probabil ca ambele forțe să se epuizeze pe timpul verii, iar apoi va exista o
pauză operațională.”

Modern armed forces prize the idea of combined-arms warfare, in which the various
elements of a military formation compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Tanks
can clear the way for infantry, but only infantry can go into a warren of tunnels to
weed out enemy squads armed with anti-tank weapons. Warplanes can provide
cover for advancing tanks and infantry, but need air defences on the ground to keep
enemy planes away. Ben Barry, a former commander of a British armoured infantry
battalion, now at the iiss, a think-tank, has called it “a lethal version of scissors,
paper, stone”.

The battle for Kyiv was a powerful reminder that small armies can, and often do,
frustrate larger and richer ones. But why? Stephen Biddle offers a compelling (if, in
places, technical) explanation. By 1914 modern weaponry had become so lethal that
infantry could not advance without being shredded to pieces. What broke the trench
stalemate in 1918 was a complex bundle of new tactics that Biddle calls the “modern
system”. The apocalyptic artillery barrages of Passchendaele gave way to shorter,
sharper bursts designed to force defenders to hunker down, not obliterate them.
Small, dispersed infantry teams, armed with machine guns and grenades, advanced
under cover and concealment afforded by the terrain. Powerful armies that neglect
these principles get unstuck There are vital lessons for armies, argues Mr

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Biddle: training and skill are more important than kit, boots on the ground remain vital
and infantry will have the edge over heavy armour.
What stands in front of us, what could be weeks away, is the first peer-on-peer,
industrialised, digitised, top-tier army against top-tier army war that’s been on this
continent for generations,” warned James Heappey, Britain’s junior defence minister,
on January 19th, pointing to Russia’s build-up of over 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s
border. “Tens of thousands of people could die.” Estonia’s defence chief echoed the
warning. “Everything is moving towards armed conflict,” he said.
The war in Ukraine is a curious mix of old and new. Soldiers crouch in trenches that
would not be out of place in Verdun, were it not for the glimpse of a reconnaissance
drone above. Some Ukrainian gunners receive orders via Elon Musk’s Starlink
constellation of satellites. Others fire artillery pieces that pre-date the Cuban missile
crisis. Chinese-made quadcopters drop 1940s-vintage grenades on unsuspecting
Russian tanks

Președintele ucrainean Volodimir Zelenski estima la începutul lunii iunie că 20% din
teritoriul Ucrainei a fost minat de forțele armate ruse. Zelenski a amintit că Rusia a
declanşat războiul împotriva Ucrainei încă din 2014 când a anexat ilegal Crimeea și
a declanșat războiul separatist din estul țării. Președintele ucrainean a precizat că
Moscova a controlat aproape 43.000 de kilometri pătraţi din teritoriul ucrainean chiar
și înainte de declanșarea „operațiunii militare speciale” pe 24 februarie.

Ukraine’s paucity of air defences and the weakness of its armed forces means that
Russia could drive to Kyiv perhaps as easily as American forces reached Baghdad in
the Iraq war of 2003. Michael Kofman, an expert on Russia’s armed forces at cna, a
think-tank, thinks Russia might go so far as to encircle Kyiv, take Odessa, a coastal
city due south of the capital and partition the country, leaving only its western fringes
unoccupied. “It would be terribly risky, and costly,” he wrote in an essay for “War on
the Rocks” a website, “but it would make Putin the Russian leader who restored
much of historical Russia, and established a new buffer against nato.”
In 2020 rand, an American think-tank, estimated that Russia would need 80,000 or
so troops to seize and hold tracts of eastern Ukraine, including the cities of Donetsk
and Kharkiv. A larger effort that included Kyiv would take a lot more, easily absorbing
even Russia’s substantial forces. It would not be the first great power to wade into
such a conflict on the basis of rosy assumptions about its course. But it may see less
risky ways to get what it wants.

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Ofensiva din Donbas înregistrează progrese minime, iar Rusia anticipează un
contraatac ucrainean major. Din punct de vedere operațional, Rusia suferă din cauza
lipsei de muniții, vehicule și personal. Moralul soldaților ruși este scăzut, iar armata
sa este semnificativ degradată. Puterea sa diplomatică a fost diminuată, iar
perspectivele sale economice pe termen lung sunt sumbre. Au trecut șase luni și
războiul Rusiei s-a dovedit atât costisitor, cât și dăunător din punct de vedere
strategic", punctează serviciile secrete britanice.

So far, the war itself is demonstrating some of democracy’s strengths and

autocracy’s drawbacks. Ukraine’s fighters have astonished their adversaries, and its
people’s commitment to their freedom has inspired the world. For his part, Mr Putin
was able to start his ruinous war on a whim. His flunkeys are scared to bring him
unwelcome news. He seems sincerely to have expected many Ukrainians to
welcome his troops. And his regime, like most autocracies, is corrupt, rendering his
army weaker in the field than on paper. Budgets have been looted; Russian kit is
breaking down for lack of maintenance or spare parts.

Galeev spune că, după standardele rusești, războiul din Ucraina nu este crud ci
„foarte blând”, tocmai fiindcă Ucraina se poate apăra, un lucru pe care victimele
anterioare ale agresiunii rusești nu au avut posibilitatea să o facă. „Modul în care
Rusia poartă războaie este răul întruchipat”, spune Kamil Galeev, afirmând de
asemenea că opinia publică din Rusia preferă să nu observe acest lucru până când
rușii nu sunt afectați personal de lupte. „Rusia este o mașinărie militară mare și
puternică fără niciun fel de îngrijorări etice sau umanitare. În Siria ea a depopulat la
modul propriu o țară mare. Opinia publică din Rusia ignoră sau susține acest lucru”,
spune cercetătorul născut în Rusia.

ONE OF THE main lessons of Russia’s war in Ukraine is already clear: a formidable
advantage in capabilities is no guarantee of success. Comparing the size of the two
countries’ forces, most Western experts did not hold much hope for Ukraine. The
fighting so far, however, has played out contrary to expectations.

Russia’s strategic mistake has been an overestimation of its own capabilities and an
underestimation of Ukrainian ones. Their whole plan was based on one main
scenario which involved suppressing Ukrainian air defences, multiple advances on
key Ukrainian cities and a successful lightning attack on Kyiv. They failed to
anticipate just how much resistance they would meet from Ukraine’s armed forces
and from its civilians. Similarly, the Russians underestimated the West’s response:
sanctions, Russia’s economic isolation and weapons supplies have all helped
Ukraine.

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