Ukraine owes its success to material and immaterial factors. Senior security and defense researcher Bob Deen of the Clingendael Institute refers to morale and internal cohesion as incommensurable factors. ‘Ukraine has a very unambiguous sense of purpose. They know what to do, because they do it. Everyone’s really on one side, while those Russians are fighting each other.”
Line
Deen refers to the quarrels that leader Wagner Prigozhin and Russian Defense Minister Shoygu are fighting publicly, a lack of cohesion that will certainly have repercussions on the morale of Russian troops. ‘Ukrainians are less likely to flee than Russians and will fight harder. They all go out.’
A second reason is the defect command and control from the Russian side. According to Deen, there is “simply bad management” and there is a lot of mutual distrust, lies and information withheld for fear of top-down sanctions. Which army throws its troops into underground cellars to punish them? So there is something wrong in that Russian part.’
Incompetence
Deen also mentions incompetence as a major factor. “Don’t underestimate the incompetence on the Russian side.” To illustrate this, she gives the example of Russian soldiers placing their ammunition in an open field, photographing it and posting it on social media: Fressen foundation for Ukrainian artillery. He also points out that the theft of petrol seriously damages Russian mobility. All in all, food for the Ukrainian image of a Russian army that is fragile and collapses under heavy blow.
In addition, the leadership of the Russian army has a flat learning curve, it does not learn from mistakes: the Russian military personnel are still undernourished, there is almost no communication with them, they are trained in different ways and there is almost no no integration of the various militaries. An inherent handicap is that there is almost no room for initiative within the Russian military at lower levels, says defense expert and former battalion commander George Dimitriu.
A rigid top-down approach, an order-is-order mentality, and a highly hierarchical command structure stifle any flexibility and initiative. And it doesn’t work in the chaotic reality of the battlefield, the so-called fog of war. According to Dimitriu, this Soviet-era mindset is not uniquely reserved for Russians, but Ukrainians can do something about it as well.
“Russians’ communication is so bad that they often only talk to each other over open radio links”
Mission command
“Especially at the brigade level and beyond, Soviet culture is very institutionalized. This also makes sense (…), you can’t just remove it from your system.’ However, Dimitriu clarified that there is more room for initiative in the Ukrainian army, especially at the lower levels. ‘Mission command, you give an assignment and then let the lower level determine how to carry out the assignment. This is important. Eventually you come across a different situation than prescribed and then you are there as a junior lieutenant or junior sergeant. The Russian leadership and military culture leave little room for this.”
Structure
Bob Deen also points out that the structure of the Russian military is a handicap for effective warfare. Russia had a large Soviet military built for rapid scaling, with units that could quickly absorb mobilized conscripts. “They all scaled it down as part of those army reforms. They wanted a high-tech professional army that they could use for operations like in Syria.’
In short, the Russian problem is a small army combined with a lack of large numbers of people. “They don’t have those numbers anymore.” Which is quite a handicap when your combat tactics stem from WW2 and rely on throwing large numbers of foot soldiers into battle. “Had they kept their old Soviet structures, they could have fought better than they have now.” Deen also points out that it is difficult to mobilize large numbers of people in a short period of time and that this is a relative fortune for Ukraine.
“Ukrainians will run slower than Russians and fight harder”
Information
A fifth factor that favors Ukraine: the better availability of information. “You need to know what your enemy is doing. The position of Ukrainian intelligence is several times better than that of Russia. Americans know a lot more about Russians than the other way around, so this gives the Ukrainians a huge advantage.” It is not irrelevant that the local population is hostile to the Russians, passes information to the Ukrainian army and even engages in partisan battle. Last but not least, the communication of the Russians is so bad that they often only talk to each other over open radio links. “Those Ukrainians listen to all this. They know exactly where the weaknesses are, so this gives them a huge advantage and they will make the most of it.’
Hear the full conversation in the Perestroy cabinet here