Putin's Folly

 

Mr Putin’s fundamental folly is that he wanted more than life itself to return to the vainglorious eras of the Russian Empire and the USSR. His folly was two-fold; first, to think that anything of the kind of was remotely possible and second, that a return to the Soviet era would not necessitate the inherent presence of M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction). 

Putin has provided us further evidence of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Vlad has over-estimated his talents, his resources and has misplayed his hand based on those faulty estimates of his own infallibility and genius. He has committed the age-old caveat about under-estimating your opponent. The invasion of Ukraine has been far more than he bargained for militarily, economically and diplomatically.

He and his sycophantic general staff have botched up their ‘special combat operation’ at ever phase and in every aspect of war: tactics, strategy, logistics and operations.

As example; tactically, the surrounding/investment of Kyiv should have been accomplished in the first few hours of the very first day of the war. The task bogged down from the very git-go; under-supplied and traveling only on roads and highways. (Lessons taught by the Germans ‘Blitzkreig’ were not learned, obviously.)

Strategically, sighting on Kyiv, such an obvious target, and announcing for weeks beforehand that attacking Ukraine and taking Kyiv was the Russian plan was both asinine and amateurish. For the vaunted Russia military - which defeated both Napoleon and Hitler - to bungle so badly is baffling.

Operationally, the Russians left themselves open to the ever-alert monitoring of communication by the Western allies. Generals used unsecured cell-phones which Ukraine and NATO could accurately geo-locate. Ooops. Jam up communications and see how far a modern army gets when they’re deaf and blind.

Logistics seems to have been absent from the curriculum of military colleges in Russia. It was as though the general staff never considered that a modern mechanical operation might need… fuel! WTF? Columns of mobile armor sat motionless for days and weeks for lack of petrol. Fuel was so scarce that soldiers were suffering frost-bite because they couldn’t even run the heaters in their vehicles. Not to mention that they were sitting ducks sitting dead still on the highways.

The old maxim; ‘An army travels on its stomach’ was another lesson Putin was ignorant of. The news is rife with tales of Russian conscripts looting grocery stores sacking the larders of babushkas and mugging citizens for food.

The word ‘cock-up’ does not begin to describe the military bone-headedness of the invasion of Ukraine. Any war-gamer or amateur military historian could do a better job than Putin and his general staff have done. 

Sadly, the military screw-ups are bloody and deadly. The effects of diplomatic isolation and economic strangulation, not so much. However, those less deadly effects will have to be endured for many years by the entire world, not just those on the battlefield of Ukraine.

This is Putin’s legacy: Folly, disaster and calamity.

Putin's Debacle?

 

All of the military experts and talking head noobies are scratching their heads about Putin’s battle plan in Ukraine.

What’s he up to?

What does he want?

It all? Piecemeal and in utter ruins?

Does he see Ukraine’s total annihilation and destruction as a fitting punishment for not fulfilling Vlad’s fever dream of empire? 

Entering the mind of a madman is always a dangerous proposition but questions must be raised.

What modern, mechanized army launches an invasion in February/March, after a brief thaw when the ground is marshy, sodden and impassible even for tread vehicles?

As for the infantry, the word ‘slog’ comes to mind.
This is not ‘lightening war’, that’s for certain.

As one military analyst described, ‘The Russian assault on Kyiv is a single lane wide and stuck in traffic.

A forty-mile long convoy, stalled for lack of fuel, replacement parts and solid ground; that is the stuff of cautionary tales for military history classes.  

The Russian slo-mo invasion will be featured on a YouTube channel that animates history’s greatest military blunders. It’s like Hannibal crossing the Alps but leaving the elephants behind. It’s the obverse of a ‘bridge too far’; it’s as if no one amongst the General staff actually thought any of this through.

Tanks? Check…

Missile launchers? Check…

Conscripts? Check…

Fuel? … duh…

 

Putin Bungles It

Ooops.

A slight miscalculation.

Putin got two vital things wrong; he overestimated the effectiveness of his unmotivated armed forces and he underestimated the resolve of his enemy. He obviously ‘mis-under-estimated’ the depth and breadth of response from NATO, the EU and the United States. Even Switzerland has taken sides against Putin’s madness.

Dispirited Russian forces seem to take running out of petrol as a sign to surrender and tuck tail. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are determined to defend their nation to the death rather than welcome the Russians with bouquets and warm wishes.

‘Go Fuck yourself’ is the recurring war-cry from even old Ukrainian women. The granny who offered sun-flower seeds to the Russian soldier she scolded for being in her country is well-known. The troops on Snake Island who told the Russian war-ship to go fuck itself outside Odessa are international heroes.

What this arm-chair analyst got wrong was to base my assessment on the notion that Putin would act ‘rationally’. War, itself, is an irrational endeavor but war-planning follows well-established tenets; tactics, strategy, operations. Writers such as Clausewitz, Liddel-Hart and Sun-Tse are assiduously studied and adapted as changes of technology are adopted and utilized. It is generally considered irrational to try to swallow an entire nation in one go. (‘Biting off more than one can chew’ is a faux-pas in war just as it is a no-no at the dinner table.) 

To recap:

Putin snatched the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in order to maintain Russia’s only naval access to the Mediterranean. Crimea was the site of numerous wars and battles; including the eponymous one in which Florence Nightingale gained fame. Since ancient times when the Greeks colonized the area, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, Crimean Peninsula and the Kerch Strait have been regarded as the area of constant dispute and the place of opposing political interests. 

Due to its strategic and historic importance, it was concluded that the Russians would demand a land bridge along the shores of the Black Sea to address the necessity of supplying the Russian base in Sevastopol. The Russians had built the Crimean Bridge at a cost of 230 billion rubles but as magnificent as that bridge might be, it was not enough to meet the constant need of re-supply which the various Russian military bases required. In the world of war, launching military action to establish that land-bridge would have been considered ‘rational’.

In that rationale, threatening to invade and occupy Ukraine was seen as a feint, a ruse, a political arm-twisting to create leverage whereby Ukraine might be willing (under duress) to grant Russian forces access from Rostov oblast (province) through the Donbas region to the Crimean Peninsula.

The rational war plan would be for the Russian forces in Crimea to move north into Ukrainian territory, taking Kherson and then procede east toward Mariupol as forces move from Russia through Donetsk, linking up with the forces based in Crimea, all the while being supported by Russian war ships in the Black Sea. This would have been a war plan that would have been seen as ‘rational’. The effort to subdue Ukraine by attacking on 3 sides seems to have accomplished nothing of strategic value for the Russians.

If, on the other hand, Putin’s plan had been to take Kyiv and decapitate Zalenskiy’s government as has been widely speculated, then the thrust from Belarus with the aid of Belarussian forces, would have been done all in one ‘go’ without the simultaneous attacks along the eastern and southern Ukrainian borders except as diversionary tactics.  This could have been accomplished in a 90-minute Wehrmacht-like blitzkrieg before Ukraine had steeled itself for invasion.

That was not how it has played out, of course. Apparently, Putin, in a massive fit of hubris, decided to take the entire nation of Ukraine in one giant bite. So far, he is choking on his own greed as the Ukrainians offer stiff resistance, thwarting the Russian troops all along the border between the two nations. One is inclined to ask what Putin is up to.

Former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul told Chuck Todd on meet the Press that “He (Putin) sounds completely disconnected from reality. He sounds unhinged”. Others have remarked that Putin is not who he once was. Mark Galeotti, an author and expert on Russia, wrote that it is “now clear he (Putin) is truly divorced from reality. This is a tragedy.” Putin’s baseless and bizarre description of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government as a band of ‘drug addicts’ and ‘neo-Nazis’ could be cited as an example of Putin’s change. (It should be noted that Zalensky is Jewish.)

All in all, Russia’s battle plan has been a massive cock-up. Former U.S. Marine Corps officer, Rob Lee, a war policy researcher at King's College London, wrote in February 28^th that ‘the Russian military is committing some very basic mistakes from the strategic to tactical levels.” Such mistakes, as was inferred are fundamental ones which anyone of a military mind would have fore seen and avoided. However, Putin is most asssuredly a megalomaniac who would have ram-rodded such a hubristic cluster-fuck of a plan over the more clear-sighted objections his generals.

Ooops.