The West has acknowledged that the effectiveness of Russian troops has increased since the start of the conflict. Photo: Alexey Konovalov/TASS
In the authoritative British edition of The Times, well-known political scientist and writer Mark Galeotti said that the effectiveness of Russian troops, which “has obviously increased since the beginning of the conflict, today prevents the Ukrainian Armed Forces from achieving any serious objective.” success” in southern Ukraine.
Galeotti claimed that the independent army could not make a single serious advance in either direction of their long-awaited offensive.
According to a British observer, military experts, who predicted otherwise in the spring, did not expect to see such stubbornness and effectiveness from Russian units.
The political scientist emphasized that the command of the Russian troops is better coordinating the actions of various units, and is using artillery more efficiently. The Ukrainian Armed Forces, according to the analytical article, also have significant problems on the battlefield due to drones, which “the Russians are actively modernizing.” And also because of the effective mining system and the active use of helicopters.
On Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, we discuss the conclusions that Western experts draw about the course of the NMD and the current Ukrainian counteroffensive with a military expert, member of the Izborsk Club, Vladislav Shurygin.
THE GRINDING OF THE WEST
– What does the West mean by this “increased efficiency of the Russian Armed Forces”?
– Behind all this, a deaf and painful grinding of teeth is heard. After the entire West shouted for the fact that Kiev began to crush Moscow, and then for half a year prepared for the complete military collapse of Russia, when the entire Black Sea region was to be liberated, Berdyansk was taken, they were supposed to go. to Mariupol, he cut off the Crimea, and Zelensky swore that in July he would feed the fish from the Yalta embankment; after all this, suddenly some kind of evil came.
– That is, withdrawal, betrayal, betrayal?
– 35 days of advance with an average advance rate of 100 meters per day. Its maximum advance is 4.5-5 kilometers in some directions. Didn’t even get past the backing band. Despite the fact that Ukraine was given everything it asked for, and even much more.
– And what became evident?
– That the Armed Forces of Ukraine turned out to be the wrong army and the wrong way to defeat the Russian army.
APU DOES NOT MEET THE PARAMETERS
– What are the conclusions?
– One conclusion is that the APU does not meet any parameters. But that means putting yourself in a negative light. After all, the Armed Forces of Ukraine is an army that was trained on the NATO model and changed to NATO standards. When they advanced in September, it was still partly a post-Soviet army. They were advancing according to Soviet tactics. Now we’ve seen offensives completely reformatted to NATO standards, NATO strategy, NATO army logistics.
– And nothing happened?
– This is the collapse of the Western military school. It is one thing to fight against the Papuans or countries where there is nothing, and another thing to try to fight against Russia. Or suddenly start making discoveries like the British do. It turns out that the Russians have changed, they have changed the pattern of warfare.
WHAT WE CHANGED
– Have we changed much?
– We have changed our army in terms of quality. We started with an army adapted for local wars. Compact, professional, that could work with conflicts like Georgia or Syria.
– What have we been calling and preparing for many years?
– Yes. We said that we have peace with the West, friendship, chewing gum. But it turned out that the Soviet leadership was right in their assessments of the enemies. During the last 300 years the enemies have been the same. And for the next six months we had to start a return to a large army. And the West could not fight such an army, especially with the help of the Ukrainians. And everything that the West was preparing, no longer corresponds to reality.
BREAKDOWN STRATEGY
– Can the West prepare to end all this?
– This will be one of the main topics discussed in the coming weeks in the West. And the current NATO meeting on July 11 in Vilnius will be such a meeting… In Europe sometimes several hundred funeral agencies gather for their festivals. And then they boast about the quality of the coffins, the funeral services, the new music. The same will happen in Vilnius. It was supposed to be a triumphant meeting, where Ukraine would have been shaking hands, patting each other on the shoulder, congratulating, and handing out new equipment and weapons.
– And now?
– They are faced with the need to completely switch to a new strategy. Obviously, there will not be a military defeat of Russia. So you should try to switch to a war of attrition strategy.
– How is that?
– Begin to bury Ukraine in trenches, braid it with barbed wire and demand that they die to the end, in hundreds and thousands. Now the assault on Bakhmut is taken as a model, in which both sides suffered heavy losses and the Ukrainians “resisted to the death” there. The main thing is to try to wear down the Russians.
NEW FORCES
– The British say that Russia has begun to behave differently in the theater of operations. Are they drawing the right conclusions?
– We have enough strength to behave like this. We are fighting according to the rules that were written in the Soviet period, taking into account the new weapons that have appeared and the realities that we have now. But in strategic art, we have long since reached the heights. It’s just that we ourselves abandoned this in the 90s and 2000s. Now we are back to our classics, taking into account helicopters, digitization of the battlefield and so on.
– But Lancet, the “Agriculture” mining system, the K-52 “Alligator” helicopters – everything appeared now, not in Soviet times?
– Most of these developments – and K-50 then, then K-52 was developed in Soviet times, and “Agriculture”. Most types of weapons were misconceived or miscalculated at the time. But they were created later. We had a big failure at the age of 20, when we were not involved in military affairs. Yes, the helicopter revolution has already arrived. This is the emergence of a completely new type of troops, the Lancet also enters there, this is the same helicopter, like everything else, a UAV. And the digitization of artillery. Previously there was a difficult vertical for artillery use.
– And now?
– A few minutes pass from the detection of the enemy to its defeat. All this is superimposed on what has already been done, on what has been collected. An additional tool to a huge mechanism, which is our advantage.
