SPECIAL POST!!! -"Why the SMO?": FSB Spook Insider Reveals Why Putin's Army Failed to Take Kiev!

Part I: the failure of the Kiev Coup and its consequences have been a disaster for the Slavic race.

Today we have a guest post by Dr Livsci, a long-time commentator at the blog. He read “Why the SMO?” which is a book that was released a year ago and got Prigozhin’s ringing endorsement of it when it came out. I think that the arguments and explanations laid out by the author match almost 100% with the position of this blog, which is actually a bit unnerving when you think about it. No wonder people were accusing us ZAnon skeptics of being intelligence assets. We demonstrated more “intelligence” than anyone else on the topic.

Now, I don’t want to ruin the reading experience for anyone, but I also don’t want the key points made in the guest post to be lost in the details. So, in short, the spook author who is being reviewed has military and spook connections in Donbass and Russia and he reveals just how and why everything went bad for Russia. In short, the SMO was supposed to be an FSB op first and foremost, with the military units sent in as back-up for the intelligence coup, essentially. I came to the same conclusion a year ago and explained it over several articles.

Here is one:

And the summary of the book that follows below is by and large a confirmation of the blog’s thesis.

However, the book author does not go as far as we do here in his analysis. The allegation that the “Spook + Crook state” of Russia i.e., the inescapable conclusion that the siloviks and oligarchs who run the country as a hostile elite are clearly treacherous and in cahoots with Washington and Tel Aviv is not made. The author simply does not seem to want to go that far. Instead, he mostly portrays these developments as mistakes and oversights and the result of commonplace corruption. To go a step further is probably crossing an invisible red line, like the one that Strelkov stepped over. There are occult rules within these spook state cults, as far as I can tell, and most of the members, even the disgruntled ones, stick to the code.

OK, that should be enough from me. Enjoy!

**

"Why an SMO? The most obvious answer is because Russia wasn't planning to fight [a war]".

That's the opening sentence from Michael Golovlev’s SVO Clausewitz and the Void.

It is a work with a somewhat vague origin and given its very relevant and contemporary subject, it is not very well known. On Russia’s analogous online webstores such as Wildberries and Ozon it has less than 50 combined reviews albeit they are very positive averaging just shy of 5 out 5 stars. The book’s origin is vague in the sense that its critics claim it was commissioned as nothing more than a hit piece by Prigozhin, citing his ringing endorsement of it as proof. Some even claim Prigozhin himself ghost wrote it, but this is a silly claim. Prigozhin was a very busy man and I doubt he was writing a book in between videos berating Shoigu and organising his ZEK Army. On the other hand it is not unreasonable to speculate that Prigozhin did indeed commission the book given his endorsement, but there is no proof.

Michael Golovlev is the pseudonym for one Andrei Pinchuk who is a reserve FSB colonel who currently works at the Technical University Stakin in Moscow and holds a doctorate in political science. Working at universities is, of course, standard spook operation procedure, as Rurik can confirm. Golovlev also worked in the state security apparatus of both Transnistria and the DNR. From June of 2014 to March 2015 he was the 1st Minister of State Security in the DNR and holds the title of “Hero of the DNR”. He also helped create and is a member of the "Union of Donbass Volunteers" and he has been sanctioned by the EU and US.

Needless to say according to someone like Martyanov, Golovlev simply does not hold the necessary credentials to comment on anything related to military or political matters. We know this because Golovlev does not come to the same conclusions as Martyanov, making him unqualified through a kind of reverse disqualification process. This is unlike Shoigu, who worked extensively in the field of construction and fire-fighting before becoming Defense Minister, which gives him the necessary military credential to be taken seriously. But we should give Golovlev a fair shake and judge what he has to say for ourselves.

Also, Esteemed Stalker Partners, this is my first foray into blogging, so please bear with my writing and thank you to Rurik for sharing his platform with me. Despite his occasional threats and extortions directed at the readership let no one claim he isn’t a classy fellow at the end of the day.

[NOTE: You freeloaders still owe me money. Have you no shame? No honor at all? COUGH UP ALREADY!]

Being completed less than a year after the start of the SMO, the book is of course dated. However, to my knowledge nobody else has done such a thorough post-mortem of all that transpired in the initial phase of the SMO. Nowadays, if it happened yesterday its old news, but for anyone wanting to understand the extremely murky beginnings of the SMO this would be as good a go-to source as any. There is no shortage of harsh and erudite critics when it comes to the Kremlins handling of the operation, but these [views] are typically expressed via messages on Telegram, interviews and other short-form means. Having a book in hand that walks a reader through the whole farce from top to bottom is an invaluable resource tying together all the stuff an observer comes across in the aforementioned Telegram and interview info-bites.

So, Golovlev divides the early SMO into 3 phases, each with its own dynamics and in which Russia was pursuing different goals. Golovlev defines the Phases as follows:

Phase 1

"Attempted blitzkrieg on 9 different key axis's with Kiev as the priority, the organisation and provisioning of a palace coup, change of authority in Kiev and a following reset of Russian/Ukrainian relations. Counting on the flight or death of Zelensky taking Ukrainian politics under Moscows control. This phase ran its course after the unsuccessful attempts to storm Kiev and Kharkov and was finalised with the Istanbul agreements"

Phase 2

"The withdrawals of troops from Kiev, Sumi, and Chernogovra, focusing strength on the liberation of Donbass and the creation of cauldrons. Counting on fire and oil superiority combined with Ukrainian shell exhaustion to advance the situation in Russias favour. Ends with Russian withdrawals from Kharkov-Liman".

Phase 3

"Ukrainian strike on the Crimean bridge, public appointment of a commander of the SMO, declaration of partial mobilization, focus on destroying critical infrastructure, switching the operation to a more military focused format, restricting the operations territorial limits (limiting territorial ambitions to the LDNR and the parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye Russia held at the time) the gradual shift to defensive battle excluding attempts to liberate the LDNR".

The 1st phase was, of course, supposed to be the only phase of the SMO.

Phase 2 was an ad-hoc response to the failure of the 1st and the same mistakes of the 1st were repeated in the 2nd.

Chief amongst these mistakes was underestimating the Ukrainians and the willingness of Ukraines owners to force Russia to fight a real war for which she was by no means prepared. For Ukraine to capitulate due to arms shortages it follows that her arms supplies wont be replenished. As we know now, energy prices are higher in Europe due to the SMO but Europeans are willing to pay these prices, or at least the leadership is. Underestimating both their dear Ukrainian colleagues and Western partners led to catastrophic consequences in both the 1st and 2nd phases.

The 3rd phase is likewise a response to the failure of the second.

Russia was driven from Kharkov-Liman and was forced to partially mobilize, put someone in charge of the SMO. To try to not experience any more large losses of territory and claw forward where they could in the LDNR.

The one point where I would strongly disagree with the author is on the point of critical infrastructure strikes, because there is no evidence Russias massive drone/missile attacks were meant to actually destroy any critical infrastructure. The grain corridors, electricity, railroads etc never stopped working for any remotely significant period of time. To my knowledge the railroads in particular never stopped working for even a minute.

Golovlev goes on to describe how the SMO was basically conceived as a Western style full spectrum operation where victory via directly smashing the enemy on the battlefield was never considered. The Russian conception incorporated information war, agitation against the authorities in Kiev and heavy reliance on special forces and clandestine agents in Ukraine. Recall that Putin called on the Ukrainian Army to join the Russians and overthrow Zelensky, sending nothing more than special forces to take the city of Kharkov etc. The former clearly telegraphs that the Kremlin did not view the VSU [VSU = UAF] as an outright enemy at the time and it was presumed, incorrectly, that the special forces in Kharkov would have the keys to the city handed to them by FSB assets.

According to Golovlev this is what the “Special” in the Special Military Operation is.

Golovlev:

"This difference logically dictated that victory would not be on the front lines but that the operations tasks would be decided with other means, dynamic pinpoint strikes in tandem with non military means"

He further notes:

"The enemies of Russia clearly recognized this approach and precisely because of this initially insisted that the outcome of the war would be decided on the battlefield"

That is, very soon after launching the SMO Russia was no longer in the drivers seat and Ukraine’s owners declined to play the Kremlin’s game or by their rules.

NATO threw out the "Special" and forced Russia into a plain old military operation!

The Kremlin only had a very brief window of opportunity to pull its plan off and it was missed. Golovlev moves on to explain why the Kremlin placed so much emphasis on the “special” part of the SMO. To explain this, he takes us on a brief review of the much lauded by ZAnon so-called "Gerasimov Doctrine". In reality there is no Gerasimov doctrine any more than there is Milley or Brown doctrine. In briefly dissecting this “doctrine”, we discover that it is nothing more than the MoD trying to replicate the NATO approach to military operations during the War on Terror.

Golovlev cites it:

"Basic differences of the new type of war, initiation of conflict with peacetime troops, highly manuverable character of offensive operations, strikes on enemy critical infrastructure for a short duration, massive use of precision weapons and special forces and strikes against the enemy through the whole of her territory"

This is very beautiful military porn word salad and I am confident that any GWOT (global war on terror) veterans will instantly notice all the key buzz phrases being repeated in the so-called Gerasimov Doctrine. Unfortunately, the MoD not only aped the GWOT Lingo and pseudo-doctrine, they also aped the GWOT NATO force structure of independent battalions as the basis of their fighting force. Needless to say this led to disastrous results for the RF on the battlefield.

And so, the stereotype of "Soviet dinosaurs" and their backwards ways being the source of the Russian military’s problems couldn't be more incorrect!

The Kremlin remaking the Russian military on a Western GWOT model is the actual problem.

This is much like how the Kremlin efforts to make Russian society a mirror of Western society is what is wrong with Russia’s culture, NOT that Putin is some kind of Soviet/Russian imperialist revanchist who hates the West. By the way, Western militaries are now moving away from the GWOT doctrine and force structure while Russia like always is stuck a few years behind the West’s worst practices and playing catch-up.

I digress.

Golovlev points out that the result of applying this shock and awe NATO GWOT approach to the SMO resulted in a WW1 style artillery war and mobilization — the concept totally failed.

The workhorse formation of the Russian ground forces at the start of the SMO was the battalion tactical group which were indeed mobile and manuverable. This served the RF well enough in the opening confusion of the first days of the SMO. The RF took large swaths of South East Ukraine and was at the gates of Kiev in very short order. But, I repeat the authors astute observation that once the West had regained its nerves and observed that Russia was just trying to pull a GWOT style operation against Ukraine, the plan from NATO was that the conflict would have to be decided on the battlefield. At this point, it didn't matter that Russia had quickly driven a bunch of BTGs right up to Kiev.

Golovlev states:

"BTGs are good for solving local tasks and are flexible instruments for reacting to sharply changing situations". In other words they are good for fighting irregular opponents and as QRF assets, however "for mass movement of troops under sharp and constant support of artillery, armour and further more trench battle or mass offensive storm operations such an organisational models utility is doubtful".

So, the BTGs can pull off “big arrow” work against light opposition, but not in conditions normally associated with peer to peer war between opponents with artillery, armour, etc.

This is because BTGs:

• don't have large manpower reserves

• they are too small to defend large swaths of territory and Ukraine is a big country

• if one was looking to fight a war in Ukraine the "regiment/division" model is self evidently superior

• Russia was not expecting a war and when they got one they had on hand a completely unsuited organizational structure and massive shortage of manpower

Of course, when the SMO was declared, there were plenty of willing volunteers. But there was nothing to equip them with.

In regards to the manpower deficit:

"It was attempted to fill it with volunteers and private military formations, according to open source internet data 20 such light motor infantry volunteer battalions were formed and 20 formations for reconnaissance and diversion activities".

However:

"The absence of heavy weapons, armour and artillery in BARS (the volunteer battalions) didnt allow them to conduct defensive or break through operations on their own despite being fully manned and trained".

By many accounts I have seen on Telegram, the BARs formations didn't have transport and had to use their own private vehicles and crowd fund for trucks.

So, there was no shortage willing men in the initial stages, but the Kremlin had gutted the military as a matter of state policy, sold off its ability to use them and banked on the American dream of using quick “Shock Doctrine” against cowering, low tech enemies.

The author further points out that in regards to the reconnaissance/diversion troops they were never used as anything other than storm infantry.

"Despite the fancy names no massive diversionary work for achieving the goals was ever organised. There are many different opinions on this account, its really quiet and intrigue".

There was, of course, the doomed Spetznaz incursion into Kharkov, but the author is basically correct. There the lightly armed Spetznaz drove into the city, parked and were absolutely shot to pieces by enemies possessing vastly superior numbers and firepower.

There was no plan other than show up and have the FSBs assets hand the city over.

The author concludes the chapter discussing the results of MoD using the Spetznaz as nothing more than storm infantry and contrasts it with the VSUs more traditional and effective use of these invaluable troops, but this is a theme he picks up again in later chapters so we will move on chapter 2 after a brief rant.

Dear fellow Stalkers, please don’t forget why our blog overlord frequently berates the Zanon 5th dimensional chess club cultists! They are still insisting that the push on Kiev was a fake out to cockblock a Ukrainian attack on Donbass. We have established here that the BTG organizational structure would, in theory, work for spoiling an enemy attack in the making, but is wholly unsuited for holding territory once taken. Furthermore once said attack is spoiled, the BTG structure would be useless for defending Donbass or anything else associated with full industrial scale warfare between peers. So are we to believe that the Shoigu MoD foisted this absurd organizational structure on the Russian Ground Forces purely to spoil a Ukrainian attack on Donbass?

The author correctly notes that the culmination of all 3 phases of the early SMO was the loss of most gains around Kharkov, the loss of Liman which Russia fought hard to take and we can add the loss of Kherson to the list as well. To explain all this loss, the ZAnonists claim that "lol territory doesn't even matter its all about destroying the enemies army via attrition".

But then please explain to me how the lightly armed and low manpower BTGs Russia entered the SMO with are suited better to attrition war than regiments and divisions.

Well?

My favorite explanation was Sakers ridiculous soccer analogy. Being slightly more clever than other Zanonist copium charlatans, he said that modern war is like a soccer match. The two armies maneuver over a vast space back and forth until one side scores more and whatnot and wins. Russia’s BTGs being flexible and mobile own that game. Well, cool story there Saker, but when one side has 10 highly mobile and flexible players but the other side has 40 maybe not so fast, but still decent players the later team is going to win.

On to chapter 2.

The second chapter recounts the fiasco that was the attempt to take Kharkov, a city with a population of over a million people with only a few undermanned and under supported detachments of Spetznaz.

Golovlev gives us a brief overview of what was supposed to happen:

"A brief generalisation of the task, penetrate into the city, occupy the SBU headquarters on Mironozitsky street, the airport and tractor factory, they will meet you there. Only return fire is authorised to be used upon Ukrainian troops". [NOTE: he means the Russians could only shoot if shot upon first, basically UN Peacekeeper rules.]

As we learned in chapter 1, the Kremlins plan was by no means conceptualized as a traditional style war to be waged in Ukraine. Obviously, someone was supposed to meet the Spetznaz from within the cities. Furthermore, the order to only open return fire on Ukrainian troops if shot on is odd if the actual goal of the SMO from the beginning was to destroy the VSU via attrition as Zanon claims that it is. The brief outline of the plan that the author gave us is nothing less than a death sentence for the Russian soldiers should the FSB spooks fail to hold up their end and, needless to say, that's exactly what happened. Nobody met the Spetznaz besides the more numerous and more heavily armed Ukrainian soldiers.

The intelligence operation was a total failure.

Gorlovlev:

"The core of the operation was 2nd brigade of Army Spetsnaz. Command started the operation without the full presence of supporting attachments. The first loss occurred when one of the columns fell into a well prepared ambush and a medic blew himself up with a grenade to avoid being taken prisoner".

And:

"Spetznaz and private military contractors in 3 columns moved into the city on Tiger armoured vehicles and KAMAZs where they dispersed along the streets of the metropolis. There they were methodically engaged and destroyed by the well focused strength of the enemy".

Accounts that I have read online of this one-sided slaughter suggest that Russian Spetznaz drove into the town and arrived where they were supposed to get to, but nobody met them there. As they weren't allowed to engage Ukrainian troops on sight, the Ukrainians just called in the tanks and their own armour and simply squashed the Spetznaz once the big guns arrived.

"The outcome was instead of occupying and holding administrative buildings one group on 2 KAMAZs and 3 Tigers was destroyed in the Dendroparka district. The main group was forced to take up defence in school number 134. The attempt to dig in was unsuccessful. 19 troops and officers were killed in the course of a 9 hour battle. 3 were taken prisoner".

The author doesn't mention it, but a couple of the Spetznaz did manage to at least escape from the school and one convey managed to avoid destruction. That’s all we who are on Russia’s side have to rejoice about. Golovlev speculates that it was precisely the failure to regime change Kiev combined with the failure at Kharkov that forced the Kremlin to try and find another means to fix the situation. This would presumably be the Istanbul talks which took place over a month later, with Moscow offering very generous terms to Kiev.

The main thing to take away from this chapter would be the Kremlin’s utterly hands-off and suicidal approach to the VSU. Again, soldiers were only allowed to return fire and not allowed to engage on sight. These are harsher rules of engagement than I had in Iraq in 2003! If we saw armed Iraqis in uniform (never saw any) we were allowed to engage them without waiting to be shot at.

"But this is a war of liberation! We must be humanitarian! Putin is a moral hyperpower!"

— the 5D chess cretin howls in outrage.

Well, is it mass extermination of the Ukrainians or is liberation of the Ukrainians? Because these are basically mutually exclusive claims.

Sure, Russians claim they liberated Germans from the Nazis, but they at least don't deny that this liberation required slaughtering the Wehrmacht and the SS first, which meant millions of German dead. Liberation necessarily has to follow the total annihilation of the enemy’s armed forces unless they join a coup against their own government or something like that.

The Kremlin was not expecting to really have to fight just like the author says.

They were expecting a coup which never came, which means that the start of the SMO could have nothing to do with a so-called “fake out feint” to prevent an imminent attack on Donbass.

But, I suppose the cornered 5D Kool-Aid guzzler will screech again that spoiling an imminent Ukrainian invasion of Donbass via sending lightly armed, undermanned, and under supported Spetznaz into Kharkov with express orders to not engage the VSU is a logical plan.

But, Esteemed Stalkers, let’s simply do a quick thought exercise together.

Let’s say that Scotland seceded from England and you I were tasked with preventing an imminent Scottish invasion of England. Would sending some lightly equipped, undermanned, and under supported SAS with strict orders not to cause any trouble with the Scottish army into Dumfries (in our thought exercise Dumfries now has a population of over a million) be the best plan we could come with?

Really??

Chapter 3 gets into more details that we scratched the surface of in chapter 1.

Golovlev discusses many of the criticisms leveled at the Kremlins initial strategy of dispersing its limited forces on 9 different axis's as opposed to concentrating them. Even after the the initial plan flopped theoretically MoD could have reshuffled and kept a bridge head at least in Kiev Oblast, or concentrated more force in the less densely populated and urbanized Sumi region. This potentially could have facilitated cutting off the Donbass grouping of the VSU.

"There exists opinions for example that priority axis's shouldn't have been 9 but 3 or 4 primary with accompanying feints that wouldn't involve real strength on secondary locations with the overall goal of tying down the front".

The criticism the author is recounting here is one that I have seen from both random Telegram people on many channels and from Strelkov himself. It’s irrefutable, but sadly, within the context of the SMOs framework as established by the Kremlin, the criticism is irrelevant.

"Such plans and scenarios however don't consider the specifications initially chosen for the SMO conceptually, not war but military action in tandem with behind the scenes special plans. For this reason such critics of the SMO strategy imagine conditions that aren't reflective of the planned for state of affairs. Therefore its more correct to study the capabilities of the Russian Army which will inevitably dictate the conditions of any possible plan".

Please excuse, Respected Stalkers, I is not being a professional translator, no speaking good, no!

Both Riley and Rurik will agree that translating some versions of Russian into understandable English is often akin to reading a cows entrails to figure out whether you will have a good grain harvest while your knowledge of bovine biology and its nuances are only at a temp intern’s level. What the author is essentially communicating here, is that the SMO’s critics are imaging not the Russian army that actually existed in February of 22 but one capable of carrying out these alternate scenarios i.e., a fantasy army that Russia no longer possessed.

Therefore, it is more helpful to study the Russian Army that actually existed as this will help us understand why the actual plan that didn't work was selected.

"Its likely that war planning was reduced in concept by an assumption that war would be fought with opposing strong states, that opponents would posses nuclear triads (land air and sea based nukes) tactical nuclear and rocket based weapons. Land forces, it was likey assumed would be used in low intensity conflict analogues to Syria which don't require high levels of resources and aren't of global consequence. As following experience has shown the main error of this variant of scenario is underestimation of the role of infantry working in tandem with artillery and aviation".

In other words, despite the Kremlin’s chest thumping about military reforms, the land forces have been rotting and combined arms capabilities have only decreased since the Soviet era. In my opinion, the authors overall thesis in regards to neglect of combined arms capabilities and the general underestimation of the infantry’s role on the battlefield is self-evidently correct. However, he is being very generous to the Kremlin by framing it as this conceptual mistake cooked into the MoDs doctrine. But the truth is that the doctrine isn’t the result of any professional study or analysis of experience on the battlefield. It was just a pretext for funneling money away from the military and justified by re-writing doctrine with military jargon word salad to reflect Western GWOT military fads that were still in style at the time.

Accordingly the Russian ground forces were made into a Potemkin village of a NATO GWOT Army. Sad. Very sad.

…

So far, I haven’t included the authors frequent quoting of Clausewitz because it hasn't been essential to conveying his points. But from this point onwards, it becomes essential.

Clausewitz:

The destructive beginning of fire action in our modern wars obviously has the greatest reality, nevertheless it is equally obvious that individual face-to-face combat must be looked at as the true basis of combat

And:

An army consisting of only artillery would be a complete absurdity, while an army of cavalry is conceivable, but its strength would be extremely negligible. An Army consisting of only infantry would not only be conceivable but much stronger/

Golovlev goes on to claim that:

"Mathematical comparisons of warehouses storing weapons, rockets, cumulative fire strength, aviation, mistaken analysis of the NATO hierarchies readiness to give Ukraine strong support and most of all shifting wars burden from the infantry played a cruel joke on the Russian side, in war 2 plus 2 is never 4. Sometimes it is 5, sometimes night, sometimes Tuesday, sometimes a million. Such abstractions of strategic consequences require especially thorough and detailed tactical processes"

Most of us probably remember the fanfare that surrounded the announcement of Russia’s new and destructive hyper sonic weapons, the bragging about the huge stores of Soviet artillery ammo Russia possessed (on paper), Russias 5th generation future aircraft, the Armata tanks, etc etc. But in the end it was more than anything else a lack of basic infantry that led to Russias initial plan flopping. Once NATO realized this all they had to do was make Russia fight a war that called for more infantry centric combined arms capabilities. That was the nail in the coffin of the original SMO plan. Sure, the FSB had failed in its role spectacularly, Zelensky was not ousted, the keys to Kharkov and Kiev were not handed over, but a bit more infantry on hand could have mitigated the catastrophic consequences that followed.

A lot more infantry could have very well delivered Kharkov or Kiev anyway.

The criticisms of the SMO’s original strategy of not concentrating sufficient strength anywhere are moot precisely because they assume enough infantry with combined arms abilities to concentrate force in the first place. Again, we aren't even talking about pure numbers even though that is a big component. We are also talking about the ground forces organizational structure — the higher organisational headquarters for regiments and divisions with attachments was largely absent in the early days of the SMO. Thus, the ability to even efficiently manage and support bodies larger than independent battalions was not available. They didn’t need them in Syria, so why in Ukraine.

It’s not like their esteemed colleagues in NATO would try anything, amirite?

Golovlev goes on to detail just how bitter the consequences of infantry neglect were:

"The necessary measures for their (infantry) sustainment were also thwarted".

I mentioned the problem with an absence of HQs for management of larger combined arms bodies, Golovlev details another huge problem:

"Inadequate or often the complete absence of drones at the tactical level"

Recall, fellow Stalkers, how I said that the Russian army of 2022 was a Potemkin village of a GWOT NATO army. So just think: how many drones did an American-style infantry battalion have on hand in those days?

I left the Army in 2011 and in garrison we had a grand total of zero and nobody trained with them. While deployed we had a handful, maybe 5 or 6 in a company, and with a few more at battalion headquarters. A few guys might do a crash course on how to use them. Now I know my experience is by no means analogues to the Russian Army in 2022 … but nonetheless my gut tells me my experience is similar to the situation at the start of the SMO.

Golovlev goes on:

"In the Russian Army, very effective strike drones were designed, Orlon, Corsair, Forpost and Altius. Even recon types like Orlan 10 can be used as strike drones. But they were in short supply".

To anyone with some basic infantry experience this makes sense.

An army training for GWOT type battalion centric low intensity warfare is going to be unprepared when they have take on technological peers who outnumber them. This battalion isnt going to even have enough mortar, anti tank rockets and HE grenade rounds on hand let alone drones. These guys were training to fight irregular light infantry who were cruising around on a couple of pickups. But then they had Soviet BMPs and tanks coming at them on top of enemy drone waves.

How many drone operators did a Russian BTG even have on hand?

Not many.

A drone operator is one less driver, rifleman, etc and these BTGs were already undermanned. Making matters worse, there is no organic higher regimental headquarters to ask for spare operators. This means they weren't training for drone-centric high intensity peer war, and it follows from that there would be a correspondingly low demand and appreciation for drones. This problem with lack of drone capabilities amongst the workhorse BTGs than compounds another problem.

Golovlev:

"Furthermore the absence of medium and heavy drones such as Orlon 30 useful for precise artillery observation and correction led to high expenditure of shells groping in the dark and consequently shell hunger".

A little ice and snow sliding down the mountain can become a full on avalanche of disaster. And so, then the shell hunger is naturally going to have its own unpleasant ripple effects and so on and so forth the effect cascades from one bad decision.

Golovlev further notes that Russian artillery forward observers in 2022 were still working with paper maps and binoculars unlike the Ukrainians who were working with the aid of encrypted digital tablets with offline maps that were updated regularly with the latest satellite and drone Intel giving Ukrainian observers much better situational awareness. Now, Russia had analogues to these systems in 2022, but they simply never made it into the troops hands.

Because of course!

Also, these systems are expensive and Russia’s MIC is not comparable to the US's. The US can pay for an enormous MIC that overprices everything because America’s financial overlord rulers have so far suffered no consequences for conjuring infinity money out of nowhere nonstop. But Russia can not do this — the ruble is not the world’s reserve and international trade currency and, accordingly, the feeding trough is smaller. Putting the Russian analogues into serial production would not be as ridiculously expensive as the Western models, but nonetheless, it would have to come from the federal budget and that money was allocated for more important things.

After all, Shoigu’s daughters Dubai penthouse isn't going to pay for itself, nor is Peskovs daughters place in Paris or Milan or wherever she is now.

[NOTE: I know that Peskov’s son is some low-life wannabe drug dealer in London living in an expensive flat, as is Soloviev’s gay model son and Lavrov’s diva-daughter. They’re all in London. ]

Getting back to the drones, the situation with small recon types was the worst.

"And what about small drones for reconnaisance detachments fulfilling the role of flying binoculars and close recon? They didn't exist at all"

He then details how this problem was solved almost exclusively due to the troops crowd funding on the internet. This I can corroborate myself. I remember in those early days that every other post on Z Telegram pages were guys at the front imploring patriots to send them DJ Mavics. Guys like Murz and Tartarsky would make videos of them delivering vans full of small drones to guys at the front and the they would all thank the people that donated.

[NOTE: both of them are dead now. They both died in Russia. Suicide and assassination, respectively.]

Golovlev states this is all made possible when the human factor is under-appreciated:

"This is only possible when the personnel factor is itself underestimated. This concludes with the scarcity or absence of all that with which infantry work is impossible or becomes harder. Items of individual protection like helmets, body armour, aid kits, radios, even elementary items for daily life (Russian troops can’t even count on being issued so much as socks and jackets). Who needs them when rockets and aviation will solve everything? We have seen the outcome of this thinking".

Again, I don't believe for a second that Gerasimov and Shoigu came to the conclusion that combined arms infantry war was a thing of the past after they did some war gaming with the General Staff and deep analysis of contemporary global conflicts. The re-hashed NATO GWOT model and accompanying doctrine was accepted to justify gutting the land forces so that more money went into corrupt Kremlinoid pockets. The decision to gut the land forces was taken, then came the GWOT model and doctrine to justify this decision. The whole point of the 2022 model Army was to make sure that the people siphoning from the federal budget weren’t forced to share too much with the military.

Sure Shoigu and his daughter will get their cut but private Ivan Ivanovich Smirnov is SoL [shit out of luck].

We continue with the litany of problems caused by insufficient amounts of provisioned infantry on hand.

"Underestimating the role of manpower entailed mistakes in strategic planning. A key task in traditional approach is to localize the theatre of battle, this was apparently forgotten. Why cut off locations where nobody is fighting? If need be just fire some rockets!"

(…)

"At the same time the enemy using the the classical algorithms of battlefield theory cut off Russian supply routes than constantly withdrew without any exhausting battles."

This point, fellow esteemed Stalker patricians, is why I keep insisting that the February 2022 Russian Army was a Potemkin village GWOT Army and even then, not comparable to NATO’s forces.

Yes, in Iraq and Afghanistan NATO supply columns very frequently ran into ambushes.

But serious attempts were made to mitigate this.

The most successful method was simply to place observation and block posts along the MSRs. Even the Soviet Union did this in Afghanistan fairly successfully. During the GWOT, NATO had some serious manpower shortages herself and couldn't protect every stretch of highway so in came very heavily armoured trucks that as per regulation had to be escorted by gun trucks with 50cals and Mark 19s etc.

In contrast, Shoigu’s MoD didn't do any of this.

Non-armoured KAMAzs and Urals with no escorts were just lined up ducks in a row for Ukrainian units that the BTRs had bypassed. This is exactly where the heavy casualties for Russia in the early days came from!

And now let me qualify my former statements and beg for mercy from the ZAnon watchdogs …

My point is absolutely NOT to say something like “NATO #1, Russia smells” so please don't hurl abuse at me in the comments for that at least.

The point I want to drive home is why I believe I am justified in calling the February 2022 Russian Army a Potemkin village and why I DON’T believe Gerasimov and Shoigu were drawing conclusions from recent low intensity conflicts and were simply mislead by the data into disastrous reforms on the eve of the largest land war since WWII.

The author is giving us excellent insights and observations but he seems to think these mistakes came from faulty doctrine and incorrectly learned lessons.

[NOTE: There are clearly spook codes of silence that aren’t allowed to be crossed.]

But, if Russia’s MoD was seriously studying the painful lessons NATO learned in Kebabistan, they couldn't have missed the stuff I just mentioned. Hence, I’m leaning towards no studying and no wargaming — the Potemkin village Army was the result of banal corruption with the so called “Gerasimov Doctrine” a post-hoc justification that was then passed down to Saker and his cabal of imitators and sycophants.

[NOTE: looking straight at you, Duplicitius, Big Sperg, Hinklestein and all the rest of you parasites.]

The author again:

"If Russia had adopted a similar approach initially and the main emphasis placed on the full isolation from Western supply the map would look much different. But when the goal is maintaining delivery of oil supplies the rest of the goals and the means for their realization automatically become secondary."

Well, see, now that part suggests that the author is pulling some punches and knows very well what the root of the problem is.

I suppose that’s where Rurik’s job starts.

He can fill in the blanks that this officer is either unwilling or unable to.

…

We will continue the review of the book in Part II! Many thanks to the good doctor for reading and summarizing this technical war-manual and sharing it with us, FOR FREE.

Now, cards on the table here, I told him straight up that the SWINE who read me for free without supporting my work do not deserve an analysis of such caliber. But he insisted on sharing it anyway. “Bring forth my offering to the people, so that they mayeth knoweth truth at long last,” he spaketh unto me. He also begged for forgiveness on your part and for your disloyalty to me as readers (for I am a jealous blogger) even though we both agreed that such forgiveness if even given at all would be undeserved. Thus, I think you should at least share his work as far and wide as you can to show some appreciation, don’t you?

If you don’t share it, and as a result no one reads it, I see no reason to ask Livsci to waste his time on finishing Part II, which is already partly done, and is an even more fascinating read, actually, with yet more revelations.

The ball is in your court!