SPECIAL POST!!! -"Why the SMO?": FSB Spook Insider Explains Why Moscow Lost So Much Equipment and Territory to Kiev!

Part II: Gerasimov Launches a War With a Peacetime Army and Refuses to Mobilize

Last time, we covered the opening of the Kiev SMO and the intelligence failure surrounding that very special operation.

We continue with the inside story of what happened in those early days with Dr. Livsci’s summary of the next few chapters of the tell-all book “Why the SMO"?”.

**

Copying The Classroom Dunce’s Homework Answers

From here, we are introduced to the basic Russian war doctrine which the MoD adopted in December of 2014. I honestly don’t see any reason to quote it here because it's 90% military word salad meant to cover a lack of substance with professional sounding jargon.

For example, we have emphasis on "strikes throughout the enemies depth".

Well cool but if you have the ability to do it why not do that? Just do it — like, why wouldn’t you if you could? Showcasing it as a strategy in itself is typical of these kinds of doctrine papers and Russia is not unique in this sense. We also have emphasis on "rapid maneuver" and again that sounds pretty cool, but then how is it a strategy, per se? Like, why not maneuver rapidly as opposed to slowly if you can? Rapid maneuver is a capability within the context of an overall strategy, but instead, again, it is being presented as a strategic concept in and of itself.

Now what is totally absent from the 2014 doctrine is talk of actually destroying the enemies means of resistance in its entirety via say encircling his forces via "rapid maneuver" and strikes throughout his entire depth. [Note: so much for the much-vaunted cauldrons that we heard about but never saw for ourselves.] But there is much ink spilt on the importance of psychological operations carried out against the enemy and changing the enemies political situation to favor Russia. Also MG points out that this document was published in late 2014, that is after Maidan and it mentions likely areas of future military operations to be on Russia’s borders.

Thus, it stands to reason that they had Ukraine in mind.

So, we have flashy shock and awe strikes throughout the enemies depth, psychological operations targeted at the enemy population, and rapid maneuver as themes in a general military-themed war grad student word salad thesis paper. Worse, it looks like the Russian MoD had been peeking at another student’s paper all the while. Because the ingredients in this war word salad look an awful like Western style "full spectrum dominance" terminology. The funny thing is that NATO never, ever, actually tried that BS against an actual technological peer that could change the rules of the fight.

In other words, the Russian MoD tried to outbullshit the master bullshitters.

And please don’t say: "but Ukraine wasn’t Russia’s peer"... because Ukraine was no less a NATO satellite in 2022 than Belarus was a satellite of Russia. NATO had the means to change the rules of the game that Russia wanted to play by and so they simply did.

Another point Id like to make is that where are flashy shock and awe strikes and rapid maneuver the least likely to succeed in Ukraine? Well, the heavily urbanized, fortified and industrialized LDNR, that’s where. That is, the only way rapid maneuver and showy strikes are applicable vis a vis the LDNR is in the context of a very big encirclement operation accompanied by knocking out the railroads and bridges over the Dniper. None of this was even attempted by Russia. So, this doctrine was not written specifically with the LDNR in mind nor was the Army capable of facilitating the grand encirclement maneuver there.

Instead, the Kremlin sent the Army that they had to do what they thought they might be able to do by relying very heavily on spook ops to facilitate the rapid advance on Kiev. Honestly, if the FSB spooks hadn't failed so miserably and given the West a critical few days to regain their balance it might have even worked.

[NOTE: I mentioned all of this in passing many months ago. Here:]

So the main reason for the failure wasn’t even because of the Army per se, especially given the incredible disadvantages and under-resourcing that were foisted on them. In my honest opinion, they did decent work and the troops and officers on the ground don’t have anything to be ashamed of. The absolute hollow and Potemkin village nature of the ground forces only became glaringly obvious once the withdrawals were done and the spring campaign had began in earnest, that is the infantry centric combined arms war that the Russian Army of 2022 wasn’t ready for.

MG states:

"This presentation (the 2014 doctrine paper) of course doesn't call for too much mass as in the the model of the Great Patriotic War and the Soviet Army. Practice has shown this to be a mistake, or at maybe not a mistake if the initial SMO plan had worked".

As result of the SMOs initial failure, Ukraines strength in theatre rapidly increased vs Russias thanks to the US printing press and NATO weapons warehouses being opened. After some bitter defeats the Kremlin belatedly bit the bullet and announced mobilization which again shed a sad light on how neglected the Army was.

"Why would a country with experience in mobilizing its entire population and industrial base against German aggression and fighting the fallout of the Chernobyl experience difficulties before the task of conducting a normal mobilization process? We will see that the reason is the same mistaken imagining of war as a brief point operation".

GM points out that many of years of military "reform" in Russia has led to the destruction of the full time "cadre" caste of the Army.

The Soviet Army always maintained the ability to massively increase its numbers if need be via maintaining lots of "skeleton" regiments and divisions. Being a country of universal service for males men who had completed their mandatory 2 years could be called back to one of these skeleton regiments or divisions. The fulltime cadre facilitated the unit being rapidly brought up to full strength. Reform almost completely liquidated these cadres and when mobilization was announced there was nowhere to send anyone. The BTGs were small and already undermanned, their cadre were already deployed. So the mobiki spent a lot of time doing nothing while MoD scrambled to find them officers, equipment (and very often not finding any) and mold them into functioning units. That was all stuff the old skeleton cadres would have done back in the day.

Ukraine on the other hand did the opposite:

"The irony is that Ukraine in contrast started advancing its armed strength exactly on the basis of the cadre unit.”

(…)

"Overall it seems that Russian Generals at the start of the SMO took their basic calculations of Ukrainian units as static and didn't dive in to any specifics or the perspective of their rapid growth."

Again, after the initial SMO plan flopped Ukrainian strength started massively increasing while Russia’s steadily declined. The Ukrainians were ironically acting more Soviet here than the Russians. Honestly, if not for the LDNR mobilizing immediately and efficiently plus Wagner flying in to save the day it is crazy to think what would have happened. The LDNR formations and Wagner paid in blood to buy the MoD time … time which they by no means used with any brilliance. I am not short changing the RF soldiers; they did the best they could and the VDV guys did outstanding work in Kherson before being forced to withdraw anyway.

The Marines in Mariupol were straight-up IRL Lord Humongouses by all accounts.

[Note: Lord Humongous is the patron saint of this blog.]

But in the grand scheme of things Wagner and the LDNR guys carried the war for about 8-9 crucial months.

By the authors calculations, Ukraine had at least 700,000 men mobilized (counting border guards and territorial defense) by fall of 2022 when Russia announced partial mobilization. Well according to Western sources Russia entered Ukraine with something like 120-150k. Let that number sink in for a minute. By fall of 2022, that number wouldn't be much higher. Even after we count LDNR and Wagner, Russia would still be absurdly outnumbered.

Given that Russia was also fighting with less drones, less accurate artillery, no serious air support, crappy to non-existent comms, with the enemy’s supply lines wide open etc etc it is a miracle that the catastrophe wasn't worse. Sure, when Russia initially went in, they were only badly outnumbered 120-150k vs 215k give or take. But given how fast Ukrainian formations grew, plus the advantages I mentioned, let no one say that Russians at the lower levels, the Privates, Sergeants, Captains and Majors can’t fight. Who could have really done better with such appalling circumstances foisted on them? And remember, Russia officially has only called up 300k while Ukraine hasn't stopped mobilizing since the SMO started.

Thus, at no point ever has Russia, the much larger country, enjoyed any sort of advantage in manpower at the front.

Supply Shock Doctrine

Another example of the doctrine of de-sovietization and the Westernization of the Army lead by Shoigu and his predecessor Serdyukov, was the MoD switching to the old NATO system of supply.

"The Russian Army entered into the SMO with a unsuitable system of warehouse logistics. The Soviet system of interrupted top down direct delivery to forwarded bases was switched to the old NATO application of half full logistics centers where the issuing of equipment required statements and applications."

Soviet war planning assumed that replacement equipment would be in high demand so they just shipped it forward ahead of time once the fighting started and kept shipping it in. In a high intensity war that is eating an immense amount of gear, this is clearly better than a system where every individual piece of replacement equipment first requires a bunch of paperwork and than its sent individually from a warehouse ran by private contractors in the interior of Russia. Not trying to beat a dead horse here Respected Stalkers, but this old NATO system is what MoD decided was the best suited to a "war or attrition" against NATO.

Which is baffling, frankly.

Golovlev notes the irony of NATO scrapping this logistics center system and adopting the old Soviet one in 2020.

Just how well NATO has so far been able to switch over is an interesting question given that the Western industrial base isn’t in much better shape than Russia’s. But the VSU by all accounts strives to be fully NATO-compliant and its units have shown decent enough staying power in the field. Some of that presumably is due to a logistics system that feeds replacement equipment directly from NATO warehouses in the EU to the VSU without a mountain of paperwork required for every individual machine gun barrel and pair of boots. Naturally, Russia’s stubborn refusal to interdict Western supply to Ukraine with its high precision missiles and bombs helps mitigate Western industrial limitations. If you only have a limited amount of equipment on hand due to industrial limitations it surely helps when very little of said replacement equipment is delayed or lost in route due to Russian bombing, right?

The author says that unlike America which painstakingly analyzed its experiences in Vietnam, Russia did no such thing in regards to the USSRs experience in Afghanistan.

This was due to the fact that USSR was dismantled right after it withdrew from Afghanistan and the following rapid liquidation of the Soviet military system. Okay fair enough, but there were also two bloody wars in Chechnya, the short war in Georgia, and the intervention in Syria. Was anything learned from those? I suppose we could say yes, actually, something was. In regards to Chechnya, the lesson would have been to bribe the right people and then to help de-russify the region. In regards to Georgia, it would be to rapidly withdraw from the territory you just took to avoid problems with your dear Western partners, and in the case of Syria, to allow NATO to bomb your guys because some of your generals have a personal beef with Wagner.

So, perhaps Golovlev is right in pointing out that some incorrect lessons were drawn with unfortunate consequences in Ukraine.

The Kakistocracy of Weaklings in Moscow

From here Golovlev discusses how the total absence of some important tools and lack of political will to use others meant Russia could not achieve any full spectrum dominance. Obviously, the greatest ISR capabilities in the world belong to NATO not Russia. Elon Musk and his satellite network are NATO assets and Russia simply has no analogues. Furthermore, and probably most importantly, Russia does not have the political will to shoot down NATO reconnaissance aircraft. Meanwhile, the MoDs own meager fleet of high tech ISR aircraft are fair game for both NATO and Russia’s own air defences.

[NOTE: he means that Shoigu keeps shooting down Russian planes. He did it again a few weeks ago and I didn’t bother to write about it for the sixth time].

Russia does not have the political will to de-energize Ukraine and isolate it from Western supply which would offset the Ukrainian ISR advantage. When the US pulled full spectrum dominance operations in Iraq, the US really did knock out the power for as long as was necessary and didn’t care about civilian casualties in the slightest.

The same can’t be said about Russia in Ukraine.

Furthermore, the US developed decent enough tools to attain very high levels of situational awareness, and they ensured these tools made it all the way down to the squad level. Veterans of the US's Kebabistan misadventures will surely remember the Blue Force Trackers where every individual vehicle and asset in the area could theoretically be located on a tablet. Such a device obviously is very useful when platoons and companies are dispersed over vast distances, whether it's NATO troops in Afghanistan or Iraq or Russians in Ukraine.

Sadly, Russias situational awareness in Ukraine was non-existent.

"Heres its worth considering that practically all Ukrainian vehicles are equipped with digital markers. It is unnecessary for commanders, as is often the case with Russias to run and search for his tanks, guns (mortars and artillery) Urals or Kamaz's. There is no need for identifying markers on armoured vehicles. It is enough to look at the tablet".

Just imagine, Russian commanders didn’t even have encrypted radios to talk to their subordinate units.

Guys, even you if are only going to fight goat herders and Israeli terrorists assets in Syria you still need encrypted radios for God’s sake! And Syria was mostly a Wagner/Rusich production pulled off by disgruntled former Spetznaz and VDV guys. Wagner brought its own encrypted radios and made the most of their own meagre satellite capabilities and the MoD helped them begrudgingly before outright allowing the US to bomb them to knock them down a peg or two.

As for the actual MoD ground forces, when you read about commanders having to run around looking for their own tanks and trucks it makes you wonder just what the hell the Kremlin ever intended to do with this Army in the first place.

The situation nowadays is slightly better in that, often, but not always, Russian commanders do have encrypted radios on which they can call and ask where the tanks and trucks are. Not always, but by all accounts the situation has improved from the time in which the book was printed. However, equivalent tablets giving Russian commanders near complete situational awareness is still a wet dream and not even being discussed in Moscow.

Now sure, maybe Russia never could have built an analog to the US satellite network even if they really, really wanted to. But in military terms, this means you need to emphasize the strengths you could theoretically leverage. Like seriously, blow up the damn Dniper bridges, the railroad gauge changing stations (isolate the battlefield), shoot down NATO reconnaissance drones and aircraft (and blame the Ukrainians or claim its an unfortunate accident) that are giving Ukraine constant real time reconnaissance data etc. Even in its decrepit state, Russia does have the cards to play and even at this very late hour it is still Russias war to win or lose depending on the Kremlin’s political will.

I am absolutely not saying NATO stronk Russia double plus weak.

I am saying that Russia is allowing NATO to capitalize on all its strong points and refusing to put its own into play and this brings us full circle: Russia never intended to fight and is fighting as little as possible right now.

Personally, guys, I’m going to just be upfront with you though; Russia being an LLC with the chief stakeholders being a pro-Western alien elite hostile to the Russian population, there’s almost no chance of the necessary will to achieve victory materializing. It is instead a matter of where on a scale of 1-10 that defeat is going to land.

Moving on:

"Since 2015 the Ukrainian Army has been using the NATO radiolocator stations AN/TPQ-36, 37, 50 with synchronized auto management. Upon artillery receiving rocket or artillery fire from the Russian side Ukrainian commanders with tables on an online regime receive counter battery coordinates from these stations."

That is all made possible by Starlink.

Now look, Russian counter battery systems like Zoopark are just as good and perhaps even better than these NATO systems. I’ve seen Russian War Bloggers who are solidly in the doomer camp still praise Zooparks capabilities while bemoaning just how few of them are on hand at the front now. The problem is that in February of 2022, and immediately after, there just weren't any to be found at the front. I’m absolutely not shilling some NATO technological superiority in general. The point is that Ukraine and NATO were getting ready to actually fight Russia in 2015. There is absolutely no evidence that Russia was doing the same, quite the contrary actually.

If they were seriously planning an attrition war of liberation after spoiling an invasion of Donbass wouldn't there have been Zooparks at the front in February of 2022?

Maybe some encrypted radios? Some tablets for the artillery forward observers?

Sure, Russia doesn't have the satellite network of NATO but tablets with offline capabilities that are updated every once in awhile as opposed to the VSUs constantly updating would be better than nothing. We have already covered that there are ways to mitigate this advantage of Ukraine’s — no bridges and railroads means less artillery ammo and a more level playing field.

Yes, the VSU have more situational awareness with more timely and accurate fire but constant shell hunger due to badly functioning supply lines. The Russians have way, way more shells but less situational awareness (as opposed to the complete absence that they went in with). If MoD had produced more Zooparks that would have made their counter battery work no worse than the Ukrainians so overall despite the much better ISR on NATO’s end, Russia would actually have come out ahead here.

See guys I’m not shilling for NATO and never will!

I’m pointing out that Russia had the tools to level the playing field!

And that they just don’t have the political will to use them.

So, while the Russian MoD has neutered the Russian Ground Forces and created a cardboard cutout GWOT Army, the Ukrainian Army is a Frankenstein NATO/Soviet hybrid. If Russia has sold off and liquidated the Soviet military legacy while failing to achieve anything NATO might do, well then, in contrast, Ukraine has maintained the efficient Soviet ability to quickly get men under arms and ruthlessly trade these men’s lives for territory and time whether in defense or offense. This approach is made doubly difficult to deal with when it is working hand in glove with the most advanced ISR system ever and the realtime battlefield management capabilities NATO possesses (like the blue force trackers, artillery tablets etc).

I know pro-Russian readers are going to absolutely hate hearing that, but guys let's be real.

Sure, today Russia’s FABs are doing enough damage to the Ukrainians and there are more drones and encrypted radios at the front. But these are very, very poor consolation prizes next to destroyed Dniper bridges, fully knocked out power plants, gauge changing stations etc. The belated positive measures mentioned are along the lines of a drowning man finally learning to tread water.

After remarking on the Ukrainian command’s willingness to take very high losses because they can be very quickly replaced, Golovlev illustrates the nature of this Frankenstein:

"Another issue is that the supply of the Ukrainian army by NATO with means of communication and intelligence was accompanied by a restructuring of the management system and organizational changes to meet real conditions and had the task of increasing effectiveness (of command and control). In this way, without an increase of personal at the expense of better equipment and facilities the final battlefield results were significantly improved."

That paragraph was beyond my ability to put into clear and understandable English, but what the author is describing is that with the aid of Western battlefield management technology the Ukrainians were able to use their expendable human resources much more effectively.

Furthermore, they achieved this without any increase of personal at the command level — there wasn't any bloating at the top and middle of the chain of command. This makes the VSU a frightening beast, its NATO technology and resources in the hands of an army that has absolutely none of NATOs casualty aversion, and a population that can be quickly and systematically mobilized unlike those of the US and Western Europe.

Nonetheless, Ukrainian offensive practice would be 100% recognizable to Rossokovsky and Zhukov:

"Often the VSUs strategy boiled down to offense on a large section of the front, find a breach and strike hard there. The factor of large formations of Ukrainian troops in the first and especially the second phase of the SMO played an important role."

Remember, esteemed Stalker colleagues, that the second phase of the so-called SMO began when Moscow starrted banking on high oil prices and Ukrainian shell exhaustion to turn the course of events in Russia’s favour. It ended with Russia being forced out of most of the territory they took around Kharkov and Liman. The loss of Kherson would belong in the 3rd phase as for chronology, but it was all fallout from the 2nd phase.

"Not especially sensitive to the loss of personal Ukrainian command would launch probing strikes at Russian defenses, locate hinges (the spot where one formations line of defense ends and another formations begins) which often forced fully battle worthy formations into retreat. This Ukrainian strategy has not undergone any change since the time of Great Patriotic War."

The author is describing nothing more than well executed mechanized flanking attacks which the Germans pioneered and the Soviets perfected.

We are mercifully approaching the end of chapter 3 and so, thank you to all you Stalkers who have stuck along with me to the end here. The ever elusive and aloof Marko from Anti Empire gave me some feedback in regards to Part I about how actually there were plenty of vehicles available to Russian forces at the start of the SMO so BARS (the volunteer battalions) could have been reasonably equipped. Marko is right, so it would have been more correct if I had said that BARS simply wasn't given anything while the BTGs literally had more vehicles than they could use. Marko also drew my attention to the fact that BTGs formally did belong to brigades, but these brigades could only function if mobilization was conducted and they received their mobiki (conscripts). Golovlev does address both these points but at the end of chapter 3 and even more so later in the book. Since my overview is following Golovlev’s narrative in sequence we haven’t arrived at that part yet.

"If we familiarize ourselves with the NATO analytical publication from October 2022 we see how they counted Russian personal staffing vs numbers of vehicles. For example 10 tanks in a BTG, one BTG has a 1000 soldiers, 100 tanks for 10 BTGs and 10,000 soldiers. Its likely this is also exactly how the Russian general staff counted when planning operations".

And:

"Reality turned out otherwise."

And:

"With a large compliment of armored vehicles Russian formations ended up under complimented with soldiers."

When reading this I just have to face palm and stair at the ceiling a few minutes.

What Golovlev is saying is that the Russian General staff simultaneously planned operations with mobilization in mind because without mobiki they had more vehicles than they could use but also to initiate conflict with "peace time forces" So that means vehicles had to either be left behind if mobilizing is off the table, or just operate with a sharp deficiency in soldiers but take all your vehicles. Doing the latter means that now you have even more riflemen and gunners and probably even squad leaders and medics needing to drive trucks so your manpower shortage gets compounded to an unbearable level.

Initiate conflict with peacetime forces but plan operations as if you have mobiki to work with.

Just.

W.T.F.

I can't even.

These are the sort of oversights or deliberate sabotage that got people shot in Stalin’s day. Much is made of the Soviet military and the Kremlin’s blunders on the eve of WW2, but what we just read gives the Stalinist Kremlin a serious run for its money.

"Naturally, attacked vehicles were immediately abandoned as there weren’t enough personal to defend them."

(…)

"The result was that the Ukrainians received brand new Russian T-90A and T-90M tanks. This give the Western press reason to publish articles along the lines of "Russian becomes the largest supplier of the Ukrainian Army" with statements about how Ukraine had received 320 Tanks from allies and taken 436 from Russia as trophies. Analogues numbers were given for different types of armoured vehicles. For example allied deliveries of BMPs 210, and 452 trophy taken from Russia".

Golovlev expresses doubt in regards to these numbers of trophies and I agree they are inflated. Let’s say that Ukrainians doubled them, 160 trophy T90s is still a staggering number. Western European NATO countries like Germany and England barely even have that many battle ready tanks on hand! In all likelihood, they don’t even have that many at all!

Furthermore, contrary to NAFO claims. Soviet legacy tanks are actually better suited to the Ukrainian battlefield, they require less maintenance and when upgraded aren't any worse armoured. Being lighter they also are less prone to sinking in Ukraine’s infamous mud. In short, 160 T90s that aren’t stuck in the mud or down for maintenance 75% of the time will go farther probably than an equal number of Challengers or Leopards. Especially when in Ukrainian hands, those T90s will be outfitted with decent communication capabilities and linked to the more efficient Ukrainian command and control system.

In summary, the MoDs illustrious Gerasimov Doctrine called for initiating conflict with a peace time army (just like NATO) but Russia’s peacetime manning levels couldn't even bring the BTGs up to full strength, much less the brigades they operated under.

Dunce or traitor?

This is another contrast with the NATO armies that the MoD was trying to mimic, while NATO operations during the GWOT were typically at the company level and below with brigade level operations being very rare affairs the battalions at least had a functional brigade HQs to appeal to for support.

NATO brigades had the ability to coordinate and support their battalions as well even if in practice most work was done at the battalion level and below with Brigade doing not much more than passing on objectives and telling the Battalions to get them done. Russian brigade HQs in contrast had no support to offer the BTGs and no ability to manage them in those early months. Yet, the BTGs were forced to operate as if they were fully manned.

Absolute worst of all worlds scenario, folks.

This is a comfy spot to end chapter 3.

Golovlev goes on to give more examples of Ukraines more efficient battle control over its formations in the field but you guys who have stayed with me this far get the point already.

Above the battalion level on Russia’s side, with few exceptions, higher headquarters might as well have not existed because their smooth functioning assumed mobilization. Meanwhile MoD doctrine called for initiating conflict without mobilizing (let me face palm again for a minute....). The Ukrainians in contrast had been honing their command and control abilities for 8 years using NATO technology, plus the Ukrainians had something else utterly priceless on hand. They had the means and will to very quickly mobilize a population of males that compares very favourably to the gender confused, obese and decadent general populations of Western Europe and the US. The VSU would be a scary enemy to take on in the best of circumstances and Russia did very little to try and level the playing field until it was damn near too late.

And what they eventually did was very little.

If you guys found this part interesting and want me to keep going, give Rurik his due, and we will skip to chapter 9 which covers the spook angle and digs deeper into what the "special" part of the SMO was supposed to accomplish.