How Russia Lost in Ukraine. By Jim Dunnigan.

Russian military performance in the 2022 Ukraine War has been an epic failure.

Six months into the war, Russian forces are on the defensive. Since then, Ukrainian troops have been constantly advancing and the Russians not only failing to defend themselves, but surrendering in large numbers or fleeing and leaving their undamaged armored vehicles behind. High resolution commercial satellite photos of the battlefield appeared regularly and allowed an international network of civilians to scrutinize the photos and pool their data via websites (like Oryx) and provide accurate accountings of vehicle losses on both sides. Russia lost most of the vehicles, especially the armored ones, they sent into Ukraine. Russian vehicles losses were four times that of the Ukrainians and Ukraine actively recovered and repaired damaged vehicles belonging to both sides.

A unique feature of this war was that both sides were using the same armored vehicles. That was because, until 1991 Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Soviet Union and Ukraine was a major center for Soviet armored vehicle design and production. About half the Russian armor losses were vehicles that were abandoned or captured intact. …

Although they use the same tanks, the Russians and Ukrainians use different anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). Soviet tanks have a weakness in top armor and use an auto-loader for the main gun. This saves on a tank crewman, so the tank can be smaller and less of a target. But the auto-loader means many shells are stored in the top turret, and explode if the top is penetrated by a missile, destroying the tank and all inside. Hence, all the tanks in this war are vulnerable to ATGMs that rise up and come down on the top of the tank.

The Russians didn’t bother to develop top-attack ATGMs, because western tanks aren’t particularly vulnerable to top attack. But most of the Ukrainian ATGMs attack the top of a tank.

The upshot is that, in this war, the Ukrainian tanks are considerably less vulnerable to missiles than the Russian tanks. Hence the relatively high Russian tank losses, and the effectiveness of Ukrainian tanks.

Russian troops quickly noticed their tanks were easily destroyed by the Ukrainians so most Russian tank crews would abandon their vehicles once they realized their unit was under attack.

Six months into the war Ukraine was able to deploy a larger and more effective tank force than the Russians. … The Ukrainian mobile force (tanks and other armored vehicles) expanded as the Ukrainians put their growing number of captured Russian vehicles into Ukrainian service. This usually took a few days, at most, as each vehicle was checked out, repairs made and the vehicle repainted to remove the prominent white Z that identified all Russian vehicles with the Ukrainian V, often with a Ukrainian flag on the radio aerial.

Ukraine had plenty of military veterans with experience operating these vehicles and mobilized many to teach the younger volunteers. Ukraine used more effective tactics, maintained the vehicles better than the Russians did and suffered a sixth of the Russian casualties. The Ukrainians were operating in friendly territory, the Russians were not. The Ukrainians had developed better battlefield communications while Russian combat leadership and support services were very bad. Ukrainian troops received regular supplies of food, medical care and the support of local civilians. …

The Russians had a shortage of effective combat leadership from the beginning but it got worse month after month as Russian officers suffered higher losses than their reluctant troops. Not to mention that the Russians threw the staff of all their junior officer training schools into the fighting during the two months after the war started. After six months Russian officers were too few, too inexperienced and too incompetent to provide effective leadership. …

If the Ukrainians attack, most see surrender as the best option, even if their officers threaten to shoot those who disobey orders. Officers know that troops have fired back when fired on by their officers and most Russian officers in Ukraine are more concerned with staying alive than winning the war. …

Over 90 percent of Russian troops and their officers were ineffective and often fled or surrendered, even if the Russians were on the defensive (in fortifications and facing advancing Ukrainians). Russia is seeking to force former soldiers to join, as well as anyone the recruiters can catch, to fight in Ukraine. While still in Russia these men are given assault rifles and, in many cases, only a few days of training. Those with previous experience are formed into tank crews or assigned to operate other armored vehicles. There are no longer enough trucks to support Russian forces, even with civilian trucks taken from firms idle because of the sanctions. …

It’s now getting colder in southern Ukraine, where most of the fighting is taking place and most Russian troops don’t have cold-weather clothing. … New arrivals in Ukraine now spend most of their time trying to find food and stay warm. …

Vladimir Putin … is running out of other people to blame for the failures of the Russian military. Now he threatens to use nuclear weapons and, having made empty threats so often in the past, few people believe him.  …

It’s a similar crisis to the one that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. … As in 1991, there is not an armed revolution brewing in Russia but a general agreement that the current government is not working and has become a danger to most Russians. … Given the unstable situation with Russian forces in Ukraine and the government in Russia, the crisis will be resolved, one way or another, before the end of 2022.