Kherson Humiliation: Ukraine Schools Russia in Effectiveness of War on Bridges
A war that Russia inexplicably omitted to wage
Earlier today Shoigu and Surovikin announced the start of a complete military withdrawal from Kherson on Russian state TV.
Surovikin explained the retreat back across the river was necessary because the force across the river could not be kept in a state of supply.
That’s quite “funny” in a certain way.
If there are two things that I have been constantly harping on since spring is that Russia is committing a grave unforced error in not using conscripts and in not targeting the Dnieper bridges.
The problem of insufficient mass has since been partly addressed in a different way, by calling up mobiki, leaving the omission to target Dnieper crossings as the last inexplicable Russian sin against rudimentary war logic.
Ukraine did not make the same omission and will now get Kherson back as a reward without even having to capture it trench by trench.
What is interesting is that Ukraine had much poorer tools to wage a campaign against crossings. All Ukraine had for the job is HIMARS with its small 90-kg warheads.
Actually, Ukraine was never even able to destroy the crossings merely to damage them. It repeatedly severed the rail link over the Nova Kakhovka dam but could never take out the road over it. (The one time it was successful in severing the road over the dam lock, the Russians simply filled the lock with material then drove over that.)
Similarly in Kherson it merely damaged the bridge but couldn’t destroy it, nor the pontoon that was built underneath.
Yet even just damaging the crossings, lowering their throughput, turned out to be enough for a victory.
Only now we have learned the full extent of the supply issues the Russians had been dealing with beyond the river. The war correspondent Semen Pegov (WarGonzo) now reveals the Russians had been dealing with “shell hunger” and Kadyrov says the area didn’t have a “stable regular supply of ammunition”.
Russian supply lines ran across the water only for their Kherson corps, and the Ukrainians immediately took advantage of that. For Ukrainians the vast majority of their supply lines have to cross the very same body of water in the other direction and the Russians have never even attempted to stress them.
This despite having far better tools for the job like heavy-duty Iskander ballistic missiles, and despite having expended over 4000 of various guided missiles on various other targets.
This is bewildering.
The Ukrainians started the bridge war as soon as they got a tool for it. One that wasn’t even particularly well-suited for the job. One that wasn’t even capable of destroying the crossings but merely of degrading them.
And it worked! And they now have a great victory to show for it as the Russians humiliatingly retreat from a city they had just supposedly annexed.
But the Russians, despite having much better tools for the job available since the start, have in 8 months not even got going. Despite facing opposition whose supply lines are bridge-reliant for almost the entire length of the front! Yes, the Ukrainians have more crossings, but they’re also having to feed far more forces to the east of the river than the Russians ever had to to the west of it.
And this is not hindsight.
I have been screaming from the rooftops how weird it is that Russia won’t go after crossings for over half a year now. You have a battlefield defined by the fact it is split into two halves by the presence of a mega river (actually more of a system of grand artificial lakes rather than a mere river) and you have Russia trying hard not to notice this. You’re looking at opposition whose railways can cross the river in just six (!) places and you’re not doing anything with this. This despite waging a “strategic” war of sorts against transport in general and rail in particular, just not against this obvious bottleneck.
Look, unlike some other writers I have never tried to big myself up as some kind of grand “military expert” or some VeRy sErIoUs “military analyst”. On the contrary, I categorically deny being any sort of expert on this stuff.
My shtick has never been “hey look at me, what fancy strategies I am able to come up with because I’m so smart and I know so much”.
On the contrary, my point has always been the exact opposite. My point has always been: “I don’t know anything about this stuff but the basics of the basics — so why is it that even I am able to identify so many and so glaring blunders?”
I am no great general. I am just a machinist who read a few dozen war histories and maybe listened to a similar number. If you are running a war in a way that is merely semi-competent I shouldn’t be able to critique it at all, because any advanced stuff you are doing wrong will be over my head anyway.
But if you’re running a war and I actually am able to spot one blunder after another, well that means that you’re committing the most rookie, the most basic, the most bizarre, the most nonsensical errors — because those are the only ones that as a history-buff machinist I am capable of spotting.
I’m not Marshall Zhukov but I know idiocy when I see it.
Stuff like “Let’s invade a country the size of France without conscripts in a headless mad dash with tiny unsupported detachments dispersed over six different axes, not mobilize until 7 months into it and completely ignore the just 6 railway crossings over the large geographical obstacle that bisects the entire theater.”
The reason I am able to identify this as a blunder isn’t because I’m so smart but because this is total moronism.
It has been 20 years but I’m somewhat sure that when I dragged my classmates to the MoD library so that I could get my hands on Guderian’s Achtung – Panzer! the book didn’t say “try to get away with activating as small a force as possible and then dilute it into numerous unsupported directions”.
In fact, I’m pretty sure Mr. Heinz insisted one must “Hit with your fist, not with your fingers spread” and “Smash, don’t splash”.
But the thing is, this shouldn’t be happening. Some blogger who read a little Guderian 20 years ago and promptly forgot everything but two funky quotes shouldn’t keep getting validated that he is more farsighted than the Russian military machine.
They can’t possibly be this stupid. It’s not possible. Somebody else is running the war for them. Or put better, someone else is defining constraints for them within which they must operate and this someone has absolutely no clue about wars. Not even so much as a machinist-blogger.
(Not that it’s preventing a certain crowd from selling this pure politically-dictated moronism as solid military 5D gold.)
Some stuff where I was wondering why won’t Russia go after the bridges:
57 Days and 1700 Missiles Into the War Russia Hits a Dnieper Bridge for the First Time
Russia Has Launched a Strategic Campaign vs Rail but Still Won’t Target Railway Bridges Over Dnieper
MIRACLE! 69 Days and 2150 Missiles Into the War Russia Hits a Dnieper Bridge for the SECOND Time
The War on the Dnieper Bridges Rages - But it is being waged by Ukraine
Some stuff where I was pointing out the dispersion problem (addressed with the Kiev withdrawal):
Russia Is Trying to Advance Along Too Many Axes at Once and It’s Showing
Supply Loss Forces Thinly-Spread Russians Into Local Withdrawal from Nikolayev Outskirts
Russians at the Gates of Kiev: Too Far to Go Back, Too Far to Go Forward
Russian MoD Says It Conducted the Largest Diversionary Operation in History
Russia Is Shortening Its Front to Bolster the Two Key Donbas Axes of Advance
Some stuff where I was pointing out even weirder early head-scratchers (mostly gradually addressed over the initial few weeks):
Excellent post. Totally agree with your conclusions on the military side of the campaign. The way it was and continues to be executed by the Russian side defies their own military science guidelines on how a war should be conducted. Many of the retired Russian military, including Konstantin Sivkov, former officer of the Staff General now deputy director of the Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences (a military think tank), have expressed that opinion.
But if military portion of this campaign is so blatantly off the mark on how the modern warfare should be conducted, this only leaves us to direct our attention to a level higher, to politics and see who is on the losing and the winning end of this "strange war". The main beneficiary in the short to mid term is US. Democrats' incessant focus on using Ukraine as a weapon against Russia that continued for 9 years is paying off. As a result they have subdued Europe, capital flight to the United States, demonstration of the military prowess after humiliation in Afghanistan. US reasserts itself as a top dog, at least among its vassals and the countries where they can twist their arms enough to make them do what State Department wants. 52 countries that voted in UN against Russian resolution opposing glorification of Nazi ideology is a pretty precise list of the countries that are going to follow US' direction no matter what. In prior years number of countries voting against this resolution was only 2, (US and Ukraine) today we have 2+50. Obviously EU is getting a short stick here - energy shortages and higher prices, losing a sizeable Russian market for high profit margin goods, another refugee crisis, unhappy population, even further reduction in political sovereignty. For Russia, along with many negatives, such as a significant lowering of position in international power ranking where it was considered not a great economic power but a significant military power, now no more - many see that the bear is not that scary and has got got claws made of cardboard. That military humiliation is going to have a long negative effect on Russia. On the positive side for Russia - this war is a jolt, both for the system and for society. It uncovered that Russian military was a cash cow for generals serving their personal enrichment goals, that economy based only on extraction and export of natural resources is a way to nowhere. That society, if it wants to survive during difficult periods, can't be based only on consumerism. That ruling power structures in Russia are inadequate for handling of current challenging situation and so forth. Russia now stands before a very difficult choice, either change rapidly or to disappear in a shape and form we know it now, as USSR did in 1991. China rips benefits from this conflict - broader access to Russian natural resources at a lower price and increased sale of their own high margin products replacing Europe in the sizeable Russian market. Same applies to India. Obviously on the beneficiary side of this war are the Globalists and their plan for Great Reset. COVID pandemic didn't come close to the damage to world economy that this war did in terms of inflation and disruptions to supply chain and previously established trading schemes.
Now, did Putin understand all of the nuances of who will be a loser and who is going to be a winner because of his military intervention campaign globally, when he ordered Russian troops to move into Ukraine in February? I think he did and this was a part of the agreed upon game. His assertion that Russia was forced to attack first because Ukraine was ready to start offensive in March is a total nonsense. Russia would have been in a much more advantageous position if Ukraine started this war first. But he couldn't wait since a) Full scale Ukrainian offensive on republics wasn't certain and b) Global planners could not wait and depend on the whims of a comedian Zelensky to start the war. They had to go to Putin who is famous for sticking to his commitments to the "Western partners". Did Putin understand the complete spectrum of risks that this action creates for Russia and his personal power and even physical survival? No, I think that his advisors have purposely presented diminished risks, overstated Russian military capabilities and perhaps they were victims of bad Intel about Ukraine themselves, coming from the people like the exchanged for 160 Azov regiment soldiers former Ukrainian opposition leader, Medvedchuk.
So my conclusion about this war is that it isn't driven by the military goals in a traditional sense. Both Russia and the United States, but in the first place the global planners with a good degree of influence on the official leadership of the countries, want this conflict to go for a period of time needed to achieve other goals, principally related to nearing conditions needed for the Great Reset, that in practicality means population reduction, greater command over remaining population using converged digital-medical-social means of manipulation and control, introduction and take over of financial markets by CBDCs that will also be used as one of the principal means of control, reduction of consumption by the remaining population switching most of proteins to insect and artificial sources and many other "smaller" changes spanning from education, gender policies, hiring practices etc. This is why we see in this war a certain caution preventing one side from gaining a clear victory. Russia looks like it fights with one hand behind its back, on constant retreat after very successful first 10 days of the operation, refusing to do what is needed to break Ukrainian supply lines flowing to the Eastern front. At the same time US and the West in general despite the rhetoric still didn't give Ukraine long range missiles, modern fighter jets and effective air defense systems in sufficient quantities. Conflict continues with the use of mostly Soviet weaponry on both sides that dates back 30 years +++, serving two main goals the way I see it - destroying infrastructure built by Soviets over the 70 years and killing in large quantities men of productive age on both sides. When the set but not stated goals for this war are going to be achieved? This is hard to say. But my projection is that by mid spring next year all sides including Ukraine, Russia, population of the Western countries will reach a sufficient level of exhaustion from this conflict so that it would have to be at least suspended and each side is going to declare itself a victor.
Here is an interesting video that was release on February 24th of this year, where Russian businessman industrialist, Vladimir Boglaev, the head of the mechanical foundry factory in the city of Cherepovets expressed his opinion on how this war is very likely not a part of scenario that Russia wanted to play, but was rather a result of a third party influence that made Putin to act the way he did. Original video was produced and published on February 24th of this year, translated to English version appeared only a day ago, November 9, 2022. Despite the fact that this video is now 9 months old, it still didn't loose its relevance.
https://youtu.be/D2bkGCLHNMg
Excellent post. Depressing in the extreme.