What’s interesting about the Russian invasion is what we are not seeing or hearing. We are hearing the Russian army is experiencing surprisingly strong resistance from the Ukrainian people. That’s not a surprise – to us or to the Russian Army. Ms. Rice’s analysis of Putin’s increasing isolation from his own government and people is interesting. What we’re not hearing during this invasion is the presence of a massive amount of Russian tanks or airplanes. Russian doctrine is based heavily on tanks and airplanes spearheading invasions- a LOT of them in overwhelming numbers.
Like Will Rogers, “all I know is what I read in the papers” – or hear on the media. I’ve heard Russian equipment is breaking down and the logistics “trains” (the military intelligence term for lines of support) either “weren’t planned for by Putin” or are breaking down en route to Ukraine’s main cities.
Unlike Americans, Russians have long memories and the strongest memory of their army invading another country in which they did not have a modicum of “perceived legitimacy of the population” is Afghanistan. The Russian army left Afghanistan because the Russian people finally got tired of seeing their sons returning in body bags (something Americans seemed to have become inured to as long as those contractor paychecks kept coming and there is no draft). There are probably Russian veterans of Afghanistan with sons in the invading force of Ukraine. Combined with the “cousin” relationship many Russians have with the Ukrainian people and it makes for a ground-level conundrum at the tactical and operational level.
Military intelligence conducts analysis based on several categories: Political, Military, Economic, Social, Intelligence and Infrastructure (PMESII), Order of Battle, and Indicators & Warnings (I&W). The last is obtained by both air and non-air breathing collection assets. These are what told us Putin was massing troops on the Ukraine border for the last month. These are what told us they were making lists of High Value Targets in Ukraine. Politically, Putin appears to be going rogue (or “Cowboy” – like Bush, 43) against the Russian people and perhaps even just outside his narrowed sphere of political influence. Raising the alert status of Russia’s nuclear force can’t be popular with the more rational members of the Politburo. If evidence of Putin’s withdrawal from the Kremlin circle is accurate there has to be members who are thinking of a Putin putsch right about now.
Militarily, I would look at the Order of Battle the invasion force consists of and see if it jives with their doctrine – particularly of tanks and aircraft. Something doesn’t smell right about the make-up of this invasion force. I haven’t seen the OB but it feels like Putin was trying to conduct this geo-political maneuver on the cheap if he’s missing some of his doctrinal order of battle units in quantity. With a ten to one ratio in his favor even a unilaterally patriotic nation the size of Ukraine shouldn’t be able to stop a determined Russian assault if the Russians are using all their assets. For a political / military system based on “asking ‘forgiveness’ rather than permission”, time is not on their side.
If the military leadership doesn’t support Putin’s aggression, they could sabotage it in subtle ways (delayed supplies, equipment breakdowns, communication “failures”, etc.) until the rational political leadership back in Moscow gets their plan for the putsch together. That’s a tricky thing to do in a totalitarian state. If the military leadership is not behind Putin on this invasion the blunted invasion could be a result of reticence on the part of the Russian generals to suffer politically unacceptable casualties. If they and the Russian people are not behind Putin – and I hope and believe they are not – look for germaphobic Putin to be ousted in the near future. Even Communists have a low tolerance for hubris? We’ll see how low that is.
- Putin is increasingly isolating himself from the Kremlin. That is unusual. Acting unilaterally is not a recipe for success in any government.
- “Unexpected” Ukrainian resistance – was not. The Russian military knew they would fight.
- What’s missing (if anything) from the Russian army’s doctrinal Order of Battle? Tanks? Aircraft? to indicate the invasion was not an all-out effort?
- “Nuclear Alert” is unprecedented and has to be unpopular with Party and population.
- The Russian government is comprised of individuals who like their perks. Even with the feathered sanctions imposed by feckless Biden they are bound to hurt some high officials levels of accustomed comfort.
All these factors (plus several we don’t know about) result in “2nd and 3rd Order Effects” within Russia.
Then there is the tried and true political approach of staging military operations in order to get “pre-negotiation concessions” (see Revel’s How Democracies Fail) from our feckless State Department.
Human assets within Moscow and overhead SIGINT can tell us how Putin’s invasion is playing with the rest of the Politburo and the Russian people. My money is on “not real well”. If we had a president with two functioning brain cells he would exploit those vulnerabilities.
The sooner Biden and Europe tighten the economic net completely around Russia’s economy the sooner the invasion stops and, maybe, the sooner Putin is ousted.
