{"id":77537,"date":"2023-01-18T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T19:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=77537"},"modified":"2023-01-17T15:43:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T04:43:45","slug":"mercenaries-and-massive-troop-call-ups-wont-win-putins-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mercenaries-and-massive-troop-call-ups-wont-win-putins-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercenaries and massive troop call-ups won\u2019t win Putin\u2019s war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fresh threats of a major military offensive and the use of mercenaries, many recruited in Russia\u2019s jails, are unlikely to bring victory to Vladimir Putin a year after his invasion of Ukraine, says retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan.<\/p>\n

Ryan tells The Strategist<\/em> that it\u2019s clear Russia wants to launch a major offensive in Ukraine\u2014but there\u2019s less evidence that it can carry out such a campaign. \u2018We need to temper our expectations. Size does not imply quality or capability about the Russians.\u2019<\/p>\n

Russia has moved trains full of old tanks into the pro-Moscow nation of Belarus, north of Ukraine, but that doesn\u2019t mean it will invade from there, says Ryan. \u2018It\u2019s evidence that the Russians are conducting a deception campaign to draw more Ukrainian forces to the border.\u2019<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s mobilisation of men for his war in Ukraine would give Russia some capacity to undertake offensive operations, he says, \u2018but it does not give you the ability to do the complex planning and orchestration and execution of large-scale military offensives. So they will be able to undertake some offensive activities in a couple of locations concurrently, maybe. But I think the expectation that the Russians have now built this big army of mobilised troops is just not reality.\u2019<\/p>\n

However, Putin is clearly putting a lot of pressure on his military commanders to launch a major offensive, says Ryan. \u2018Putin has no military knowledge, as has been very clear over the last year, and he thinks just because he\u2019s mobilised 150,000 troops, all of a sudden that gives him this massive capability to conduct operations to take the provinces he annexed. Once again, he\u2019s demonstrating the massive disconnect between politics and military capacity in the Russian system.\u2019<\/p>\n

Days ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin<\/a>, the leader of Russia\u2019s Wagner Group<\/a> mercenary force, claimed success in Ukraine\u2019s Soledar<\/a> area and had himself photographed there with some of his troops in a cave some distance from the front. Ukraine insists it has not been defeated at Soledar. \u2018We should be very careful about Russian claims,\u2019 Ryan says. \u2018They are desperate for some kind of victory.\u2019<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, the Kremlin announced that the chief of Russia\u2019s general staff, General Valery Gerasimov<\/a>, had been appointed to lead Putin\u2019s \u2018special military operation\u2019 in Ukraine. Gerasimov replaced General Sergey Surovikin<\/a>, who became commander of the operation only in October.<\/p>\n

Decision-making in Russia is \u2018pretty murky\u2019, says Ryan, and anyone who says they know the exact reasons behind the latest change probably doesn\u2019t. \u2018We can speculate on potential reasons. Personally, Putin remains dissatisfied with the pace of progress in Ukraine, and as he comes up to the first anniversary, he wants to show some kind of decisive victory. Even dictators have domestic audiences they must please to ensure that pretenders to the throne aren\u2019t able to get some breathing space,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

Putin and his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu<\/a>, might well be putting the pieces in place to have a good fall guy for all the disasters of the past year, says Ryan. \u2018It has to be someone senior who\u2019s also dispensable\u2014and who\u2019s more senior and dispensable than the commander-in-chief of the military?\u2019<\/p>\n

And, says Ryan, there\u2019s clearly palace intrigue going on. \u2018The Russian military versus Wagner is a significant issue now, not just on the battlefield, but in Moscow. At the battle for Soledar, you\u2019re seeing Prigozhin basically saying, \u201cThis was all Wagner Group. We did it ourselves.\u201d That could make him more powerful, but it could also make him more dangerous to Putin, and more vulnerable to Putin striking out as well. So, I think there\u2019s a whole range of reasons here. I think battlefield reasons are less of an issue. It\u2019s more politics in Moscow than anything else.\u2019<\/p>\n

After being used in Russia\u2019s overseas operations in Africa, Syria and elsewhere, the Wagner Group has become extraordinarily powerful, says Ryan. It\u2019s influence in Ukraine is growing and Putin has given it the power to go into Russian prisons, recruit inmates and give them pardons. That\u2019s probably about 80% of the group\u2019s main power now. \u2018They have a constituency among young bloggers and others in Russia and, to be fair, Surovikin and the Wagner Group got on reasonably well. They are an alternative source of violence for Putin to use in other scenarios, beyond Ukraine.\u2019<\/p>\n

The fighters in the Wagner Group are much better equipped than the troops Putin has mobilised in recent months. They are probably at the equipment level of an elite Russian organisation like the airborne forces, Ryan says. That would give them sufficient small arms, tanks, artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and helicopters to be a fairly powerful combined-arms force on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Could the Wagner Group be a match for Ukrainian forces in a way that the Russian forces are not?<\/p>\n

Ryan thinks not. \u2018The Wagner Group has the same problem that the Russian army has: what\u2019s the motivation for it being in Ukraine? It will never have the same motivation as the Ukrainian army, so there\u2019s certainly an asymmetry there. And the Ukrainian military is becoming better equipped while the Wagner Group and the Russian army are not. I think that asymmetry will play out.\u2019<\/p>\n

In addition, says Ryan, the Russians have used up much of the reserves of equipment created over decades of the Soviet system and they have the industrial capacity to replace some, but not all of it. This has become a battle of industrial systems, and if Europe and the US decide to scale up their commitments, there\u2019s no way Russia could compete industrially.<\/p>\n

In the weeks after the invasion, the world saw lines of wrecked and rusted Russian armoured vehicles and the Ukrainians seemed to be knocking them out at will. Now Ukraine is pleading for more tanks. What does this say about the use and the future of armour in battle?<\/p>\n

Yes, says Ryan, lots of tanks were knocked out. But lots of helicopters were shot down and many soldiers were killed, yet \u2018no one\u2019s talking about the end of helicopters or the end of soldiers,\u2019 he points out.<\/p>\n

The Ukraine experience provides no evidence that the era of the tank is over, Ryan says. \u2018There is evidence that we will need to change how we use them, that\u2019s obvious. But everything on the battlefield is vulnerable if it\u2019s used stupidly.\u2019<\/p>\n

He says he would like to see a debate in Canberra on the future of crewed aircraft penetrating enemy airspace. \u2018There\u2019s none of that going on, even though there\u2019s more evidence that crewed aircraft are far more vulnerable now than tanks are. You\u2019re not seeing the Russians fly crewed aircraft over Ukraine, because of the very good air- and missile-defence regime it has.<\/p>\n

\u2018If you are looking at tanks, you need to look at a whole range of battlefield systems. I think attack helicopters are very vulnerable and have an uncertain future. I think crewed fighter aircraft are unlikely to penetrate enemy airspace and complex air-defence regimes in the future. I think that\u2019s an important conversation to have.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ryan says the role of autonomous systems should not be overemphasised because over the past two decades investment has gone into autonomy and not counter-autonomy.<\/p>\n

\u2018Smart countries will look at this and see they have counter-autonomy systems that are cheaper than the autonomous systems being used against them. Clever nations will come up with counter-autonomy systems that are cost-effective against those who decide to heavily weigh towards autonomous aircraft or maritime systems.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ryan says no army on earth is better at all forms of military operations at the moment than the Ukrainians. \u2018When they are begging for more tanks, maybe that should be an indicator that they still have a future.\u2019<\/p>\n

Overshadowing the conflict from the start has been the possibility that Putin might resort to using tactical nuclear weapons to overcome a level of Ukrainian determination on the battlefield he didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n

How likely is that now?<\/p>\n

Ryan says Russia\u2019s military doctrine contemplates the use of these weapons in defence of Russian territory and some have proposed that the five areas of Ukraine annexed by Russia now fall under that definition. \u2018I think that\u2019s a long bow to draw at this point,\u2019 he says. \u2018Even Putin has walked back the nuclear sabre-rattling of earlier in 2022. But you can never take your eye off nuclear weapons because they exist, and when people have them you must consider the implications of their use.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ryan believes there\u2019s a very low probability of Russia using nuclear weapons at this stage unless there\u2019s a major incursion into Russia, and \u2018the Ukrainians are just not going to do that\u2019.<\/p>\n

If Putin does opt to cross that nuclear threshold, Russia is likely to use enough bombs to achieve its military aims, given the international sanctions it would suffer, he says. \u2018If they were to use them, they would not, as Michael Kofman has said<\/a>, just use one.\u2019<\/p>\n

The international community would be likely to respond with a whole range of mechanisms. \u2018Even the Chinese have made it clear they\u2019re not keen on the Russian use of these weapons to break all kinds of international norms, and the last thing we want is for it to establish a new normal in conventional operations.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely, says Ryan, that the Americans have war-gamed many different options on whether Russia might use nuclear weapons, and what might follow if it did. Other nations might opt to obtain nuclear weapons. \u2018There\u2019d be follow-on impacts that would be surprising in very unpleasant ways.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fresh threats of a major military offensive and the use of mercenaries, many recruited in Russia\u2019s jails, are unlikely to bring victory to Vladimir Putin a year after his invasion of Ukraine, says retired Australian …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":77541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[325,163,714,744,239],"class_list":["post-77537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-europe","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-warfare"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMercenaries and massive troop call-ups won\u2019t win Putin\u2019s war | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mercenaries-and-massive-troop-call-ups-wont-win-putins-war\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mercenaries and massive troop call-ups won\u2019t win Putin\u2019s war | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fresh threats of a major military offensive and the use of mercenaries, many recruited in Russia\u2019s jails, are unlikely to bring victory to Vladimir Putin a year after his invasion of Ukraine, says retired Australian ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mercenaries-and-massive-troop-call-ups-wont-win-putins-war\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-01-17T19:00:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-01-17T04:43:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GettyImages-1245800193.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brendan Nicholson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Jerry Cashman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Brendan Nicholson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mercenaries-and-massive-troop-call-ups-wont-win-putins-war\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GettyImages-1245800193.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GettyImages-1245800193.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"Destroyed Russian tank is seen in the village of Oleksandrivka, Kherson region on December 23, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 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