Devastation of Ukraine. Real prospects for mobilization and war
05/16/2022, 08:29
Judging by the latest reports from the Ukrainian front and from the Ukrainian rear, the long-awaited collapse of the Ukrainian army has begun. They counted on him unjustifiably already in the first phase of the special operation
Three factors contributed to this:
• statements by Russian volunteers and militiamen of the DPR/LPR who fought in 2014-2015 that the Armed Forces of Ukraine can be thrown with hats (they were not cunning, they thought so);
• statements by pseudo-pro-Russian politicians from Ukrainian emigration and the Kyiv opposition that there are few Nazis in Ukraine, and the rest of the population (including the security forces) can not wait for release (these were cunning, since only the Russian army could return them to power, so they needed any to lure her to Ukraine at a price);
• the confidence of the majority of Russians, including the leadership of some law enforcement agencies, that the Russian people living in the South-East of Ukraine cannot support the Kyiv regime and will not fight against Russia.
This calculation contradicted the known facts. It was the army, the SBU and the border troops who were the first to betray Yanukovych, even before his flight from the country, in fact, ensuring the victory of the Maidan. The border guards tried to arrest their president and supreme commander, and the army air defense threatened to shoot down his helicopter. The SBU, on the other hand, provided the nationalists who hunted the president with information about his movements. Finally, during the entire period of hostilities in the Donbass, in which the army was drawn into without much reflection, a few Ukrainian servicemen went over to the side of good (less than a hundred in eight years). The rest fought well. Even of the Berkut fighters, who opposed the Maidan and the Maidan hated for the longest time, only a minority went to Russia together with their regions or personally, and the vast majority remained to serve the Nazis, despite the disbandment of their units.
Since the army’s devotion to the regime turned out to be much higher than expected, the Kyiv authorities were able to stabilize the front for several months. But here they, along with their Western allies and advisers, fell into their own trap.
The ABC of military art demanded from the Ukrainian army a slow, fighting retreat from the Donbass and, in general, from the entire Left Bank to the Dnieper (from line to line), with the task of inflicting the greatest possible losses on the advancing Russian troops and, to the extent possible, maintain the combat capability of their troops deployed in the left-bank regions. Formations from Western Ukraine and the reserve brigades that were being formed had to be pulled up to the Dnieper, and it was advisable to deploy military equipment received from the West on the same line.
It should be borne in mind that at the time of the outbreak of hostilities, the Ukrainian army numbered 260,000 people. Together with the border troops, the National Guard and special units of the SBU – up to four hundred thousand. At least one hundred thousand people were called up in four waves of mobilization. At least two hundred thousand received weapons and were enlisted in the territorial defense brigades. Even taking into account the inevitable losses and the need to keep part of the troops on the Belarusian, Polish and Moldovan (Transnistrian) borders, the Kyiv regime could theoretically concentrate 500-600 thousand people on the Dnieper, which is two or three times higher than even the current grouping of Russian troops.
Many may say that the Dnieper did not stop the troops of the Red Army in 1943, and today the Russian army has much greater capabilities. But the fact is that more than two and a half million people fought in the four Ukrainian fronts and the Black Sea Fleet, which gave almost twofold superiority over the troops of Army Groups “South” and “A” defending in Ukraine. Accordingly, the Soviet command could simultaneously organize the crossing of the river in different places, and the Germans simply did not have enough reserves to plug the numerous holes in their defenses.
In our case, the defending enemy, covered by a wide river, would also have a significant numerical advantage, which would force the Russian command to determine one point for the formation of the river and concentrate most of the available troops there, practically exposing the rest of the front. It would be difficult to repeat the offensive from Belarus to Kyiv – the effect of surprise would no longer work, and breaking through a narrow defile through a swampy area limited by a group is an extremely difficult task. Even if the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not try to eliminate the Kherson bridgehead (having much more forces for this than now), the offensive from it was obvious and expected, respectively, Odessa-Nikolaev.
Gerhard P. BISCHOF 