Vorige maand verscheen dit artikel bij de NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2...litary-putin-ukraine.html
Wat quotes:
In the early years of Vladimir V. Putin’s tenure as Russia’s leader, the country’s military was a hollowed-out but nuclear-armed shell.
It struggled to keep submarines afloat in the Arctic and an outgunned insurgency at bay in Chechnya. Senior officers sometimes lived in moldy, rat-infested tenements. And instead of socks, poorly trained soldiers often wrapped their feet in swaths of cloth, the way their Soviet and Tsarist predecessors had.
Two decades later, it is a far different fighting force that has massed near the border with Ukraine. Under Mr. Putin’s leadership, it has been overhauled into a modern sophisticated army, able to deploy quickly and with lethal effect in conventional conflicts, military analysts said. It features precision-guided weaponry, a newly streamlined command structure and well-fed and professional soldiers. And they still have the nuclear weapons.
The new capabilities were evident in Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015. They were not only effective, but caught some in the U.S. military off guard.
“I’m embarrassed to admit, I was surprised a few years ago when Kalibr missiles came flying out of the Caspian Sea, hitting targets in Syria,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “That was a surprise to me, not only the capability, but I didn’t even know they were there.”
Kremlin thinking has also evolved over the size of the armed forces. The military relies less on a dwindling number of conscripts and more on a slimmed-down, well-trained core of roughly 400,000 contract soldiers.
Russia used the war in Syria, experts say, as a laboratory to refine tactics and weaponry, and to gain combat experience for much of its force. More responsibility was delegated to lower-level officers, a degree of autonomy that contrasts with the civilian government structure in the Putin era. Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu said last month that all ground troop commanders, 92 percent of air force pilots and 62 percent of the Navy had combat experience.
A major turning point came in 2008 when a long-simmering conflict over disputed territories in the Republic of Georgia exploded into war.
Russian forces quickly overwhelmed their much smaller Georgian neighbors, but the war uncovered deep deficiencies in the Russian military. Ground troops were not in radio contact with the Air Force, leading to several serious friendly fire attacks. Communications were so bad that some officers had to use their personal cellphones. Tanks and armored personnel carriers broke down frequently.
The failures prompted a massive shake-up of the Russian armed forces. The Soviet military’s prowess at land warfare was revived, with improvements such as revamped artillery technology, according to Mathieu Boulègue, a research fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House in London.
Just over a decade later, Russia’s tools of electronic warfare, which can be used to intercept or jam enemy communications and knock drones off course and out of the sky, are believed far superior to the U.S. military’s, analysts said.
All those developments, analysts say, make it hard for the West to stop Mr. Putin from attacking Ukraine, if he is determined.
“There’s very little we can do to deny Russia’s ability to wage further warfare against Ukraine,” Mr. Boulègue said. “We can’t deter a worldview.”
De huidige realiteit lijkt daar toch niet helemaal mee te rijmen. Eerder lijkt het een herhaling van de 'deep deficiencies' in de oorlog tegen Georgie.
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Dit topic is gesloten.