Why Vladimir Putin's war has not been swift
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Eoin McNamara is a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He says: "Russia, at least in the early phases of this war, has relied on a lot of conscript soldiers, very young men, only just out of school, and often away from home for the first time [have been] sent to the border with Ukraine over the last few months".
He says while these things can happen in war planning, the conscripts "have essentially been lied to, they were told that they were just going for training exercises and all of a sudden they find themselves in live battle against the very, very motivated enemy on the ground defending their country in Ukraine.
"So, morale is low, motivation is low and experience is low, and this has led Russia to suffer quite a number of battlefield casualties."
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Mr McNamara says
because they are now bitter adversaries, we forget that these two states were once part of the same union, and that senior Ukrainian army officers would have received a remarkably similar military education to the Russians.
"The Ukrainians knew how the Russians were likely to fight." (BBM)
He cites the typical Russian military doctrine of putting their armour out in front.
"That armour blitzes the opposition and then the logistics, which are the lifeblood of any army as it moves forward, delivering ammunition, delivering fuel, delivering food and other supplies to soldiers as they march forward."
But Mr McNamara says the Ukrainians hit the Russian supply chains, after letting the armour go through.
"In this asymmetric conflict that should otherwise advantage Russia, that [targeting of logistics] has devastated Russia's advance and has now probably made Vladimir Putin's vision of a short and sharp...victory an impossibility."
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Another factor that may have slowed Russia’s progress in Ukraine is the quality of the intelligence President Putin was relying on before waging war.
Domitilla Sagramoso is a senior lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King's College London.
She blames this on the structure of the Russian political system, that is firmly ruled from the top with little room for dissent.
"It’s possible that within the intelligence community, analysts may feel that they had to provide a particular kind of answer [to Putin]."
She says they were probably never provided with enough information ahead of the invasion to properly war-game scenarios.
"It seems to have been the case that Putin decided to keep the decision to actually use force so secret that the analysts were not asked to really examine these scenarios."
Dr Sagramoso says it’s clear there were serious problems inside the structures of the Russian intelligence community.
She says it’s ironic and indeed quite astonishing, given Vladimir Putin’s background in the world of espionage, adding "That's the area where one would have expected him to really know how things work."
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