Western military experts believe that Russia has made major errors in estimation, represented by attacks on several fronts in Ukraine without air coverage, armored columns without support, lack of coordination, and underestimation of the Ukrainian resistance.
absurd scenario
“Russian political leaders have imposed an absolutely absurd scenario on the military leadership that everything will happen as happened during the annexation of Crimea in 2014,” said Russian military expert Alexander Khramchikhin. “They thought that the Russian army would be welcome in all of Ukraine, except in the western regions,” he said. It is clear that the Russian military leadership was not ready for such resistance from the Ukrainians.”
“The Russians completely underestimated the balance of power,” said Vincent Touré of the Strategic Research Foundation, noting that “the only part of the operation that was planned as a military operation was the raid on the (Antonov) airport in Gostomel and the attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian authority. Other Russian forces entered the country as if they were going to take it, with high ambitions that dispersed them across the country.
air control
Russian forces are deployed on the ground without Moscow pre-establishing its control in the air, despite the mobilization of 500 aircraft, which is a huge mistake according to all experts. A French pilot considered that “the achievement of air supremacy is one of the fundamentals that determine the course of what remains in any contemporary conflict. They had to hit Ukrainian combat aircraft, radars, surface-to-air missile systems and landing strips.”
On the ground, the ground maneuver appears to be a flop and exposes chain-of-command failures and training gaps. Elite units are parachuted into Gostomel airport, without air support, while long columns of Russian armor sometimes advance without cover, becoming vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes.
open armor
Within two months, the Russians lost more than 500 tanks and more than 300 armored vehicles.
“This does not mean the end of the age of tanks,” said William Alberk, a military expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “But armored vehicles work well when combined with artillery, infantry and air support,” which was not available in the first phase of the war in Ukraine. (AFP)
