Languid, Error-Prone. Brutal Invasion

"The word I'm hearing from everybody in the government who is watching this is 'surprising'. My own word is 'shocking'."

"It's shocking  how incompetent they are [Russian military] in the basics of joint military operations by an advanced country." 

"What's the number of civilians killed by days and days and days of artillery? What's the number that leads to a more favourable Russian position?"

"I'm really worried about that."

Barry Pavel, Sr.Vice-President, Atlantic Council

 

"Probably we're going to start looking at exhaustion of their force in the next several weeks. They're probably going to reorganize and replenish."

"Yeah, they've lost a lot of equipment. But they have a tremendous amount of equipment to begin with, and many of the things they've lost are actually pretty replaceable."

Michael Koffman, director, Russia studies, CNA think tank, Washington

 

"They've only taken one regional capital out of the 26 which were free of Russian influence before February 25."

"The logistics are pathetic. The soldiers are definitely not motivated. It's not what you would call a steady advance."

"There is actually very little terrain occupied."

Francois Heisbourg, French political analyst, former Macron adviser on national security

 

"[The Russians] don't seem to be able to coordinate the use of them together [their high-end fixed-wing aircraft ] and deconflict them and ensure they aren't shooting each other."

"Having painted the Russians as ten feet tall compared with Ukrainians, now some people are painting them two feet tall."

"It's somewhere in between. They are still a formidable adversary."

Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general, RUSI think tank, London

Given the slow pace of the Russian advance that has taken place thus far, supplanting Russian expectations that their invasion would sweep all resistance in their path and gain them the goals they have planned for relatively effortlessly, it seems now, according to intelligence garnered through careful screening of events on the ground and background data on the military conventions that Russia is married to, they are now realigning their expectations with reality on the ground.

As perceived by the evident abandonment by Moscow of its original plans for that swift advance. Placing their reliance now on shelling besieged cities while launching unguided bombs to wreak their haphazard damage on infrastructure and civilians alike. The unexpected fierce resistance displayed by Ukraine has gone a long way to denying Russia its quick-and-easy occupation and change-of-government.

The slow advance of the Russian troops encircling multiple cities and towns in Ukraine, especially to the south where major cities seem in near danger of collapsing. Kherson to this point represents the sole city taken by the Russians, and there the resistance is ongoing. According to the British Defense Ministry, it seems that Russia is repositioning troops north of Kyiv in preparation of launching operations against the capital.

The long column of Russian tanks and other vehicles had stalled for what must have appeared to its servicemen as an intolerable length of time, awaiting provisions, bogged down in mud, unable to veer off into agricultural fields lining the two-lane highway they've monopolized. Sitting ducks, as it were for artillery fire from Ukrainian defence units nearby. Three elite-level commanders have so far in the period of two weeks, lost their lives, demoralizing already subdued and glum troops.

Satellite images appear to indicate the column is finally breaking into smaller contingents. Leading elements of that advance evidently 14 km from Kyiv's downtown centre, shaving the distance from the 19 km distance it had held for a week.  A senior American official spoke of the column's movement as 'creeping'; that it was 'very difficult to predict when Russian forces might commit to a more serious movement'.

Other intelligence agents felt that airstrikes in western Ukraine signalled possible expansion of the war. A 'notable decrease' had been identified by Britain's defence ministry in Russian air activity recently. Slowdowns, generally agreed, as indication of the impact attributable of the "unexpected effectiveness and endurance of Ukrainian air defence forces".

Russia had started out with close to twice the battalion tactical groups as opposed to Ukraine's numbers at the beginning. Air superiority had tilted the balance further toward an "overwhelming" Russian advantage, yet almost all Moscow's objectives remain unfulfilled. "President Putin's arrogant assumption that he would be welcomed as a liberator has deservedly crumbled as fast as his troops", observed British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.

Russian soldiers have been featured in a series of news conferences held by Ukrainian officials where the captured servicemen have been videoed regretting their role in the war, testifying they had no knowledge that they would be moved forward to invade Ukraine until the attack was ordered the day before. A posting on Facebook by the Ukrainian military had it that since the invasion began, Russia had lost 12,000 people, 526 vehicles, 335 tanks, 123 artillery pieces, and 81 helicopters. Representing close to 7 percent of the 190,000 troops assembled at the border with Ukraine for months beforehand.

That scale of loss, even if inflated, according to Michael Kofman of CNA think tank, is significant, in particular when paired with the loss of hundreds of vehicles, among them 160 tanks. The erratic performance by the Russian military was evidenced in its brief Georgia war, leading Vladimir Putin to spend $154 billion yearly in recent years on defence.

Cold water was thrown on the Russian personnel losses in Ukraine by the observation that Russia's majority of its best jets, submarines and a variety of other weapons remain available to be called into service. Russia has "greater than 90 percent of their available combat power", according to a senior U.S. defence official. Yet the Pentagon sees no indication the Russians are sending in reinforcemnts.

Dominique Trinquand expects Mariupol to fall in a week, at most, while other Ukrainian cities located in the south, including Odesa, are at risk. "In Odesa, they will be able to attack from the sea, from the land and from the air", he explained. And, warns Malcolm Chalmers, though Russia may not have taken the skies or advanced quickly on the ground in Ukraine, it does have the firepower to do colossal damage to Ukraine. To underplay Russia's strength is an intelligence error.

After more than two weeks of war, Russia has failed to establish military dominance over Ukraine. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)