Following Russia’s temporary retreat to resupply and strategize its potential attack to secure the Donbas region, there have been two differing predictions from high-ranking military officials regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the past few days. These two differing views come from Retired United States Army Maj. Gen. Michael “Mike” Repass and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.
During a CNN interview, Repass shared his insights on the ongoing war in Ukraine. Repass, the former commander of the US Special Operations Command in Europe, has been an adviser for the Ukrainian military for the last six years under a US government agreement. He thinks that the Russians had “culminated” 5 days ago and that they would be weaker in the coming attacks.
“The Russians culminated about 5 days ago… I believe that the Ukrainians sensed that and started conducting local counterattacks, particularly to the north and west of Kyiv. They also started counterattacks in the east recently.”
He explained that “culmination” in military jargon refers to when a force no longer has enough combat power to maintain progress in offensive operations. Despite the Ukrainian counter-offensives, Repass is also concerned about whether the scale of this operation will be enough to mount a significant pushback against Russia.
“We really don’t know what’s going on, on the ground, in granular detail, so it’s hard to judge the Ukrainian tactics and capabilities, and — this is more important — we have no idea what the Ukrainian losses have been so far.”
Repass points out that if the war turns into a battle of attrition, observers from the outside will not know how much it will cost Ukraine. “Our analysis about what is going on will be somewhat shallow,” he said.
Furthermore, he assessed that the Russian forces had peaked as it was revealed that the Russians had really poor command and control processes, shown in the high number of deaths among its commanders, generals, and troops. In the previous weeks, it was also discovered that the Russians had really poor radio communication systems coupled with conscripts that did not know how to fight. This combination led to senior leaders going to the front lines to try and fix the problems, only for them to be killed by Ukrainian forces.
“On the organization side, the Russians created battalion tactical groups as their primary war-fighting formations with vastly different armaments and degrees of vehicle mobility. To employ their capabilities properly, they have to string them out across the battlefield in-depth, but they don’t have the technology and procedures for arranging these forces in the way they need to,” he explained.
COMMENTS
There are 4 Comments on this article.
You must become a subscriber or login to view or post comments on this article.