Evidence of Russian early blunders in Ukraine war

 ISW:

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A New York Times (NYT) investigation of Russian military documents supports ISW’s longstanding assessments about how flawed Russian planning assumptions and campaign design decisions plagued Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from its onset. ISW has long assessed that faulty Russian planning assumptions, campaign design decisions, and Russian violations of Russia’s own military doctrine undermined Russian operations. The NYT acquired and published logbooks, timetables, orders, and other documents of elements of the 76th Airborne Division and 1st Guards Tank Army related to the early days of the war on December 16.[11] The documents demonstrate that Russian military planners expected Russian units to be able to capture significant Ukrainian territory with little to no Ukrainian military opposition. The documents indicate that elements of the 76th Airborne Division and Eastern Military District were ordered to depart Belarus and reach Kyiv within 18 hours against little resistance; Russian planners placed OMON riot police and SOBR Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) special police elements (essentially a Russian SWAT equivalent) within the first column of a maneuver element of the 104th Air Assault Regiment of the 76th Airborne Division.[12] Riot police are not suitable lead elements for a large maneuver force in a conventional force-on-force war because they are not trained to conduct combined arms or mechanized warfare. The decision to place riot police in the lead column is a violation of Russian (or any normal) doctrine and indicates that Russian planners did not expect significant organized Ukrainian resistance. A separate set of orders indicates that Russian planners expected unsupported elements of the Russian 26th Tank Regiment (of the 47th Tank Division, 1st Guards Tank Army) to conduct a mostly uninhibited, 24-hour dash from Ukraine’s border with Russia to a point across the Dnipro River, about 400 kilometers away.[13] Ukrainian forces destroyed elements of the 26th Tank Regiment in Kharkiv Oblast, hundreds of kilometers short of its intended destination on March 17.[14]

The NYT investigation also supports ISW’s assessments that Russian strategic commanders have been micromanaging operational commanders' decisions on tactical matters and that Russian morale is very low. The investigation supported existing reporting that Russian soldiers in Belarus did not know they were going to attack Ukraine until February 23—the day before the invasion—and that some soldiers did not know about the invasion until one hour before the invasion began.[15] A retired Russian general told the NYT that the lack of a unified Russian theater command meant there was “no unified planning of actions and command [and control].”[16] A Ukrainian pilot told the NYT he was amazed that Russian forces did not conduct a proper air and missile campaign at the beginning of the war to target Ukrainian airfields—as Russian doctrine prescribes. The NYT reported a Russian tank commander deliberately destroyed a Rosgvardia checkpoint in Zaporizhia Oblast over an argument and that many Russian soldiers sabotaged their own vehicles to avoid combat.[17] The NYT's findings support ISW’s assessments and body of research on why the Russian military has been experiencing significant failures since the beginning of the invasion.

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These revelations confirm my earlier response to the Russian invasion.  It was both poorly planned and poorly executed with a gross miscalculation of Ukraine's response to the invasion.  It should be noted that Russia was not the only one that miscalculated Ukraine's response.  The US military also thought the war would be over in a matter of days.

One of the Russian's major mistakes was a lack of combined arms operations to begin the operation.  If they had been launching missiles at the same time they were moving their troops it could have had a greater impact.  They then sent mechanized units on narrow roads into Ukraine making them vulnerable to ambushes.  Some of these units also got lost and abandoned their vehicles.  The current missile campaign reminds me of the ineffectiveness of the US bombing of North Vietnam which was never tied to putting troops into the country.  There is also the general failure of Russian troops that suggests both poor training and poor leadership.  The Russian leaders compounded the problem by sending senior officers to the front to try to rally the troops leading to many of them being killed.  I suspect this was Putin's response to the early failure of the Russian military.

ISW is also reporting that Putin is going to be making political showings at events within Russia which I suspect is an attempt to rally political support for his disastrous war.  It suggests to me that he is worried about his own standing with the population.

See, also:

Counting Russia’s War Toll, With Tips, Clips and a Giant Spreadsheet

Doubts about the true losses from the war in Ukraine have led Russian data journalists and volunteers to use news articles and tombstone photographs to tally the dead.

And:

 Russia Can Finally See That Putin’s ‘Days Are Numbered’

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 The war in Ukraine has opened up a credibility gap, and for the first time many Russians no longer feel they can trust what their leader is saying to them. Combined with tough economic sanctions, funds being re-allocated to the war, and conscription drives across the country, the costs of this vainglorious conquest are becoming more and more difficult to take.

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And:

 Ukrainian military demonstrates how it achieves high casualty rates among Russian soldiers

And:

 Russia launching drone attacks from inside the country as 'Crimea becomes more vulnerable'

And:

 An elite Russian military brigade was basically 'wiped out,' taking so many losses in Ukraine that it will 'take years to rebuild,' report says

And:

 Putin’s hawks are turning on each other

There is a growing fraction of nationalist opinion that is coming to see opposing Putin as a patriotic duty