Ukraine war: US military expert - "The Russian military is not made for this war"

Created: 03/14/2022, 10:32 am

By: Kathrin Reikowski

Cars drive past a destroyed Russian tank near Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv.

© Vadim Ghirda/AP/dpa

According to a US military expert, there are four reasons why Russia has not been able to achieve quick successes in the Ukraine war.

Western observers had misjudged in advance.

Washington DC/USA - "We overestimated the Russian military just as much as we underestimated the Ukrainian military," says US military expert Michael Kofman, who has been observing Russia's military for a research and development center of the US Navy for years.

Especially at the beginning of the escalated Ukraine conflict, many things were very difficult to assess, Kofman wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

But now he identifies four areas that show the weakness of Putin's army in Ukraine.

Kofman points out two things for his analysis: firstly, observers say that much is still hidden “in the fog of war”, and secondly, Ukraine is very good at information warfare.

Ukraine war: What Putin and Russia underestimated before the conflict in Ukraine

Why was the Russian military overrated by the West before the conflict?

Kofman writes:

• 1. The war in Ukraine brings peculiarities

• Every military operation is special.

  Just as one cannot judge the strength of the US Army by the Afghanistan mission, one cannot judge the Russian military as a whole by the Ukraine conflict.

  "Armed forces never march cleanly from paper to a battlefield," writes Kofman.

  The fact that the presumably 150,000 Russian soldiers are in the majority does not say anything about victory or defeat.

• 2. The war effort in Ukraine is new for the Russian military

• Russia "has never tried anything on this scale against a country the size of Ukraine and with a comparable military."

  Limited operations, such as the Russian army's battle in Syria, may not provide an accurate picture for observers.

Ukraine War: Why the US and Others Massively Overestimated the Russian Army

The military expert identifies two other reasons why Putin's army was overestimated:

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• 3. The Russian military is not made for this war

• The Russian army has to "fight along several axes" in Ukraine and has logistical problems, Kofman diagnoses.

  The Russian military's personnel, readiness and logistics are not designed for ground offensives or for holding large sections of terrain.

  From this he concludes: "The Russian military is not made for this war." Only now is Putin trying to gradually adapt his army.

• 4. Ukraine's resistance was underestimated

• "Ukraine makes very clever use of urban combat zones," writes Kofman.

  "They work with ambushes and small units and force the Russians into a fight in which numerical superiority is of no advantage." Other experts have already explained what lies behind this scenario: Is Putin threatened with a partisan war?

"This war will set the Russian military back years and severely damage its reputation," Kofman wrote on Twitter at the end of his remarks.

What the United States and other countries should conclude from this for the future is difficult to say.

Because one should not underestimate the military in the future.

"No extreme is helpful," he warns at the end.

Is Russia attacking high-rise buildings in Kyiv from the air?

You can read all the current developments in the Ukraine war in our news ticker.