A Ukrainian war expert told Business Insider that while watching the war, Russia has surprised him with how poorly trained its soldiers are. Even when he thought they couldn’t get any worse, they somehow found a way.
“I find myself surprised by the new depth of how poor the quality of the Russian military is,” said George Barros, a Russia analyst at the Center for the Study of War, a US think tank.
Each batch of new recruits gets progressively worse as Russia rushes them into the war. He said that when it comes to the quality of Russian troops, “it’s becoming very difficult for me to see what other short cuts they can take without sending people who are not fit for service,” such as the disabled or the very old.
“But the bar is very low, especially at this point,” he said.
Captured Russian soldiers, military experts, Ukrainian forces and Western intelligence have all pointed to Russian forces being poorly trained and treated as disposable throughout the war.
Poor training, combined with the force of the war, caused a quick death: In October 2022, just one month after Russia announced the mobilization of 300,000 Russian citizens, some of those new soldiers he was already dead, he had received days of training. before being sent to Ukraine.
Russia’s losses have increased recently as Russian soldiers continue to suffer from poor training.
Soldiers of the Russian Army ride their armored car towards the Ukrainian territories. Press Service of the Ministry of Defense of Russia via AP
US intelligence estimated in December that Russia had lost 87% of the troops it had before it launched its full-scale invasion, meaning it started the new year without most of its professional army. which had its problems. Now it is fighting hard with the other forces that he has quickly put together.
Russia’s losses, although still high since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, appear to have increased in recent months.
The UK Ministry of Defense said in July that more than 70,000 Russian soldiers may have been killed or injured between May and June. It blamed “effective Ukrainian defenses and a lack of Russian training” as Russia fought on multiple fronts.
That rate – more than 1,100 casualties per day – appears to be continuing, with Ukraine regularly reporting similar Russian losses every day, including reporting 1,140 casualties in 24 hours on Wednesday and ago. Business Insider could not independently verify the reported Ukrainian figures.
In addition to the poor training that the Russian forces receive, Barros also said that the high number of deaths in Russia is due to Russia conducting operations at a high speed in many areas of the front for almost a year now. Russia “has been a racetrack for a very long time,” he said.
Quantity, not quality
In some ways, Russia’s high losses have been part of its strategy: Russia has a much larger population and military than Ukraine, and it can use those troops to try to pressure Ukrainian forces.
Barros said that “the whole concept of Russian victory is based on the mass, not the virtue of the individual.”
He said that Russia was inspired by the victories of the Soviet army in World War II: “They won their wars not because of the excellence of soldiers or teams. untrained soldiers, who did not work individually, but together and the majority, he was able to achieve what he needed.”
A Russian soldier fires a “Giatsint-B” 152 mm howitzer. Press Service of the Ministry of Defense of Russia via AP
During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly used “meat wave” tactics rooted, in some ways, in the Soviet “No turning back!” education. These brutal Russian tactics have included sending waves of untrained, ill-equipped troops to overwhelm Ukraine’s positions before sending in more skilled troops first.
Russia has been able to reorganize and sustain losses, replace killed or wounded, but there are problems. Russia cannot take a heavy loss forever.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not made any attempt to start mass immigration from 2022. Russian experts and Western intelligence have said that migration is a political risk that he seems to be risking. unwilling to take it.
That limits its pool of new soldiers. Instead, Russia has employed prisoners, used citizens of allies and partner countries such as Cuba, and used men already in the military in the reserve.
Matthew Savill, a military strategist at the Royal United Services Institute and a former intelligence analyst at the UK Ministry of Defence, told BI that Russia’s weak response to Ukraine’s attack on its Kursk region, which began last month , at least partially. be because “Russia’s reserves are not as large as we think they are.”