• FishFace@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy.

    According to whom?

    According to the actual battlefield, Russian doctrine relies on throwing wave after wave of poorly trained criminals and shanghaied DPR/LPR citizens into the machine guns, artillery and drones of the Ukrainians.

    Don’t get me wrong, there are massive weaknesses, and we may see Ukraine exploit them. But we aren’t seeing that translate to battlefield success. Putin hasn’t shown any eagerness to talk peace; only the same old “peace” meaning capitulation. He’s been keen on that since the beginning.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      According to whom?

      Funnily enough, experts on Russian battlefield doctrine. The ones I talked to all work in the CAF, but you’re welcome to search up your own sources on the subject. This guy was the commander of the US armed forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, so I’d say he probably knows his stuff, and his analysis aligns with that of the experts I’ve spoken with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qjrYpDDWS4&t=1s

      If you’re trying to understand the disconnect between their doctrine and what’s actually playing out on the battlefield, it’s surprisingly simple really. This is what happens when you have an inflexible command structure that relies exclusively on doctrine and rigid adherence to chain of command (eg, individual soldiers are basically just machines to operated by their superiors), mixed with a huge amount of institutional corruption and an unwillingness to report the basic facts of the situation on the ground because it’s politically unfavourable to admit that things aren’t going to plan. The doctrine says “Smash a hole” so they try, and fail, repeatedly to smash that hole. That leads to waves of men being thrown at targets to no effect because if you haven’t smashed the hole you can’t move on to step two, so you just keep on repeating step one.