From The Institute For the Study of War:
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 20
Mason Clark, George Barros, and Kateryna Stepanenko
March 20, 4:00pm ET
Russian forces did not make any major advances on March 20. Russian forces around Kyiv are increasingly establishing defensive positions and preparing to deploy further artillery and fire control assets. Ukrainian forces repelled continuing Russian efforts to seize the city of Izyum, southeast of Kharkiv, and Russian forces did not conduct any other offensive operations in northeast Ukraine. Russian forces continue to make slow but steady progress on Luhansk Oblast and around Mariupol, but did not conduct any offensive operations towards Mykolayiv or Kryvyi Rih.
Key Takeaways
- The Ukrainian General Staff reported for the first time that the Kremlin is preparing its population for a “long war” in Ukraine and implementing increasingly draconian mobilization measures, including deploying youth military organization members aged 17-18.
- Ukrainian forces reportedly killed three Russian regimental commanders in the last 24 hours.
- Russia’s Wagner Group will likely facilitate the deployment of Libyan fighters to Ukraine.
- Russian forces are digging in to positions around Kyiv, including the first reports of the war of Russian forces deploying minefields.
- Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault on Izyum, southeast of Kharkiv, and inflicted heavy casualties.
- Russian forces continued their slow advance into Mariupol but did not achieve any major territorial gains.
- Ukrainian forces launched further localized counterattacks around Mykolayiv.
The Ukrainian General Staff reported for the first time that the Kremlin is preparing its population for a “long war” in Ukraine and implementing increasingly draconian mobilization measures.[1] The General Staff reported the Russian military commissariats of the Kuban, Primorsky Krai, Yaroslavl Oblast, and Ural Federal Districts are conducting covert mobilization measures but are facing widespread resistance. The General Staff reported the Russian PMC Wagner Group will facilitate the transport of Libyan fighters from LNA leader Khalifa Haftar’s forces to Ukraine. The General Staff reported universities in the DNR and LNR are conscripting students above the age of 18 and that most units in the DNR’s 1st Army Corps are comprised of the “mobilized population,” rather than trained soldiers, and face low morale and equipment shortages. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) additionally reported on March 20 that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu signed an order to prepare to admit Unarmiya (Russian Youth Army, a Kremlin-run military youth organization) personnel aged 17-18 to fight in Ukraine on March 15.[2] The GUR further reported Colonel General Gennady Zhidko, head of the Russian Military-Political Directorate, is in charge of executing the order. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 19 that Russian officials “severely reprimanded” the head of the 652nd unit of Information and Psychological Operations for his “weak efforts” and inability to create a “Kherson People’s Republic.”[3]
Russian forces face mounting casualties among officers and increasingly frequent desertion and insubordination. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported on March 19 that “some [Russian] naval infantry units” (unspecified which, but likely referring to Eastern Military District units deployed to the fighting around Kyiv) have lost up to 90% of their personnel and cannot generate replacements.[4] The Ukrainian General Staff reported at noon local time on March 20 that Ukrainian forces wounded the commander of the 346th Independent Spetsnaz Brigade and claimed that Ukrainian forces killed the commanders of the 331st VDV Regiment, 247th VDV Regiment, and the 6th Tank Regiment (90th Tank Division, CMD) at unspecified times and locations.[5] The General Staff reported the Russian Black Sea Fleet is replacing 130 insubordinate soldiers in the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade with paratroopers from the 7th Airborne Assault Division – a measure highly likely to cause greater unit cohesion problems.[6] The General Staff additionally reported that Russian forces are increasingly using ”outdated and partially defective equipment” to replace combat losses.[7]
The Ukrainian MoD reported that forced mobilization in the DNR has demoralized Russian proxy forces, with many refusing to fight and accusing Russian leadership of forcing them into combat to find Ukrainian troop positions. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported the number of insubordinate Russian personnel who are refusing combat orders is “sharply increasing” in the Kherson and Mykolayiv oblasts on March 20.[8] The Ukrainian General Staff reported the Russian military commandant office in Belgorod City is investigating 10 Russian servicemen of 138th Motor Rifle Brigade who refused to continue fighting in Kharkiv and agitated for other Russian servicemen to abandon their posts.[9]
Ukrainian military intelligence (the GUR) reported on March 20 that another group of mercenaries connected with Yevgeny Prigozhin and the “League”/Wagner Group began arriving in Ukraine on March 20.[10] The GUR claimed this group aims to eliminate Ukraine’s top military and political leadership, including Volodymyr Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, and Denys Shmyhal. The GUR claimed Russia is turning to assassination plans due to the failure of Russian conventional operations.
We do not report in detail on the deliberate Russian targeting of civilian infrastructure and attacks on unarmed civilians, which are war crimes, because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
Russian forces are engaged in four primary efforts at this time:
- Main effort—Kyiv (comprised of three subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv;
- Supporting effort 1a—Luhansk Oblast;
- Supporting effort 2—Mariupol and Donetsk Oblast; and
- Supporting effort 3—Kherson and advances northward and westward.
Go here to read the rest. What was going to be a swift decapitation “special military operation” is becoming the largest war that Russia has fought since World War II. I doubt if the Russian people will be willing to go along with this long term, especially as sanctions are biting. I think anti-war protests will turn violent in Russia this week.
Some shocking facts (to reasoning minds) emerge from this report today:
The Russian military leadership has now had to commit some fairly elite regiments to the war, and it has to appear that they too are being degraded rapidly (if it is so that the Ukrainians are killing their commanders: it is unlikely that only the commanders were killed): the 247th and 331st regiments are fairly elite parachute troops (VDV: Vozdushno-desantnye voyska: “airborne-descent military”); the 346th “Spetznat” (“special operations”—GRU-directed elite operators) are reputedly Russia’s most highly skilled military units and are often selectively tasked to kill and capture “high-value” leadership targets. If it is a fact that there have been heavy casualties (“90% casualties” quoted by the Ukrainian GUR may be exaggerated —but perhaps not that far off to destroy the effectiveness of a unit) to units deployed around Kiev, this would explain the freezing in place of the Russian advance— except around Mariupol. There is no official US military figure, but generally 20% – 30% casualties taken by a unit is considered “combat ineffectiveness.”
Bringing in hated Muslim Libyan mercenaries is a joke. If we haven’t seen a vicious response by the Ukrainians to the Russian invasion, what likely will be the outcome to a likely rag-tag poorly trained undisciplined band of Ben-Ghazi and Tripoli street thugs?
Now it is obvious the Russian strategy is moving simply to a war of attrition with the Ukrainians—once again showing that Putin never served as a military officer and has no knowledge of higher strategy, nor do all the KGB yes-men arrayed around him. It is a generally agreed principle that World War I was a 4-year failure on both sides simply because the British, the French, and imperial German military each settled on a war of attrition without achievement of a specific military goal. No one here needs to be educated about the failure of the idea of “a war of attrition” in Viet Nam. [MacArthur and Nimitz, by contrast in the battle plan for the Pacific, bypassed many Japanese fortified islands and facilities, avoiding a war of attrition which was specifically chosen by the Imperial Japanese “die-to-the-last-man-for-the-Emperor” theme), most notably Formosa /Taiwan and Rabaul—only nearly making a critical mistake with Iwo Jima (Okinawa probably had to be taken). But those points could be argued.].
If the battle plan isn’t, perhaps, to seize the key Ukrainian oil facilities and the key ports of Mariupol and Odessa, and simply adopt a policy of economic and military strangulation of Ukraine, if that could be done (and there is doubt that the SV could hold these positions with the morale and recruitment problems that are being evidenced daily ), then this is clearly a Russian defeat. And a massive one.
I hate to quote CNN, but Gen. Petraeus, whom I respect, explains how Ukrainian military is killing Russian generals (1:34 brief but informative video):
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/more_sports/retired-gen-petraeus-explains-how-ukrainians-are-taking-out-russian-generals/vi-AAVhU0P?msclkid=b3302b7da93911ec874cbab30415d137
Not ironic, but this is Red Army doctrine from WW2: how they disrupted German field operations: Always look for the senior commander(s).
MSN. com actually
Somewhat related, I’ve been seeing a lot of reports that the Ukrainian president took over the country-wide TV stations and put them all on a single shared broadcast thing, in the last day or so.
Which is really amazing, because the four nation-wide broadcast networks did that last month, on their own.
https://deadline.com/2022/02/ukraine-media-groups-join-together-for-united-news-urge-world-to-turn-off-russian-channels-1234960684/