Ukraine update: To execute a different strategy, Russia needs a different army

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Kos has written at length about the problems with the command structure in the Russian army. In an army filled with disinterested conscripts and poorly-trained regulars, Russia also has no non-commissioned officers—the corporals, sergeants, staff sergeants, etc. that turn orders from above into actions on the field. Why do Russian generals keep getting killed in Ukraine? Because Russian generals have to practically be in the ear of every ryadovoy (private) under his command. A general who is in earshot is also in rifle shot.

For most people, the idea of dropping all the middle management in their company may sound sort of blissful. It is definitely not blissful when that company is trying to coordinate moving thousands of tons of heavy equipment down hundreds of miles of muddy road before deploying to fight a pitched battle.

In any case, the Russian army demands generals on-site, and now the biggest general of them all may already be on the ground in Ukraine. Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov isn’t just a general, he’s Putin’s Agrippa. Whenever Putin goes into a war, it’s actually Gerasimov who executes that war.

Gerasimov started as a tank commander and first took command of an army in the Second Chechen War. How did that war go for Gerasimov? Well, it started by blowing up buses carrying refugees out of the battle zone, moved on to bombing villages with cluster bombs, and then moved onto the phase for which it’s known: using bombs and artillery to reduce the city of Grozny to absolute rubble.

Say, does this look familiar?

It’s not just the pulverized buildings and Russian tanks driving forward over wrecked cars and concrete dust that looks familiar, pictures of Grozny have it all—the shocked families staring at apartment buildings split wide open by missiles, the sad graves dug into the space between ruined buildings and parking lots, the blank-eyed stares of civilians who have become the targets of ongoing torture on its most massive scale.

Russian General Alexander Dvornikov, who was put in charge of Ukrainian forces just two weeks ago, might be known as the “Butcher of Syria,” but it’s Gerasimov’s butcher shop. The tactics Gerasimov used to successfully crush Chechnya were used again and again. Gen. Gerasimov had already been Chief of the General Staff for four years before Dvornikov played his role in Syria.

Gerasimov is regarded as a “military theorist” and the man behind the current design of those Battalion Tactical Groups that make the Russian army peculiarly fragile and deliciously griftable. What is Gerasimov’s theory? We’ve seen it. We’re seeing it. Gerasimov isn’t an idiot. He knows what he has—an untrained military with a lot of aging heavy equipment that’s poorly maintained and a lot of soldiers who are more interested in looting (with a side order of rape) than shooting. Whether it’s Dvornikov or Gerasimov calling the shots, that’s not going to change.

What will change? It won’t be the level of brutality. Already, roughly twice as many civilians have died in Mariupol alone as died in Grozny. More civilians may have died in the suburbs of Kyiv than in Russia’s entire war in Georgia. The levels of pure cruelty in Ukraine already seem to be higher than they were in Chechnya or Georgia. Maybe not Syria, but in that case, Russia had assistance from their chemical-weapons loving puppet, Assad.

It’s not so much that Dvornikov is some kind of unique monster. He’s just a regular commander in a military whose structure, culture, and tactics are entirely based on being monsters. 

The whole Russian army is designed to operate on brutality. Because it has to. Corrupt officials, generals, and just plain criminals steal everything that’s worth stealing. So Russian equipment, like the T-72 tank, is deliberately not advanced. It’s crude, cheap, easy to produce in numbers, and designed to be operated by disposable knuckleheads who just got shoved into the thing yesterday. Russia tactics are just like that tank. Crude. Blunt. Dependent more on numbers than skill.

What difference will it make to have both Dvornikov and Gerasimov on the ground in Ukraine? Well, it might momentarily distract the Russian soldiers in their immediate area from scheming to steal washing machines. Maybe. It might also distract Ukrainian snipers as they look for that big score.

But in terms of overall strategy, don’t expect much. Because what Gerasimov needs to execute a different strategy is a different army.