Michael Kaufman confirmed that Putin spent a lot of money to modernize his forces
Military expert: The Russian army is not prepared for a strategic ground attack
The Russian army is heavy in strength, very expendable and exhausted.
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Michael Kaufman.
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Despite the death and destruction caused by the Russian offensive, the Ukrainian army held out better than experts expected, and the Russian advance was slower.
Michael Kaufman, an expert in Russian military affairs and director of Russian studies at the Center for Naval Analysis, spoke about the strategic mistakes made by the Russian army, during his talk to The New Yorker magazine.
Here are excerpts from the conversation:
■ What is your assessment of the performance of the Russian army in Ukraine?
■■ I think it is fair to say that since late 2008, roughly, after the Russo-Georgian war, the Russian army has changed through a process of reform and modernization, and it has not seen an operation of this magnitude in a long time.
And so, looking at the Russian military performance in all areas, we see that they have a lot of challenges and a lot of problems that, perhaps, not many expected.
It is clear that they are struggling with a large amount of equipment that has been abandoned.
The other part of that is that the Russian forces are not primarily an army destined for a strategic ground offensive or for that kind of campaign;
It's a heavy, firepower-heavy, exhausting and cumbersome army.
And he doesn't have a massive amount of logistical resources to support this kind of war, certainly not in the way they're fighting it.
■ turn back. What was the state of the Russian army in the nineties before this modernization to which I referred? And what about the Chechen wars in the 1990s, which people talked about compared to Ukraine?
■■ In the nineties, the Russian army was really at its lowest level, but in that period, it had, however, undergone several partial reforms, which were incomplete, but eventually stabilized enough in the late nineties, allowing the army to build up enough forces to fight the war The second Chechen.
This war, too, was very troubling, with the complete destruction of Grozny and the Chechen operation marred by the misuse of forces.
The army also suffered from the corruption and problems seen throughout the chaotic 1990s, in Russia, which affected the country greatly.
The Russian military gained notoriety, particularly in the West, and Russia was seen as a declining power, a country that relied primarily on its strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal, as the ultimate guarantor of sovereignty because its army was simply not in a place where it could form serious challenge.
■ What has changed during Putin's era?
■■ In fact, Russia has spent large sums on procurement, and out of the $160 billion, annually, at least $50 billion of that may have gone to military procurement.
■ After all these reforms, how about the way the past two and a half weeks have surprised you?
■■ The most surprising part, of course, was the campaign itself, because those of us who looked at this, expected that the Russian army was about to launch a combined-arms attack, that there would be an initial air campaign, that they were going to take advantage of some of the capabilities that they had, very hard including electronic warfare.
The political leadership had imposed the framework, the essence of which was that they believed that the Russian army could, within days, bring about regime change in Kyiv;
And that there wouldn't be a great deal of fighting and resistance, and they wouldn't have to wage a protracted war, until they could quickly build up forces and bring them into the Ukrainian capital.
■ Is Ukraine trying to repel the invasion or is it trying to hold out somehow?
■■ Ukraine is pursuing a largely correct strategy, trying to buy time and exhaust the Russian forces;
While the Russian advance poses its own challenges, the rate of Russian progress in the first part of the war was actually very rapid.
• 50 billion dollars a year spent by Moscow on military purchases.
• Ukraine is following the correct strategy, to a large extent, and is trying to buy time and exhaust the Russian forces.
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