Russian Battalions Aren’t Invulnerable. Ukrainian Commanders Know How To Beat Them.

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/02/13/russian-battalions-arent-invulnerable-ukrainian-commanders-know-how-to-beat-them
 
Russian Battalions Aren’t Invulnerable. Ukrainian Commanders Know How To Beat Them.
David AxeForbes Staff
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Feb 13, 2022,11:01am EST


The Russian army has staged equipment for nearly 100 battalion tactical groups along Ukraine’s borders. It’s a powerful force with more than a thousand tanks, hundreds of artillery pieces and all the usual engineering, air-defense and electronic-warfare support.

But it’s not invulnerable. If Russian President Vladimir Putin orders the army to roll into Ukraine, thus widening the eight-year-long war in the country, it will face a fully mobilized Ukrainian force that, on paper, significantly outnumbers the attackers.

The existential question, for the government in Kyiv, is how hard—and smartly—its forces might fight. However, in nearly a decade of bitter fighting, the Ukrainians have figured out the major weaknesses in a typical Russian BTG.

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If Ukrainian battalions can exploit these weaknesses, they might be able to slow the Russian assault — if not halt it — despite Russia’s likely control of the air, the sea and the electromagnetic spectrum.

U.S. Army Capt. Nicolas Fiore outlined the options in a 2017 paper for Armor, the official magazine of the Army’s tank corps. “Although Russian tactical defeats were uncommon and typically ended in an operational stalemate rather than decisive defeat, Ukrainian regular-army successes exist in sufficient number to suggest that Russian BTGs present tactical vulnerabilities that can be exploited.”
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The key is manpower. The Russian army organizes its BTGs to leverage artillery firepower—a traditional Russian strength—while preserving the army’s most precious resource: skilled professional infantry.

Remember, Russia is an aging and shrinking society. And short-term conscripts are all but worthless in combat. A Russian army brigade, which on paper possesses several battalions, in reality can generate just one BTG with around 36 squads of professional soldiers. A U.S. Army brigade, by contrast, can field 60 squads.
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In a conflict such as that in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Russian regulars fight alongside local paramilitaries—in this case, anti-government separatists from the Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics.”

“The BTG commander will employ his strike assets to cause casualties to pressure his opponent to negotiate a settlement, but he must also preserve his own strength because it cannot be regenerated operationally and casualties are strategically expensive,” Fiore wrote. “To preserve combat power, BTGs employ a force of local paramilitary units as proxy forces to secure terrain and guard the BTG from direct and indirect attack.”

For the Ukrainians, those proxy forces are the way in. A BTG’s regular infantry might be spread thin fixing enemy forces along the front and screening the battalion’s big guns and supply convoys.

If a Ukrainian commander can mobilize enough forces to keep the Russian regulars in place and also organize a counterattack, he might be able to maneuver around the regulars in order to hit a BTG where its defenses are weakest. That is, wherever proxy forces are in charge of security.

That might even include the main BTG assembly area, where the command post, intelligence units and critical support functions reside.

The Ukrainian army’s own experiences in Donbas show how a penetrating raid, aiming for a BTG’s weak points, might work. An August 2014 raid by the Ukrainian army’s 95th Air Assault Brigade penetrated more than a hundred miles behind separatist lines. “They destroyed and captured Russian tanks and artillery, relieved several isolated Ukrainian garrisons and, finally, returned to their starting position,” according to Fiore.

It would be harder to execute a similar raid when the outermost enemy forces are Russian regulars rather than proxy fighters, of course. But it wouldn’t be impossible. The Russian BTG’s limitations were evident in later phases of the Donbas war—in particular, during the battle for Mariupol in February 2015.

“A Russian tank battalion was committed to the fight to capture the town before the Minsk II ceasefire was signed, but a company-minus of Ukrainian army tanks were able to defeat them,” Fiore wrote.

“The infantry attack continued for three more months, with support from Russian artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, but the separatists were unable to penetrate the city’s eastern outskirts,” Fiore continued. “Ukrainian volunteer infantry, backed by army tanks and long-range artillery, prevented a Russian success because there were insufficient local separatists, and Russia was unwilling to commit enough regular infantry.”

Assess these two experiences and a strategy for defeating a Russian BTG becomes apparent. Endure the BTG’s bombardment and subsequent frontal assault not only as a matter of survival, but also to fix in place the battalion’s few regular infantry squads. Then counterattack around the front and aim at the BTG’s assembly area. Barrel right through the defending proxy forces and wreak havoc.

Even a successful raid could be a costly affair for the raiders, however. Whether Ukrainian leaders and front-line commanders possess the resolve they’d need to resist a hundred BTGs, then strike back, is an open question.
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