WASHINGTON: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has so far been a surprising strategic and tactical blunder marked by food and fuel shortages, abandoned armoured vehicles, aircraft losses and troop deaths.

But the failures of the first days, including vastly underestimating the Ukrainians’ willingness to fight back, could lead to a frustrated Moscow deciding to unleash all its power and indiscriminately destroying large swathes of Ukraine, US experts say.

US specialists who study the Russian military say they have been astonished by the mismanagement of the campaign, which has seen invading columns stalled, apparently hundreds of Russian armoured vehicles lost, and the Ukrainians preventing the Kremlin’s air force from controlling the skies.

“If you were going to (mess) it up two or three weeks in, I might understand it,” said Scott Boston, a senior defence analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank.

“But if you, like, tripped over the doorframe on the way into the house, you have another issue,” he said.

The Pentagon and private sector experts expected President Vladimir Putin’s army to quickly destroy Ukraine’s ability to fight back, undermining its command and control of the 200,000-strong Ukraine military, wrecking its missile defences and destroying Kyiv’s air force.

None of that has happened in the first six days. And, although there are no reliable estimates of the dead, injured and captured Russian troops, the numbers appear to be much higher than what would have been expected in a well-managed invasion.

Aircraft losses

An assessment by military experts of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Centre pointed to the crucial failure of the Russians to quickly seize and hold an airport just outside Kyiv.

The fight over the airport left it likely too damaged to use as planned to invade Kyiv, they said.

Moreover, they said, “Russian aircraft and helicopter losses have been surprisingly high and unsustainable,” because they did not destroy the Ukrainians’ air defences.

Also surprising was the limited or ineffective deployment of electronic warfare weapons, which most analysts expected would have a significant role in attacking the Ukrainians’ ability to communicate.

“Were the Russians able to cut off Ukrainian military leaders from those they are commanding ... Ukrainian air and air-defence forces would have been forced to fight in an uncoordinated fashion, making them less lethal and more susceptible to attack,” the Scowcroft Centre’s report said.

Boston pointed out that the Ukrainians have continued to use their Turkish-made Bayraktar drones to destroy Russian armour. “If they got hit with the Turkish drones once or twice, okay,” he said.

“If they got hit more than once or twice, something’s wrong on the Russian side.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the Russians appeared to not coordinate well their sizable and diverse capabilities, or manage the logistics for the invasion.

“We’re seeing indications here early on that though they have sophisticated combined arms capabilities, that they’re not being necessarily fully integrated,” he said.

Equally surprising was their logistics shortcomings. “We’re seeing vehicles abandoned. We’re seeing sustainment problems not just in fuel but in food,” he said on Wednesday.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2022