London: Russian forces retreat in panic from their positions in Kharkiv, abandoning expensive equipment

Some of the Russian forces are retreating “in panic” from parts of the region of Kharkiv, as Ukrainian forces gain control, Britain’s Ministry of Defense announced on Thursday.

As he emphasizes, Russian forces have “largely withdrawn from the area west of the Oskil River”.

While some of the Russian troops withdrew “in relatively good order”, others “retreated in apparent panic”.

“The expensive equipment abandoned by the Russian troops who they ran away reportedly highlights the disorganized retreat of many units,” notes London.

Latest Defense Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 15 September 2022

Find out more about the UK government’s response: https://t.co/bC8r1YOi3S

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/VVEpMiOvLD

— Ministry of Defense 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) September 15, 2022

Since September 6, the Ukrainian army has liberated more than 6,000 square kilometers and over 300 settlements with a total population of about 150,000 in the Kharkiv region, according to Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hana Malyar.

The Russians had quickly taken over the area from the start of the February 24 invasion. For Ukraine now it is the second big hit since late March, when the Russian offensive on Kyiv failed and Moscow withdrew its troops north of the capital.

The Pathogens of the Russian Military Machine

Inadequacy of the Intelligence services, blindness of the hierarchy, incompetence of the military machine to predict predictable events: it is obvious that Russia was surprised by the Ukrainian counterattack.

Within a few days, Kiev’s forces regained the initiative in a war that had seemed stuck on a frontline almost immobile since the start of the summer. Today, they have recaptured many cities and areas of thousands of square kilometers.

The fact that Moscow did not see it coming “constitutes a colossal failure of military intelligence,” says Michael Kofman of the US-based CNA institute. “They failed completely.”

“Russia was unable to predict,” according to Pierre Grasser, a historian of International Relations and researcher at the Sirice Center in Paris.

Like many others, he refers to the management of the Ukrainians by announcing the counter-offensive in the south before launching an even larger counter-offensive in northeastern Ukraine.

“Small indications could have alerted Moscow,” he says, especially since Ukraine “appears to have been shelling the front line throughout August” with small-scale operations.

The operation of the element of surprise is all the more unexpected when this conflict is documented by satellite images and with a wealth of information from the battlefield available in the public domain – what spies call “open sources”. No large-scale movement of troops or artillery should be allowed to escape under these conditions of the enemy’s camp.

THE Rob Lee, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, reveals that some Russian channels on Telegram have been reporting on gatherings of Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region for a month.

Extreme centralization

“One of the biggest weaknesses of the Russian military is its slow response rates to developments on the battlefield,” says Rob Lee.

Still a hostage to Soviet culture, the Russian military “is overly centralized, but it also makes bad decisions – to the point of making no decisions at all.”

The crushing defeat of Moscow’s bid to seize Kyiv in March had already shone a light on the weaknesses of what had been considered one of the world’s strongest armies.

The Russian intelligence services and Putin himself were stigmatized by the inability of the combat units of the Russian army detached from the general staff to adapt to the conditions of the conflict.

The Russian army then regrouped to advance into the Donbass in the spring, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.

But the organic weaknesses of the Russian forces reappeared later. War is won less in the fighting of each day and more in predicting the next. And at this point the heir of the Red Army lags behind.

In June, in the absence of a general mobilization, the Russians did not replace units depleted by months of fighting, recalls Michael Kofman. However, they did not adapt to this treaty: “they continued to attract the Ukrainian forces to the Donbas while the Russian forces had little chance of success.”

And they were “not adequately prepared for defence”, leaving large sections of the front line “terribly exposed” to counter-attacks.

The importance of Western aid

The independent Russian military analyst Alexandre Khramtchikhine notes that simultaneous Ukrainian attacks have complicated Moscow’s work. “The Russian intelligence services did not understand where the real Ukrainian counterattack would take place,” he told AFP.

In his opinion, the Russian retreat is explained by other factors. “In Ukraine, the entire population has been conscripted.” “The Ukrainians therefore have the ability to reinforce themselves with as many forces as they want,” says the Russian military analyst, emphasizing that “and in terms of technical equipment, especially the number of weapons on the ground,” the Ukrainian forces have an advantage.

In addition, Moscow could not have been unaware that the president Volodymyr Zelensky he would finally succeed in getting the modern weaponry he was asking for from his allies.

The Russian military command “failed to prepare for the importation of NATO weapons,” writes Christopher Dougherty of CNAS in Washington on his Twitter account.

Himars and Harm missiles and Caesar self-propelled howitzers changed the course of the conflict far more than Moscow had anticipated.

“At every turn, Russia fails to make the right decisions quickly,” insists Christopher Dougherty.

Against Russia, Ukraine, buoyed by reform of its military after the loss of Crimea in 2014 and bolstered by Western aid, is hitting where it hurts.

“Ukraine’s ability to gather, manage information, and act quickly and decisively has given it a huge advantage over the hyper-centralized and arteriosclerotic command structure of the Russian military,” summarizes Christopher Dougherty.

Alexandre Khramtchikhine for his part points out the role of foreign Intelligence. “Ukraine receives real-time information from American satellites and long-range spy planes,” he says.

“It is not even certain that the administration (…) has not turned, at least into a Ukrainian-American one.”

Moscow’s message to the US

The United States will become directly involved in the conflict if it decides to supply Ukraine with longer-range missiles, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

– AMPE

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