Jamie Detmer is Opinion Editor at POLITICO Europe.
On one thing Western and Russian military strategists agree – crowding large numbers of mainly new conscripts inside a building within range of Ukrainian missiles so they could see into the new year was a fatal error.
“They should never have been there,” Told Britain’s retired Air Vice Marshal Sean Bell.
Reportedly, around 600 Russian soldiers were at the college in Makiivka when it was Four were hit by US-supplied HIMARS rockets. on New Year’s Day. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed – the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has admitted since the start of the war – while Ukraine estimates the death toll to be closer to 400.
Bell and other Western military experts say the Russians left themselves wide open to a devastating attack — and the country’s fiercely pro-war military bloggers and lawmakers agree.
Telegram and other social media platforms used by these increasingly influential and war-mongering critics have been raising clamor for impeachment and calls for the military chiefs to be rolled out.
“Our generals are theoretically untrained,” wrote Igor Girkin, a former intelligence officer and paramilitary commander who played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.
Girkin, who uses the pseudonym Igor Strelkov, and others were let off on a series of missteps that gave Ukraine the opportunity to launch the deadliest single attack ever on Russian forces.
And not only were the large numbers gathered together in one location, not only a dozen kilometers behind the frontline, they were also in close proximity to a massive ammunition dump, which, bloggers say, added to the power of the explosion. .
“What happened in Makievka is terrible,” wrote Archangel Spetsnaz Z, a Russian military blogger who has more than 700,000 subscribers on his Telegram channel. “Who came up with the idea to put a large number of personnel in a building where even a fool understands that even if they [are] Will be hit by cannons, many will be injured or dead?
There is also growing criticism from lawmakers and state broadcasters – including top publicist Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state-controlled Russia Today – that the defense ministry has no choice but to break its initial silence on the debacle and try to manage it. was not. Story by promising investigation.
However, so far this effort has failed, mainly due to the ministry’s attempts to preempt the investigation by blaming itself for defying a ban on cell phone use. “It is already clear that the main reason for what happened was the massive use of mobile phones by soldiers despite the ban,” said Lieutenant General Sergei Severyukov, deputy head of the Main Military-Political Department of the Russian Armed Forces. Said,
“This factor allowed the enemy to track and determine the coordinates of the location of troops for a missile strike,” he said.
However it is believed that both sides have used cell phone signals for targeted purposes – possibly by Russia to attack a Ukrainian military base near Lviv and possibly by Ukraine to target a Russian general last March. Some Russian critics have disbelieved the claim, including Semyon Pegov. High-profile blogger who was awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin last year.
“The mobile story is not very believable,” he wrote on Telegram. “I rarely say this – but this is a case when it would be better to remain silent, at least until the end of the investigation. In such a situation, it seems like an attempt to shift the blame.”
Attempts to pre-empt an investigation by the Ministry of Defense have failed miserably, who attribute the debacle to the original decision to gather many troops in one place, and who say the soldiers are to blame. Part of the effort is to remove the shortcomings of the commanders and officers.
Blaming the recruits is also adding to the doubt that any senior commanders will be found guilty and punished – but if none are, signs indicate the furore will grow. For weeks now, rumors have been circulating in the higher echelons of Russia’s armed forces, with talk that Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, among others, could be replaced as well as these pro-war bloggers . Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and paramilitary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin have long sought.
With frustration building and recriminations about command incompetence, this demand from pro-war critics of Russia, who have been talking about the conduct of the war for months, is unlikely to subside – they already are busy highlighting other operational missteps as they see them.
For example, a pro-war blogger known as Riber, who has over a million subscribers on Telegram, recently drew attention to the failure to distribute Russian consignments among units that had already Only seen combat, so newcomers can learn more quickly – a practice followed by the Ukrainians, who now avoid creating new units from scratch.
“It is worth mentioning once again the experience of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which back in April made a conclusion from its experience of working with mobilized people: the called-up reinforcements should be ‘mixed’ with combat units that have Has already been tested in combat conditions,” he wrote.
And as calls for action grow louder after a series of successive failures, it remains to be seen whether those in command will listen.