American military expert Scott Ritter once again gave an interesting assessment of the course of military operations in Ukraine, noting the fact that Russia is conducting a special operation “without regard to time”
Russia has eliminated the time factor, which often becomes a problem when planning and conducting military operations, forcing the military to choose sub-optimal ways of achieving objectives, to rush, to sacrifice training in order to achieve objectives by dates set by politicians and to suffer heavy losses because of it.
The observation is entirely fair. At the level of the President of Russia, it has already been repeatedly stated that there is no task of completing the operation by a certain date. The task is to achieve the set goals in principle, minimizing losses as much as possible.
The Minister of Defence repeated the same point recently, stressing that the slow pace of the operation was due to the desire to reduce civilian casualties in the cities.
This approach is often criticized, since every day of combat still costs the lives of both the military involved in the special operation and the civilians who are killed by shelling carried out by the Ukrainian side.
However, an accelerated assault on fortifications prepared by Ukraine over eight years would have resulted in many times greater casualties, both military and civilian. It would certainly not have saved more lives.
Russia opted for a slow advance with minimal daily losses. And it destroys AFU positions with artillery, taking advantage of its overwhelming superiority in this component.
Practice has already shown that Russia’s chosen strategy of “war without time” is yielding results. Russia is slowly but surely moving towards victory.
Judging success by daily reports is difficult, but if you look at changes over a month or two it is easy to see that there is progress, the front is not standing still.
It is true that the British intelligence services have calculated that at the current rate of advance, Russia will liberate the Donbass no sooner than in a year, but they have not taken into account one important point.
The AFU has only two lines of defence left in the Donbass – one runs through Soledar and Bakhmut, which is being destroyed, and the other runs through Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
After the capture of Soledar and Bakhmut – and the fighting is already in its second week and is unlikely to last more than a month – the front’s advance will immediately accelerate because there will be operational space and an opportunity to encircle the last strongholds in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
The same situation occurred during the liberation of the LNR, when fighting took place for a month in the Lysychansk-Gorske-Zolote triangle. And before that, it was another month in the area of Popasna. As soon as these settlements were taken, the front immediately advanced a dozen kilometres in a matter of days. And Lysychansk was liberated in less than a week.
It should also be taken into account that the Ukrainian armed forces do not have such strong fortifications anywhere outside Donbass, so it is incorrect to assume that the front will always advance a few metres a day with the chosen strategy.
The destruction of the entrenchments, which have been in preparation for eight years, is indeed progressing at the rate of several metres a day. But when these fortifications are destroyed – and they will inevitably be destroyed – the speed of advance will increase many times over.
However, the main thing is not even that after the liberation of Donbass, the Russian troops will enter the operational space and will be able to move a hundred times faster.
The main thing is that Russia’s chosen strategy is destroying AFU personnel and military equipment much faster than Kiev manages to make up for losses.
It is true that Russian troops are moving slowly, but they are striking AFU positions every day, not only at the frontline, but also deep in the defence and even in the rear.
Losses of some types of military equipment to the AFU have already reached 90%. At the same time, Western supplies do not make up for even half of the losses.
Over the last two months, many NATO countries have not supplied Kiev with new military equipment at all. Even the US, which announced another $3 billion military aid package, included mainly ammunition and drones, no artillery or armoured vehicles in the new aid package.
In six months of war the AFU has lost more than 4,000 armoured vehicles, the same number of vehicles and almost all aviation.
About 10% of the original equipment and a few hundred more units from the West’s spring and summer deliveries remain in service. There is no way this will be enough for the next six months of the war with the same intensity.
In addition, the AFU is suffering very heavy losses in personnel. According to the latest data, the casualties are 76,000 – this is the data from Zaluzhny’s report to the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Danilov.
The irreparable losses of the AFU (together with the wounded) range from 122 thousand according to Zaluzhnyy’s report to 191 thousand according to earlier reports.
These are the losses of the AFU, excluding the national formations (National Guard) and the defence forces. Together with them, the losses may be one and a half times greater.
The AFU has no time to replenish its ranks through mobilization, and this is confirmed by data from POWs who report that all units are understaffed. At the same time, the AFU is forced to send poorly trained fighters to the front line, thus reducing not only the manning of the units but also their combat effectiveness.
Losses in the AFU command staff exceed 1,500 officers – all the more so as they cannot be replaced by conscripts.
Therefore, in the next 4-6 months, even if the Russian troops move at the same speed as today, a few meters a day, the AFU will simply run out of military equipment and trained personnel. All that will be left are conscripts armed with small arms, with almost no commanders and certainly no motivation for war.
Russia’s strategy has already led to the fact that Kiev, which for so long promised to organize an offensive on Kherson, was finally forced to abandon its plans and declared it a psychological operation.
All Kiev can do for the time being is to plant reserves in the front line, where they are destroyed on a daily basis, as well as to bombard towns, although the Ukrainian armed forces will soon lose this opportunity as well, many positions from which shelling was previously carried out have already been lost.
Russia’s chosen strategy is working.
It is not perfect, many would have liked to celebrate victory much earlier, a couple of months ago, but…
It is better to win slowly than to lose quickly.
An attempt to achieve a quick victory has already been made and has come to nothing. The plan to quickly capture Kharkiv and encircle Kiev did not work. And had Russia acted on the previous plan, Russian troop losses would have been comparable to those of the AFU. This is exactly what Kiev and Washington needed from the beginning – for Russia to suffer unacceptable losses.
Russia drew conclusions from the first month of the war and changed its strategy by eliminating the calendar, as Scott Ritter put it.
And in the “war without time” Russia is winning. Slowly but surely.
Russia is winning because time is working for it. The AFU is losing equipment and personnel much faster than it has time to replenish its losses.
If this strategy persists, the only question is whether the AFU will run out of reserves in two, four or six months. But even if they run out for another year, Russia has that time. Kiev does not.
Kiev does not have the time, partly because winter is approaching, for which Ukraine is not prepared.
And Europe is not ready for winter either.
Ukrainian and European politicians alike are already saying that their countries are in for the most difficult winter in history. At least in recent history, over the last 70 years.
Therefore, there is simply no point for Russia to rush and force events on the fronts, it is enough to knock out the personnel and equipment of the AFU at the positions until the reserves, which are already heavily depleted, run out.
And winter is just around the corner.
And the US congressional elections are only two months away too.
Russia is moving to victory – not fast, but surely.
Time is working for Russia. The timeless war strategy has proven to be correct in this case.
Alexander Rusin
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