Big Serge On The Russian Military's Reorganization

Military history writer Big Serge has published an excellent essay that explains much of what has puzzled observers of the conflict in Ukraine—why does Russia appear to be hanging back, what happened to that much touted offensive, and some other matters as well. What I’ve done is excerpted the essentials from the much longer essay. Those excerpts should suffice to provide an understanding of what’s going on. First, however, here are some basic points that will serve as guide posts.

1. Russia, for political reasons, has not yet declared war on Ukraine—the conflict remains, legally, a Special Military Operation. That “legally” is important, because Putin himself has a degree in international law. Legality is very important to him, as we know from his criticisms of the Rules-Based Order, in which the rules are unilaterally made up on the go. A declaration of war may or may not happen, but the lack of such a declaration at this point places constraints on the Russian military.

2. The Russian military is composed of a professional military—personnel who are on contract—and conscripts. Conscripts serve only for a limited time and are mostly trainees for most of their service. Importantly, they cannot be used outside the Russian Federation unless there has been a declaration of war. In a very practical sense, this explains why the Russian forces have often found themselves outnumbered by the Ukraine/NATO forces. The fact that Putin has followed the law in this regard is a measure of his commitment both to legal requirements as well as to determination to refrain from a “militarization” of Russian society—a point he made in his recent national address.

3. This dichotomy of professional contract personnel and conscripts also explains the heavy reliance on the Wagner forces and the militaries of the former Donbass republics, both of which forces can be regarded as “irregulars.” On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that many of the Wagner soldiers are former members of the Russian military. This lack of full complements is being solved through the mobilization, but the problem of integrating the call-ups into the new organizational structure remains a work in progress.

4. The incorporation of several formerly Ukrainian oblasts into the Russian Federation has obviated some of the legal difficulties, but the organizational problems are still being worked through.

With that, the excerpts:

Russo-Ukrainian War: Schrodinger’s Offensive

Russo-Ukrainian War: Schrodinger’s Offensive

Where is the big Russian offensive? This is, at the moment, the million dollar question that inevitably intrudes on any discussion of the war’s current course.

So either a giant offensive will happen any minute now (it might have just started while I was typing that), or it will never happen at all, or it already happened, or ...

I would like to suggest an alternative to all these theories …

Russia is currently driving the attrition of the Ukrainian army and denying Ukraine any chance at regaining operational initiative, while at the same time pursuing important shaping objectives. I believe this is occurring against the backdrop of moderate, but not catastrophic organizational disorder and restructuring in the Russian armed forces, which are delaying its readiness to launch a large scale offensive. In other words, the current pace of Russian operations supports the overall attrition of Ukrainian manpower and implies that there is no need to rush an ambitious operation until organizational issues have been sorted out.

Russia is currently sorting through organizational issues which were created through the country’s unique mixed service model (which mixes contract soldiers and conscripts), and in particular the wearisome Battalion Tactical Group (BTG).

The problem this unique organization model presents is this. If a given BTG is composed of both contract soldiers and conscripts at any given time, deployment outside the Russian Federation for the unit as a whole will be problematic. Further, many of the members of the BTG at any given time will not be fully trained up.

The Russian army utilizes a mixed model of professional contract soldiers and conscripts, and these two types of personnel have an important legal differentiation. Conscripts cannot be deployed in combat outside of Russia without a declaration of war. This means that a given Russian unit ... has a full (“paper”) strength comprised of mixed personnel, and a rump core of contract soldiers that can be deployed abroad. The question for Russian leadership therefore becomes how to design these units to fight without their conscripts.

The BTG, as has been noted, is heavy on firepower, with a strong organic complement of artillery tubes and armored vehicles, but exceptionally light on infantry. This has implications for both offensive and defensive operations, which we saw very clearly in the first nine months of the war in Ukraine.

On the defense, the BTG (being infantry poor) has to fight from behind a thin screen, and inflict defeats on the enemy with its ranged fires. This isn’t a unit that can fight doggedly to hold forward positions; it’s built to maul the attacker. More generally, however, BTGs are fragile units, by which we mean relatively low losses in infantry or tanks make them unsuitable for further combat tasks.

In a sense, this is what you’d expect given the constraints of the contract-conscript model, which by its very nature forced the Russians to design a stripped-down, manpower light subsidiary to their full strength brigades. This is why Russia had a general scarcity of manpower that began to compromise its overall operational effectiveness over the summer of 2022 as Ukrainian mobilization and western aid resulted in an enormous UA numerical advantage. At the peak, the first phase of the war probably saw no more than 80,000 regular Russian combat personnel in Ukraine, and even with the DNR, LNR, and Wagner providing an infantry buffer, the total Russian force was outnumbered at least 3-1. The BTG could still inflict huge damage, but the construction of the force in Ukraine was simply not sufficient for the scope of the theater, leading to a huge section of front in Kharkov being hollowed out. Hence, mobilization.

Russian leadership has clearly concluded that the stripped down, manpower-lite army is not adequate for a high intensity war.

It seems like the most likely verdict is that at this point in time, these organizational challenges are not fully resolved, limiting immediate Russian activity to shaping operations and the maintenance of attritional death pits (like Bakhmut) under the safety of Russia’s ISR and fires umbrella in the east. This will continue until the regular Motor Rifle and Tank units are ready for attacking operations.

This is why, at the moment, much of Russia’s offensive duties are being handled by units at the high and low end of the unit spectrum - that is, either elite units like VDV (airborne) and Marines, or irregular units like Wagner and the DNR/LNR. The middle rung of the ladder - regular motor rifle units - are mostly visible holding defensive positions.