Sandhi Yudha said:
According to this news article, more than 1700 members of the "155e Gemechaniseerde Brigade" deserted, and 50 of them even run away in France during the training. And now it seems this brigade is actually disbanded, and what left over of it distributed among other units.
Is this correctly?
Yes it's correct. I have hear about it in details on French chanel LCI. The french government is embarrassed because they spent hundreds of million equipping and training them. But ultimately said that it was up to the Ukrainians to use the resources as they see best.
Interesting note: Most of the recruits were not volunteers, but mobilised ones. Which in part explained the high ratio of desertion. Possibly some of them agreed to enlist when they knew that they would be trained in France and took the opportunity to disappear in western Europe once they arrived. The French police is not even looking after them. Nobody really care.
More embarrassing is the bulk of desertion inside Ukraine. First the general of the brigade was dismissed as soon as he arrived in Ukraine. To dismiss such a high rank officer while combat operations have not even started is unusual. It means something was really wrong with him.
I don't know if the brigade was disbanded after or before, or if this was the consequence or the reason for his dismissal, but the disbandment was a grave mistake. The force lost his cohesion. Soldiers would not perform as effectively when inserted in other brigades as they would in the brigade they were trained and acquainted with, That was the first reason of discontent.
The second reason was the absence of drone in the armement of the brigade. In France, it was assumed that they will receive drones and training to used them once in Ukraine because Ukrainians is much better with drone technology and experience than the French. Alas, they didn't receive a single drone. This was a scandal because the Ukrainian army is using over 5000 drones a day and producing a consistant amount.
The third reason was that, on their first day of arrival, they were sent to the Pokrovsk front line, the most dangerous one in the whole country. That was a mistake because they should have been deployed in less intense areas to gain experience. Perhaps the military command in the Pokrovsk axis needed reinforcement urgently and they were the only ones available at this time.
At the end of the day, literally, the entire brigade was dilapidated.
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Vanquish said:
I have to think Ukraine opening up a little boil in Russia must be really irritating to Putin especially seeing as they seem to be able to do little about it after 5 months.
Feanor said:
Except... it's never good to let political considerations dictate military decisions like that.
Even if it became political, the initial goal and reason for the Kursk incursion was military. They broke through Russian lines in order to strike them in the back, disrupt logistic (they still control the main north-south railroad), force the Russian to modify their plans and deploy more troops to this area. Most analysts estimate that over 50 000 Russian troops have been moved there to repel the Ukrainians, not counting Koreans.
The raid on Berdin, was sort of, a break through inside the break through. A mini Kursk incursion inside the Kursk incursion. They took Russians by surprise, used advanced anti-drone jamming, targeted a weak spot in the Russian line, used western tanks and IFV in the most advantageous circumstances. All these things are disrupting the Russian invasion force aparatus.
After that, people, mostly in the Western media, started to speculate about a varieties of scenarios without listening what Ukrainians were telling about it. Why did they
waste resources there instead of using them in the Donbas? Because the northern border between Sumy and Kharkiv is also a part of the front.
That Putin is irritated and that it's a blow to Russia's prestige is of course an excellent additional reason to do it, yet not the first one.
vikingatespam said:
I have to wonder if the lack of focus on stopping RU in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas indicates UKR knows it will be giving those up in the upcoming negotiations.
There is no lack of focus, or lack of effort to preserve the territories in eastern Ukraine. Instead reinforcements have been sent to Pokrovsk, they kept Kurakhove and Toresk as long as they could, they repelled assaults in Kupiansk, they fiercely fought for the defence of Vovchansk. They are making repeated counter-attacks on Russian lines. These counter-attacks don't allow them to regain much territories but they weaken Russian troops.
Ukrainians do this amidst mass desertion among their ranks, lack of recruits, poor commandment and lack of ammunition and weapons.
I agree with
@KipPotapych that the Ukrainian leadership is not even remotely considering giving up any territory not yet under firm Russian control. Were the front line will be when Trump will force every one to negotiate is where the demarcation line will be.
vikingatespam said:
RU territory now is the most valuable negotiating card.
No. It isn't. Because it's too small and by the Trump's Inauguration deadline, it will be even smaller.
There is an interresting detail thought: Zelensky has said recently, that it can be used to negotiate. But I think he means that it will be forcing Putin to negotiate rather than to make a swap of occupied territories.
Vanquish said:
In regards to Russia being a super power I dare say most of the world believes that.
Feanor said:
I think that Russia had a chance of becoming one of the future great powers in a multi-polar world. I think this war did a lot to blow those chances. On the flip side none of this seems to have really done much damage to Russian aspirations in Africa, and much of Russia's near-abroad has taken the "wait and see" position. Except Georgia who apparently wants to be friends now. Presumably to avoid the fate of Ukraine.
The perception of Russia as the Second, then the Third or on par with or after China was still alive and well until February 2022. The Ukrainian resistance blew that both in the perception and in the reality. Yet, not evenly across the world. The Global South, both the population and the official propaganda, still believes that Putin has the upper hand in the fight against Western and American imperialism. They think that Putin is inflicting an humiliating defeat against the West. Not the opposite.
The invasion of a tiny portion of the Kursk Oblast, albeit minimal geographically has somewhat altered this perception. But further Russian defeat is needed to reverse it. There is a lot of wait and see in the so-called neutral countries.
