Ukraine War: The Real Lessons
When we step aside from overly excitable news media reports, we see a very different and disturbing picture emerge
The Royal United Services Institute is a British think-tank tasked with studying war and all matters military. Its goal is to provide objective independent assessments that may — or may not — be used by policy makers to arrive at more adequate decisions. The RUSI has recently released a paper on the lessons learned so far from the war precipitated by Putin’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine. And these lessons are not at all what one would imagine if one based one’s ideas on the babbling of sensation-hungry journalists.
The paper draws heavily on data compiled by the Ukrainian General Staff and covers the period February — July 2022. Some of the information in the report utilizes captured Russian documents that show the intent was to conquer Kyiv within ten days and occupy all of Ukraine by August, turning it into a captive state governed by a puppet regime installed by the Kremlin. Due to a mixture of deception and secrecy (very few Russians were involved in the planning of the invasion and so leaks were few), Russia was able to achieve a 12:1 force advantage north of Kyiv in the first three days of the invasion. As the usual metric for a successful defeat of defending…
