The so-called “LPR” blogger and volunteer Murz, a long-standing character from the made-up “Novorossiya” kingdom whom we featured on a number of occasions here at WarTranslated, published on 11 August a text titled “Why is everything so slow and difficult?”, explaining the painful advance of the Russian forces in the east of Ukraine.
He attributes this primarily to a lack of encirclements by Russian forces which prevents them from eliminating the most experienced and combat-ready Ukrainian troops, which in turn results in both sides grinding each other out. This tactic does not work for the Russians, however, due to a lack of infantry, and specifically for the “L/DPR” republics where the most recent wave of forced mobilisation led to totally unfit soldiers being drafted, including ambulance staff. The translation is below:
Why is everything so slow and difficult?
A lot of people are wondering why is the war in the Donbass being fought so slowly? Why the offensive in the Donbass has begun, but after taking Pisky it’s not really moving forward? Why did they say ten times as if the enemy was running from Siversk and abandoning it, but Siversk is still not taken? Why so slow?
Fine, I’ll act as an explanatory brigade, although I wrote about this already. Even Strelkov talks about this day after day mentioning the personalities and events of the First World War that are widely known in close circles.
It’s actually pretty simple. Due to presence and constant replenishment of military air defence in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including MANPADS, there is no complete superiority of our aviation in the air, and it’s unlikely to happen soon. Accordingly, it is not possible to hang in the air over the front line of the enemy and destroy all of their vehicles and all artillery positions. Accordingly, we come to the conclusion that both a successful offensive with a breakthrough of the enemy’s defence, and a successful defence with the ability to stop such breakthroughs come from the presence of artillery, the ammunition needed for it, its controllability, mobility, accuracy, range, and more, more, and more. If you do not conduct encircling operations, then you are not destroying the enemy’s most valuable resource – their experienced military managers, their experienced military signalmen and their experienced artillerymen. If a cauldron is closed then all these people either go for a breakthrough and, with your correct approach to suppressing it, for the most part die or surrender. If you create a threat of an encirclement, but do not close it, these people dump all their metal and leave the encirclement on cars, taking with them the most important thing – their experience.
– What do I need the sights for, son?! – the Colonel interrupted bitterly. – What do I need the sights for, my dear fellow … There will be guns, but not people…
It doesn’t take much time to prepare new infantry, “any infantry”, just to drive them into the trenches instead of those knocked out – two weeks of “training” and a person will be able to play “pow-pow”. He will not resist a competent assault, but how many “competent assaulters” do we have now?
But the new skilful, trained and experienced artillery officers and signalmen do not lie on the road and do not grow on trees in the forest. It takes a lot of time. If you knock them out, degradation of enemy’s speed and quality of control and fire damage will begin. But how to knock them out? Only with encirclement operations, with cauldrons with dense walls, from where the only way out is to the cemetery or to the prisoner of war camp. Do we have such operations? Apart from the capture of “Azov” in Mariupol, we have no such operations. This means that there will be an exchange of infantry in positional battles, and the coefficient of the exchange depends on the quality of control and fire damage on our part.
The intermediate result of the “exchange” can be traced by the results of the next wave of mobilisation in the LPR and the DPR.
In the LPR, recently, I don’t remember if I already wrote about this, they started taking ambulance drivers to the army. The cost of “paper off the army” [i.e. bribe] jumped to 100 thousand rubles.
In the DPR, one and half of dozen of those “replenishment” people arrived into a unit. Out of them all, of those who turned out to be fit fighters were just two. TWO. Some of those who arrived were convalescents, still with rods in their injured limbs. One of them the “recruiters” took from “durka” [mental asylum], which quickly became clear, and he was sent back to the “durka”.
So, citizens “Russian military bloggers” who have been jerking off for a month to “The main event of August-September of this year: the offensive of the Allied Forces on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk”, let go. Even if it is implemented, then only by the Russian Armed Forced. By the way, where are they?
In general, “quick” [victory] is when encirclement operations are taking place. And if there are no encirclement operations, there are no cartoons.
