Today I would like to share with you some of the contents of a long investigative report by an American media on the war in Ukraine. The entire report is divided into six parts, each titled: "Big Mistake," "Arrogance," "Corruption," "Collapsed Fronts," "Divided Teams," and "Cannon Fodder."
The following is a description of how the Russian army made a big mistake, which not only gave Ukraine a chance to breathe but also allowed it to fight back against the invading enemy.
01 The story of a Ukrainian pilot
On February 24, 2022, the southern Ukrainian city of Nikolayev was attacked by a missile before dawn. A Ukrainian pilot Oleksii woke up to a call: "Get to the runway," a pilot told him.
As the first Russian missiles landed, Oleksi sprinted across the tarmac in the dark, climbed into his Su-27 fighter jet, and took off just as buildings across the airport began to explode.
"At that moment, I understood that this was really bad," Oleksi, 26, told reporters. Just before 6 a.m. Moscow time, Putin announced the start of his "special military operation" in a televised speech. It began with aerial bombardments, destroying Ukraine's air defense, communications and radar infrastructure - leaving its military defenseless and crushing its ability to fight back.
More than 150 missiles roared into Ukraine from bombers submarines and ships. Analysts and officials said as many as 75 Russian aircraft flew into Ukrainian airspace, equivalent to the size of Ukraine's entire active air combat fleet.
On his radar screen, Oleksi saw the blips of incoming missiles and enemy aircraft before receiving the order. He flew the plane to an alternate air force base in central Ukraine. When he landed, he was stunned. Not only were his troops there, but a large portion of Ukraine's remaining air force was as well.
For several days, he and his fellow pilots flew missions from their new base, wondering when Russian radar operators would finally notice them. A strike against their positions could be catastrophic, destroying Ukrainian defenses, and the pilots believed that an attack on them was only a matter of time.
But it took the Russians four days to launch the attack, by which time most of the planes had moved to new locations, much to Oreksi's surprise. "It's really simple," he said. "I don't know how they missed this opportunity."
The failure to destroy Ukraine's modest air defenses was one of the most significant blunders of the war, as Ukrainian air defenses thwarted Russia's powerful air force early in the war.
According to journalists from the US outlet, their interviews reveal why this happened - and how the Ukrainians managed to stay one step ahead of the invaders.
Ukraine could not withstand it at all. According to one statistics, in some early air battles, the ratio of the Russian army's fighter to the Ukrainian army's fighter jets exceeded 15 to 1. Russia's aircraft are also more advanced, helping its pilots see farther and attack from longer ranges. Russia has thousands of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles that are supposed to strangle Ukraine's aging Soviet-era defenses.
In any case, this is what U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence officials assumed, leading to predictions that Ukraine would fall within days.
Therefore, Ukraine is reshuffled. Senior Ukrainian officials said it moved some defense facilities - such as Buk and S-300 missile launchers, as well as its main radio intelligence command and control center - to new locations before the war began.
However, it is the old locations that Russian missiles often hit. In total, as many as 60 percent of Russian cruise missiles missed their intended targets, U.S. officials said. Part of Russia's problem is flexibility.Even if Russian forces discovered that Oreksi and his fellow pilots had gathered at their new rendezvous point, Russian forces were very rigid and focused, often taking 48 to 72 hours to update intelligence and gain approval to pursue new targets, U.S. officials said. Of course, by then the Ukrainians were gone.
The same rigidity makes the Russians easy to hit. After failing to destroy Ukraine's defenses, many Russian pilots continued flying as if Ukraine's air defenses had been destroyed. The Ukrainians say their ground-attack aircraft often sortie without support from other fighters, allowing pilots like Oleksiy with underpowered machine guns to catch them off guard by flying low, evading radar and roaring them down from below.
"Maybe the Russian military didn't read the Soviet book," Oleksey said. "They just flew without any cover. They had bombs, they had rockets, but they had no cover for their attack aircraft."
Then in March, when Russian pilots finally changed tactics and began flying low to avoid Ukrainian air defense radars, they fell into the crosshairs of Ukrainian missiles, including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles supplied by the United States.
02 The disaster of the Russian army ground troops
For the Russian army on the ground, this is a disaster. Without air cover, they suddenly became more vulnerable, making their advance toward Kiev and other large cities more difficult and more confusing.
Although tens of thousands of people gathered on the Ukrainian border, walking menacingly as if eager to launch an attack, many never imagined that they were actually going to war. Like most Russians, they believe this is just for show, to force concessions from the West.
Interviews with Russian soldiers showed how shocked they were when they were given the order to invade. Corporal Nikita Chibrin is a 27-year-old soldier in a motorized infantry brigade. He said he and his troops were celebrating the Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland at their camp on February 23 when their commander approached and they were eating sweets provided for the occasion.
He said the commander told them: "Tomorrow you are going to screw up Ukraine." No further explanation was given. Before dawn on the 24th, Corporal Qiblin and his comrades boarded a tracked armored personnel carrier. He said they had no instructions and didn't know where they were going.
Another Russian soldier stationed in Belarus said he only knew he was going to fight an hour before his unit started marching. The order was simple and very optimistic: follow the vehicle in front and reach Kiev in 18 hours.
According to the unit’s schedule and logs, which were obtained by this US outlet and reviewed by three independent military analysts, who considered them authentic, the first vehicles in his convoy were supposed to rush down from Belarus and arrive on the outskirts of Kiev by 2:55, faster than soldiers were told.
However, he did not come close. The huge vehicles were so heavy that they tore up the road as they tried to move forward, so much so that the convoy immediately became bogged down, the soldier said. Just crossing the border into Ukraine took more than a day. It gets worse from there. The logs documented day after day of delays, Ukrainian attacks and hundreds of injuries, deaths and destroyed vehicles.
The secret orders for another Russian military force (obtained by this US outlet and shared with four independent military analysts, all of whom said they were credible) were released just hours before Putin's announcement.
For a unit of the 26th Tank Regiment, these orders were surprisingly overconfident to the point of being self-contradictory.They anticipated a series of resistances that Ukrainian troops and aircraft might organize, but they still formulated a nearly unrestrained 24-hour sprint from the Ukrainian border with Russia to the opposite side of the Dnieper about 250 miles away.
Russian war plan says the force will excavate about two hours from Kiev and stop Ukrainian troops from sweeping from the south and east. And no matter how fierce the enemy is, the troops have to complete their missions on their own. The
command says: "No reinforcements or equipment." Sure enough, the clumsy, basically unprotected Russian column proved to be a tempting target.
htmlOn March 17, Ukrainian army commander Valeriy Zaluzzhnyi posted a video of a tank burning. He said the tanks belong to the 26th Tank Regiment in northeastern Ukraine, and are hundreds of kilometers away from the planned destination.
According to Russian documents seized and published by Ukraine, the force lost 16 vehicles in less than three weeks. The mother of a young tank soldier on the roster of the troops told Russian media that her son was torn to pieces when taken home and could only be identified by his DNA.
The losses in the whole of Ukraine, Russia are getting bigger and bigger. Soldiers and senior officials said a massive armored column of more than 30,000 soldiers advanced southward to the city of Chernigov as the core of the Russian army, and was defeated by a group of Ukrainian defenders with one fifth of the Russian forces. Ukrainians hid in the forest and destroyed the Russian column with shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapons such as javelins made by the United States.
A Russian soldier in the unit said he was shocked by the speed of the Ukrainian attack. He said: "In the first battle, the column was ambushed, I was injured, that's all. For a full 24 hours, I lost one leg and lay in the field waiting for my unit to pick me up."
The rout near Chernigov destroyed part of Russia's plan to surround Kiev. (End)
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