Russian experts and the independent media have analyzed the state of the Russian Federation’s army, which is sustaining heavy losses in the war launched against Ukraine. They also write about the obsolete Soviet weapons used by the Russians, which produce casualties among both the civilian population and among the attackers themselves. They also discuss how the war has changed the media landscape in Russia.
RIDDLE: The ultimate army
Expert Pavel Luzin told Riddle why the Russian land forces are unlikely to return from the war
After nearly half a year of armed struggle between Russia and Ukraine, the Pentagon estimates casualties among the Russian army to stand between 70 and 80 thousand dead and wounded. In the second half of July 2022, Russia had lost 15,000 in manpower and another 45,000 were reported wounded, the CIA claims. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had announced that the number of enemies killed stood at 43,000. Even if these figures refer to the total number of casualties, without discriminating between armed forces, the national guard, forcibly mobilized people from the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and mercenary groups, Russia is still dealing with catastrophic losses.
Of course, when looking at the total number of Russian forces, which according to 2020 estimates stood at 740-780 thousand military (in 2016 official figures spoke of 770 thousand forces, and there are no records indicating the number has increased), the statement about catastrophic losses can be somewhat challenged. We must, however, take into account the breakdown into types of troops. The war first and foremost required the deployment of land forces, airborne troops and navy, their total number standing at 280,000, 45,000 and 35,000 people, respectively. Of the total of 360 thousand soldiers and officers, not all are taking part in combat directly, as many of these troops are auxiliary forces.
In August 2021, the Russian army had 168 battalion tactical groups (BTGs). These forces have readiness and response capabilities, they are well trained and equipped to deal with a variety of military operations. Given that each BTG totals between 800 and 1,000 people, the total number of combat-ready troops on the eve of the war stood at around 135-168 thousand people. Jointly with other forces, adding to those of the battalion tactical groups and the combat troops of the national guard, including “Kadyrov’s men” (Chechen fighters) and the units recruited from the occupied separatist regions of DNR and LNR, the total number of invasion forces initially stood at 190 thousand. It’s hard to say what reserve troops Russia had at the time, but it is unlikely they exceeded 100 thousand military. If we take into account the deploying of the troops as well by the six month of the war, Moscow has already involved 85% of its army, American experts say. Therefore, the loss of 70-80 thousand troops, killed or wounded, in the context of the ongoing war, raises the question whether such an army can ever return home.
Under these circumstances, two key important questions follow. Number one, will Moscow be able to offset its losses? And number two, how will these losses impact the Russian forces overall in the long run?
[…]
Most likely, Moscow will have to rely on whatever troops are engaged in battle at present. We can assume that, in the near future, Russia will deploy part of the forces that are now guarding certain military objectives. Additionally, certain companies, battalions, regiments and auxiliary brigades, such as communication units, engineers or radiation, chemical and biological defense units, might be reclassified as combat units and formations. This will not solve Russia’s problems, but hypothetically it buys some time, especially if Moscow manages to decrease the intensity of the war.
In the long run, Moscow will have to deeply rethink its armed forces, its approach to recruitment and training, its military doctrine and strategies overall. The current regime in Moscow is incapable of conducting such reforms, but it is already clear that, to achieve its defense objectives, Russia needs a much smaller army than it has today. It has to scale down all types of armed forces. Besides, for Russia it is key to “defragment” its military power, which means eliminating all regular and irregular armed forces created by the authoritarian leadership to serve its private interests, in addition to the regular armed forces. To that end, the war needs to end, of course, and Russia has to withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s occupied territories and embark on the path towards democratization.
Novaya Gazeta. Europe: Old stuff that kills
Instead of “high-precision weapons”, Russia is using outdated Soviet arsenal in the war in Ukraine, which is suitable only for annihilating all life (including the Russian servicemen themselves). An analysis by Novaya Gazeta.Europe.
[…]
We have examined the existing weapons used by the Russian army prior to the invasion, and we have also looked at 4,000 units of destroyed Russian equipment. As a result, we found out why, instead of “fifth generation weapons”, the Russian army is using tanks from the 1960s and hits shopping centers with anti-ship missiles.
[…]
At the end of April, RUSI experts announced that Russia has depleted its stockpiles of high-precision weapons. Due to its shortage of state-of-the-art Kalibr and Iskander missiles, the Russian army is shelling Ukrainian positions using Soviet weapons. Their guiding system is obsolete, frequently causing the death of civilians.
On May 9, Russia attacked Ukraine for the first time using X-22 Soviet missiles. During the shelling of Odessa, one such missile hit a shopping center, causing a fire over a surface of a thousand square meters. A month and a half later, X-22 missiles hit the shopping center in Kremenchug. At least 20 people were killed and another 56 wounded.
[…]
The accuracy of Russian missiles is under 40%, says an anonymous expert with the US Department of Defense intelligence: two or three in ten missiles don’t launch or explode in mid-flight, another two report technical issues, and another two or three don’t hit their mark, despite reaching their target.
[…]
By 2022, according to the Military Balance report of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian Federation’s armed forces had over 80,000 pieces of technical equipment. 65% of its weapons are kept in storage, and, according to our sources, they are ill-suited for use.
“The Russian army is powerful only on paper. The war is in full swing, but BMP-2s and T-72s are still in storage. Why? The only rational explanation is that they have been “cannibalized” (dismembered for spare parts or for building other equipment) or stolen, CIT analyst Kirill Mikhailov argues.
87% of Russia’s weaponry, according to the Military Balance report and Novaya Gazeta. Europe, is Soviet grade. The oldest type of combat equipment used by the Russian army is the artillery.
[…]
In addition to the lack of high-precision weapons, analysts interviewed by Novaya Gazeta. Europe underlined the following issues affecting the Russian army: the undertraining of military personnel – from commanders to officers and ordinary servicemen […]; the poor interaction between various types of troops […]; difficulties reported in gathering intelligence. The Russian army has very few drones and laser-guided devices.
[…]
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the Russian army has already used 55-60% of the high-precision weapons it had before the invasion. “In the first month of the war, Russia launched dozens of missiles every day, whereas right now it launches one every week”, Pavel Luzin comments. Air raid sirens go off in Ukraine on a daily basis, yet only in the range of classical or response artillery. All cruise missiles produced in Russia in the last 15 years have been used up, and the rate of producing new missiles is under 225 units per year”.
“No one knows what will happen first – the ammunition will be depleted or the (cannon) barrels will wear out, but sooner or later the army will have to deal with these problems”, says CIT expert Kirill Mikhailov. “Russia is unable to recover its losses”. […]
PROEKT: The new world. The Russian media in the era of total censorship
Proekt.media describes how the war in Ukraine has changed the Russian media, why the media ban imposed on independent publications failed to scare off their audience, how propagandists got pay rises and how censorship works in the private media sector.
[…]
“It was obvious the media outlets that would report on the war wouldn’t have much time. It was a race against the clock – how much will we be able to get out there before they shut us down?”, says the editor-in-chief of the political department at Novaya Gazeta, Kirill Martynov, currently the editor-in-chief at Novaya Gazeta. Europe.
Novaya Gazeta managed to stay afloat a month after the war had started. The Ekho Moskvy radio station was suddenly closed down after over 30 years of broadcasting. On February 28, editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov got a phone call from the presidential administration. Officials were apparently outraged by the interview with Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov, who said that should Putin decided to drop a nuclear bomb, Russia will face retaliation. The next day, the radio station was blocked by Roskomnadzor, while its owner, Gazprom Media, decided to shut it down shortly afterwards.
Many journalists working for groups that were shut down started relocating abroad. In the last year, at least 504 journalists left Russia, most of whom fled the country after the start of the war on February 24.
The editor-in-chief of Istories, Roman Anin, who had to leave Russia ever since 2021, recalls how his colleagues had to leave the country with great urgency, soon after the war had started, and they had to spend nine hours at a border checkpoint in one of the Baltic States: “They didn’t know whether they would be let in or arrested on the spot, simply because their publication used the term ‘war’ to describe what’s happening in Ukraine. Journalists working for most of the known publications left the country in a similar way. Only a few full-time journalists stayed behind, mostly those who couldn’t leave for personal reasons.
[…]
Leaving the country was just the beginning – editorial offices had to change their business models and their approach to their public.
The largest foreign advertisers have left the Russian market, and Russian ones refuse to work with any media outlet that has been banned. For instance, ever since the first weeks of the war, advertising in The Bell, an independent economic publication, fell by 80-90%. Crowdsourced revenues also fell sharply, as Russians’ cards are blocked for international transfers. Besides, not everyone is willing to subject themselves to persecution in order to support outlawed journalists. Therefore, the Mediazona publication lost over 70% of donations from readers. The revenues of media outlets disseminating video content also dropped dramatically – starting March, YouTube cancelled all forms of monetization (advertising, sponsorship, etc.) for the Russian segment of the service, whereas sponsored YouTube integrations, although allowed, have diminished due to the deterioration of the economic context and the withdrawal of advertisers from the Russian market. The most sought-after model is the non-profit one, as the demand from institutional donors has increased several times.
[…]
Another issue is distribution. Since the start of the war, Roskomnadzor has blocked 95% of information sources that worked in Russia or from abroad addressing Russian audiences, Proekt in cooperation with the Center for the Protection of Media Rights have revealed. Only a few of those, however, have suspended their activity. Moreover, the ratings of independent media have gone up since then on many platforms.
The biggest increase was reported during the first month of the war. The audience went up despite the ban of Instagram and Facebook – two major social media platforms used to promote journalistic content. Whereas prior to the war, the website of Novaya Gazeta had 12-13 million views every month, in February and March the figure increased to 23 and 32 million views, respectively. Record-high ratings were also reported by the Mediazona website, whose audience increased in March from 1.5 to 4 million views.
[…]
At the same time, the independent media also reports an accelerated growth on social media platforms.
[…]
Ersatz journalism
On February 24, a few hours after the conflict in Ukraine started, an open letter signed by a group of journalists appeared on the Internet. The letter was written by Kommersant special correspondent, Elena Chernenko. On the same day, Chernenko and a few other journalists who signed the letter, lost their accreditations to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
In fact, the authors pulled down the letter from the Internet. Chernenko went on working for the Kommersant, where censorship was commonplace long before the war started, albeit less strict.
“Work has become much harder now. And it’s not just the term ‘war’, but the tone publications use. If the text is too vocal or contains even a hint that things are getting worse in some area due to the ‘special operation’, the article risks never seeing the light of day. A complete ban is in place on any articles about servicemen, dead or wounded, or accounts about their families”, one Kommersant employee argues. “We are all disheartened. Our newsroom used to be bustling with activity and people, and now it’s grown quiet as a grave”, another Kommersant worker says.
The test for the Kommersant staff was the interview with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who talked to a group of Russian journalists in late March. Among them was Kommersant correspondent, Vladimir Solovyov. Neither the interview, nor the follow-up article, was ever published in the paper.
[…]
On the other hand, no Kommersant journalist left as an expression of their disapproval of the war in Ukraine.
[…]
Propaganda
Surprisingly, the war resulted in a larger wave of layoffs and resignations from the Russian state media compared to the formally independent media, such as Kommersant. Channel One editor, Marina Ovsyannikova, dared take her protest publicly, yet many others preferred to leave quietly.
Journalist Yulia Akhmedova, who left RIA Novosti, recalls the heated debate that started during the first staff meeting since the start of the war: “Those who specialize in politics refused to write what they were probably expecting of us. No one wanted to write frank propaganda in the given context”.
Approximately 20 RIA Novosti employees were laid off. A few dozen people also left the Russian department of Russia Today. “When it all started, they told us to drop all other assignments and focus entirely on Ukraine”, a RT workers recounts. According to him, everything station workers would post on social media was closely monitored. “In the early days of the war, at least three journalists were fired precisely because of what they had posted”.
[…]
Yet war remains highly lucrative for those who continue to publish propaganda. For instance, the salary of Yevgeny Poddubny, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company war correspondent who regularly covers military operations in Ukraine, has gone up to 974 thousand rubles per month (over 16 thousand EUR), compared to 782 thousand before the war. […] Salaries of Russia Today employees have also increased. For instance, the director of the Russian broadcasting service, Yevgeny Shilipov, had a salary of 950 thousand rubles in January, but starting March his salary was increased to 1.1 million rubles
[…]
