US does not know who is the top Russian commander in Ukraine

The United States has not been able to determine whether Russia has appointed a military commander responsible for leading the country’s war in Ukraine, according to several sources familiar with the matter — something current and former defense officials say is likely a major factor in the war. the apparent disorganization of the Russian attack.

Without a high-level commander in or near Ukraine, units from different Russian military battalions operating in different parts of Ukraine appear to be competing for resources rather than coordinating their efforts, according to two US defense officials.

Units participating in various Russian offensives across Ukraine have failed to connect with each other, these sources say, and indeed appear to be acting independently, without a comprehensive operational design.

Russian forces also appear to be having significant communication problems. Soldiers and commanders sometimes used business cell phones and other vulnerable channels to talk to each other, making their communications easier to intercept and helping Ukraine set targets for its counterattacks.

All of this led to what these sources say was a disjointed – and at times chaotic – operation that surprised US and Western officials.

“One of the principles of warfare is unity of command,” said the military analyst at CNN Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, former commander of the US Army in Europe.

“That means someone has to be in overall command — to coordinate fires, direct logistics, commit reserve forces, measure the success (and failure) of different ‘wings’ of the operation, and adjust actions accordingly.”

Historically, there have been instances where Russia has released this type of information, but the Ministry of Defense has not made any reference to a senior commander for operations in Ukraine and has not responded to a request for comment from Russia. CNN about the subject.

While it is possible that Russia silently designated a top commander to oversee the invasion — even if the US was unable to identify this individual — the state of combat operations would suggest that “he is inept,” according to Hertling.

The Russian invasion would also have been marked by excessive casualties among high-ranking Russian officials, according to Ukrainian accounts. Local forces say they killed five Russian generals during the first three weeks of the war, an allegation that the CNN cannot independently confirm.

Still, any military general killed in combat is a rare event, retired US Army General David Petraeus told Jake Tapper of CNNduring State of the Union Sunday.

“The bottom line is that your command and control has been overthrown,” Petraeus said.

The size of the invasion only made things worse. Coordinating operations along a front spanning more than 1,600 kilometers requires “extensive communication capabilities and command, control and intelligence capabilities that the Russians simply do not have,” added Hertling.

“I can’t see coordination between what the navy is doing with anything the air force is doing or anything the ground force is doing,” said the retired lieutenant.

General Ben Hodges, another former commander of the US Army in Europe, who warned that he had no insider knowledge of the US understanding of Russia’s command structure.

“The Russians had enormous difficulties with command and control during this operation at all levels,” echoed a US source familiar with the war front. “A part of this may be due to actions by the Ukrainians themselves.”

At the front, Russian troops on the ground were often isolated from their senior commanders, sources said.

“Soldiers in the field go out and have their objective, but they have no way of getting back on the radio if something goes wrong,” said another source familiar with intelligence, who added that Western officials believe this is part of the reason some Russian troops have been observed abandoning their own tanks and armored personnel carriers in the field and simply walking away.

a paralyzed campaign

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, it has bombarded Ukrainian cities with missiles and artillery, destroying apartments, hospitals and schools and leaving dozens of civilians dead.

But its ground invasion largely stalled amid fierce resistance from the Ukrainians and what senior defense officials described as tactical errors.

Airspace over Ukraine remains contested and Russia has not taken control of any major cities, including the capital Kiev.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday told Don Lemon of CNNthat the US “saw a series of mistakes” from Russia.

Moscow “struggled with logistics,” he said, adding that he saw no evidence of “good employment of tactical intelligence” or “integration of air capability with a ground maneuver.”

Both current officials and outside analysts point out that while Russia has deployed its armed forces in other recent conflicts, including in Syria and Crimea in 2014, it has not attempted anything even remotely as ambitious as a full-scale invasion of a large nation like Ukraine that would require air and ground integration and coordinated effort by units from several different regional military districts.

Russia rotates its annual military exercises between its regional military districts, Hodges said — rather than holding the kind of so-called “joint” exercises that the United States routinely employs to ensure smooth coordination between disparate pieces of its expanding military.

“They don’t have any experience of it, not on this kind of scale,” he said. “It has been decades since they would have done anything on this scale. What they did in Syria and Crimea in 2014 is nothing compared to this.”

Putin’s Reliance on Secrecy

Some US officials also suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin continued planning the overall operation inside the Kremlin on the eve of the operation, which meant that many of his own military commanders in the field did not fully understand the mission until the last minute – likely preventing different military resources from coordinating effectively in preparation for the invasion.

“In the assessments, we see that it is clear that some people on the Russian defense side are not really understanding what the game plan is,” a senior European official said in early February, just weeks before the invasion. The official added that assessments suggest that defense personnel think “it’s a very difficult game plan to stand up to.”

The lack of central organization also has implications for Russia’s efforts to resupply its forces.

Moscow has struggled to provide enough food, fuel and ammunition to troops in the field — and as its casualties have mounted, officials say there are indications that Russia is trying to replace its losses with foreign fighters and Russian troops that were stationed in Moscow. other places.

Without a central commander, strategically allocating limited resources can be challenging, said Hodges.

“That’s the job of the joint force commander: to allocate priorities,” he said. “Who has the priority of fuel, ammunition or specific capacity.”