Behind the Front Lines, Russia's Military Struggles to Supply Its Forces

[dalton99a]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-front-lines-russias-military-struggles-to-supply-its-forces-11648805401

Behind the Front Lines, Russia’s Military Struggles to Supply Its Forces
Weaknesses in logistics mean Moscow’s forces suffer shortages of food, fuel and ammunition, Western analysts say
By Stephen Fidler and Thomas Grove
April 1, 2022 5:30 am ET

...

Mr. Barry said more than 170,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been committed to Ukraine in about 130 units, known as battalion tactical groups. When the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, similar numbers of U.S. troops were committed in fewer than 50 BTGs. The reason for the difference: the large proportion of the U.S. force being used for logistics and the transportation of fuel, ammunition, water and food.

Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said military experts may have been deceived by the “lavish logistical system” employed by the U.S. in the past three decades. “What the U.S. has done has made people immune to looking at the reality of logistics and just assuming it will get done,” he said.

He said the complexity of the Russian operation compounded problems of logistics. “What they were actually trying to do was logistically bonkers. They were trying to support five or six different axes of advance in a hugely spread-out arch, all the way from west of Kyiv, all of that bulge of eastern Ukraine, down to Crimea.”

With little evidence that Russian forces established their own supply dumps inside Ukraine, resupply trucks had to shuttle long distances back and forth, themselves needing to refuel. Clips on social media also show much of this equipment was poorly maintained, perhaps coming out of yearslong storage.



A destroyed Russian tank in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday. Photo: Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press

[The Unmitigated Gall]

1. I'm going to guess that Hitler

And his generals gave more thought to supply and logistics in their invasion of Russia than these Russian Nazis apparently gave to the Ukraine invasion. At least they made the hundreds of miles
to Moscow.

“History, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.”

[Igel]

2. Amusing. Not saying it's wrong. Just that in a hellish week, it made me smile.