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Now they have had a black eye, they will revert to doctine, i.e. use of Battalion Tactical Groups, heavy artillery, establishing air superiority. They have brought in Chechen troops for urban warfare. This phase of the conflict is likely to become far more attritional and brutal.
I really hope that the response from the West and calls for negotiations will - fingers crossed - prevent things going this far. If they go down this route, they will have to commit not only a huge amount of troops and equipment to do the job, they will also have to keep them there long term, to keep the population in check. All the whilst the Russian economy getting absolutely battered by continued brutal economic sanctions.
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Lightening strikes bypassing centres of resistance is very much a Russian tactic but they are supposed to field an unstoppable shock force backed up with 2nd echelon troops to mop up. The BTR-80s shown on the news should be doing the mopping up.
To give you some idea of what will happen if this does move from being a manoeuvre war to a slog through the streets the Red Army allocated 10,000 troops to clear the Reichstag area in WWII.
The prospect of fighting in a built up area is frightening as an eager youth I was in the TA we did FIBUA exercises with a kind of LazerQuest system in our rifles(SAWS). We had to abandon an exercise because the entire battalion (400 troops) was “killed” before clearing a village.
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Howard
Dibble
@deleted
https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/interpreting-the-first-few-days-of-the-russo-ukrainian-war/
TL / DL
The initial Russian assault was predicated on a lighting attack that assumed the Zelensky government would collapse immediately. It was also aimed to minimize destruction / civilian casualties. It bypassed cities and focussed on taking key roads and junctions en route to Kyiv. It didn't follow Russian military doctrine.
Now they have had a black eye, they will revert to doctine, i.e. use of battalion tactical groups, heavy artillery, establishing air superiority. They have brought in Chechen troops for urban warfare. This phase of the conflict is likely to become far more attritional and brutal.
Additional point - Ukraine has won the information war so far, but the claims of Russian losses are likely to be massively overstated, and this obscures Russian successes, in particular the break out from Crimea. If and when the Russian fronts converge (southern front; north eastern front from Kharkiv, North-western front from the Belarus border), Ukraine's ability to 'win' will be pretty much finished.