Russian invasion of Ukraine

Just another armchair general here (who has never played call of duty/or read 'the Art of War' by Sun-Tzu) but it wouldn’t surprise me if Ukraine stops at Kherson and then has a third push in the middle to split east and west so right down the middle to the coast to Berdansk/Mariupol which will force every supply to Crimea through the Kerch bridge (which Ukraine can accurately sever the railway part and make the road part unsuitable for anything but foot/small cars) make the Azov sea a no go area for the navy and create a southern launchpad to go north to Donetsk plus bring Taganrog airbase into HIMARS range.

Why?

Probably the bit that said about training and better equipment arriving over winter, thus making it harder to combat them.

That's how I read it anyway.

Loss of momentum i guess plus russia will have a lot of time to reinforce their possitions.

Right now they are in shambles it seems but russia is still a big country with a lot of recorces. I dont think one can just assume they will not train a lot of recruits well just because thats not happening this very minute. On the other hand ukraine will likely have even more modern weapons by spring (one would hope) and that could be difficult for the russians to overcome even with huge manpower and ”proper” training

What’s the minimum training time a soldier needs to become efficient on a battle field? Is a few months enough or do you need years?

Depends if we talking Russia or normal world.

Some Russian conscripts who were collected in the streets are already in Ukraine.

A swedish "expert" i heard say that 5 month was probably a good enough time to get a good operating force but its going to vary ofcourse. His thoughts were that these rectruits now that are beeing sent in without proper traininig would do little to change the situation but speculated that russia could have reasonably trained forces to put in after the winter.

Yeah but how long does it take to become an efficient soldier rather than just getting lined up for the meat grinder.

Military service in Sweden is usually 12-18 months iirc, but is that really how long it takes if you have an ongoing conflict and can throw all resources necessary at it?

It's numbers game. Any kid with a gun of any sort that can aim and pull a trigger can kill you. Fact that many of them will never return is not something Putin is concerned about, he only wants to slow down UA soldiers advancing. 300k moving targets will slow you down regardless how capable of shooting back they are.

They also need to be supplied with clothing/fuel/ammunition/food/air support/artillery support and be commanded by officers, something russia has struggled to do recently and that situation is not going to change and will only get worse in the coming months as supply lines get hit.

So many variables i would think. Who is doing the training, How is it set up and what facilities and equipment are available during the training etc etc. I can see how ukrainians who are desperate to learn anything as fast as possible and put in overtime to save their lives and their country and even get to go to a different country to train and come back would learn a great deal more over the same period of time than a guy who does not want to be there and feels he struck out beeing draftet (not that the ukrainians want to be there either..) and feels the war and his duty is completely bonkers and that he has no business doing what he is asked to do.

Can't be bothered to find the links right now, but through Reddit you see rumours of Russian recruits being sent straight to the front without training at all, just those couple of days worth of formailites and transport. Apparently some are handling artillery equipment for the first time right there on the battle field. But again, unconfirmed rumours.

EDIT: I don't see how you can improve upon that to the point where you are sending out an army of mean fighting machines in 5 months time.

Another thing I have read is that a lot of the experienced soldiers that could do the training are either fighting in the war right now or are already casualties.

I've read that too in multiple write ups. It's a risk you can take if think you're only sending them out there for a couple of weeks tops.

Ref. the confirmed stories of soldiers being sent across the Belarusian border in February with nothing but parade uniforms in their backpacks. By the time they reached Kyiv the war would have been won.

Draftees who had already served as specialists like snipers are being shoved into general infantry; they can't even organise using people they have trained already appropriately.

Can't be bothered to find the links right now, but through Reddit you see rumours of Russian recruits being sent straight to the front without training at all, just those couple of days worth of formailites and transport

So its not a rumour, its well known and normal Russian training practice. This is a general misunderstanding/underestimation looking at what military training 'should be' from a western perspective.
The Russian way of training soldiers has always been about giving a short very basic intro of only days/weeks before recruits are sent to do the bulk of training time learning on the job straight in their units. It makes sense, you learn from the most experienced people about your specific job immediately rather than lots of general stuff from a generalist trainer.

It's a different school of thought for training. Which I assume works well under normal circumstances, less so now when all the experienced russian soldiers are dead or wounded...

Interesting read here:
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1572571676524838915?s=20&t=e84VF3s2s7rcXqVP04iXRg

It's also not just a case of training.

It's a known phenomenon that only a subset of trained soldiers will actually be willing to take a life when asked to. Modern military selection for professional infantry selects for people who are essentially on the sociopath scale to some degree.

It's fascinating stuff. From memory I think it started to be studied after observations from the US civil war and WW1 where a surprising proportion of trained conscripts would fire over the heads of the enemy even when under fire themselves.

Rounding up your general population and training them to a high standard might not produce you an effective fighting force.

Wiki on one of the most read books on the subject.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing

My grandfather and his brother are perfect examples of people who are fine with killing and those who aren't.

For my dad's uncle, the people he killed in combat didn't bother him at all. He told me once that people either needed to surrender, desert or they were fair game; it was the only way to finish the war and get on with starting his life (lied about his age to sign up at 16).

My grandfather, on the other hand, had nightmares about the one person he shot and killed during the war and when he told me about it in detail when he was in his 80s, he cried about the life he took.

.

I've done 11 months of mandatory military service. For normal infantry it really isn't all that difficult. You can pretty much learn on the job. Operating and maintaining weapons isn't much of a challenge. Finding cover and digging fox holes is pretty self-explanatory. The problem is you need somebody to run the show. You need to have officers that know what they are trying to accomplish and can explain why. You need to have comms, intelligence and
rear support. So even if Ruzzia throws in million men it will not be able to solve the critical issues.

From speaking to people who were trained to deal with Russian military tactics the impression I got was that their soldiers were given relatively little initiative or flexibility to achieve their objectives, which is in contrast to how our soldiers are generally trained.

I was trained to deal with the yellow enemy from the East. To be honest in the end it does not matter whether the enemy makes decisions on the fly based on objectives or they get good plans from above. Like ukrainians say "We are very lucky they are so f*cking stupid". Thing is the plans are not that great to begin with and they don't have comms capability to change on the fly.

Meanwhile, Russia are bombing their own people (by their definition)
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-forces-break-through-russian-defences-south-advance-east-2022-10-03/

re: tanks

Re-purposed captured Russian equipment now makes up a large proportion
of Ukraine’s military hardware.

Ukraine has likely captured at least 440 Russian Main Battle Tanks,
and around 650 other armoured vehicles since the invasion. Over half
of Ukraine’s currently fielded tank fleet potentially consists of
captured vehicles.

Probably more tanks and other equipment to be donated by fleeing Russian forces in Lugansk and Kherson oblasts in the coming days.