When “Armageddon” Sergey Surovikin was appointed by Vladimir Putin as the overall theatre commander for the Ukraine operation in October 2022, the world was aghast that he would bulldoze the entire stretch of Ukraine with shock & awe method of warfare. Contrarily Surovikin went on a cool and calculated path in moving the pieces in the chess game. Here are ten pointers how Surovikin strategy savours success:
1. Deriving from his own experience in Syria and from the annals of history as regards to Stalingrad war, Surovikin made strategic withdrawal as battle tactics where he can occupy high lands with artillery power and decimate enemies breaching the defence line
2. When he reached the heavily contested Bakhmut (Artemovsk in Russian) he decided to make Bakhmut a “Prestige issue” for the Ukrainians where the loss of it would hurt their national pride
3. Thereafter he transformed Bakhmut as a meat grinder and encouraged field commanders on the opposite side to pour in Ukraine soldiers in great numbers and facilitated un-hindered re-supply of weapons, munitions and replace soldiers who died or injured. The kill ratio averaged on 7 to 1 or more where Russians suffer the lesser integer
4. Adhering to the golden advice by Sun Tzu, he ordered his field commander not to foreclose entry & exit routes by affording them “the golden bridge”. Theoretically this to let opponent flee but in this case it was used to attract more and more reinforceents as fodder for Russian artillery. Additionally, the replacements progressively became less talented in war fighting
5. Whenever main assault is to take place he doubled down with well supplied artillery pieces and the right techno to go for it. This was done on the basis of counselling from ISR (Intelligence, surveillance & Reconnaissance)
6. Economy of force remained the major policy pivot, where manoeuvres were made strictly keeping them as much cost-effective as possible in terms of use of manpower while firing more rounds of bombs, rockets and artillery barrage.
7. In order to reduce manpower losses on one hand and preserving legitimacy on the other, most part of the dirty war or grey operation or urban warfare was contracted out to Wagner Group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, periodically allowing him to boast or vent his feeling against Ukraine and in some cases even against the Russian security establishment
8. Demonstrating long term survivability and sustainability of the land war is a key paradigm. Surovikin just did that by hinting his opponents “Russia is ready for a long war Are you?”
9. Geoeconomics matters. Surovikin helped Russia to pedal on the war economy with no stone unturned to get revenue stream up and running without hiccup, within and without Russia proper. There are two vectors:
a) One is to encourage opponents to run through the existing weapons and techno supply first lapping from the surplus part and thereafter sucking the substance part. This basically made his opponents at the end, with no arms to defend should Russia escalate the war!
b) The second vector is to generate implosion in the ranks of opponents. Consequently, Americans started to join with Europeans to call for peace amid incessant protests and rallies against current administration.
Cheers!
Muthu Ashraff Rajulu
Business Strategist
Mobile: + 94 777 265677
E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com
Blog: Business Strategist
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