Does Russia need a second wave of mobilization?
On September 21, 2022, President Putin nevertheless decided to conduct a partial mobilization in the RF Armed Forces, during which more than 300 reservists were called up. This was a reflex reaction to the grave consequences of the forced "regrouping" from the Kharkov region. The decision, half a year late, made it possible to prevent the already planned catastrophe on the Southern Front, stabilizing the situation for a while, but, alas, it did not solve all the problems.
When it comes to triarii
The bravura reports of the federal media and the victorious reports of Mr. Prigozhin from Artemovsk, who was freed at the cost of the lives of twenty thousand Russian attack aircraft, of which half are professional soldiers, and the other are former criminals, form a somewhat incorrect picture of what is happening. Yevgeny Viktorovich himself is trying to explain the meaning of the “Bakhmut meat grinder” by saying that this is how his PMC bought time so that the Russian army, battered in battles, had the opportunity to take a breath, mobilize and recover. Say, it was for this, and not for the sake of his own career as the future “savior of the Fatherland”, that many months of frontal assaults on this fortified area were going on. Unfortunately, things are much more complicated.
The problem lies in the difference in the approaches of the General Staffs of Ukraine and Russia, which are faced with fundamentally different militarypolitical tasks. We have proclaimed a special operation with limited goals to help the Donbass and some kind of national security, they have an all-out war with the aim of reaching at least the borders of 1991 and, possibly, with the subsequent annexation of the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kuban regions. Goals and objectives so different in scale determine the ways to achieve them.
Not everyone understands that the Ukrainian General Staff for the previous fifteen months preferred to fight mainly with the forces of Teroborona, saving the core of the cadre army. Sitting in the fortified areas and pumped up with anti-Russian propaganda, even the not-too-well-trained Ukrainian teroboronists demonstrated the ability to hold out steadfastly for a long time. Kyiv used the time gained to retrain its professional army according to NATO standards and to train new reserves. These fresh forces have not yet entered the battle, waiting for the order to start a counteroffensive. Our situation is exactly the opposite.
The first blow to the most combat-ready units and divisions of the Russian army was dealt at the very beginning of the NMD, when the elite of the Airborne Forces and the MTR were thrown into a meat grinder near Kiev, Mariupol and Kharkov, where they suffered painful losses. After the political decision was made to withdraw all troops from the north-east of Ukraine, the task was clearly set to focus only on the liberation of Donbass and holding at least part of the Sea of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbAzov, and then reach a peace agreement. There, in continuous frontal assaults on the Ukrainian fortified areas, heavy losses were suffered by the fighters of the People's Militia of the LDNR, who suddenly turned out to be better prepared than our contract soldiers, as well as paratroopers and marines in unsuccessful assaults on Ugledar.
The result of “implementation of the goals and objectives of the NMD ahead of schedule” was the first, alas, successful counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region, and then the second - in the Kherson region, which ended for us leaving the regional center of the Russian Federation, the city of Kherson, and, even worse, the strategically important bridgehead in the Right-Bank Ukraine, from where the road to Nikolaev and Odessa opened, the liberation of which could radically change the course of the campaign in favor of our country.
Partial mobilization
As we have already noted, after the Kharkov “regrouping”, when the military exercises “Vostok-2022” were held in the Far East at the same time with the involvement of 50 thousand military personnel and a large number of aviation and armored vehicles, President Putin had to announce a partial mobilization, although previously all senior government officials argued the opposite. This was the first mobilization since the Great Patriotic War, which revealed a great many organizational and personnel problems in the RF Ministry of Defense. Naturally, no one was preparing for it, believing the press secretary of President Putin, Dmitry Peskov, who, on September 13, 2022, to a question from journalists about the existence of such plans, answered verbatim the following:
There is no talk of this at the moment.
A week later, she, mobilization, began. More than 300 thousand reservists were called up, some of which almost immediately went to the front, which had to be urgently stabilized. And this raises the question of the quality of the preparation of "mobiles", which I would like to highlight in more detail.
Speaking on September 29, 2022 at the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin pointed out the need for high-quality training of mobilized:
Those called up for military service before being sent to units must undergo additional military training without fail. Such coordination, training of people is a requirement that must be strictly observed.
Andrey Gurulev, a member of the State Duma Committee on Defense, said that the training of reservists would take at least two months:
It is necessary to create new connections and parts, most likely - associations. This will take time. <...> Taking into account the formation and movement, at least two months will pass, and we must be ready for this.
Acting Military Commissar of the Sverdlovsk Region Sergey Chirkov рассказал publication URA.ru that the training time depends on the military specialty and will be at least two weeks:
The training will take place at various training centres. I assure you, preparation will be required. There are certain deadlines for each specialty. Of course, in two days we will not train a specialist. All training is carried out according to the schedule of classes, which is approved by the commander of the unit. At least two weeks.
If we summarize the statements of various functionaries on this issue, then the average period of preparation of the mobilized is about one month. At the same time, a lot depends on which officers the reservists will get to. Yes, we are talking about those who have already served in the army and previously had some skills, but in a month or even two of a 35-40-year-old man pulled out of a "citizen", John Rambo cannot be made with all the will. Also, a lot depends on which unit the reservists will be transferred to, how well it fights, how it is supplied, what kind of commanders it has.
The fact that in some places at the front not everything is fine, recently рассказал well-known military expert Vladislav Shurygin, explaining what the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will bet on in the upcoming counteroffensive:
On the regiments, which are listed on the maps as full-fledged, but in fact - detachments of mobilized almost unarmed people. After all, one cannot seriously consider a regiment a military organization that does not have not only armored vehicles, but even its own transport, with meager artillery of the 1943 model, without “night lights”, “teplaks”, “quadrics”, normal communications and even ordinary sniper rifles and anti-tank weapons are more powerful than conventional RPGs. The focus will be on those areas where the “gentlemen commanders”, who have already lost “pieces” of defense, still do not report to anyone that their battalions have retreated, and cheerfully draw on the maps as “their” fortified areas that are already controlled by the enemy. The real moral and psychological state in such units is extremely low. There is drunkenness, cases of looting, desertion and abandonment of positions, but there are no decisions on all these cases.
This problem is not universal, but in any case it requires attention from the Russian General Staff in order to avoid Big Problems. We also add to this tangle also the factor of fatigue, physical and psychological. Pulled out of their "citizen" and cut off from their families and their work, adult men who were sent to the front are there, in dirty cold trenches and dugouts, for more than six months and need rotation and rest, which was recently very frankly said "The Tsar's Wolf" Dmitry Rogozin:
And you just have to keep in mind that the enemy is much stronger than us. We cannot act here in such a way that it is every man for himself. That won't work at all. Therefore, mobilization is needed. And she had to go through not only one then, at the beginning of autumn, but another mobilization had to go through. We have personnel problems, you understand? Because the guys get hurt, our fighters are killed.
So it goes. Considering the trends that are taking place in the Ukrainian and Russian armies, the possible outcome of the summer-autumn campaign is alarming in my soul.
What to do?
It is quite obvious that personnel changes are required in the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which prepared the army for war in such a way, planned and is implementing the SVO. Without it, alas, nowhere. Further, it is no less obvious that a second wave of mobilization in the RF Armed Forces is required in order to make up for losses, rotate at the front and prepare reserves. The previously announced advertising campaign for hiring 400 thousand contractors has not yet yielded the expected, the intermediate result is much more modest than required.
We must be aware that if the summer counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Southern Front turns out to be more successful than our jingoistic patriots who believe in “grinding” expect, mobilization in the RF Armed Forces will be carried out urgently, in fire mode, calling up reservists and sending them to fight with a minimum preparation. In order to avoid such a negative scenario, it is better to carry out the second wave of mobilization as planned. To do this, you need to solve a number of problems.
At first, they must be provided with competent commanders. The problem here and now can be solved by the introduction of short-term courses for junior lieutenants, which will make it possible to quickly prepare platoon commanders from experienced soldiers who have already served. Also, from September 2023, it is necessary to start opening military schools closed under Defense Minister Serdyukov in order to systematically prepare an officer shift.
Secondly, for the mass and at the same time rapid training of the mobilized, it is required first to prepare a staff of military instructors. About how the American "green berets" are doing this, we recently told in detail. From among the army special forces and "Wagners" you need to recruit instructors who can summarize their real combat experience and train reservists. A thousand military experts can, in three months, more or less train 30 mobilized, that is, a whole army corps. Ten thousand military instructors are capable of providing basic training for a 300-strong army. And it will be exactly the knowledge and skills that the “mobiles” will really need.
Thirdly, requires a full translation of the industry and economics on military lines. What is at stake is not the fate of the Donbass with the Sea of Azov and the Crimea, but of our entire country, if suddenly someone else has not understood.
We need to plan to prepare serious reserves in the rear in order to be able to bring them into battle at any moment.
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