In the five days last Wednesday through Sunday, Russian forces lost at least 338 pieces of major military equipment — from fighter jets to tanks and trucks — destroyed or captured, according to open-source intelligence site Oryx. Ukrainian forces entered Russian territory in an attack that stunned the Russians with its speed and scope.

Ukraine’s top military leader said on Sunday that his country’s forces had reclaimed more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory since early September. “Since Wednesday, Ukraine has regained an area at least twice the size of Greater London,” the UK Defense Department said on Monday.

Ukrainian reports say Putin’s troops are fleeing east to the Russian border by any means available, including taking cars from civilians in areas they have taken over since the start of the war in February.

These Russian losses are a combination of many existing problems, as the Russians now come face to face with a Ukrainian military that has been patient, methodical and equipped with billions of dollars of Western military equipment that Russia cannot counter. Analysts say that without a radical and potentially unconventional intervention by Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s progress is likely to accelerate.

Many of Russia’s problems—poor and inflexible leadership, low troop morale, inadequate logistics, and poor maintenance—were evident from the early stages of the war.

The troubled image of the Russian military, including tanks that were easy prey for the Ukrainian ground forces and trucks that lacked the right tires to traverse the Ukrainian landscape, was quickly exposed with tactics unsuited to the blitzkrieg designed by Mr. Putin. So a huge group of Russian vehicles 65 kilometers long, stuck north of Kyiv in the spring, was crushed by Ukrainian defenders.

Since then, there have been numerous reports of Russian soldiers having serious morale problems – some soldiers did not even know they were in Ukraine, or if they did, why they were there. Soldiers spoken to by CNN and other Western media report poor training and management, with shortages of food, sleeping bags and blankets, and weapons in the hands of Russian infantrymen from the time of the invasion of Afghanistan (1980s).

On the other hand, the Ukrainian military is getting more and more Western weapons, such as large HIMARS missiles, which the Russians are unable to handle.

“Ukrainian long-range artillery is now probably hitting the Dnieper crossings so often that Russia cannot repair damaged road bridges,” the UK Department of Defense said on Monday.

Trent Teleko, a former quality assurance auditor for the US Defense Contract Management Agency who has studied Russian logistics, told CNN that Ukrainian forces have used precision-guided missiles fired from HIMARS to destroy key large Russian weapons caches near railroad tracks far behind the front lines. .

This meant that Russia had to use trucks to disperse artillery pieces and ammunition into smaller depots, making distribution difficult, Mr. Teleko said. When Ukraine launched its blitzkrieg, he said, Russia was unable to send adequate firepower to the Ukrainian offensive because its artillery was dispersed.

But HIMARS and other powerful Western artillery systems do not take credit, as they, combined with Ukrainian strategy and ingenuity, have also exposed the Russian military.

Russia moved forces south last week to bolster its ranks ahead of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson, according to Ukrainian officials and video footage of vehicles moving through Crimea. This opened the door for Ukrainian forces further north.

Kyiv’s lengthy discussion and subsequent announcement of an operation against the Kherson region diverted significant Russian forces away from areas where Ukrainian forces have been conducting decisive offensive operations in recent days.

According to CNN analyst and former U.S. Army General Mark Hertling, after these Russian forces moved in, the Ukrainian military began looking for weak spots in Russian positions.

“What they were able to do was to reconnoiter with a small force to find where to make a much larger offensive, pushing tanks and artillery through the gaps on the Russian front, and then reaching the rear areas that the Russians occupied,” explained Mr. Hertling.

Russia’s rapid retreat has allowed Ukraine to pump Russian arms, ammunition, fuel and supplies into these areas, Mr Teleko said, adding that adding trucks and trains to Ukrainian stocks would allow Kyiv to “recharge” its advance.

Analysts also pointed to a lack of air support from Russia. Richard Hooker, Jr., a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Ukraine has amassed a force of old anti-aircraft systems already in service with supplies of US and German equipment and “significantly outnumbers the Russian air force.”

So much land that Russia seized in Ukraine in seven months at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian victims was lost in a week. And the Russian generals don’t seem to have an immediate answer.

Source: CNN