The rot runs deep in the Russian war machine. Ukraine is exposing it for all to see

From Wednesday to Sunday, Vladimir Putin’s military forces saw at least 338 pieces of important military hardware – from fighter jets to tanks to trucks – destroyed, damaged or captured, according to numbers from the open source intelligence website Oryx, as Ukraine’s forces have bolted through Russian-held territory in an offensive that has stunned the Russians in its speed and breadth.

Ukraine’s top military commander claimed on Sunday that more than 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 square miles) of territory had been retaken by his country’s forces since the beginning of September. And for more perspective, just “since Wednesday, Ukraine has recaptured territory at least twice the size of Greater London,” the British Defense Ministry said Monday.

Ukrainian reports say Putin’s troops are fleeing east to the Russian border in whatever transport they can find, even taking cars from the civilian population in the areas they had captured since the start of the war in February.

The Russian military’s hollow core – including tanks that were easy prey for Ukrainian ground troops and trucks that didn’t have the right tires to traverse Ukraine’s landscape – was quickly exposed by tactics ill-suited to the blitzkrieg Putin had planned.

Remember that 64-kilometer (40-mile) convoy that stalled on the way to the capital of Kyiv and was shredded by Ukrainian defenders?

As that convoy stalled, reports filtered out that Russian troops had significant morale problems – some didn’t even know they were in Ukraine, or if they did, why they were there. As the fighting intensified, Ukrainian forces targeted Russian leadership, killing generals and colonels who would have been expected to rally the Russian forces.

And the Russians certainly needed stronger leadership if accounts of troop hardships are to be believed.

Pavel Filatyev, a Russian paratrooper who fought his army’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Kherson earlier in the war, told CNN last month that his unit lacked even the basics during that operation.

“Several days after we encircled Kherson many of us did not have any food, water or sleeping sacks,” he said. “Because it was very cold at night, we couldn’t even sleep. We would find some rubbish, some rags, just to wrap ourselves to keep warm.”

And their armaments were substandard, he said.

“All of our weapons are from the times of Afghanistan,” where Russian forces fought from 1979 to 1989, he said.

The impact of Western arms donations

Meanwhile, Western arms have flowed into Ukraine, among them powerful advanced artillery systems like the HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.

The wheeled HIMARS offer what US manufacturer Lockheed Martion calls “shoot and scoot capability” – they can fire highly accurate rockets at targets about 70 to 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) away and then move quickly to avoid any counterstrike.

Ukraine’s armed forces employed HIMARS and other Western systems to attack Russian ground lines of communication in Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts, setting conditions for the success of this operation,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a blog post on Sunday.

The pounding meted out by Ukrainian deployed HIMARS on Russian supply lines has been relentless, according to Western analysts.

“Ukrainian long-range artillery is now probably hitting crossings of the Dnipro (River) so frequently that Russia cannot carry out repairs to damaged road bridges,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said Monday.

Trent Telenko, a former quality control auditor for the US’ Defense Contract Management Agency who has studied Russian logistics, said Ukrainian forces used precision rockets fired from the HIMARS batteries to take out key large Russian arms depots near rail lines well back of the front lines.

This meant Russia had to use trucks to disperse artillery pieces and ammunition to smaller depots, making it more difficult to distribute, Telenko said. When Ukraine began its lightning offensive, Russia could not bring appropriate firepower to blunt the Ukrainian advance because its artillery was so dispersed, he said.

But the HIMARS and other powerful Western artillery systems shouldn’t get all the credit, ISW said. They were coupled with Ukrainian feints and ingenuity.

Abandoned Russian munitions lie in a village on the outskirts of Izium, Ukraine, on Sunday.

Last week Russia redeployed forces to the south to bolster its ranks ahead of a mooted Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson region, according to Ukrainian officials and footage of equipment moving through Crimea.

That opened the door for Ukrainian forces farther north.

"Kyiv's long discussion and then an announcement of a counter-offensive operation aimed at Kherson Oblast drew substantial Russian troops away from the sectors on which Ukrainian forces have conducted decisive attacks in the past several days," ISW said.

Once those Russian forces moved, the Ukrainian military probed for weak points in Russian lines, said Mark Hertling, a CNN analyst and former US Army general.

"What they have been able to do is conduct reconnaissance with a small force to find where to conduct a much larger breakthrough, pushing tanks and artillery through the holes in the Russian front and then getting into the Russian rear areas," Hertling said.

Supplies for Ukraine to fuel its advance

The quick Russian retreat has enabled Ukraine to capture Russian arms, ammunition, fuel and supplies in those rear areas, said Telenko, adding that the addition of trucks and trains to the Ukrainian inventory will allow Kyiv to "supercharge" its advances.

Analysts have also noted the lack of Russian air support.

Richard Hooker Jr., a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, said last month that Ukraine has stitched together a force of older antiaircraft systems already in its inventory with supplies of US and German equipment and "largely sidelined Russian airpower."

"Ukraine has been outstandingly successful in denying Russia air supremacy with extremely effective air defense and a strategy of 'air denial,'"