For Westerners, the solution was inhumane, but for the Kremlin, it was just a matter of survival on the battlefield. In 2023, in an attempt to compensate for the disastrous performance of Russian troops in the first months of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia resorted to forming assault units from prisoners and other “sacrificial resources”. The goal was not to gain sympathy, but to gain ground – even at the cost of a brutal abandonment of humanity, writes Business Insider.
For Vladimir Putin’s regime, which knows no other option than victory, sending waves of expendable soldiers into battle gave Russian troops a chance to occupy more Ukrainian territory. At the end of this “strategy”, Russia gains ground without risking an internal revolution, so that despite huge losses, the Putin regime stands firm.
How does Russia’s ‘small step’ advance on the battlefield actually work?
How do the pieces of the puzzle fit together?
I will describe the essence here.
We all heard that Russia changed its ‘meat grinder’ tactics – but why did the number of casualties go up?
— Rene Duba (@ReneDuba) December 30, 2024
Bahmutul, testing ground
The roots of this bloody approach are deeply rooted in the Battle of Bahmut in late 2022 and early 2023, where the Wagner group, a mercenary unit, pioneered the massive use of prisoners. They were pardoned and sent to the front, in Ukraine. Wagner applied a mix of mass bombardment tactics with “sacrificial body” tactics, in which the lives of soldiers were merely bargaining chips to face the enemy.
“Bahmut became a testing ground for the Russian army, a laboratory of the method of using convicts as a sacrificial force. Wagner’s methods, though cruel and coercive, proved effective. The Russian military has focused on efficiency, less on humanity,” wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on Russia’s military adaptation, in a study for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Turning criminals into soldiers is not a new concept. In the past, in America, some defendants had a choice between prison and military service. But Russia has taken this practice to another level out of deep necessity. Having lost around 700,000 soldiers in nearly three years of war, the Kremlin was forced to resort to these extreme methods. Conscription from prisons offers a simple solution without stirring up discontent among the population that might challenge compulsory conscription.
“Wagnerization” of the Russian army
Unfortunately, the conditions in Russian prisons are so harsh that many of the convicts choose to fight at the front, considering it a lesser evil than life in detention. Russia, historically, was not overly concerned with the fate of its soldiers, and Wagner took this cynicism to its peak. The tactics used by the mercenaries are described by Kofman as “simple and based on severe punishment to ensure compliance”. If a soldier refused to advance or retreat without orders, he was simply executed.
Wagner distinguished himself by cheap warfare, having units of prisoners equipped with simple, SIM-free cell phones to communicate and coordinate their attacks on complicated terrain. Despite the brutality, this system worked, allowing Russian forces to make territorial gains, albeit at an enormous human cost.
The Battle for Bahmut in 2023 was an example of effective use of these tactics. Although Russian losses were huge, about 100,000 dead and wounded, most of them recruits from prisons, the ratio of casualties between Ukraine and Russia was favorable to Ukraine at a rate of one to four. But despite these losses, Russia managed to exhaust Ukrainian resources and gain ground.
While the Russian military was criticized for its tactical rigidity, the Wagner prisoner units adapted quickly and demonstrated remarkable flexibility in the face of a superior enemy. The leaders of the convict units were chosen on the spot, and tactics were constantly adapted to maximize damage, changing according to the conditions on the ground.
Although Wagner lost influence after the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigojin, in 2023 in a mysterious accident, the group’s legacy lives on through what Kofman calls the “Wagnerization” of the Russian military. Today, Russia relies on assault units made up of poorly trained and minimally equipped individuals drawn from prisons. Soldiers in these units complain about their chances of survival, which do not exceed 25%.
While there are instances where these units have been effective in urban combat, their tactics prove to be a recipe for failure when mechanized forces or open terrain are involved. In this situation, they become only an auxiliary force to the regular troops.
In the end, the price of the war is paid by the citizens of Russia. Those who return home, survivors of this merciless war, often return to communities where, unfortunately, many of them will continue to commit the same crimes that sent them to the front in the first place, Business Insider concludes.
Source: ziare.com
