King of All I Survey-Chapter 173: Why the Rest of Ukraine Wasn’t as Easy as Crimea

"I have eight former oligarchs," Joe told me an hour later. "Of them, five are willing to testify, the others have families still in Russia and are afraid for their safety."

"So, bring the families here, too," I told him.

"Of course, I suggested that, but they feared even that would put them at risk. Volkov’s reach is pretty long."

"But five will testify?"

"Yes, they will testify to racketeering, diversion of public funds, conspiracy to commit murder, all crimes within Russia, nothing related to Ukraine. They simply weren’t involved and didn’t have firsthand knowledge of specific war crimes. Two of them were willing to make things up or say whatever we wanted them to say. I didn’t think you’d consider that."

"No, of course not. What about the three who won’t talk? Do they have firsthand knowledge of war crimes?"

"One is a former general. The other was CEO of a weapons manufacturer. Both were in their positions during Crimea and the first part of the current conflict. They almost certainly have relevant testimony."

I inhaled deeply and blew out my breath loudly, closing my eyes to think. "There still in Rotterdam in the hotel?"

"Yes, it was easy to use security issues as a reason for them not to try to go anywhere."

"OK, let me talk to the general, what’s his name?"

"General Gennady Lisek, formerly in charge of the First Guards Tank Division. He was removed in 2022 after the failure of a major offensive to take Kharkiv."

"The one where Russia lost most of their modern tanks?"

"Yes, such as they were."

"What? Now who needs an English lesson? What does that mean?"

"It means they never really had what you’d think of as modern tanks. The T-14 was supposed to be their ’modernized’ tank, better than anything else on the field, but the engine that was supposed to propel it at 80 Miles per hour only managed 34 miles per hour. The transmissions were an old design and prone to failure. The sighting and visibility was poorly designed, and crews often end up using a World War 2 era periscope to find targets and see the battlefield. They use a loading system that is only half the speed of the American systems and prone to failure of the exploding kind. The final design had less armor than the original design because they wanted to lower the overall weight to try to increase the speed and protect the transmissions. In the end they used reactive armor, which is essentially effective only against one hit, then leaves that area of the tank vulnerable."

"Why would they do that? I mean, if they ever planned to use them, it seems..."

"Mostly, it comes down to money. Volkov wanted a modern tank but didn’t want to spend the money it would have taken to do the job right. People were afraid to tell him it couldn’t be done for the amount of money allocated, then afraid to tell him it wasn’t as good as advertised. In a military parade that was supposed to introduce it, the first one actually broke down during the parade. China had agreed to buy a bunch of them based on the bill of sale that the project leader sold them, but when the Chinese saw that was basically just a redesign based around obsolete systems instead of the modern equipment that was promised, they backed out and cancelled the sale."

"I guess that’s what happens if you push everyone who says no out of a sixth story window," I said, shaking my head. "People start telling you yes, even if they know it isn’t true."

"Exactly. It was this same lack of candor that caused such poor tactics in the overall 2022 offensive. For the earlier Crimea effort, Russia laid substantial groundwork, infiltrating pro-Russian subversive teams whose goal was to drum up popular support for Russia, undermine central Ukrainian authority, and compromise key parts of the military in the region, through bribes, threats, persuasion or sabotage. This worked like a charm and when Russia moved in, they faced almost no opposition in Crimea. Later, when they were supposed to be doing the same thing in other regions to prepare for the broader take-over effort, the groups who were supposed to be funneling money to the pro-Russian groups in Ukraine, but they had some difficulty taking the money out of their own pockets. They figured that Crimea was so easy, they could pocket most of the money and no one would ever know. When they were asked how the effort was going, they had two options: they could tell the truth and say, it’s not really getting a lot of traction this time, which would have led to questions about the where the money was spent. Of course, most wasn’t spent at all. So, they chose the second option which was to tell the distant leaders ’everything is going great!’ to avoid scrutiny.

"So, Volkov, thinking it was going to be a cakewalk, like Crimea, facing little or no opposition to massive Russian deployments didn’t spend a lot of effort thinking through the tactics. Waves of poorly armored, slow tanks were easily taken out by a variety of anti-tank weapons in the Ukrainian arsenal included the US supplied shoulder fired Javelin. Small teams could hide in the countryside and pick off tanks with these rockets without presenting a target for counter-attack. Because of the lack of effectiveness of the pro-Russian subversion, Ukraine had many more men willing to fight back and they had effective equipment and tactics to do so.

"Instead of using a more defensible array as they advanced, they thought they would just roll in almost unopposed. So, they left the tanks more or less lined up like sitting ducks. Same thing with their supply convoys. A single column of trucks driving straight down the highway, got trapped between two bridges when Ukraine took the bridges out in front and in back of the supply convoy. Even if the convoy had survived, chronic underfunding and poor oversight of the troops left Russian soldiers so cash-strapped that they had been selling gasoline from the supply barrels leaving either partially empty barrels or gasoline diluted with water in some cases. With massively inefficient engines on the tanks, that reserve gasoline was desperately needed. Similarly, food supplies for the troops had been stolen in advance of the offensive and not discovered, or at least not reported to anyone who did anything about it, until it was too late. Russian soldiers went for days without food, then started raiding houses and stores when they got hungry. Local Ukrainian civilians instead of supporting them after an extensive subversive campaign, resisted as best they could. They left poisoned food and tainted vodka where the Russians would find it, taking many of them out of the fight.

"When things didn’t go according to plan, local commanders didn’t dare to make any decisions. They sent for new orders from Moscow and waited in place or just carried on with the previous orders even in the face of ongoing severe losses. Everybody who could do something wrong did the exact wrong thing for years before it started, during the planning, during the initial execution, and then again in reaction to changing circumstances in the field.

"Yes, Lisek was in charge of the tank division, but the same errors were present in all phases of the armed forces. The infantry had even sold ammunition prior to the incursion. It’s hard to pin the failure entirely on him, but the alternative would be to go higher up than the generals, and nobody was even willing to suggest that, or admit their own failures. So, Volkov was told the tanks were good enough (they weren’t), the subversion effort was good enough (it wasn’t), the soldiers were all trained and disciplined enough (they weren’t), the overall strategy was correct (it wasn’t), and the pre-incursion intelligence was accurate and up to date (it wasn’t). So, the problem had to be the general leading the biggest part of the offensive. It was easy for everybody else to look around and see who was pointing a finger at whom, then just point in the same direction. In this case, at Lisek, who was new to commanding the Tank Division."

Meanwhile, Ukraine was willing to make up for only moderately trained soldiers by using boatloads of the shoulder -fired anti-tank and especially anti-aircraft munitions. At that time the US was willing to supply them with whatever they wanted because any success Ukraine had would weaken the USA’s biggest strategic enemy. They saw it as a proxy war against Russia in which the US would not be targeted at all."

Finally, I just shook may head and called, "Stop!" Joe, all I asked was his name, and after all that, I’ve already forgotten it. What was it Generally something?"

"General Gennady Lisek," Joe replied with a tone that was the audio equivalent of an exasperated eyeroll. "His last name is actually of Polish origin, meaning the little fox, which is interesting because..."

"Yikes! Joe, stop! If you keep going on, I’m going to forget his name again. Holy cow. OK, I’ve already got Russian implanted in my head, so just get me to his hotel room to see if I can convince him to testify."

"Acknowledged... Oh was that too much? Should I just say OK from now on so as not to confuse you."