Angry Planet - Most of Russia's military still 'rubbish' despite Ukraine, Syria deployments

Episode Date: October 20, 2015

The annexation of Crimea, the war in eastern Ukraine and the military operation in Syria present the image of a confident Russian President Vladimir Putin willing to expend military power for political gain. The truth, according to Dr. Mark Galeotti of New York University, is far more complex.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' news. The big challenge for Putin is whether when military things start to go wrong, he will start to fall victim to the hope of, well, one more push, one more. expansion. In other words, try and win the war militarily, which you can't do.

What if Russia's bombing campaign in Syria has very little to do with Bashar al-Assad, and even less with the Islamic State? This week on War College, we do a little Kremlinology and try to find out what's really behind Russia's latest military moves. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here's your host. Jason Fields. Hello, and welcome to War College. I'm Reuters' opinion editor, Jason Fields.

And I'm Matthew Galt with War Is Born. Today we're talking to Dr. Mark Galiati. He's a clinical professor of global affairs at New York University. And Mark is also an expert on modern Russia. His most recent book, Spetsniz, Russia's Special Forces, details the history of Moscow's elite soldiers. Dr. Galiati, Mark, thank you for joining us. My very great pleasure.

All right. So, well, let's just start off with Russia is now in Syria, aggressively fighting, at least dropping bombs. And have you heard anything about troops actually being on the ground? I mean, if you don't mind just sort of starting off there? Really, the troops that we've definitely seen on the ground so far have essentially been security troops for the bases. They've sent about 350 naval infantry that they're Marines. And they are essentially making sure that the base at Latakia, which is the main forward base of the Russians,

both Air Force and drone operations, and also some of their facilities in Damascus are secure. There's almost certainly a few others, intelligence officers, forward air controllers, perhaps some special forces. But essentially, this is something that the Russians are still trying to keep as an arm's length war for them. The Syrians, the Syrian militia, Hezbollah, and the like can go and do the ground fighting. They will do the pounding from the end. Okay, so I think that sort of begs the next question, though, which is, how far do you think

Vladimir Putin is willing to go in Syria? I mean, if he had to put in troops, would he do so? I think he'd be very reluctant to. My concern is, though, precisely, that, first of all, there is no clear sense of an exit strategy or even a de-escalation strategy. And secondly, it's not quite clear how far it's the military that is in charge of the overall context of the operation. At the moment, after all, we're still in the very early techno-thriller war phase. It's all about planes going and delivering precision munitions, cruise missiles, arcing out of the Caspian Sea, all very dramatic. It's giving Putin exactly. the visuals he wants, as well as the political impacts in the West, which is what it's primarily about.

But we know things are going to go wrong. There's already been, for example, a mortar attack on the Russian embassy in Damascus. And we know that asymmetric warriors, what they do is they try and find ways around the other side strengths. So whether we see, for example, a suicide bomb attack against the naval facilities at Latakia, certainly I think it would be basic. ships carrying munitions, which for me will be one of the obvious targets, or whether it's just simply that the Saudi or Turkish or other backers of other militia groups start providing shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Something is going to happen, which is going to make it tougher for the Russians. And that's really when the crunch point comes.

So they just simply say, well, never mind, we have a plan, we stick with it, which is often the sensible thing to do, but also the hardest thing to do. People always feel they have to do something. Do they cut and run, which seems hard to imagine both given Putin's own matro-political persona, but also because of the wider political reasons, why they're in Syria. Or do they escalate? And this is the risk. It's always that one little step. You know, we just send a few more planes. Surely that's going to do it. We just send a few troops will be able to secure our facilities better.

And bit by bit, they might find themselves creeping that way. But the bottom line, though, for all that, is that Putin does not have significant numbers of the kind of troops that you can really deploy in this kind of an environment. He can't just send second-line conscript forces for both political and military reasons. If he's going to start sending significant numbers of ground troops, then he's basically admitting that he's not going to have them available for his campaign in Ukraine, which again very much changes the political balance of power there. Wow, so they're really that constrain? I didn't realize that. Well, I think the thing is, in a way, we are always prone to overcompensation. For a long time, there had been this assumption that the Russian army was this terrible, terrible, lumbering, alcoholic, indisciplined beast.

Then there was the very smooth takeover of Crimea by the Little Green Men or the polite, people in the Russian parliaments. And in some ways, we've gone the other way. And we thought, my goodness, the military reform program that has been going on, particularly since 2008, actually has had real impact. Well, the truth as ever is somewhere in the middle. Of Russia's significantly shrunk armed forces, I mean, at total, there are about 700,000 across all their armed forces. I would suggest that maybe a third have been properly reformed. you know, really are up to, I wouldn't say, American or British standards, but shall we say, without naming names, southern NATO flank standards, which is not bad at all.

But there's still two-thirds that is actually still pretty rubbish. It will be fine in an essentially defensive war or a sort of straightforward one way who are just in good, almost Soviet forms, just throwing in forces. but they're not of the kind of quality that they can be power projecting into other battlefields and not start taking serious casualties. And if we look at what's happened in Ukraine, basically the Russians have been cycling in not quite penny packets, but shall you say dollar packets, of forces to form composite battalion tactical groups from their paratroopers, the so-called air assault troops,

their naval infantry, their special forces, and a certain number of, of their regular brigades that have known to be the better ones. But the point is you cycle your troops through, they do their tour and then they're out and they have to be replenished, cattle is made up, just generally they can't be exhausted. Most of the Russian forces are still very heavily conscript-based and not very good. And I think this is the thing. It's actually, it's really that, at most I would say a third of the army that is really usable. Of those, you can only deploy a certain amount at any one time before you're going to start

feeling frictional costs. And particularly, you can't really send conscripts. Russian conscripts just do a 12-month tour of duty, which is not really long enough. I mean, even the Russian High Commanders admits that. Talking to Russian military commanders themselves, I mean, what they basically say is that really, of those 12 months, you've really got them properly usable for three months. By the time they've done their basic training, and then they've done their unit training, you've got about three months before and then the last month they're basically drunk and DEMO Pappy.

Now, in that context, of course, these aren't very good. And the political costs of sending them into Ukraine, let alone Syria, would be far too great. So they happen to use the relatively small proportion of their troops who are contract troops, contract troops, volunteers. So, I mean, for all these reasons, you know, we think of the Russian bear. We think of it, more as having as many troops as it ever needs to have. But in fact, I think there is a considerable risk of overstretch. And the main thing is, look, it's not just about soldiers. I mean, the thing that always really distinguishes modern military operations is logistics.

Modern operations are incredibly voracious in terms of munitions and fuel and everything else. And the Russian supply lines are actually quite problematic. They're either having to supply by air, which means Iranian and Iraqi airspace. So it depends on those two powers being willing to say yes. or by sea from Crimea, which is if they're really pushing their ships a 10-day round trip, and they don't have that much sea-lip capability. So I think for all these reasons, I mean, this is one point. The Soviets never really deployed beyond their own borders far.

I mean, they would go over their border into some like Afghanistan. No problem, because basically that was at the end of railway and road links. but actually a proper, long-range, naval and air power projection of the sort that the United States has done a lot. Well, the Soviets were never very good at that, let alone modern Russia. We've had some conversations on this show previously about aircraft carriers and force projection. And one thing that God mentioned was that, as a matter of fact, all of Russia has a single aircraft carrier that can't be deployed at any great length of time. It just sort of proves what you were saying. I mean, that's not what they're designed for.

Maybe this is a silly question, but how come this isn't better known? I mean, you would think that from the press coverage that we think that the Russian military is all powerful and that Putin is showing up the United States by doing what they're doing. Right, and this kind of speaks to something that I wanted to talk to or I wanted to talk about as well. My mother sent me a political cartoon that she thought was very clever of, you know, this machismo Putin with his shirt off, standing and sitting at a table with Obama, and they have a game board of the world between them. And he's moved his pieces into, Putin has moved his pieces into Syria and is looking at Obama and says, checkmate.

And that's just not, the story that you're telling us and kind of what you're talking about kind of really calls that into question. It's not as straightforward as that. And he's also, Putin's also facing challenges at home because of these things, right? like you were talking about the political situation and the political challenges that he's facing. Yeah, well, I think there's several points here. The key thing we have to realize, and this is actually one of the Russian strengths.

Let's be clear, Russia is not a great world power. We're talking about a country which, depending on how you assess it, its underlying economic power is somewhere between that of Italy and Brazil. It's a capacity to really sort of project hard power, distant battlefields is pretty, minimal. Its military is reforming, but we'll actually have to see how far that goes in its current economic problems. The key thing, though, and the Russians, this is why the Russians, as it were, play a weak hand very, very well, whereas the West has a vastly stronger hand, but tends to

play it really quite badly, is two things. One is because there is a single command structure, a single will. They don't have to worry about what's Congress going to say, or what are our European allies going to say, or anything like that. But the second thing is that the they have an absolutely sharp focus on the politics. This is politics by other means. They use their military as a political instrument. 30 bombers in Syria is not going to turn the war. Again, lots of nice visuals, and it provides a certain degree of air support for the current military operation that the Syrians and their allies are mounting, but it's not going to turn things around. The best it can do is slow the speed at which Assad's forces lose, quite frankly.

But the point is this is not first and foremost about Syria. It's certainly not first and foremost about hitting Islamic State. This is a political deployment. It's intended to do two things. One is distract a certain amount of domestic attention from the Donbass, from Ukraine, where things are basically bogged down. But most importantly of all, it's about forcing the West to re-evaluate its relationship with Russia. I mean, again, this is classic Putin. It's basically causing some trouble and then more or less saying, look, you can either work with me and I can make things easier for you, or you can ignore me or work against me, and I can make things tougher and more problematic. So in a way, he's just more like saying,

buy me off now. So instead of this being, you know, checkmate, again, this is a classic sort of image of the chessboard, I mean, essentially, this is just a part of a haggling operation. He wants the West to basically start talking into Russia, treating Russia more seriously, stopping its political isolation, and basically allow him a slightly more, you know, a graceful opportunity to extricate himself from his other quagmire in Ukraine. Now, in that context, it's not, I mean, that I think At the moment, there's any great political problem at home. Suddenly, Syria has eclipsed Ukraine on the TV news. That's very much the way the Kremlin controls the public. But one of the things about that is, I think that's exactly the point, is that the Syrian spectacle is meant to distract ordinary Russians, which will allow Moscow to basically make some kind of an implicit deal in Ukraine or try and make some kind of deal in Ukraine and pull out. So what we should think of this is not, first and foremost, about as a being a military operation. This is a political operation.

And in a way, the question is, the big challenge for Putin is whether when military things start to go wrong, he will start to fall victim to the hope of, well, one more push, one more expansion. In other words, try and win the war militarily, which you can't do. You said you don't think that the forces that have been deployed as of now really can make much of a difference. difference in the war. You said it can slow the advance of the various rebel groups. I think a lot of Americans were sort of hoping for more than that. I mean, as long as the Russians were going to be there, maybe at least they could help. But you really don't see that as a real possibility? Well, I think the problem is, as it way, help what? If one looks at the war in Syria, I mean, in some ways, it's a three-decker war. You have the Damascus government. The Damascus government,

which is really now sort of focused down to the al-a-white held areas. Then you have the rebel groups that tend to be the ones being backed by the West. The moderate rebels, quote unquote. And then you have ISIS. The point is the Islamic State forces are essentially up to the north and to the east. They're not that close to the areas that are largely held by Damascus. So clearly at the moment the Russians are primarily pounding the rebels that are the most immediate threat to the Syrian regime to try and precisely hold the line for the Syrian regime.

They have also sent some attacks against ISIS, but that's not the main target. And the irony is, yes, of course, at the moment America is thinking, well, you never know, the Russians might, might kill a few Islamic State fighters and that's a good thing. But until very recently, actually, this was more the Russian perspective. I was in Moscow this summer and talking to someone close to the security apparatus who was complaining. Who was complaining. So the trouble is the Americans aren't killing enough of them. Because this had been their big idea. They were at first delighted when Islamic State began to reemerge. Because what that did was it drained a fair number of the younger and more radical insurgents from the Russian North Caucasus and sent them down. And that's one

reason why last year you actually had a really quite substantial diminution in terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus because all the real hotheads were heading down south. So they thought, great, they go out there and the Americans kill them. Two birds and with one airstrike. But now what's happening is, firstly, we're beginning to get some signs that some of them are beginning to now return with their combat experience they've gained. Secondly, Islamic State is not withering, but quite the opposite. It is, you can you assess it, at least holding the line and the and are arguably expanding. And therefore, they're now getting rather more worried about it.

But really, both the Americans and the Russians at different times been hoping that the other person will be able to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of killing them. It is sort of a theater of the absurd. It's the, it's wag the dog, right? It's what it feels like. Kind of to circle back to something that you were talking about earlier, how does Putin extricate him,

how does he use this to extricate himself from Ukraine? Well, I think it's clear. that the operation in the Donbass, the operation in in southeast Ukraine wasn't thought through. I mean, my sense is that it's actually because the annexation of the Crimea went just so easily. And there was no fighting. I mean, they had planned for and expected there to be some resistance. And in some ways, it almost meant that they basically were propelled by their own momentum. And others thought, well, if it was that easy, then surely we can have.

actually make Kiev bend the knee just by pushing a little bit further. And then they found it didn't work, and they'd already got sucked into this conflict, and they now don't really know quite what to do with it. And certainly the hopes that this is somehow a way in which they can get the Ukrainian government to change its policies, its orientation, I think they're increasingly dissipating in Moscow. So actually, it's more that Moscow is thinking, look, this is expensive, in immediately financial senses. We're having to maintain forces there. We're having to maintain our proxy forces there. It's expensive indirectly in that it's contributing to sanctions, which may not be the main thing hitting the Russian economy. That's clearly the oil price.

But nonetheless, they don't help. And just as importantly, it's very expensive politically. It keeps us being the bad guys. And now we've just had the MH17 report come out, which is kind of rekindled this sense that there is a clear that the Russians are the bad. guys. Now, at the same time, Europe is putting out signals that basically it would like to see peace re-emerge in Ukraine, and there is scope for some kind of a deal. Now, the Americans might not be as happy to do so, but certainly I think from the European point of view, some kind of deal which, and I'm just guessing this, which would see Crimea, not formally recognized as part of Russia, but essentially de facto taken off the country.

table. The Russians pull out of the Donbass, maybe some of the local militia, warlord leaders, perhaps find sanctuary in Russia, but essentially the Donbass returns to Ukraine. With some clear implicit understanding of what is the truth anyway is that Ukraine is not imminently going to become a member of the European Union or NATO. Right. But the main thing is basically that the Russians, I think, would like to pull out, but what they cannot afford to do is make it look like they're being defeated. They're looking for more than just a fig leaf. They're looking for a whole bushel of fig leaves to allow Putin to say it's a mission accomplished moment. That's what all leaders want, even if you can't do it on top of an aircraft carrier. And therefore, in a way,

this would be, I think in Moscow's thinking, part of the deal that essentially it will help you out in the Middle East. We won't be problematic. Maybe even will be the people who will negotiate some kind of political deal, which means that Assad goes. He can just join. There's a whole colony, frankly, of ex-dictators living around the Moscow ring road. So I'm sure there's a doubt of for him. Not least among them, speaking of Ukraine. Exactly. And as more expats leave, there's, I'm sure, empty dachas. So maybe the Russians can be part of fixed. fixing at least partially what's going on in Syria. Let's face it, at the moment, no one, except for Islamic State, can really be said to be winning

in Syria. And in return for which he gets cover to be able to withdraw from Ukraine, have at least partial lifting of sanctions, and gets to claim that everything is fine now. And the reason we're leaving is because we now have guarantees that ensure that the neo-fascists of Kiev are not going to be. hunting down Russian speakers in their homes and all the other, the nonsense that the Russian propaganda machine put out. So I think that's the deal. He's injected himself in Syria so that he has more leverage to be able to arrange, shall you say, defeat with honor in Ukraine.

Well, I mean, honestly, that's the first time I've heard that theory, and it's fascinating. Yeah, most people have been talking about how essentially this is just him turning to another warfront and anyway, but what you say makes an awful lot of sense. I think it also because it fits into a longer trend. Again, I mean, this is because I'm going into kind of deep chronological wonkery. But for example, I mean, earlier, they've made an unexpected move. They had taken a deputy director of the Federal Security Service, which is the sort of KGB successor agency.

The guy who'd actually been in charge of the counterterrorism operation around the Sochi Winter Olympics, Al Yaksir Moldov, and they've made him into a brand new deputy foreign ministerial position as deputy foreign minister for counterterrorism cooperation. No one else has got a deputy foreign minister for counterterrorism cooperation. And the reason why the Russians had that was precisely because they were hoping this was going to be one of the areas in which they could get some kind of traction with the West. Say, look, yeah, you don't like us, but you need us when dealing with Islamic State.

So they'd already signalled that this was part of their big attempt to try and actually get out diplomatic isolation. That hadn't been working, so given the General Assembly of the UN was coming up and so Putin could go, Putin always likes to catch the other side by surprise. He likes to have a big, splashy initiative. And so I think this was just a kind of an escalation in injecting steroids into something that was already there. You mentioned the Caucasus. You mentioned the threat of Islamic militants in the Caucasus. So, I mean, and Putin, of course, in some ways, really burst onto the stage in 1999 by taking on the Chechen war, which obviously is in the Caucasus, and bringing the Chechens to heal in one

way or another, right? To heal is actually probably not bad. I mean, it's sort of under the boot, right? I mean, it was a very, very violent operation, and eventually he turned to this guy, Ramzan Kadyrov. Am I pronouncing that at all right, by the way? Kadyerov. Ramdan Kadyerov. Turning to him, he had been one of the rebels and was actually the son of a former leader of Chechnya. And he's about as brutal as you can get, right? And he turned to him and said, here, why don't you finish the pacification? Is that about right or am I overstating the case? No, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think this is it. They were delighted to find a Chechen who could basically,

out-brutalize the rebels. And even though in the process, they've more or less allowed him to become an autonomous leader of Chechnya. As long as he kind of pays constant and forning the basins to Putin, he gets away with quite literally murder. I mean, just talking about the special forces, spesnots, I assume that they were, and we were talking about would they have a role in Syria, but maybe you could actually just broaden out a little bit and tell us a little bit about them and what role they might have had in Chechny as well. Okay, well, the Spetsnaz, it's always difficult writing about, talking about the Spetsnaz, because precisely they have been so mythologized,

and everyone has this sense that they are these 10-foot-tall red ninjas. Right, you see the picture online of the Spetsnots upside down, throwing an axe into a target. Yeah, and frankly, there's so many sort of Spetsnaz Mims in Russia, but also in the West. I think it is worth, it is worth sort of dwelling and looking into them. I mean, because the start point is there are something like 17,000 of them, seven regular brigades, a whole bunch of independent brigades, naval, spitz, nows and so forth.

A woman thinks of 17,000 special forces. Wow, that sounds quite, quite terrifying. I remember once doing a briefing force and, you just say NATO special forces people, and I sort of came up with that figure. You could see them straightening up thinking, oh, my, my gosh. But the point is, there are Smetsnaz and there are Spetsnaz. Just as not all of the Russian army is of equal standing and quality. So too, a lot of the Spetsnaz are conscripts. So they're still, they're there on one year terms. And okay, they're probably the pick of the

conscripts and they're ones who beforehand had already sort of, you know, physically fit and whatever else, but they're still conscripts. The majority of the Spetsnaz was really a long-range reconnaissance forces for a big war, the sort that we would sort of prepare ourselves for in Cold War days. Now they have become more like intervention forces. And to me, the majority of the specs now is really what you think of perhaps like in US terms army rangers or the French foreign legion or whatever. So they are absolutely better than your average Russian soldier. But they're really designed to operate in quite large units in the context of some major operations. So, you know, they are precisely the kind of forces that you might see deployed to somewhere like Syria.

Within that number, there is a much smaller proportion who are equivalent to sort of tier one Western special forces, particularly in the so-called Special Operations Command, KSO. This is a sort of a new unit that actually had its first real operational deployment with a seizure of Crimea. So what we're actually talking about is, as it were, two specksnazzers. The wider spitznaws who are, who are basically scouts, who are there as force multipliers for other forces more than anything else. And then the handful who are the real, hard, bitten, snake-eating, axe and sharpened entrenching tool throwing tough guys.

Now, in operations, in wars like Chechnya, I mean, often they ended up being used for the wrong purposes. They ended up often being used for things like convoy support or guard duties, simply because the Russians didn't have enough reasonably good deployable troops. And the thing is, the Spetsnaz, like any sort of better than normal force, can do any operation. It's just a bit of a waste to have them guarding trucks. But on the other where they were particularly valuable, as they had been beforehand, frankly, in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, was when precisely they went out of the major deployment areas and engaged in, for example, ambushing, supply caravans, tracking down rebel leaders and killing them,

perhaps by calling in air strikes or whatever, that kind of thing. That's how they were used in Chechnya. And again, so we might see that in Syria. Again, not some kind of mass deployment of thousands of troops in the straightforward ground- pounding operations. But relatively small teams that have been used as force multipliers, as I said, things like, you know, calling in airstrikes, hunting down leaders or particular sort of high-value targets amongst the rebels, infiltrating rebel lines, sabotage, that kind of thing. And I think they would be quite effective at that.

But again, what they can't do is substitute for just simply enough reasonably good, reasonably disciplined, reasonably well-motivated troops, which is what actually Assad is having trouble assembling. You mentioned the Alawites as his main group. And just I thought for the sake of clarity, it might be worth mentioning that the Alawites are sort of a Shia sect. They're not actually the same sect as the main Iranian sect as well, right? Yeah, I mean, Al-Wite is more, frankly, an ethnic, I mean, there are the root-dish dimensions as well. But, I mean, it's more ethno-political. I mean, this is basically the constituency from which Assad draws his political support. And they're the people who, in a way, know that they're unlikely to do well if the Damascus regime crumbles.

Gotcha. So, and unless they get the full 17,000 Spetsnaz, delivered on the back of a truck, that could very well be where they end up? I think so. I mean, I think, you know, one of the reasons why the Russians deployed when they did, apart from being the wider issues, is that I think there were concerns that momentum was swinging against Damascus quite badly, and obviously momentum matters in war, because particularly it has a, kind of have a dramatic impact on morale. And again, this is before that, but just again, talking to Russians in Moscow who come from the military side of things, a fair number of them served in Afghanistan, or if nothing else, Afghanistan still looms very large in how they think about foreign deployments. And if I think of the regime that the Soviets left behind when they withdrew the Najiborovar regime, it was actually pretty effective in its own brutal, rough and ready way. But the point was, in 1990, the defense minister, Shana Washtani, defected.

And really, when that happened, the regime was starting to crumble. And I think this is what they were fearing, that with momentum beginning to swing decisively against Damascus, that's the point when people begin to decide that maybe it's worth trying to jump ship. And so I think what they were doing is trying to jump in at this point also, just to give the regime a breathing space, in the hope that. that it could re-cohere and regather its forces. But that's just a breathing space. I mean, again, I'd be surprised to think that they honestly,

or certainly the High Command and the general staff, honestly thought that this pretty limited deployment was actually going to have a huge effect on the ground. I think that's actually a terrific place to stop. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us, and take us through all this. And apologize if we wandered a little bit to apologize to the audience.

But honestly, there are so many fascinating threads to track down. It's hard to get it all into a half-hour show. Well, I'm happy to ramble as long as you're willing to give me space. Okay. If you enjoyed this or other episodes of War College, go over to the iTunes page and tell us what you think about us That would be a wonderful thing, and we look forward to getting your feedback. Next time on War College.

Experiences like this that led General Pete Schumacher to compare J-Socd during this period to a brand new Ferrari that was being kept in the garage out of concern that if it was taken out to race, the fender might get dented.