The London-based Royal United Services Institute named the lessons of the Russian-Ukrainian war

The London-based Royal United Services Institute RUSI has published a report on preliminary results and lessons from the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The co-authors of the report included Oleksandr Danylyuk, a representative of the Spilna Sprava Civil Movement, and Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, former Commander of the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces.

According to the Institute, Russia planned that the active phase of the “special operation” in Ukraine would last 10 days.

The occupation, with the aim of further annexation, was supposed to end by August.

For this, a quick capture of Kyiv was planned with the use of deception to keep Ukrainian forces away from the country’s capital.

At the very beginning, the Russian military achieved a 12:1 force ratio advantage in manpower and weapons in key areas.

The very operational security that enabled the successful deception, however, also led Russian forces to be unprepared at the tactical level to effectively execute the plan.

Immediately after the Russian military was bogged down, this allowed the Ukrainian military (“through resilience, not resources”) begin operations to knock them out and wear them down.

The tactical competence of the Russian military proved significantly inferior compared to the expectations of many Western observers.

Nevertheless, Russian weapons systems proved largely effective.

The authors singled out five areas of “learning from mistakes” of the Russian military, including revising the concept of battalion tactical groups and a “window dressing” when reporting to the top.

The enemy could strike throughout operational depth – the Russian Armed Forces succeeded in engaging 75% of static defense sites in the first 48 hours of the war. The Ukrainian military avoided irreparable losses only through disinformation and dispersal.

According to RUSI’s analysis, large stocks of weapons and capacity reserves for their production are absolutely necessary for war. Now, of the NATO countries, only the USA has them.

Drones have become a decisive factor in warfare and should be a standard weapon at all levels.

For the most part, drones must be cheap and attainable, since the level of their losses in operation reaches 90%.

The problem of detecting and suppressing enemy drones has not yet been adequately solved.

High-precision weapons should be used sparingly and selectively, conventional weapons should provide a window to use high-precision weapons.

According to the RUSI report, camouflaging from modern intelligence and guidance systems on the battlefield is extremely difficult.

Field reinforcements do not protect against modern weapons, especially high-precision ones.

Basically, the only method of protection remained the maximum distribution in combination with mobility, which allows you to quickly assemble a shock connection only in a promising area and only at the time of the impact.