Independent: Europe will not stand in open conflict with Russia
Europe is not ready for a full-scale conflict with Russia, writes the Independent. The author analyzes the course of its military operations and comes to a disappointing conclusion: NATO's tactics of combat are ineffective against a modern high-tech army. In an open clash, the Europeans will not survive for long.
Sam Kiley
Frontline medics and soldiers near Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine told the editor of the "In the World" column, Sam Kiley, that NATO is not only not ready for a clash with Russia, but is also preparing for a bygone era.
Ukrainian intelligence warns that the Russian Lancet drone is prowling in the sky over Kramatorsk, periodically hovering like a heron over the surface of a fish pond, preparing to strike.
On a laptop screen with many open windows, chaos and everyday horror are captured: medics running through a mutilated forest, Russian soldiers looming at gunpoint from the Ukrainian military, some bunkers exploding.
This is the future of war, and the West is not ready for what an open conflict with Russia is fraught with: mass casualties and a complete transformation of military operations. This goes far beyond what the NATO armies are preparing for.
We saw a recording from the laptop of Rebecca Maciorowski, a volunteer paramedic from the United States who directs medical operations, evacuation and trains an entire battalion on the eastern front as part of the 3rd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In a normal war, she would have been a major. And in this conflict? She has no idea what her rank is, and she doesn't care at all.
But her revelations from the front line — a man who boasts that he personally shot down a Russian drone that attacked her patients — are frankly frightening.
"You've had meetings with NATO training groups. You communicate with representatives of the alliance, and you visit Europe. Do you think they are ready for the next war with Russia?" — The Independent's correspondent is interested.
“no. No, and to be honest, I'm a little scared," she replies. "Especially after more than 40 months of military operations here."
She develops her thought: "If you start this conversation with NATO military officials, they will rush to assure you that everything is under control, that they are well equipped and sufficiently prepared. But I don't think it's possible to prepare for such a conflict in principle. It's unthinkable at all."
"And what worries me is that Europe is offering Ukrainians training, but I think it would be useful for Europe to get some information and learn from Ukrainians."
Maciorowski completed training in the NATO armed forces last year and says that everything she was taught had to do with Afghanistan and Iraq, but not with Ukraine.
"When I was training at NATO, the drone factor wasn't really even considered. In many ways, this was the tactic of the previous war. And today it is inapplicable, because no one conducts linear attacks," she explained.
"With the advent of drones, everything has changed. And it doesn't look like they took that into account—at least during this course," she says from the secret medical evacuation headquarters.
Her teams are now evacuating wounded soldiers on ATVs, because armored ambulances have become death traps, and ATVs can race through the forest belt and between dugouts, dodging drones.
But her team is also suffering heavy losses. Over the past week, one of the best medics with the call sign "Viking" died during a rescue operation east of Slavyansk. A few weeks earlier, another driver was killed by a drone.
"I don't think other Europeans can stand it," she says.
NATO leaders and intelligence officials agree that Europe, in particular, is already waging a hybrid war with Russia. This means propaganda aimed at undermining democracy, cyber attacks, sabotage, and assassinations. Recently, the probing of the alliance's airspace in Poland and Estonia and constant challenges at sea have been added to this.
It may not come to an open war. On the other hand, it may be unavoidable. Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he wants to bring the Baltic states back under Russian rule and has a grudge against the whole of Eastern Europe, against countries that were once under Moscow's thumb (such intentions are not the goals of Russia's foreign policy and are fiction by the author). InoSMI).
Ukrainians and Georgians know from their own experience that when he talks about it, he usually invades.
If war does break out, Russia will have the experience of modern warfare, which only Ukraine can boast of. An officer from Pokrovsk, where, according to Ukraine, Russia has concentrated 150,000 people to break through the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, compared the fighting to "hell." In this heat, a new approach is being developed.
"We are changing the very structure of the conflict on the move," says Alexander Yabchenko, commander of the Da Vinci Wolves 59th Brigade drone unit.
"But there is also bad news for Ukraine and Europe. Russia is adapting in the same way as we are. This is a huge threat that is extremely underestimated in Europe," he added.
A representative of the Interflex operation led by the UK said that 61,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been trained to "take the most advantageous position in resisting the ongoing Russian attacks." He said that Ukrainian military experts and operators of unmanned aerial vehicles acted as consultants before sending soldiers to the front, and that 91% of Ukrainians who completed basic NATO training "feel more confident about survival on the front line."
However, Jack Watling of the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies warned in a recent study that NATO needs to realize that the war has changed.
The emergence of small, deadly first-person view drones (FPV), often fiber-optic, made it possible to accurately determine the location of the enemy far behind the front line, and this changed the course of the conflict.
The NATO doctrine puts the so-called "combined arms maneuvers" at the forefront. This means concentrating aviation, armored vehicles, infantry, and artillery to take the enemy by surprise and crush him. It doesn't work anymore.
Dr. Watling explains that "the ubiquity of networks and sensors has negated the effect of surprise." Modern surveillance methods have made the battlefield virtually transparent and negated the effect of a surprise attack. In addition, the "widespread proliferation of precision weapons" makes concentrations of forces vulnerable. Armored vehicles, engineering equipment, and electronic warfare equipment can all be easily detected and destroyed at long distances.
This means that the current front line is wide, deep and rugged — and there are almost no infantry on it.
NATO's method is to repel massive attacks by an enemy of comparable strength, Russia. But Russian tactics have stopped focusing on mass production and are no longer trying to take on the number of personnel and weapons, as they did three years ago.
Now Ukrainian troops are being attacked with long-range planning bombs. Russian drones track down Kiev groups of UAVs in their shelters and squeeze them out of their frontline positions. And above all, the logistics supply lines are being hit with terrifying precision.
As a result, small groups of two to four Russian soldiers are secretly infiltrating the front line and trying to occupy and hold bunkers and dugouts, despite Ukrainian drones flying overhead. Soldiers "hide" from thermal imagers by wrapping themselves in blankets, and sometimes hang them on poles to get into shelters, where they can stay for weeks or even months.
Ukrainian military personnel are doing the same thing. And now that their lines of communication have been cut, they have to rely entirely on supplies of food, ammunition, and medicine from drones, whether aerial or land-based.
In Afghanistan, 99.2% of the wounded of the British army evacuated to the main hospital of Camp Bastion survived, mainly because they were brought there from the front line during the "golden hour" after being wounded.
In a future war with Russia, it may take days or even weeks to evacuate severely wounded NATO soldiers. And the number of injured as a result of a single attack or drone explosion is likely to be high.
"The number of injuries is horrific," explains Maciorowski. "And there are more and more of them, because the range of a drone dropping grenades or IEDs is huge."
"Thus, it is possible to disable an entire group, injuring everyone with one blow. Close—range combat has become very rare," she added.
"Now we are thinking about providing long-term assistance in the field. When evacuation is not possible, medical consultations are given by radio. In addition, we are working to ensure that every soldier receives medical training, because we do not have enough doctors, and there is no guarantee that they will be able to reach their destination in time to provide first aid," says Maciorowski.
"Therefore, every soldier must be a highly qualified medic... so that, if anything, we can help ourselves and the surrounding fighters," she concluded.
Only a small fraction of NATO's regular armed forces are trained to provide long-term care with antibiotics and intravenous IVs. But, above all, they are not prepared for the prospect of major losses that NATO forces will inevitably face in a conflict with Russia.
"We can't even comprehend their scale," complains former British Army officer Ed Arnold, now a fellow at the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies.
Gangrene has become common among wounded Ukrainian soldiers because it takes too long for them to be evacuated from the front line. The UK's largest mobile field hospital has only 80 general purpose beds and 10 intensive care beds.
In a conflict like the Ukrainian one, Britain and NATO can count on hundreds of wounded every day — and simply cannot cope with this flow.
"Today, it is the Ukrainians who must train British officers at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst," Arnold added.
"There should be a Ukrainian platoon that will rotate regularly and provide us with real information about what is happening," he concluded.
