Russian specialized Spetsnaz units were destroyed in fighting during the war in Ukraine, secret US documents have shown.
The war in Ukraine decimated the elite forces Specnaz and Moscow will need years to rebuild them, according to secret US estimates obtained by the Washington Post.
US officials based their assessment on excessive reliance of Russian commanders on these specialized units, which were deployed as part of infantry formations on the front line in Ukraine. These formations, like the Ukrainian ones, suffered a huge number of dead and wounded.
Spetsnaz members are usually assigned high-risk covert missions – such as the one to capture Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – for which they receive some of the most advanced training in the Russian military. But when the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion last February, senior commanders, eager to capitalize on the initial military momentum and skeptical of the capabilities of their conventional forces, deviated from the norm and ordered elite forces into direct combat, the findings said. American intelligence services and independent analysts who closely followed the deployment of special forces units, reports Jutarnji list.
It is said to be accelerated depletion Russian commandos changed the dynamics of the war from its inception, severely limiting Moscow’s ability to use covert tactics to support conventional combat operations. US officials believe the staggering losses they have suffered will make these units less effective, not only in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world where Russian forces are operating, estimated from late 2022 to early this year.
According to the Washington Post, the thinning of these units appears to be visible in satellite images found among the leaked materials. The before-and-after photos — showing a base used by the 22nd Separate Special Forces Brigade in southern Russia, the document says — reveal that “all but one of Russia’s five separate special forces brigades, which returned from combat operations in Ukraine in late summer 2022 .suffered significant losses”.
The material contains two photographs, one taken in November 2021, a few months before the start of the invasion, and the other a year later. The first shows a busy fleet teeming with vehicles, while the second reveals what US officials have concluded is a state of extreme exhaustion months after the brigade returned to base with less than half the tactical vehicles it had before deployment. In addition to the 22nd Brigade, two other special forces brigades suffered an estimated casualty rate of 90 to 95 percent.
Russia’s problems are further complicated by the fact that these losses actually mean the loss of experienced members of the elite forces. At least four years of specialized training is required for special forces soldiers, the US documents say, and it may take Moscow a decade to reorganize the units. The documents do not provide an estimate of how many Spetsnaz members were killed or wounded in Ukraine, but the materials, in which the authors refer to intercepted intelligence, estimate that only one unit, the 346th unit, “lost almost an entire brigade and now has only 125 active members compared to the 900 that were deployed”.
These estimates of US structures are in line with analysts’ observations. Rob Lee, a military expert on Russia and a senior fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Research, said that Russian motorized infantry soldiers have proven ineffective, and commanders have tried to compensate by deploying elite airborne units, marines and special forces to the battlefield, which includes an unsuccessful attempt to capture Kiev, and in battles in the east and south.
There is an immediate consequence of that strategy, says Lee. Russian commanders, after “exploiting” the best trained fighters, lost the precious skills that these forces possessed from the beginning of the invasion until last autumn.
“It affected the rest of the war because Russia lost all these key capabilities that it couldn’t easily replace in terms of both top equipment and top soldiers,” he said.
Just days after the war began, special forces arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in small numbers and without much support from conventional troops, Lee said. Many of them were killed or captured, he pointed out. Videos and photos show that several examples of their specialized vehicles were also destroyed in that area. A similar situation played out in Mariupol in southern Ukraine and in the eastern Donbass region, where fighting often took place in wooded areas where regular Russian motorized units had difficulty operating, Li said. Spetsnaz forces were also operating in the mining town of Vuhledar in the Donetsk region, where fighting has been going on for months, Li said.
(World)