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Putin’s General Problem
That’s an awful lot of generals getting killed in Ukraine there, Vlad
How are the Russians losing so many generals so quickly? As I understood it, generals get to enjoy the only upside of being in the military, which is not having to do the things that get you killed. That’s nine of the poor old boys now, very nearly ten yesterday, when Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces no less, narrowly avoided cashing in a one-way ticket to the family mausoleum back home, after an enemy missile strike came a bit too close for comfort.* Gerasimov is also the Deputy Defence Minister; the Russians are running so low on generals, they’re now drafting in politicians to try and remember what buttons they used to push before they retired.
In the entirety of the Second World War, Britain lost 16 generals in total, eight of which were non-combatant deaths, such as car or plane crashes. So basically eight killed in action over the course of a six-year global armageddon that claimed the lives of up to 80 million people. Russia has already lost more than that in the last five weeks of a complacent and clearly botched invasion. At this rate of attrition, a few more weeks of this, and Putin will be handing out battlefield promotions to the one guy left standing who remembered to turn his Grindr GPS off.
One thing for sure, the various intelligence services of the world — particularly the Americans and Chinese — will be watching events in Ukraine very closely indeed, with intel of a completely different scope and quality to the bits and bobs we’re shown on the telly, and drawing their own conclusions about Russia’s military capabilities. During the Falklands War, the Soviets were presented with a rare opportunity — at the height of the Cold War — to observe a leading NATO member in actual combat, which they seized with both hands, coming away with the quiet conclusion that the British military were a more formidable proposition than they’d hoped. Contingency plans were, no doubt, adjusted accordingly. Analysts in China, the US, Britain and Russia’s multiplicity of other enemies, will be sharpening their own pencils pretty soon, I’m sure.
Losing generals doesn’t mean you’re losing the war, but it doesn’t exactly look like you’re winning it either. The Russians had been hoping to announce the…
