Russian generals under fire on battlefields in Ukraine have different roles than US generals, US official says
Kremlin Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
- Among Russia's heavy losses in Ukraine have been several generals and high-ranking commanders.
- Their deaths are seen as indicative of Ukraine's fierce resistance and of Russia's struggling military effort.
- Those officers' presence on the battlefield reflects the Russian military's command-and-control structure.
The Russian military's struggles in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance have been underscored by the number of generals and high-ranking officers who have been killed over the past three weeks.
More than a dozen Russian generals and commanders have been reported killed in Ukraine by officials from Ukraine and other countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged the death of one general, and NATO officials have confirmed the deaths of several others.
The presence of senior leaders at or near the frontlines has been attributed to efforts to restart stalled advances and boost falling morale, but a senior US defense official said Monday that such a presence would also be in keeping with the Russian military's organization and command-and-control structure.
The senior official, who spoke anonymously to describe the evolving conditions in Ukraine, stressed that the US couldn't confirm reports about generals being killed but said "it makes sense" for the Russian military to have senior commanders, including generals, "in the field for an invasion of this size and scale."
AP Photo/Marienko Andrew
"They haven't done anything on this size and scale really ever from a conventional perspective," the official told reporters. "They've got an awful lot committed to the fight, so there's a certain logic to making sure that you have general officers in the field."
The official also attributed those commanders' battlefield role to the organization of the Russian military's chain of command and the division of responsibility within it.
In the US military, midlevel enlisted troops — including noncommissioned officers such as sergeants and petty officers — are more empowered "to make decisions literally in the moment on the battlefield," a structure and tradition that is absent in the Russian military, the official said.
"They don't have an equivalent to a noncommissioned officer corps, and their junior officers don't have the same wherewithal [and] flexibility" as their US counterparts, the official said. "They don't invest in their junior officers the kind of initiative that we do."
"The fact that there might be senior leaders on the field, perhaps involved at a more tactical level than we would have a two-star or a one-star [general], it's apples to oranges in terms of how they organize themselves [and] how they lead," the official said.
Maj. Gen. Harold Green, the two-star commander of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, became the first US general to die in combat since the Vietnam War when he was killed by an Afghan soldier in August 2014 in an insider attack.
Press service of the Joint Forces Operation/Handout via REUTERS
US, European, and Ukrainian officials have attributed the Russian military's struggles in Ukraine in part to its heavily centralized leadership, with troops on the ground, many of them conscripts, unable to make decisions on their own.
In the Soviet and Russian militaries, lower-ranking commissioned officers, such as lieutenants, are often the primary small-unit leaders. Moscow has sought to develop a professional enlisted component since the 1990s, though it has struggled to do so and that component remains small.
Those professional troops serve under an enlistment contract and their training focuses on technical skills rather than broader leadership roles. They are better described as "enlisted professionals" than as "noncommissioned officers," according to Maj. Charles Bartles, a Russia analyst at the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office.
Russian military conscripts are generally barred from deployments abroad, and their use in Ukraine is seen as a sign that Moscow expected less resistance and is now scrambling to adjust.
Conscripts are also tasked with duties like logistics, which Russian forces have struggled with in Ukraine. Those troops' inexperience, other problems plaguing Russian forces, and stiff Ukrainian forces may be contributing to "anecdotal indications" of morale problems among some of those forces, the senior defense official said Monday.
Security Service of Ukraine
Russian generals and high-ranking officers being present on or near the frontlines doesn't necessarily indicate a breakdown in their command-and-control of their forces, but those forces have had trouble integrating and simply communicating, the official said.
Communications issues and other logistics and sustainment challenges are signs that the Russians "just weren't fully prepared for operations of this intensity for this long on so many different multiple lines of attack," the official said.
Two US officials told The New York Times that Ukrainian forces were able to intercept a Russian commander's call on an unsecure line, pinpoint the commander's location, and kill the commander and his staff in a strike. No evidence has emerged to support this account, however, and Insider could not verify its accuracy.
US officials say they are sharing intelligence with Ukraine but not information that could be used for "real-time targeting."
"We're seeing them use a lot more unclassified communications because their classified communication capability, for one reason or another, is not as strong as it should be," the US official said Monday.