the times | Tuesday April 5 2022 9
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and colonels had been killed, forced by
confusing signals to move to the front
to try to sort out logistical and opera-
tional glitches.
Another mystery was that the inva-
sion force was equipped with armoured
vehicles and weapons “that are certain-
ly not the cutting-edge models Russia
was supposed to have been fielding”.
On top of all that, up to 25 per cent of
the Russian forces comprised con-
scripts with inadequate kit who had yet
to complete one year of service, he said.
Petraeus, who briefly became the di-
rector of the CIA after completing his
command in Afghanistan in July 2011,
said: “It has to be inescapable to Putin
that Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv
and Russia has lost.
“Also Russia has failed to encircle
Kharkiv; failed to break through at
Mykolaiv and been unable to take
Odesa; fallen far short of getting to
Dnipro in central Ukraine and has
made only modest, very costly, grinding
gains around the Donbas [in the east].
“Beyond all that there can be no hid-
ing the reports of the enormous losses
of soldiers, weapon systems, armoured
vehicles and commanders.”
Good intelligence can help to tame
tyrants, William Hague, page 29Americans hesitate over
sending tanks to Zelensky
Larisa Brown Defence EditorThe US is “not minded” to agree to
President Zelensky’s calls for allies
to send armoured vehicles to Ukraine,
a senior western official said yesterday.
Claims that the US could facilitate
the transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine
were not accurate, the official said, add-
ing that Americans were “not minded
to give those to Ukraine”.
There are concerns that tanks and
fast jets are “offensive” weapons rather
than “defensive”. The official said that
“tanks would not be particularly rele-
vant to the military activities that the
Ukrainians need to undertake”. The
official said there was an effort to “scale
up” the defensive lethal equipment that
could be supplied and that discussions
were ongoing.
A senior British government source
dismissed the comments from the offi-
cial. “The Ukrainians want tanks so
they can counter-attack. They need
armour.” The source said that the
Americans could facilitate the transfer
of Soviet-made tanks to bolster Ukrain-ian defences in the country’s eastern
Donbas region. Under the plans, the
Americans could hand Poland some of
its Abrams tanks, for the Poles to then
hand over their T-72 tanks to Ukraine.
The smouldering wrecks of Russia’s
T-72 battle tanks have been a common
sight across Ukraine, leading some
people to question if tanks are now
obsolete. Senior figures in the Ministry
of Defence believe they are not, they
just need to be used effectively.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Stuart
Crawford, an officer in the Royal Tank
Regiment for 20 years, said: “How do
you propose to help Ukraine regain lost
territory? Ice-cream vans?
“You need protected mobility to
attack the Russians, and as long as the
Ukrainians have integrated air defence
with armoured fighting vehicles plus
other supporting arms, tanks are the
best option. The best defence is attack.”
Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the
defence select committee, said: “There
is nothing defensive about any weap-
ons I fired while in the army — they are
all lethal.”Ships bombard
Odesa with
cruise missiles
George GryllsRussian warships have blockaded Ode-
sa and fired cruise missiles at Ukraine’s
largest port, analysts say.
Two frigates, two submarines, air-
craft and an anti-ship defence system
fired about 50 missiles, according to the
Centre for Defence Strategies, a
Ukrainian think tank.
The Russian defence ministry
claimed it had hit an oil refinery and
three fuel depots in the suburbs.
Ukrainian media reported that one of
the ships was seriously damaged by re-
taliatory strikes, although this could
not be confirmed.
Odesa, a city of a million people, was
an early target of the Russian invasion
but the invading forces were held up at
Mykolaiv, 70 miles to the east.
Boris Johnson has instructed officials
to send more British anti-ship missiles
to relieve Ukrainian ports, because of
fears current weaponry may not be
enough to resist the Russian attack.commissioned officer corps and an in-
adequate logistics structure to support
the forces deployed once the rail system
was not available.
Petraeus outlined other basic weak-
nesses. He said the Russian troops suf-
fered from “a lack of standards for per-
formance of the most basic of tasks”,
which included failing to stay dispersed
when moving or in static positions,making them vulnerable to attack.
The Russian troops had also failed to
achieve “combined arms effects”,
another key element of the forces
under his command in Iraq and
Afghanistan. This meant they failed to
employ armour, infantry, engineers,
mortars and artillery together.
Petraeus said he had seen no evi-
dence of any proper integration of air
and ground operations. There had also
been “abysmal tactical communica-
tions”, which was why so many generalsGeneral David
Petraeus predicted
Russian control of
their forces would
only get worseRussia’s war is being run from Moscow,
ensuring that the military lack clear
instructions, with troops unable to per-
form the “most basic tasks” in Ukraine,
one of the West’s most experienced
combat commanders told The Times.
General David Petraeus, who led
coalition forces in Iraq and Afghan-
istan, said he had been watching the
war with a sense of bewilderment. He
predicted that Russian command and
control in Ukraine would get “even
more muddled as units are withdrawn
from around Kyiv”.
“There certainly does not appear to
be the kind of unity of command and ef-
fort that we achieved in Iraq and
Afghanistan, where one commander
exercised operational control over all
US and coalition forces, as well as over
100,000 civilian contractors in each
theatre,” he said. “Presumably the
leaders in Moscow thought they could
do a better job.”
Petraeus, 69, said that troops on the
ground in Ukraine had to wait for their
orders from the Kremlin hundreds of
miles away. This was, he said, unlike in
Iraq and Afghanistan, where the allied
directive was in the “absence of orders,
figure out what they should have been
and execute aggressively”.
Petraeus ridiculed the Russian pre-
invasion rehearsals, noting that
months before the war forces deployed
to the border had carried out live-fire
exercises and appeared to be engaged
in extensive armoured manoeuvres “as
if rehearsing for D-Day”.
“It is a complete mystery to me what
the Russian forces were doing during
the many months of training exercises
on the border. It is starting to appear
that they were camping, not training,”
he said.
There were innumerable reasons
why the Russian forces had failed, in-
cluding “vast overestimation of Russian
military capabilities, considerable un-
derestimation of Ukrainian capabili-
ties, lack of unity of command and
abysmal campaign design”.
He said the Kremlin had deployed a
“wholly insufficient lack of forces re-
quired for the tasks envisioned”, which
relied on too few professional non-News
Kremlin’s muddled troops can’t do
basic tasks, says US commander
Michael EvansAZOV SEA
BLACK SEA50 milesDniproPoltavaChernihivOdesaMelitopolUKRAINERUSSIABELELARUARUUSSMOLMOLMMMMOLM DODOVDOVVVAAAAACRIMEARostov-on-DonDonetsk LuhanskSumyZhytomyr
MakarivVinnytsiaKonotopKhersonZaporizhzhia
nuclear plantChernobyl
nuclear plantMykolaivVoznesenskKharkivMariupolSouth Ukraine
nuclear plantStaromlynivkaVolnovakhaBerdyanskKyivUKRAINEDirection of Russian troop advance
Previous advance
Russian-held territory
Russian advances
Surrounded by
Russian troopsUkrainian
counter-
offensiveSources: Institute for the Study of
War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project;
Ministry of Defence. Updated April 4she volunteered to
return to the front line
with the 35th infantry
brigade of Rear
Admiral Mykhailo
Ostrogradsky.
There is a long
tradition in Russia and
Ukraine of glamorising
snipers, who are often
singled out as national
heroes for their efforts
on the battlefield.
Snipers played a
prominent role in the
Battle of Stalingrad
from 1942 to 1943, a
decisive moment in
Soviet history when
the Red Army halted
the advance of the
German sixth army,
reversing the tide of
the Second World
Wa r.
Charcoal has been
compared to Lyudmila
Pavlichenko, one of
the most prolific
snipers in military
history. Pavlichenko
was credited with the
deaths of 309 Nazis
during the Second
World War, for which
the Ukrainian sniper
was nicknamed
“Lady Death”.She was initially
given only a grenade to
defend herself due to a
shortage of munitions,
but when a comrade
died next to her,
bequeathing her his
rifle, she demonstrated
her prowess by killing
two Nazis.
Pavlichenko served
the Red Army in the
defence of Odesa and
Sevastopol before
being hit by shrapnel
in 1942, leading to her
evacuation from
Crimea via submarine.
She subsequently
spent the war touring
the United States and
England as part of a
propaganda exercise
and twice received the
Order of Lenin, the
country’s highest
civilian designation.
In a message aimed
at rallying the
Ukrainian troops,
Charcoal promised to
fight the Russians “to
the very end”.
“We must take them
all out!” she said.
“These people are not
human beings. Even
the fascists were not as
vile as these orcs. We
must defeat them.”
On the Russian side,
an elite female sniper
has been captured by
Ukrainian forces after
apparently being left
for dead on the
battlefield. Irina
Starikova, codenamed
Bagira, thought to be
from Serbia, has been
wanted by the
Ukrainians since 2014.
She was severely
injured when she was
captured and was
given medical
treatment by
Ukrainian forces.
Starikova, said to be
divorced with two
daughters, is wanted
for killing 40 people,
including civilians,
according to local
reports. She has been
fighting with
separatist forces in the
Donetsk region of
eastern Ukraine since
2014.
She reportedly said
her fellow fighters had
left her “knowing that
I was injured and had
the opportunity to
pick me up... hoping
that I would die”.RMThe sniper, known as
Charcoal, served many
tours in eastern Ukraine.
She has been likened to
Lyudmila Pavlichenko,
below. Irina Starikova,
above, was captured by
Ukrainian forces