A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022
war in ukraine
BY LIZ SLYThe ineptitude displayed by the
Russian military in its initial at-
tempt to overrun Ukraine has as-
tounded military professionals.
The world’s second-most-power-
ful army has bungled almost every
move since the first hours of the
invasion. Now, seven weeks into a
war that Russia as well as the West
had expected would last only days,
the Ukrainians have the momen-
tum. They have forced the Rus-
sians to make a humiliating re-
treat from the north of the country
and stalled or reversed Russian
advances on most other fronts.
As Russia refocuses its energies
on capturing Ukraine’s eastern re-
gion, the crucial question will be
whether its military can redress
the mistakes of the early assault.
Here are nine of the most impor-
tant mistakes by the Russians,
according to m ilitary experts.
- Misjudging the Ukrainians
The biggest mistake of all was
to underestimate both the will
and the capacity of the Ukrainians
to resist. Russia had planned for a
swift and easy victory, expecting
its troops to be greeted as libera-
tors. Instead, the Ukrainians
fought back ferociously, aided by
weaponry from the West.
And it wasn’t just the army that
fought back. Ordinary civilians
also seized the initiative to thwart
Russian advances, such as those
in the farming town of Voz-
nesensk who picked up hunting
rifles and hurled bricks to help
halt Russian soldiers along the
southern coast.
Many of the setbacks Russia
encountered sprang from this ini-
tial miscalculation — but not all.- Not preparing their troops
Testimonies of captured Rus-
sian soldiers suggest many troops
had not been told they would be
invading Ukraine. Some said they
were told they were participating
in a military exercise, others that
they were being sent just to the
eastern Donbas region. That
meant they were psychologically
unprepared to be shot at and
blown up, as happened almost
instantly, which took an immedi-
ate toll on troops’ morale, noted
Jack Watling of the London-based
Royal United Services Institute.
The enormity of the casualties
Russia subsequently suffered has
only exacerbated the low morale,
he said. NATO put the number of
Russian dead at 15,000 over two
weeks ago, more than in the Soviet
Union’s decade-long war in Af-
ghanistan. Ukrainian officials say
they have collected 7,000 Russian
corpses from the battlefield,
though Russia maintains it has
lost only 1,351 soldiers. - Invading without enough
supplies — or the right
supplies
Russian units seemed wholly
unprepared for the conditions
and circumstances they encoun-
tered. Units expecting to roll un-
opposed into Kyiv and other cities
brought just two weeks of sup-
plies, and those quickly ran out.
Videos quickly emerged showing
Russian soldiers stranded on
roadsides next to their vehicles
because they had no fuel and hun-
gry soldiers looting stores and
stealing chickens.
Surprisingly, those troops also
lacked some of the key tools of
modern warfare, such as night-vi-
sion equipment, said John Spen-
cer, who chairs the Urban Warfare
Studies program at the Madison
Policy Forum. Ukrainians have
such equipment and were able to
control the night, launching at-
tacks and ambushes under cover
of darkness against an enemy un-
able to see them.
Russia might not even have
enough regular weapons to equip
all the forces it is sending into
battle. Some newly drafted sol-
diers on the eastern front have
been issued rifles first developed
in the 19th century and out of
production for decades, accord-
ing to witnesses quoted in a Reu-
ters report.- Not recognizing their poor
logistics
Military experts describe a
massive logistical failure: When
troops ran out of food and other
supplies after the initial plan went
wrong, their superiors had no
plans for resupply. Tanks stalled,
and the poorly maintained trucks
that were then sent lost tires or
broke down, contributing to the
infamous 40-mile convoy-turned-
traffic jam.
“Amateurs talk strategy, profes-
sionals talk logistics” is an oft-re-
peated cliche in military circles —
and one that the Russians appear
not to have heeded. The myriad
elements behind the logistics fail-
ure are laid out in this detailed
account by Washington Post re-
porters Bonnie Berkowitz and Ar-
tur Galocha.- Failing to take out
Ukraine’s air defenses
Military experts had expected a
Russian bombing campaign to
take out Ukrainian air-defense
systems, bases and planes before
troops would be sent across the
border. Instead, the troops surged
in without air support.
Perhaps this also can be ex-
plained by commanders’ initial
miscalculation that they would
encounter little resistance. But it
confounds military observers that
the Ukrainian air force is still fly-
ing, seven weeks on. - Attacking on too many
fronts
The largest force assembled in
Europe since World War II proved
too small to fight — let alone hold
— the vast arc of territory that
Russia attempted to seize. The
initial invasion was launched on
four fronts: the north toward
Kyiv; the northeast toward
Kharkiv; the east; and the south
from the annexed peninsula of
Crimea.
Once the first push ran into
resistance, the troops found them-
selves strung out along the coun-
try’s borders, stretching already
inadequate supply lines. Accord-
ing to the “force ratio” rule used by
military tacticians, an invading
force needs 20 soldiers for every
1,000 of a country’s population.
For a country the size of Ukraine,
that calculation means 880,000
troops, as Michael Clarke, a visit-
ing professor in the war studies
department at King’s College Lon-
don, told the Times of London.
The United States invaded Iraq
with a force ratio of 7, going up
against a far less capable army
than that of Ukraine. Russia in-
vaded Ukraine with a force ratio of
4.- Using unsecured
communications
Astonishingly, the Russians
embarked on a major war using
cellphones and old-fashioned ra-
dios to communicate. The Ukrai-
nians were able to intercept mes-
sages regarding Russian move-
ments on the battlefield and lie in
wait for them with ambushes. At
least some of the seven generals
killed on the battlefield died be-
cause the Ukrainians intercepted
messages about their locations,
according to a Western official
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss sensitive
subjects.
So accessible are Russian mili-
tary communications that ama-
teur radio enthusiasts have been
listening in and streaming them. - Proceeding without clear
lines of command
Russia’s highly centralized mil-
itary does not empower troops on
the ground to make decisions or
issue orders, experts say. Troops
that quickly ran into difficulty
were unable to shift gears to ad-
just to their new circumstances
because they had to await orders
from superiors in Moscow (over
unsecured lines, as just noted).
Unlike U.S. and other Western
militaries, the Russian military
does not have noncommissioned
officers. Troops are left flounder-
ing when their original orders
don’t pan out, retired Lt. Gen.
Mark Hertling, a former com-
mander of the U.S. Army in Eu-
rope, told CNN.- Failing to have a Plan B
The Russians clearly weren’t
prepared for a scenario in which
they encountered resistance.
When they did, they had appar-
ently made no backup plan. In-
stead, troops pressed ahead as
originally ordered, driving into
ambushes and steadily getting
killed by the Ukrainians. Armored
convoys were dispatched without
infantry support, making them
easy targets for Ukrainians armed
with portable antitank weapons
such as the U.S.-supplied Javelins.
Overall, the entire plan was
poorly conceived from the outset,
from the size of the force to its
preparedness and its ability to
adapt to changing circumstances,
military experts say. “The incom-
petence in planning command,
control & communication (C3) is
staggering,” Hertling said in a
tweet.
Russia botched its attack on Ukraine. Here are its greatest blunders.
BY MAYAAN HOFFMANRussian President Vladimir Pu-
tin’s decision to invade Ukraine
probably sabotaged any further
aspirations for the Sputnik coro-
navirus vaccine, the first injection
approved by any country.
Manufacturing of the vaccine
has slowed, further research is
stalled and a much-anticipated
March 7 visit by the World Health
Organization to Russia’s Sputnik
manufacturing plants, the last
step in its long-awaited interna-
tional approval process, was once
again delayed — this time indefi-
nitely.
While Russia’s efforts are fo-
cused on Ukraine, other vaccine
makers are moving forward. They
are filling a void that — only a
month before the war — two Rus-
sian entities hoped to fill: the Ga-
maleya Research Institute of Epi-
demiology and Microbiology,
which developed the vaccine, and
its partner, the Russian Direct In-
vestment Fund (RDIF).
It is an inauspicious fall for a
vaccine whose arrival stunned the
world.
On Aug. 11, 2020, only six
months into the pandemic, Russia
became the first country to ap-
prove a coronavirus vaccine.
Russia hoped its vaccine would
be used worldwide to help stop the
pandemic, that the shot would
bring geopolitical and economic
gains and restore its glory as a
superpower, lost with the fall of
the Soviet Union. The country
named its vaccine Sputnik V after
the first artificial satellite, Sputnik
I, developed in 1957, which beat
out the United States in the space
race.
Sputnik V has been approved in
71 countries with more than 4 bil-
lion people, and its newest jab,
Sputnik Light, has gained recogni-
tion in 30 nations, according to
data provided by Sputnik.
But nearly two years later, Gama-
leya and RDIF have sold fewer than
300 million doses, and fewer than
2.5 percent of the people vaccinated
worldwide have taken a Sputnik
shot, according to data from the
World Trade Organization.
By contrast, China’s Sinovac
and Sinopharm vaccines — with
lower reported efficacy — have
accounted for more than 5.3 bil-
lion doses, the WTO data shows.
“Russia’s vaccine diplomacy
has failed,” said Agathe Demarais,
global forecasting director and
trustee for the Economist Intelli-
gence Unit. “Gamaleya was look-
ing toward a big PR push to save
the vaccine. I understand they be-
lieve in it from a scientific perspec-
tive, but obviously, the current sit-
uation goes beyond science.”
Just as Gamaleya and RDIF
were trying to rehabilitate their
vaccine in February with new re-
search promoting it as a universal
booster, Russia invaded its west-
ern neighbor. Four days later, the
United States sanctioned RDIF,
and in March, the European
Union followed suit.
When the U.S. Department of
the Treasury’s Office of Foreign
Assets Control placed RDIF and
its chief executive, Kirill Dmitriev,
on the list of sanctioned Russian
entities and people, it labeled
RDIF a “slush fund” of Putin’s and
“emblematic of Russia’s wider
kleptocracy.”
The Treasury Department said
in a statement that RDIF was being
sanctioned for “acting or purport-
ing to act for or on behalf of, directly
or indirectly, the Government of
Russia.” It added that “Dmitriev is a
close associate of Putin and he and
his wife are also believed to be close
to one of Putin’s daughters, Kateri-
na Tikhonova.”
RDIF pushed back in a state-
ment published by Russia’s state-
run Tass news agency, accusing
the United States of “slander.” It
said the U.S. curbs were politically
motivated and “ran counter to the
principles of humanitarian coop-
eration,” according to Tass, adding
that the U.S. sanctions would de-
prive billions of people of its “safe
and efficient” vaccine.
In a separate letter sent last
week to The Washington Post,
RDIF’s general counsel, Mikhail
Irzhevsky, stressed that the sover-
eign wealth fund “always fully
complies with laws of the coun-
tries where it conducts its invest-
ments” and that “defamatory and
denigrating statements made by
the Biden Administration about
RDIF have absolutely no basis and
represent a blatant violation of the
Fund’s rights.”
He added that RDIF supports
the restoration of peace and hopes
that negotiations between Russia
and Ukraine will come to a suc-
cessful conclusion.
“RDIF and its international
partners believe that only diplo-
macy can end this conflict andsave human lives,” Irzhevsky said.
In an interview, the head of the
Gamaleya Institute, Alexander
Gintsburg, accused the interna-
tional community of punishing
Russia. Two days before the war
began, Gintsburg said that if the
vaccine was not approved, it was
because the authorities in other
countries didn’t want it to be and
“not much of a scientific question.”
“I believe Sputnik V poses seri-
ous competition to the vaccines
that are currently broadly used in
the world and basically dominat-
ing the international market,”
Gintsburg said. “The approval of
Sputnik V by the World Health
Organization would result in a
large share of the market going
over to Sputnik V and the Russian
Federation that is promoting it.
“Most probably,” he added, “not
everyone in the world, and cer-
tainly not the WHO, would be
happy with this scenario, and
therefore, we have seen certain
delays.”
Still, contract development and
manufacturing organizations that
had already completed the tech-
nology transfer for the Sputnik
vaccine and did not require raw
ingredients from Gamaleya
should be able to move forward. In
contrast, others could be stopped
in their tracks — especially if a
Russian entity still holds the vac-
cine license.
Restrictions on Russia’s use of
the SWIFT financial network
mean it would be hard for foreign
governments or nongovernmen-
tal organizations to pay for Sput-
nik doses.
Local media in South Korea,
which had hoped to produce
100 million doses a month, report-ed in March on concerns that
Sputnik production there would
be set back.
RDIF had signed a long-term
agreement with UNICEF to sup-
ply enough doses for 110 million
people in several developing coun-
tries, pending the WHO’s now un-
likely emergency use listing.
The German state of Bavaria,
too, has said it would block pro-
duction of the vaccine, even if it
received approval by the WHO or
the European Medicines Agency,
because of the invasion. A Russian
firm had set up a facility there to
produce millions of doses.
“It is inconceivable from our
point of view that this project can
now be realized,” Bavaria’s minis-
ter-president, Markus Söder, said
in a public statement. “It is over.”
Mariângela Batista Galvão
Simão, WHO assistant director
general for access to medicines,
said at a recent news conference
that the assessment and the in-
spections of Sputnik have been
affected “because of the flight op-
tions and also because of the fi-
nancial issues relating to support-
ing credit cards, and some more
operational issues” that were tied
to sanctions.
The vacuum is expected to be
quickly filled by Russia’s Western
competitors. Pfizer-BioNTech and
Moderna are working toward
completion of clinical trials on
updated vaccines targeting the
omicron variant. A vaccine from
drugmaker Novavax recently re-
ceived WHO approval.
Another hurdle for Sputnik: Re-
search published in January from
Argentina in Lancet Regional
Health-Americas showed that
countries in the region, many ofwhich provided their citizens with
at least one dose of Sputnik V, can
safely use alternative vaccines for
second doses.
In Russia, where Sputnik was
the sole option, only about half of
citizens are fully vaccinated.
Gintsburg said the state’s promo-
tional campaign “was not proper-
ly structured” because the push to
vaccinate was “mostly by state offi-
cials and not by scientists and
medical officials.” But surveys
have indicated the problem had
more to do with a lack of trust.
Multiple polls published last
year by Levada Center, an inde-
pendent polling agency, found
that more than half of Russians
don’t want to be vaccinated and
are not afraid of the disease. Denis
Volkov, Levada’s director, ex-
plained in interviews that Rus-
sians were not ready to be vacci-
nated “because they do not believe
the authorities.”
“People do not want to get a
Russian shot,” Demarais, of the
Economist Intelligence Unit, said.
“Even in Russia, the people will
always prefer a Western shot.”
Globally, some top scientists
had warned against the use of the
vaccine until all internationally
approved testing and regulatory
steps have been taken. They also
questioned Russia’s ability to de-
velop the vaccine so quickly.
Gintsburg said Russia’s approv-
al process is simply not “harmo-
nized” with the WHO process.
“This does not automatically
mean the product we produced is
bad,” Gintsburg said. “It was just
developed according to different
rules.”
The WHO said RDIF signed all
the legal agreements necessary forthe emergency use listing assess-
ment only in October 2021 and
submitted the data requested at
the end of January, triggering the
March visit that was ultimately
canceled because of the war.
“While the process is ongoing,
the details must remain confiden-
tial,” WHO spokesman Andrei
Muchnik said the day after the
invasion. “A recommendation will
be made public as soon as the full
process is finalized.”
In the 30 days leading up to the
Russian invasion, Sputnik looked
like it could have a comeback.
Aside from submitting the data
to the WHO, the single-shot Sput-
nik Light vaccine was showing
sufficient efficacy to become a uni-
versal booster for people who had
gotten other vaccines.
Just three days before the inva-
sion, RDIF sent out a release an-
nouncing that China had author-
ized mix-and-match boosting of
its domestic coronavirus vaccines
with a different vaccine, including
from the class to which Sputnik
Light belongs.
On Feb. 14, RDIF, Russia’s R-
Pharm group and AstraZeneca an-
nounced interim results of Phase 2
clinical trials to evaluate the safety
and effectiveness of the combined
use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine and
Sputnik Light. The 200-volunteer
trial showed no serious adverse
events.
And a week before that, the
drugs controller general of India
authorized Sputnik Light, partial-
ly based on local clinical trials.
The announcements followed
the release of a study of blood
samples by the National Institute
for Infectious Diseases Lazzaro
Spallanzani in Italy that demon-
strated more than two times high-
er virus-neutralizing activity
against the omicron variant by
Sputnik than by the Pfizer corona-
virus vaccine.
The road to the Sputnik vaccine
stretches to the 1980s, with the
development of vaccines then. So
when the coronavirus emerged,
Gintsburg said they knew they
had a solution. He said Gamaleya
had already been in late-stage de-
velopment of vaccines against
Ebola and MERS — zoonotic viral
diseases that share some charac-
teristics with the coronavirus.
The Ebola vaccine had been
tested in about 2,000 residents of
Guinea who were followed for a
year and a half and had no serious
adverse events. First- and second-
stage trials of the MERS vaccine
had been conducted in Russia,
and “we were already confident of
the safety profile and the efficacy
of the vaccine technology,” Gints-
burg said.
But it is likely that as the war
rages on, those who believed in the
Sputnik solution — such as Ze’ev
Rotstein, former Hadassah Uni-
versity Medical Center director
general in Jerusalem — will seek
alternatives.
“We should condemn the vio-
lence and the devastation taking
place in Ukraine,” Rotstein said.
“Unfortunately, Russian technol-
ogy is being used to kill people
instead of to save lives.”Invasion dooms Russia’s aspirations for its coronavirus vaccine
ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A woman heads to a Moscow vaccination site in July 2021. Russia’s Sputnik V was the first coronavirus vaccine approved by any country.