Russia opened the Russo-Ukrainian War with if anything, a deficiency of sufficient numbers of dismounted infantry. Particularly in the Battle of Kyiv, a company of Russian tanks rolling forwards entirely unsupported by infantry, only to be ambushed from the flanks by ATGM (antitank guided missile) armed Ukrainian Infantry was an oft-repeated theme.
Through the course of the war, Russia’s force composition has flipped. What began as a heavily mechanized, armored unit heavy force without enough infantry now is awash in dismounted infantry, with an ever-dwindling armored component.
This was triggered by two things. Massive Russian losses of armored vehicles, and Russia’s mobilization and conscription of several hundred thousand infantry. Russia can draw on its large population to bring human bodies in large numbers to the front. It has been less able to replace its valuable tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored personnel carriers.
Pre-war Russian doctrine focused on the Battalion Tactical Group (BTG), an 800-1000 man combined arms unit that sought to bring together mechanized infantry, tanks, artillery, and logistics into a single small unit. In the small wars that Russia fought in Chechnya or Syria, the 20,000+ man Corps units of the Soviet Era proved unwieldy in their size, thus Russian military planners sought to transition to a smaller and more agile unit.
This transition was implemented around 2013. It is widely evaluated as a failure. Russian BTG units were broken down into elements that individually lacked sufficient offensive power to create major battlefield breakthroughs. They lacked sufficient dismounted infantry to provide combined arms support. They failed to provide proper training to coordinate the BTG units to fight in groups of twos, threes, or four BTGs for a powerful concentration of force, instead resulting in each BTG simply fighting in parallel to other BTGs.
Furthermore, the entire BTG structure and combat doctrine was predicated on a high degree of mechanization and armor. As Russian forces degraded, and dismounted infantry became a larger and larger proportion of Russian arms, maintaining the BTG structure essentially became practically impossible.
if a battalion has three times as many infantry as prescribed, and its tank companies have no tanks, BTG combat doctrine manuals become worthless to the battalion’s commander. The doctrine might direct the battalion commander to send tanks or IFVs that no longer are available in certain tactical situations when all that is available are dismounted infantry.
This led to Russia gradually losing any doctrinal coherence and the implementation of ad hoc combat units.
The one group that had the greatest tactical success from Fall 2022 to Spring 2023 was the Wagner Group (although its success was limited). Despite being predominantly dismounted infantry supported by artillery, Wagner units managed to advance 15km in around 8 months of attacks in the Bakhmut direction—which seems pitiful, until you consider that armored attacks in Vuhledar, Marinka, Avdiivka, Kreminna, Kupiansk directions yielded 2-3km of gains. Comparatively, Wagner looked better with fewer resources.
Tatarigami_UA, a Ukrainian officer who posts regularly on Twitter, noted that Ukrainian forces captured a Russian field manual that laid out new unit types called battalion-sized “assault detachments” and undersized platoon-sized “assault units” that sought to provide a new Russian assault doctrine. This was posted in late February 2023.
The new Russian assault unit doctrine aimed to change the way Russia attacks positions. Acknowledging the reality that Russian army units were now composed primarily of dismounted infantry, the doctrine relies on frontal attacks by small groups of infantry on Ukrainian defenses, while armored groups of mechanized infantry and tanks attack the flanks.
The tactic differed radically from BTG doctrine in many ways
- It involves large numbers of dismounted infantry from conception.
- Instead of squads (9-12 soldiers) as a basic unit of infantry, it relies exclusively on small 3-man teams that are armed with different weapons for different assault roles, like rifles, flamethrowers, or grenade launchers.
- Teams of support weapon units (grenade launchers and RPGs) lay down suppressive fire, while 3-man teams of infantry approach the enemy defensive line.
- If the attack is repelled, identified enemy strong points are struck by artillery.
- Once the infantry approach sufficiently close, they begin attacking the trench with grenades and direct attacks. When the enemy defensive line is compromised, the armored mobile components advance on the flanks of the enemy position to encircle and destroy the enemy.
- This tactic utilizes creeping infantry infiltration as the primary means to breach the enemy defense, as opposed to a mechanized combined arms attack.
Tatarigami_UA believed that Russia was unlikely to be able to implement the tactics successfully. He observed that the doctrine attempted to copy that of those of Wagner units, but called for a high degree of innovation and flexibility in the assault that Russian commanders seemed unwilling or unable to permit, preferring to lay out rigid tactical methods for these subordinate units.
This appears borne out in Russia’s repeated failed attacks on Vuhledar. Russian units funneled repeatedly into the same choke points, finding themselves running into the same minefields and artillery targeting that destroyer prior waves of assaults. This rigid adherence to the same tactics was observed to be indicative of front-line officers being given little freedom in how to conduct operations, executing the same orders from higher-level officers by rote.
Tatarigami_UA also suggested that Russian units don’t have the number of support weapons, particularly grenade launchers, in sufficient numbers to conduct heavily supported infantry assaults recommended by doctrine.
Australian Ret. Major General Mick Ryan commented that the tactics outlined in the Assault Tactics Manual closely mirror that of German Stormtrooper tactics from World War One. The German Army found localized tactical successes with its tactics, but these successes did not translate into operational-level victories or breakthroughs.
Gen. Ryan comments that this was due to a lack of a sufficient mobile reserve force available to the WWI German Army that could help quickly exploit a localized breakthrough, to turn tactical success into an operational success.
Gen. Ryan observed that even if Russia could implement similar tactics on a broad scale unless Russia maintained a significant reserve force of mobile and mechanized infantry and armor units to exploit local tactical successes, Russia would have the same problem as the Germans in World War One. Small incremental tactical gains at heavy losses but no larger scale operational success would result.
Russian “successes” in Bakhmut seem to perfectly reflect General Ryan’s prediction for how such small-unit assault tactics would progress.
In subsequent months, it has become clearer that the Russian army continues to innovate in implementing these assault tactics, but has essentially failed to implement the doctrinal evolution instructed in the captured manuals. Some units have implemented these organizational changes. Others continue to operate as they had prior. Unsupported Russian tank units still conduct uncoordinated attacks on Ukrainian positions in long-distance firing, and considerable variation is observed in how Russian infantry conducts attacks.
Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) assessed that “The divergence between doctrine and observed practice likely owes much to the inability of the AFRF to either train according to the doctrine or implement it effectively and consistently.” So it’s necessary to understand that no unifying doctrinal concept exists to characterize Russian ground forces operations, rather different units act per their available equipment, their commanders’ intentions, and the relative levels of training.
However, one fairly broadly implemented organizational change observed by RUSI is that the Russian Army is informally categorizing Russian infantry into four types of units by role: specialized, assault, line, and disposable.
Firstly, RUSI cautions that characterizing Russian offensive assault tactics as “human wave” tactics is simplistic and misleading. Russia is not generally running large groups of infantry straight at Ukrainian positions.
Instead, Russian tactics revolve first around the deployment of “disposable infantry.” These soldiers are LPR/DPR militia, barely trained Russian mobilized or conscripted infantry, or Wagner convict units. These soldiers are not sent forwards in large groups, but generally in teams of 3 soldiers. Carrying ammunition and some supplies, they rush forwards through enemy fire and try to establish dug-in positions progressively closer to the main Ukrainian defensive position.
These attacks by disposable infantry are supported by “Specialized” troops—snipers, grenade launchers, rocket-propelled grenade teams, heavy machine guns, and other specialized weapons that require a higher degree of skill.
The Specialized infantry keeps their distance to preserve their safety due to their high value but aims to inflict losses while Ukrainian defenders are focused on the approaching disposable infantry units.
If the Disposable infantry is eliminated, artillery barrages are directed at identified Ukrainian strong points, and the attack starts over.
By repeating this cycle over and over, gradually the Russian commander will obtain a detailed understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Ukrainian position. Furthermore, the waves of disposable infantry will gradually develop a series of protected dug-in positions with stocks of grenades, small arms ammunition, and water that are closer and closer to the Ukrainian line of defense.
Once the Russian commander identifies a weak point, he can call on his assault infantry and, if available, armored units to launch an attack. Assault Infantry are well-trained Russian infantry units, usually formed from veterans before the start of the war. Armed with the best equipment, better training, and with a tank and/or IFVs in support, assault infantry will aim to penetrate the Ukrainian defense and overrun the enemy position with as few casualties as possible, forcing a Ukrainian retreat.
Wagner units have such distinctions, where a small group of elite ex-VDV or Spetsnaz troops form elite assault units, while the majority of Wagner soldiers are composed of convict disposable infantry. In Bakhmut, Wagner accelerated its offensive operations in late December 2022 by attaching units of VDV infantry to its convict battalions, to increase the number of available assault infantry.
If the Russians had a few platoons or tanks and mechanized infantry in reserve, at this dangerous moment, the Russians could exploit this tactical breakthrough by pursuing the retreating Ukrainians to attempt to overrun the position and achieve an operational breakthrough.
What is very clear is that the Russian army no longer has this ability.
So instead, the Russian line moves forwards (perhaps as little as a few hundred meters), and the process starts all over again against the next line of Ukrainian defense.
Line infantry is the last unmentioned infantry type, primarily because it generally does not play much of a role in assaults. They are composed of more experienced conscripts and less trained contract soldiers who generally are organized into mechanized infantry or combined arms units. Unlike Assault infantry, Line infantry have not received training on assault tactics.
Line infantry are frequently deployed together with disposable infantry units, and are given the hard labor of constructing defensive fortifications and manning defensive positions. They differ most greatly from disposable infantry in their greater experience, and in that they are prioritized for preservation when selecting units to make frontal probing assaults.
RUSI observes that no formal designation of these unit types exists, as it would be politically untenable to designate certain units as “disposable,” even in Russia.
But by utilizing small group infiltration tactics with teams of disposable infantry, Russia seeks to preserve its remaining well-trained assault infantry. Though they are often described as human wave attacks, their role is more of a repeating, high-risk reconnaissance in force, as opposed to being a real assault unit.
What this also means is that units like VDV (paratrooper) units no longer contain uniformly “elite” compositions. Since the start of the war, VDV units have incorporated large numbers of minimally trained conscripts or hastily contracted soldiers. Thus, even if a unit contains a “VDV” designation, the VDV battalion will likely contain subunits of “assault” infantry and “disposable” infantry.
Russia also likely has an ever-dwindling supply of troops able to conduct effective offensives. Furthermore, with large sections of its lines manned by troops unsuitable and untrained to go on the offensive, in the event of a major offensive by Ukrainian forces, it appears doubtful that Line and Disposable units will be able to conduct major counterattack operations.
In part, the Russian Army’s designation of a large majority of its soldiers to be unsuitable for real offensive operations is indicative of the severe degradation of the quality of soldiers that Russia can field 16 months into the Russo-Ukrainian War.
