Russian battlefield reports can distort fire support

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:34:55

   Can you speak to what does it take in the modern context to gain control of a territory or to, quote-unquote, take a territory? There's something that I've heard both of you speak about, which is that on the Russian side, the Russian military claims more territory than they have actually taken. And the difference between how much territory is actually taken and the claimed taken territory has an effect on the actual operation of the military.

2. 1:35:26

   Can you just speak to what it takes to gain control of the territory? I think that's up for debate. And we see Russian analysts getting frustrated and debating this day in and day out because it kind of happens in phases. If you look at just a town in Ukraine, there's a period of time where it's normal and there's a population there and the businesses are open. But then as the front gets closer, you start to see the population leave and the businesses close.

3. 1:35:50

   And the next thing you know, it's just military. And then at some point, there's no military because it's in the gray zone and you've got Russians in one side, Ukrainians on the other. What Russia has done a lot, I feel like it's increased, is they will have one soldier forward. They'll wave a flag for a drone to pick up. They will mark that on a map and then say everything from their back we now control.

4. 1:36:13

   Yeah. So like a video of that soldier with that flag in that area. Usually a video. This last week, we saw some AI being utilized where it was a fake video. Yeah, it's a fake video called out by the Russians themselves saying, guys, what are we doing here? This is not good. But even if it is a real soldier, that's the PR victory of saying, look how far we've advanced. We now control this territory.

5. 1:36:39

   The Russian pushback there is one soldier in a basement is not control of territory. Now, is it a platoon of soldiers? Is it is it a regiment pushing forward beyond that town? That's up for debate, because even if you have a large number of troops in that village, if you can't resupply them or if Ukraine has drone dominance in that entire area and you can't get anyone in or out, you know, what are we talking about?

6. 1:37:04

   Control of the village. You don't really have it. so it's tricky in that sense and i think if you're talking about full-blown control as in you can move you can come and go from that town as see fit you're probably talking about 20 plus kilometers back from the front line and even then you're still at risk of getting hit every single day by drones but these forward areas it's it's been interesting man russia has a concern that i have is we're starting to see putin more and more reference some of these claims that are not in line with reality and i i really wonder where up that chain of command they understand that they're sending a false report the ai video is a great example somebody made that so where up that chain does somebody know this is not an accurate report we're not there and they send it anyways

7. 1:37:53

   or is it going all the way up and everybody genuinely believes that to be true because it's it paints a very different picture of how the war is playing out i think on the russian maps They consistently claim themselves to be something like 15 kilometers, 10 kilometers at least forward of where they actually are. And they regularly cite positions they had from soldiers that they might have emplaced somewhere that infiltrated, but they don't have them anymore.

8. 1:38:19

   They've been lost. Or as Preston says, they took pictures of some flags. And it actually very negatively shapes Russian operations. In some ways, we are fortunate that they have such a cultural falsification of battlefield data because they then organize fire support around lines and positions they don't actually hold. Their troops will often advance or units that rotate into an area will be given the wrong information.

9. 1:38:46

   And what they think are actually their forward line of troops is contested territory, right? Right. So they'll they'll end up having their own soldiers killed because the map they were given is not correct. I think President is also very right. This clearest information trickles up to political decision making and to Putin. And that that may be part of the reason why he holds the view that Russian forces are still advancing in the Donbass because, in fact, the maps is being supplied lie in a very little sense.

10. 1:39:22

    And also, believe it or not, there is a pattern to Russian offensive operations where often we see them really intensify offensive efforts right now during this time period from October to November. And their casualties go up. And it is often because they find themselves pressed to actually take the territory that they've been claiming to control in reports for months. Right. Because now they're in a point where senior commanders are basically saying, now show it to me. And they don't actually control the terrain. And now they have to really throw men at it to try to realize the lie that they've been telling for some time.

11. 1:40:03

    And I completely agree with what Preston said We have a very hard time mapping it It is a gray zone for some substantial distance And to me, probably the best way to describe control is You're able to use terrain for your purposes That is, not only have you denied it to your enemy Not only do you have presence there But you are able to largely use this terrain and the enemy does not have substantial amount of fire control over it.

12. 1:40:34

    Because at this stage of the war, yes, you can go 15, 10 kilometers from the front line. Those are technically your positions, but you can't freely move around in them. You can't do much of what a ground force would expect to do. You have presence, but you don't really have control. You're not able to use it for your own purposes. And many places, Ukrainian and Russian positions in cities, sometimes in tree lines, are so commingled that they're marbled. And it's very hard to map control at all because if there's hundreds of Russian troops in Konstantinovka in basements, commingled with hundreds of Ukrainian troops in basements, who controls Konstantinovka? How would you know that? How would you empirically judge it?

13. 1:41:14

    It's crazy when you really think about it, Lex, like I could color a map on the screen and nothing matters, doesn't really change anything. The fact that leaders are making those changes and then sending their troops forward with bad information is crazy. It's costing lives. Like at the very least, you know, when they say there was a Kupyansk a little over a year ago, Russia claimed ownership of it. This was one that Putin said that they had control over. He famously invited international journalists. He said, go in and check it out for yourselves. And they didn't.

14. 1:41:42

    And what that did then was you could see Russian forces were able to relocate assets to other areas. Air power and fire support that might be needed in certain areas was either pushed forward or pulled back because it wasn't needed there anymore. So you've got these soldiers out there that now supposedly are 10 kilometers forward. They can't get airstrikes on the Ukrainian positions because if they call that up, somebody is going to have to say, yeah, okay, the lines have changed a little bit.

15. 1:42:12

    So they're genuinely making these changes, making these false reports, and it's hard to fully understand, hard to grasp. It's costing lives. If you want an anecdote, I was just west of Kupyansk at that time last year when Gerasimov declared to Putin in the meeting that they had all the Ukrainian units in Kupyansk in a circle. And I was there with a colleague from one of the Ukrainian brigades, basically reading this news.

16. 1:42:37

    And it's remarkable. I mean, when you're actually right by there and you see the situation, these things don't pass the giggle test. But nonetheless, this is what you see Russian senior military leadership tell their political leadership. To me, this is fascinating because maybe you can educate me on this, but my guess would be throughout human history, throughout all the wars, whether you look at Napoleon, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, maybe even Genghis Khan, although the interesting dynamic there, there's always going to be some distortion of information as it travels up the chain of command.