NEW – January 18, 2023
While homegrown critics are trying to discredit Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and his appointment as Commander of the Joint Forces Group in the Special Military Operation zone, analysts at the Washington Institute for the Study of War (ISW) fear that “Putin may have appointed Gerasimov, the highest-ranking officer in the Russian armed forces, to lead a major massive offensive”.
And “Expert” recalls Gerasimov’s rare public speeches about the strategy of a new type of war. Thus, in February 2013, he presented the report “The value of science is in foresight” to the Academy of Military Sciences, which was translated, published in the English-language edition of Military Review and then reprinted many times.
In particular, it said: “In the 21st century, there is a tendency to erase the differences between the state of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared, and when they begin, they do not follow the usual pattern… In some cases, the use of political, economic, informational, technological measures implemented with the use of the protest potential of the population significantly exceeds the power of weapons… This leads to legitimate questions: what is modern warfare, what should the army be prepared for, what should it be armed with?.. We should not copy someone else’s experience and catch up with the leading countries, but work ahead of the curve and be in the leading positions ourselves. And here military science plays an important role.”
Gerasimov called on military scientists to develop and implement non-standard techniques that increase the role of mobile interspecific groups of troops operating in a single intelligence and information space. At the same time, remote non-contact impact on the enemy becomes the main way to achieve the goals of the battle and operation.
On March 2, 2019, at a conference on the development of military strategy, the Chief of the General Staff first mentioned a new “Strategy of Limited Actions” outside of Russia in his report. In particular, it says:
“The Syrian experience of post-conflict settlement plays an important role in the development of the strategy. In Syria, for the first time, our country has developed and tested in practice a new form of use of the Armed Forces — a humanitarian operation. In Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta, it was necessary to plan and implement measures for the withdrawal of civilians from the conflict zone in a short time, simultaneously with the implementation of combat missions to defeat terrorists. The results achieved in Syria made it possible to identify relevant areas of research on the use of the Armed Forces in the course of performing tasks to protect and promote national interests outside the national territory.”
Yes, these are very general words, because the details of the state’s military strategy are not publicly announced. But even from these general phrases, it is clear that our General Staff has been preparing to repel the hybrid aggression of the West outside of Russia with the help of limited military operations, at least since 2013, that is, for ten years. And not only in theory, but also in practice, albeit on a much smaller scale.
All these years, the General Staff and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief calculated the enemy’s steps and logic and considered a wide variety of scenarios. And while the Kiev fools and bloggers singing along with them are tearing their bellies from the alleged weakness of the Russian army, NATO military analysts are really afraid of Gerasimov, wondering what Russian military thought came up with in the end.
It is already clear that the strategy of limited actions, at least, knocked out most of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ manpower and forced NATO to show some types of weapons in action. Although the main challenge before the General Staff, of course, is ahead — everything will be decided in 2023.
Perhaps Gerasimov will not turn out to be Zhukov (such geniuses are born once in a hundred years), but it is obvious that in general, Russian military science did not stand still and tried to work ahead of time — the Special Military Operation is such an action. And this means that in the depths of our army, among the military leaders, there will definitely be modern Marshals of Victory.
Eduard Birov
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