Saturday 3 May 2014

Lethal chess pieces



If I can trust RUSI and the Post on this graphic, there are two things to note:

1) Ukraine's remarkable achievement of turning its entire armed forces around to face east rather than west. Ukraine's army has always oriented west (to face NATO?) - armour and motorized infantry just east of the Polish border, with the Ukranian rocket artillery brigade behind them. This has since changed, and I wonder if a lot of Ukrainian troops are sleeping rough or if they are on proper basing grounds.

2) Russia's military reserve plan seems once again to be working as intended. In order to achieve maximum economy of force, operations in a given area/military district will be reinforced by whatever reinforcements can be spared from others. Their troops have been training accordingly, with each military district supposed to hold some in reserve for such an eventuality. The detachment of troops from the Central military district to the Western certainly shows that their system works.

This is a truly depressing chess game to watch, unfortunately.