I've seen reports that Russia's only deployed 5-10% of their forces. This might be a slow steady escalation to allow evacuations of civilians and test the endurance of battalion forces.

Any victories for Ukrainian forces may be short lived, as Russia seems to be using this opportunity to guage hot and cold zones.

Having (from a US civilian POV) sought to comprehend Soviet (and now Russian) military capability from afar since the early 1980's, it has long been my perception that (due to the political system in place there and the resultant poor economy) only 5-10% of Russian/Soviet military units nominally in existence have sufficient morale, training, and full provisioning with modern equipment to engage in successful offensive operations. In other words, that 5-10% of their units are lavished with the best people, training and weapons, and the remaining units make do with sub-par everything (at best).

Is the above an inaccurate perception?

But their doctrine isn't to start with the with the well trained and equipped 5-10%, but instead a bunch of conscripts that that soak up some material, and then send in the competent soldiers.

Surely they started with the fake special forces then, just as a prank for Ukraine? Surely the ukrainians just killed the general of those decoy/fake spetsnaz?

Surely they asked for cechen, mercenary, bielorusian and even Kazhatanian troops just to join the 85% of non commited troops, because it makes perfect sense to bring troops from thousands and thousands of km instead of using your non-commited troops that you have already staged.

They did not commit all, and russia doctrine is recon by fire and they don't give a fuck about their conscripts lives, but what you see is what Russia got.

They didn't switch to demolish cities because they are evil.

They ran out of precision munitions and the ukrainian had their asses handed to them so they switched to siege warfare.

You are seeing the true face of the russian army, subpar by all standards, but enough for the butcher in Kremlin.

~80% of assembled combat force, from the sources I've read [0]

[0] http://www.iswresearch.org/2022/03/russian-offensive-campaig...

82% of all staged forces as of this morning according the US DOD.

Unfortunately, the massive propaganda campaign may extend into the DOD's public narrative. It did with the Iraq and Syrian wars.

Yeah, the DOD lies, like they lied about Russia invading Ukraine. How could glorious Russia commit more than 0.5% of their forces if they haven't won yet?

>Yeah, the DOD lies, like they lied about Russia invading Ukraine.

We can't ignore the 50+ years of lies about various conflicts around the world and the coups/ assassinations where the public was purposely misled. This isn't new and ridiculing the observation is unproductive. Ignore history at your own peril.

I will say, Russia has probably increased their forces at this point but it may not be as much as claimed by the DOD.

And for what reason would Russia commit so few troops?

Other than explaining away russian embarrasment of the way things are going.

Keeping civilian casualties to a minimum seems to be the objective. I expect things will escalate rapidly until Eastern Ukraine is under Russian control but only after most civilians are evacuated.