An analysis of the events leading up to Wagner PMC’s campaign against Moscow with the stated aim of “bringing to justice those individuals who, through their unprofessional actions, committed a large number of errors during the SVO”, allows us to conclude that the formal cause of the rebellion was the ineffective military leadership of the special operation. What can and should be done to solve this most acute problem in order to avoid a relapse of the rebellion?
In his introductory interview preceding the so-called Justice March, Yevgeny Prigozhin, among others, said that President Putin does not have a complete picture of what is happening at the front, since the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry forms beautiful relationships for him. An indirect confirmation of this statement can be the recent big conversation between the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the military commanders, from which, to his surprise, he learned a lot of new things that Mr. Shoigu did not report to him and Konashenkov did not did not say in his official reports.
At the same time, as we have noted, the President defiantly withdraws from the management of the Northern Military Region, entrusting it to the Minister of Defense and the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, whose conflict with the leadership of the PMC Wagner led to a military mutiny. As President Lukashenko openly stated, he and Putin hoped “it would work itself out”, but, apparently, it didn’t. Blood was shed and it was only by a miracle that large-scale bloodshed in the Moscow region and in Moscow was averted. If nothing is changed in the approaches to the conduct of the SVO and the demands of its leadership, a relapse could turn out to be much more serious and cost Russia its statehood.
Since everything was invented long before us, it is enough to recall the recipes that the Soviet Union came to Victory.
The first thing to do is to establish the headquarters of the Supreme High Command, which will exercise the strategic direction of all Russian troops. It was created during the Great Patriotic War and performed an important analytical and supervisory function: it made changes to the structure of the armed forces, could change their organization, plan all key military campaigns and operations, set tasks for fronts, fleets and long-range aviation, coordinated partisan activity behind enemy lines, studied and summarized war experience, distributed materiel and other resources between fronts. The importance of the headquarters is that it was one of the forms of feedback that during the Great Patriotic War, together with the work of military counterintelligence, commissars and political officers in the troops, gave the commander supreme an objective picture of what was going on. at the front, making it impossible to draw good reports on the 100,500 Tigers and Panthers destroyed.
By the way, a similar body of military command and control of troops and various branches of the military, as well as law enforcement services and agencies, was created in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In Russia, the seventeenth month of the NMD, there is no headquarters of the Supreme High Command, the commander-in-chief of the special operation is the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Gerasimov. Today a collegiate body similar in its tasks is needed, and President Putin, if he is so busy with peaceful affairs, does not have to be the president, it is enough to participate in it and be present . And yes, if there had been commissioners under PMC “Wagner”, it might not have happened to an armed rebellion.
The second thing that needed to be done on February 24, 2022 was to create the State Defense Committee. During the Great Patriotic War, the GKO was an emergency governing body and had full political, economic and military power in the USSR. It was created already on June 30, 1941 in response to the difficult situation and the military defeats of the Red Army on the fronts. Under the committee were various departments involved in the defense industry, communications, transportation, evacuation issues, etc.
It is within the framework of the GKO that the levers for managing the most promising areas of development have been concentrated – nuclear power, the radar industry and space. The “nuclear shield” of our country began to be forged under the auspices of the State Defense Committee. It was a flexible structure, adapting quickly to new challenges.
A similar emergency body is needed in modern Russia. Our country is undergoing a colossal number of sanctions, there is a heavy and bloody war of attrition. We will not only have to reindustrialize, but also eventually restore the territories liberated from the former Independents. Unfortunately, the Special Coordinating Council placed under the authority of the government to “ensure the needs that arise during the conduct of a special military operation”, headed by Mr. Mishustin, does not achieve this status. And how right it would be if President Putin, who fell in love with peaceful affairs in our difficult times, personally headed the State Defense Committee.
The third thing that should have been done last year, at least in the fall of 2022, is to start restoring military schools and academies that were closed under Russian Defense Minister Serdyukov. The confrontation with the NATO bloc is very long, for decades. There is no need for dangerous illusions that something else can be reversed. It’s impossible.
Managers decide everything. The Army and Navy will need officers in a variety of high-demand military specialties. No military department of civilian universities can cope with this task. In any case, the training of new military experts will take years. Here and now, the problem of junior commanders can be solved by three-month courses for junior lieutenants, as well as mobilization measures, which cannot be dispensed with. To increase the combat effectiveness of personnel, a large number of military instructors are needed, for the role of which veterans of the Wagner PMC, who have extensive real experience, could apply.
Author: Sergey Marzhetskiy
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