Decisions that will change situation at front

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Many of our cities are under attack, there are street battles, and the situation is very acute. So, what can be done today quickly, with minimal resources, without spending any money, additional people, or training someone - right away, on the spot.

The first is the problem of leadership.

That is, the problem of appointing competent, adequate command personnel at all levels.

The second is the problem of organization.

The organization of troops ensures controllability and combat capability. The way the troops are organized also has a key impact on the conduct of hostilities.

The third is management.

That is, only management ensures focus and quality of task performance.

The fourth is planning.

What ensures the prioritization of actions, how we prepare for certain actions that will take place in the future. How consistently we implement plans to defeat the enemy in order to change the situation in our favor in the future.

And the fifth thing our commanders talk about is utilization.

That is, how the troops fight, how effectively, what losses the enemy suffers, what losses we suffer, how carefully we spend our resources, first of all, people, ammunition, equipment, weapons.

What can be done immediately to quickly achieve the desired result for all of us in these five areas?

Leadership

1. The most competent and best commanders should have the most resources, the most people, and the most responsibility at the front.

How can this be realized?

To improve the organization's management at the tactical level, the best brigades and best battalions should include other units that do not have the same combat capability and manageability.

After all, efficiency and results depend on leaders. Therefore, if there is an effective brigade that stops the Russian offensive, that holds the defence, that inflicts losses on the enemy much higher than we inflict, then it is necessary to include other brigades that have certain problems.

For example, one brigade has equipment but poorly organised intelligence, command and control, not enough officers or sergeants, and lacks proper organisation of combat work and logistics. And a neighbouring brigade, very often, has all this - and it can share it and strengthen the combat capability of another. But for this to happen, this neighbouring brigade must provide leadership at all levels: that is, the commander must be given the authority to tranfer command personnel from one unit to another in order to implement his vision of leadership: to promote competent personnel, to dismiss incompetent personnel, to move people to positions where they can be most effective.

And they have to hold their line, but the division commander is responsible for this line, then the battalion commanders who perform better become brigadiers, and the brigadiers become division commanders.

In this way, we ensure that the main problem - inefficient management organisation - is solved.

Because of ineffective leadership at the tactical level, fighters and commanders of well-organised units, units and formations complain most about those who cannot perform tasks at this level. After all, ineffective leadership causes the flanks of even combat-capable units to collapse.

2. Define clear and uniform criteria for evaluating combat performance.

Each commander should not be evaluated based on the subjective vision of the military command. After all, we are fighting a war in the twentieth century, and the determining factor in evaluating a commander cannot be solely who served with him, how he reports, how he writes a report, and whether this or that general who visited him a couple of times at the main command post likes him. In the twentieth century, there should be uniform criteria for evaluating combat performance for all commanders, each brigade, battalion, which the higher command, including the Supreme Commander's Staff, the command of the OTG, the OSGT, corps, and divisions, can see.

What are these criteria?

• the number of enemies eliminated: personnel, military equipment, important engineering structures - recorded on video

All combat work must be recorded, calculated and recorded on video. Of course, the enemy has losses that we did not capture on video, but we need an objective account based on objectively measured data - this is the main thing

• our losses, i.e., accounting for how many of our fighters were killed, wounded, transferred to the category of irrecoverable losses, or captured during the elimination of the enemy in this period of time.

It is necessary to control this especially, because the loss of soldiers who have been captured is always associated with a loss of manageability. It is also necessary to analyze the number of people who went AWOL, which is also an indicator of leadership and organization.

• It is necessary to analyze the consumption of ammunition load in fact, to solve all these problems, and the area of responsibility, how much a particular military unit controls.
• It is necessary to estimate how many people a military unit has received over a certain period.

That is, if we have these criteria: 1) the number of targets destroyed, 2) our losses, including AWOL, dead, wounded, 3) the consumption of ammunition load, 4) how many people were wounded, 5) an understanding of the area of responsibility within which the task is being solved, - based on these factors, we can assess the competence and effectiveness of combat leaders.

As a result, the situation with personnel appointments will change radically, and the assessment of combat operations will change - there will be a completely different analysis.

3. It is necessary to stop appointing commanders who do not have combat experience in managing companies, battalions, and brigades

The Armed Forces of Ukraine often appoint young commanders who have not had time to gain proper, long-term experience in managing a company, battalion, or headquarters. But they are immediately appointed as brigade commanders. And then they learn on what? On the use of these brigades.

Moreover, this continues at the highest level. There is a well-known situation when Oleksandr Syrskyi appointed Colonel Ledovyi, a man who has no experience of commanding in combat conditions, even in the ATO, as commander of the Luhansk OTG. The colonel serves in Kyiv, at the headquarters, travels somewhere with commissions, holds meetings - he is an administrative worker. Then Syrskyi dismissed him. And who counted the losses the troops suffered because of the incompetent management of this so-called commander? Who is responsible for this? Well, certainly not Syrskyi. Those infantrymen, those brigade battalion commanders who executed Ledovyi's orders are responsible.

4. Stop the personnel chaos. Due to the lack of uniform criteria for assessing the effectiveness of the troops' combat capability, we have subjective personnel movements. A lot of random people are appointed and competent people are dismissed.

The most obvious example: when two brigade commanders of the 24th Mechanized Brigade were dismissed in two months in a row. It is our own command that is harming the management of combat operations. For some reason, our generals are not replaced so quickly. They sit in their positions, hang up orders and lead. And they think it is possible to change brigade commanders and battalion commanders like gloves.

5. Leadership in the use of high-tech and precision weapons.

We need to change the organization of troops so that the use of drones, electronic warfare, ELINT, radar stations is managed and coordinated by leaders, commanders of military units and formations specializing in the use of precision weapons.

There must be UAV units that operate along the frontline for operational purposes, and there must be those that are assigned to their own line. And there they work along with all firearms, with all samples of high-tech weapons, and they are used according to a single plan, create a single system of situational business and destruction.

Just as ground forces need leadership on the ground, high-tech and precision weapons need professional leaders, not just a commander who was appointed from somewhere: yesterday he commanded an infantry battalion, tomorrow he will command an electronic warfare unit without experience. We need competence that creates leadership, that is, a person who can administer, manage, and use high-tech weapons that change every day. This requires technical knowledge, motivation, and an intellectual level. This is not taught in military academies. There are high-tech weapons, they are new, they change every month. And, of course, to use it, we need leaders. And we don't have such leadership, because in our army, instead of creating logic, tactics, application, and organization of high-tech units, everything is scattered. Often, our own electronic warfare shoots down our own drones, intelligence does not interact, there is no interaction with the target, there are all-arms forces, means, there is a constant struggle, competition that is not needed at all. What is needed is planning. And it can only be ensured by appointing leaders who give the best results in destroying and observing, detecting and destroying the enemy. Such professionals should be given the largest area of responsibility, the largest number of people and military equipment, and they should be demanded. Then there will be order in this area.

ORGANISATION

1. The current command and control system and the current organization system.

At the front, operational commands are responsible for the creation of troops and manning, while operational and tactical departments are responsible for the use of troops, but they work without communication with each other.

Operational and tactical departments are temporary command and control bodies that do not have their own stable force composition. They are not responsible for people, for equipment, they are responsible for a line on the map that they are assigned to administer. And they are given a force composition that is constantly being changed and replaced by someone else, troops are taken away, transferred, moved. It is impossible to fight like that.

And what about the enemy? The Russian command has a stable force composition that have been fighting in their areas since the beginning of the war. They operate in organized structures, there are no temporary, operational-tactical groups. Divisions are fighting there at the operational level, and army corps at the strategic level. And this scheme works not only for the Russians. This is a common organization all over the world during mass wars, for mobilized armies. Formations of both the tactical level and the operational and strategic levels fight.

How are the armed forces of France, the United States, Germany, and Poland organized? They have divisions and army corps everywhere. How are we different? All NATO countries with large armies have divisions and corps. This is an obvious logic. This was the case in all world wars. Only Ukraine does not do this. And we have no cohesion. That is, our responsibility for people and for the result at the front is scattered. It's a manual control mode.

Such an organization is needed. The OTG can be retained, but it can be subordinated as a corps, and it will be, in fact, a corps. What is a corps? Just like a division has its own force composition, a brigade has its own force composition. And brigades can be deployed in a division, so they will hold a large front. Similarly, corps should be united by divisions and brigades. A stable set. The corps commander, the commander of the Joint Task Force, must be responsible not just for a line on the map, for his troops, for his men. And each corps, each corps' OTG, must also be attached to a specific operational command, which this corps' OTG provides and organizes its work. People, equipment, training. There must be a single link and one responsibility: between all command levels, from the soldier at the front to the last general. A single system of responsibility. Which does not exist now. The operational command gives the brigade to the operational command. The OTG uses it somehow, literate or illiterate. Then the brigade is taken away and transferred to another OTG. It is somehow used there temporarily. The commanders of the OTGs are constantly changing, because the OTG could not hold that lane, so they took that lane off too. This is an absolutely absurd way.

We are illiterately organized, we are worse organized than our enemy, the Russian army, at the operational and strategic level. And this is not a subjective vision - it is written in any textbook on military science in general, and every cadet in a military academy or school knows this. But we have not done this.

And such reorganization of the OTGs into corps, providing them with a stable set of troops can be done very quickly. And linking the corps to the operational command can be done very quickly.

2. Stop forming newly created brigades, battalions.

In the army, I communicate with thousands of people, with a large number of brigade commanders, including those of newly created brigades. I have not heard from a single person that this is adequate and that it should be done. No one understands. Or our military command - Oleksandr Syrskyi, Army Commander Pavliuk - can explain their logic, at least not publicly. Why are you forming 140th, 150th, and now 160th brigades? Why are you doing this? It's bikeshedding.

Replenishment is not given to the most combat-ready brigades, where there is leadership, organization, management, where there are competent, trained, educated, war-hardened personnel at various levels. New formations will be created. For what purpose? I have heard from some commanders that this is only some kind of corruption scheme. But there is no logic in this. This is a completely wrong and harmful decision to form brigades that completely fail in real life at the front. All the military know this. And this decision must be canceled immediately. And all these newly created structures without staffing support are not needed.

People, commanders, officers, equipment - all this should be transferred to our combat-ready brigades. Instead, we simply have no replenishment, combat-capable brigades are being destroyed, and some remnants of personnel are being transferred to newly formed brigades, killing combat capability in both. This is irresponsible spending of public funds. It is an irresponsible waste of lives, and most importantly, a waste of lives when these newly formed brigades and battalions are then sent into combat. The generals who are planning this have not studied this for some reason. It is strange. And I would like to advise them that if you are sending these newly formed brigades into battle to train them, maybe you should go into a wood line yourself at least once during the war, and hold them on empty land. Our leaders do not come to battalion command and observation post, usually even brigade command posts, and everything is fine according to their reports.

3. Training of people.

A very critical problem is that the army needs constant training, replenishment, basic training, moving people for training, retraining. And the big problem is that, especially with the main people who suffer the most losses in the war, it is the infantry.

Now there is one experimental regiment in Desna. It can be said that it was created by instructors who trained and trained the Azov and all the units that have already been created from it. And this is a good example. But this is an example of a training unit created by instructors for a specific combat unit.

We need basic training for infantrymen and sergeants to be conducted in combat brigades themselves. Why do we need to maintain instructors who do not have modern warfare experience? A brigade that trains infantrymen for itself has the most up-to-date experience and the greatest motivation to train them. And the instructors there will be combat soldiers, sergeants who have been and are being withdrawn from the frontline, from the first line, for some time to rest. And then, after rest, they work as instructors. That is, we retain personnel, pass on experience, give people a chance to rest and recover. And we have a normal rotation, normal interaction in the units. And training units should be set up in every brigade. They are created where there is an adequate organisation of brigade management. And, of course, they just need to be given more time to train. The right to conduct a basic training course themselves, so that soldiers are not kidnapped from the training centre. And this is a massive story now. When people come with an attitude from a combat unit that says, 'Come to us. And then in the training centre, the person is taken to another unit. Therefore, infantrymen, sergeants for infantry, should be trained by combat brigades and divisions themselves.

Both in the First and Second World Wars, during mass mobilization, infantry training units in America, Germany, the USSR, and Britain were created within infantry divisions. These were training or reserve battalions. In the German army, this was a broad concept, a reserve battalion that took care of all administrative issues for those soldiers who were withdrawn for leave, rotation, injury, or training, or new recruits. That is, it was a structure that provided full training and transfer of personnel to combat units in each division. It was in every infantry division during the Second World War. Only the Ukrainian army continues to create training centers for infantry during mass mobilization.

I would like to remind you that separate training centers for infantry were created in the USSR during the military reform of the 1970s. Before the 1970s, the USSR also had its own training battalions in each division. This was the experience of the Second World War. And it was only later, when it was necessary to create more general positions, that they decided to create separate training centers for infantrymen.

4. The system of applying people

What's happening now is an example of absolutely inadequate management of people. Rotations, the number of rotations, the length of rotations. We do not have enough infantry. In combat-capable units, infantry are protected, where commanders ask them to enter positions, ask them to hold out, and support their request by all means. But there are many examples of infantry being used just for one time. Because people are sent to a position there, they stay there for 30 days, 60 days, and in one case, 80 days. What is a person after 30 days on the position, after 60 days on the position, if he does not receive for this, for this feat, for which he should be awarded orders and a long vacation, if he does not receive full recovery, recognition of his merits? If this is not the case, then this person goes AWOL. They organize this vacation for themselves. After all, people have to get a full recovery. That is, once they have been on the position, they should be able to fully recover. After that, the person has the opportunity to undergo additional training in the rear, to restore their skills, physical health, and psychological health.

If you use infantry once and then send them somewhere else again, it's not even psychological, it's physical health that ends up living in the ground for a long time during intense combat operations. So this also requires planning. And you need to calculate the forces. You can't stretch troops and infantry, use troops in one thin line.

5. Organisation of high-tech weapons.

It is necessary to create a drone front, a sensor front, an EW front, a radar front, radar stations, destruction systems, artillery - everything that provides us with fast, high-precision surveillance, detection and destruction must work in one system.

And we have such a system - Delta - but it is still not used by the highest military command, which continues its absurd fight against Delta. So, the core of the organization of new troops should be the command and control system.

Now we have the Delta system, a decision support system, and the Kropyva system, a system that ensures the defeat of the enemy and situational unity at the tactical level. Of course, the army should be based on the core of electronic control and decision support systems. The army should be built around this. And it is by this criterion that their ability to manage the organization of troops should be assessed in the first place.

We need to organize a drone front and a sensor front. Do we have it? If you look at the Internet and the channels of our best units, yes, we do. Where the frontline is held, it is not held by the number of people with machine guns - it is held by drones, sensors, timely reconnaissance of situational unity and damage by various types of weapons. But where the map shows the enemy's advance, these are precisely the areas where there is no such sensor front, no drone front, where the main means of obtaining information about the enemy's offensive is not a drone, but a walkie-talkie message saying "we are being stormed" or "we are being shelled." From the infantry, from the front line of some kind of observation post, barely dug with a shovel, just now. This is the problem at the front. The front is not being built.

Our top leadership, the command, always asks where the observation post is, where the people are sitting, show them. They never ask how you organize the work of drones. Do you control each area, each direction with drones? Do you monitor your position with a drone? Do you have drones and operators to see the positions in front of you, day and night? Do you have strike UAV crews alternating between drops, FPV drones, and barrage munitions? This is not interesting, because the top leadership are people who have not encountered high-tech weapons in their academies, during most of their service.

And there is a solution. We have a sufficient number of commanders and units engaged in organizing the destruction at the level of missile and artillery troops, at the level of UAV units, at the level of electronic intelligence and radar units. We have a sufficient number of commanders who can build and organize this front of drones and sensors properly. Each in their area of responsibility and systematically, clearly, so that the entire front becomes a front of drones and sensors. So that there are no sudden captures by some sudden assault group. Each of our positions should be covered by its own drone unit, its own group of UAV operators. Each section of the frontline should have its own electronic warfare, ELINT, and radar locators to shoot down Russian UAVs and our Mavics with drops. To cover artillery from Russian wings and Russian attack UAVs. There are people who can build this. And we need such an organization. It can be done quickly. We have the personnel, commanders, and units.

6. Stop the destruction of combat support units.

When there is a shortage of infantry, the General Staff decides to take people from wherever they can. People are taken who provide repair of military equipment, logistics, transportation, and ammunition handling. Now a significant number of doctors are being taken to the front. This is also not always done adequately. Why do we need so many infantry if there is no quality use for them?

In modern warfare, if we want to defeat Russia, we can only win with technology. We do not have more people than Russia or North Korea. The only thing we can have more of is shells and drones. So we have to realize shells and drones on the battlefield, not the number of people in the infantry. If we reduce the number of support units, we do not help the infantryman. We go for a few days or weeks to make a change, and then what awaits us? Failure. Because there will be no timely transportation, no quality supply, no quality restoration, no quality repair. How can you take away, for example, Humvees from repair, armored vehicles, artillery pieces, repairmen, as the General Staff has done now? You have to fight with equipment, but you want to fight with people with assault rifles, unique specialists who can be trained to repair military equipment, especially Western equipment. You can't just pick them up off the street. They have to be trained for years. These are people who came to these repair units not by chance, but because they have already become specialists

This means that, unfortunately, the leaders who make such decisions simply do not understand what modern technical warfare is. These are people who just want to draw some fake numbers today, that they have found people somewhere, sent them somewhere, and they don't care about the outcome of the war. They are only interested in reporting, a report and a chair.  

7. Problem of financial planning and spending.

Our army needs to be quickly reinforced with auditors who will calculate the cost of decisions of the military command. Just calculate how much money we spend on the fact that some units are constantly being transferred back and forth, on loading and unloading, on salaries, and on people doing rigging activities instead of combat training.

How much money do we spend on maintaining units that are understaffed? We have brigades, and not just one, that are fighting in separate battalion tactical groups and separate company tactical groups. And all the personnel who are not part of this BTG or CTG can sit for six months, a year in a permanent duty station. Why do we maintain all this? No one is counting. A brigade may not be engaged in combat operations, the whole brigade or some other military unit. We have a lot of them. What is their role? Why do we spend money on it? Where are these resources spent? No one keeps track.

If we want to improve the quality of military organization, we need auditors, an adequate audit service must work. And we really need to hire auditors from the civilian service who will simply start counting. There is no need to punish anyone. Just show us the figures we use to supply the troops with drones, for example, ammunition. And what we spend on all sorts of completely inadequate administrative decisions.

And of these billions, we could save a huge amount and strengthen the combat capability of the army.

Management

1. To stop the interference of top-level strategic-operational leadership in the management of platoons, companies and battalions at the tactical level.

It has just become proverbial: Syrskyi calls a battalion and tells them to do something. There is no such thing in any NATO army.

How can the commander-in-chief or commander of an operational and strategic group of troops command tactical operations? Give instructions to platoons and companies? Our generals simply need to be forbidden to meddle in two levels below them. You have subordinates, you have to manage your subordinates. To make subordinates responsible, you have to create a normal corps and divisional organisation instead of the system of these irresponsible OTGs and OSGs. And give orders to corps and division commanders. They know better than you which platoons are combat-ready, who can be sent where, and they will make a more competent decision without you.

This practice does not exist in any NATO country. If you read American generals Bradley and Pattan, this practice is condemned by all military leaders. A general should lead structural units, not give platoons tasks.

A story from life: One brigade commander, who at the beginning of the war received a call from the commander of the OSGT saying that at eight in the morning the next day your platoon should go there, and your company should go there, and he, as a brigade commander, used foul language against this commander, who did not understand the situation at all, because he was 400 kilometers away from the scene. The commander said that this is my area of responsibility and competence. You should not interfere with my task. I will fulfill it without fail. I am responsible for all tasks in my area of responsibility. But I will command my companies myself. As a result of this, the brigade commander was instantly dismissed. Now he is not appointed anywhere. Although he acted as professionally as possible and showed the incompetent person that he should not interfere and get into areas that are not his responsibility.

We have commanders who defend their boundaries of competence and do not allow interference with the management process, and this should be noted.

2. After-Action Review

There is a standard operating procedure in all NATO armies - after-action review (AAR). We have to analyze our operations. If any of the generals are afraid that this analysis will be taken by the SBI and will condemn them, then go to the Headquarters, go to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, show him this. And tell him, give us an order or a decree that the materials of this After-Action Review cannot in any way serve as materials for a criminal case. This is for official use only.

We are repeating the same stupid mistakes, all the ones we made at the beginning of the war, three years have passed, and the mistakes continue. And these are not the mistakes of soldiers, but of commanders and generals. Because we have no aftermath analysis, no materials for analyzing successful combat operations and mistakes, we cannot train troops on our own practice, on our own combat examples. How can we fight when people just randomly send newly formed, unprepared brigades into battle without any personnel and do not even give them training materials? And they do not learn themselves.

None of our generals, even Syrskyi, knows anything about drone tactics. But he doesn't have to know this, but he should demand that UAV units analyze the results of combat operations and then, based on these analyses of combat operations, give orders to develop combat tactics, organization, use and implement it in certain areas of the front, and scale it up.

Because we do not have an after-action review, we cannot scale our successful experience. And we often have a unit fighting with UAVs, everything is destroyed, and the flank next to it collapses because its neighbor does not know how to do all this, does not know - their people have not received adequate training.

They say that we are moving towards NATO standards, but in reality, the army does not apply any procedures or NATO charters. You don't need money to apply it. However, we have to admit that both the commanders and the General Staff have made mistakes. But this is war, war and leadership. We talked about leadership at all levels. Leadership requires responsibility and honesty. Not only about Syrskyi, but Zaluzhnyi also did not analyze the AAR. There is no responsibility and honesty in this matter and no desire to educate people.

3. Headquarters management model.

We need a management model based on NATO standards. For example, the Charter Brigade, the National Guard, has implemented a management model, and Oleksandr Syrskyi himself sends delegations there to learn from their experience. They have done everything according to the textbook, as it works in NATO. There are battle groups at all levels. There is decentralization of authority and concentration of responsibility. The headquarters is working continuously. All electronic control systems are in place, everything is clearly visible. There is always a person who is responsible for a particular process.

And there is, for example, the K-2 battalion. There, without any textbooks, a battalion commander who had not studied at any military academy organized a system of battalions for himself. His battalion works according to this logic. All officers are involved in combat management. Effective and competent organization of work. Any unit can do this very quickly. We need a proper organization of headquarters work.

There are other examples of military units and brigades that also have competent organized management. But there must be a certain standard. Let's adopt it, and all headquarters will be organized according to this standard, according to the model.

4. Management of high-tech means of reconnaissance of destruction.

Situational awareness, which is all based on technical intelligence means. Our command and control is the control of infantrymen and attack aircraft. There are many brigades and battalions where this works, so the fronts are held. But all of this is ignored at the level of the OTG, the OSGT and the General Staff. We still have problems with the interaction between electronic warfare and drones. They are systemic in nature. So why is it being solved solely on the initiative of specific unit commanders from below? This should be a requirement from above. In order for the commanders of the OTG and the OSGT to adequately manage their high-tech weapons, organization and leadership are needed

5. Resource management.

To wage a long-term war of attrition, you need to manage resources. We need to count what we spend, what resources we have:

- how many people we spend to hold this or that section of the frontline.

- How many shells we spend in this or that area to hit targets.

- How many drones we spend.

All of this must be accounted for, and then we begin to manage resources, which the army does not have now. Resources are allocated, one issues shells, the other issues shells, how it is spent, why a large number of shells are issued in one section of the front, and in the neighboring section, perhaps larger, not as many are issued. What is the logic behind this?

There must be accounting so that all this resource base can be compared and conclusions can be drawn. Responsibility for the line, responsibility for the troops, responsibility for resources: all of this needs to be managed and organised.

COMBAT PLANNING

The enemy follows certain routes. There has never been a time when we did not know that the enemy was going to go somewhere. Our intelligence, thanks to the efforts of our soldiers and our NATO partners, is fighting without the fog of war. This 21st century war is characterized by the fact that there is no fog of war at the operational and strategic level. We know where the enemy is conducting operations, with what forces, where and when they are entering, from the very beginning of the war. Even before the war starts. And, of course, we can predict the enemy's actions in advance and plan our own. That is, we must have a plan for every action of the enemy. And, of course, we need to plan in advance the defense through the use of technological weapons.

High-tech, high-precision weapons dictate their own conditions for use. In order for a drone, a drone front, or a sensor front to deter and destroy Russian infantry, it is necessary to burn out, cut out long-distance plantings, and mine possible passage routes. It is necessary to equip a very advanced system of positions for maneuvering in the defense of infantry, so that people survive, so that they can fight for a long time, so that they do not need to bring in ammunition, water, food on a daily basis, but that these ammunition, water, and food are stored somewhere in advance. To reduce the movement of people, to increase the concealment of our infantry in defense. All this can be done only if you plan it in advance. And, of course, during this planning, it should be plans for the responsibility for your line. It all works together, with leadership, with the management of the organization. We need such planning.

We have great resources that we cannot use. Prime Minister Shmyhal said that we are allocating 23 billion hryvnias for this year to build defense structures, but in Donbas, Kharkiv region, the quality of these structures is not good. First of all, we are not building defense lines. This is not planned at all at the highest level. Plantations, forests can be right in front of positions, in front of heights, sometimes even blocking the shelling, the angle of view. And no one cuts them down or burns them out. These strongholds themselves are built according to the concepts of the beginning of the last world war. Huge trenches not covered by drones, a huge number of positions. Nowadays, they are generally groups of three or four soldiers, because the decentralized offensive of the Russians in small groups requires minimal infantry groups on our part. There is no need to put a platoon of thirty people on a platoon stronghold, to build a bunch of positions. There are no people to control all these positions. We need reliable shelters with very serious protection, made of wood, concrete, which can allow a small group of infantrymen to hide. There should be several such shelters to allow for maneuver in defense, but the position itself should be so camouflaged that it is difficult for the enemy to notice, difficult to hit, and provides for the hidden maneuver of people between different objects. There must be good observation and shooting angles, there must be radio horizons for the use of drones, and the defense must be tied to the heights that such radio horizons create. All this requires planning. And then we will have a defense line that will stop the enemy.

In the meantime, we are digging up individual positions for billions of hryvnias, most of which are not occupied by our troops, but by the enemy during the offensive. Because these positions are inadequate to the conditions, they are not tied to a single plan. There is no plan, because of inadequate organization. By the way, civil-military administrations should also work under the command of corps commanders and commanders of the OTG. To the question of organization. Because so far, our civil-military administrations have been digging on their own, hiring someone, and digging something that does not really meet the vision of the brigade commanders who are fighting and have to fight in these positions.

Similarly, the expenditure of forces, the use of forces, and the restoration of forces should be planned. In other words, we need to plan defense based on the fact that we need a sufficient number of people. You can't plan a defense when you just stretch the troops into one line, and this defense doesn't last very long.

UTILIZATION OF TROOPS

1. Ukrainian troops should move to strategic defence not in words but in deeds.

The Ukrainian army does not conduct strategic defense. In fact, everywhere in the areas where the enemy advances, it is a encounter battle mode. Without any reliance on prepared defense lines. It's shocking when troops are constantly forced to attack positions on the map that they are told are our positions, go there, there's an enemy there, instead of deploying, securing favorable positions and destroying the enemy. There is a encounter battle, an exchange of people, it is impossible to gain a foothold, the infantry quickly runs out, and then they are told to get on the defense, to dig in, but there is no one left to dig in. And one battalion is replaced by another. How can you fight like that? It's a rake run, continuously. The tactics of war have changed now.

We need to oppose the tactics of drones and precision weapons. There is no other way. The number of Koreans and Russians can only compensate for the number of shells and drones. There are more shells and drones than Russians and Koreans. That is why we have to fight with them, and not exchange the number of people with assault rifles. Infantry is a scarce, unique kind of people. There can never be infantry in a massive war with an enemy that outnumbers us six times in terms of the total population and perhaps up to ten times in terms of the army. I mean the number of combat units of the army. It is impossible.

We have to destroy the enemy in large proportions, much more than we have people at the front. This requires a new tactic, a new system of use, specifically high-tech weapons. Not the fronts of observation posts we have now. Why are RF advancing in Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad? Because we have rush fronts there. The enemy enters these fronts of observation posts, and sometimes we see tragic cases of capturing and shooting prisoners. Why does this happen? Because there are no drones there. That's why they come to our positions. There is no planning.

We have a big problem called attached units. How does the Russian command advance? They plan an offensive, move forward, and when they run out of men in a particular brigade, they do not stretch that brigade and do not give it attached units to that brigade. They narrow its front, put another brigade, or another regiment, or an assault battalion next to it, and they continue to move forward. By narrowing the front, the Russian brigade in the offensive constantly rotates its battalions internally, gives them a rest, reorganizes, prepares replenishment, and pushes its area on a narrower front. Our system of employment is different. We have a brigade standing there, stretched out in one echelon, with no other echelon. The enemy starts to put pressure, the brigade throws everyone into battle, it "grinds", and when it is already "grinding down" and cannot hold the front on its own, the front is not narrowed, but units are given to the front.

What is an assigned unit, an attached unit? It is a unit that was pulled out from somewhere and transferred here. It does not know the situation, does not know the terrain. After being transferred, it finds itself in difficult organizational conditions. This unit, the command of the brigade to which it was assigned, also does not know it - its capabilities, its people. And these units are given when the front is already collapsing. Not in advance, but when there is already a hole. And then they try to throw these attached units and the command of the brigade they were given into battle, no matter what. The effectiveness of such firefighting use of attached units, the responsibility for such attached units, in many cases, is absent.

And if there had been planning for such actions, if the Russian tactics of narrowing the front had been countered by the same tactics of our defense, when, before the enemy drove out our units and destroyed their combat capability, the front was narrowed and reinforced with combat-capable battalions or brigades, then there would have been no breakthroughs. The enemy would have suffered huge losses, been destroyed, driven out, and after a while their offensive would have been stopped altogether. Our losses would have been lower overall, and the enemy would have been forced to spend everything and stop because they could no longer advance. The favorable positions we would have gained would have continued to be ours. And if someone had calculated the cost, whether it would be better not when there is a fire and a breakthrough of the front, but to strengthen brigades in advance or narrow the front so that they have a second echelon, so that they can rotate people, not keep them in positions for 30-50 days, or even 20 days, so that these are normal rotation periods, so that people do not get exhausted, then the war will have a different character, then there will be no constant firefighting, and losses will be less.

This is the opinion of the commanders at the front. It is necessary to properly organize troops that can build a defense in two echelons, to have at least some tactical reserve. Without this, it is impossible to withstand this constant pressure.

Leadership, organization, management, planning and use - in all these areas we can make changes quickly, literally very quickly. This can all be done within a month, two months at most. And this will increase the effectiveness of our army by a simple order. We will stop the Russian offensive. We will be able to defeat the Russian strike groups. And these assault groups, we will simply destroy them one by one, week after week, month after month. Russia mobilizes up to 30,000 people a month, drives them into the army, pays them with money, and drives them through prison and the security forces. This is official Russian data. If we kill not based on reports, not based on reports, but on video, if we have video evidence of the killing of 30,000 Russians and the wounding of 30,000 Russians, then the Russian assaults will stop by themselves. They don't have the resources to storm endlessly. They attack, break through the front in small groups. And this is all an organizational management effort. And we have every opportunity to counter Russian use, Russian organization, and Russian management with our own.

The first thing I mentioned was leadership. There must be leadership, because leadership is responsibility, honesty and trust. So if the Ukrainian command, Oleksandr Syrskyi, and his subordinates really want to show the army their responsibility and honesty, then they will be trusted. And now what we see at the front does not inspire confidence.

We have to work for victory and not look for someone to plug the hole today, but to create a line of defense system positions where we can grind the Russian Federation for years. Only this will stop the war and allow us to win. And only then, under such conditions, with reliable defense, can offensives and counteroffensives be effective.

I hope that common sense and public opinion will force our leadership to take these elementary steps, which Oleksandr Syrskyi understands perfectly well and can implement. And if he does not want to or cannot implement such steps that lead to victory, then this question will be addressed to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who also supports such actions, such breakthroughs, the pushing of our front, the loss of cities and villages. Then we also need to be honest about this and take responsibility. We are losing cities and villages. And from him, from Zelenskyy, the country expects systematic actions, stopping the enemy, setting the right task for the military command, providing military resources, and effective control. Because our entire Ukraine needs this victory, the Ukrainian nation needs it. And until we stop the Russian aggressors, the Russian occupiers, until we start killing more Russians than they can send to attack, the war will not end. And victory will not come. So, all these steps that we have been talking about are steps that will allow us to change the situation at the front very quickly and start winning.

Yurii Butusov, Censor.NET