According to analysts, the Russian occupying forces are trying to compensate for the strikes of Ukrainian drones in order to get out of the positional war.
Why does the Russian army want to get out of the positional war?
Russian military bloggers claim that the Russian military is trying to compensate for Ukrainian drone strikes and in the rear at the level necessary to get out of a positional war.
A Russian military blogger said on January 23 that Russian forces need to figure out how to get out of a positional war but that Russian troops cannot concentrate in sufficient numbers to break through Ukrainian lines, as Ukrainian troops are striking all concentrations larger than a battalion.
He claimed that Ukrainian troops were striking Russian forces even in the near rear.
The military blogger also reported that Ukrainian forces are targeting small Russian groups of one or two infantry companies and ten armoured vehicles with the help of drones, preventing Russian forces from even reaching Ukrainian forward defence lines.
The Russians complained that the only solution of the Russian troops so far was the attack of 10-20 driven infantrymen with armoured vehicles, which supported them at an "extreme" distance behind the infantry.
A Kremlin-linked military blogger agreed with the first blogger, arguing that Ukrainian technological advances have made it difficult for Russian forces to concentrate multiple divisions in a single geographic area without Ukrainian forces detecting the concentration of those forces.
The military blogger emphasized that Russian troops need both to gain an indirect fire advantage over Ukrainian forces and modernize Russian command and control to get out of a positional war. He stressed that Russian front-line troops must be able to communicate quickly to minimize the time between target detection and engagement and that this change will only happen if significant changes are made to C2 processes.
Ukraine's attacks may force Russia to change the location of air defence forces.
According to representatives of the American Institute for the Study of War, strikes by Ukrainian forces in the Leningrad region may force the Russians to redeploy short-range air defence systems along the expected flight routes of Ukrainian drones to protect potential targets of strategic importance.
ISW believes that Russian forces using short-range air defense systems such as Pantsir may not be able to engage all important potential targets in the Leningrad region without bringing additional systems to the area, and continued Ukrainian strikes deep in Russia's rear can increase the pressure on Russian air defense as a whole.
As already mentioned earlier, on the night of January 21, the sea terminal in the Russian city of Ust-Luga, Leningrad Oblast, was attacked by drones.
Later, it became known that this was a special Ukraine Security Service operation.
