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Russian forces have largely stopped deploying as battalion tactical groups because the formations have proved ineffective, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.<\/p>\n
In its latest intelligence update on Tuesday, the ministry said that while \u201cthe BTG concept has played a major part in Russian military doctrine for the last ten years\u201d it has proven unsuccessful in the kind of high-intensity fighting seen in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
A battalion tactical group (BTG) is a temporary formation bringing together troops and equipment from different units to complete particular operational objectives.<\/p>\n
The Russian army is believed to have deployed about 115 battalion tactical groups to Ukraine, with each comprising hundreds of troops supported by tanks and artillery.<\/p>\n
According to the MoD, the formations are \u201cintegrated with a full range of supporting sub-units, including armour, reconnaissance and (in a departure from usual Western practice) artillery\u201d.
\nBut several weaknesses in the concept have been revealed during the \u201chigh intensity, large-scale combat\u201d of the war in Ukraine, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
They criticised Russia\u2019s distribution of its artillery, saying a lack of concentrated firepower has become a hindrance to the army.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecentralised distribution of artillery has not allowed Russia to fully leverage its advantage in numbers of guns; and few BTG commanders have been empowered to flexibly exploit opportunities in the way the BTG model was designed to promote,\u201d the MoD said.<\/p>\n
The MoD also singled out the \u201crelatively small allocation of combat infantry\u201d in the system, which \u201chas often proved insufficient”.<\/p>\n
The tactical units have been described as \u201cone of the most important determinants of victory\u201d by experts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly these units, in cooperation with other branches of arms and other military services, can perform the full spectrum of defensive and offensive tasks,\u201d the Royal United Services Institute said.
\nUkrainian forces have continued to make slow advances on the battlefield in the eastern Luhansk region, pushing toward Russian defense lines set up between two key cities, Governor Serhiy Haidai said.<\/p>\n
But the onset of winter was compounding a \u201cdifficult\u201d military situation, he added.<\/p>\n
The prospect of any peace remains remote. The Kremlin reaffirmed on Tuesday that negotiations could only be possible if Ukraine meets Russian demands. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that \u201cit’s impossible to hold any talks now because the Ukrainian side strongly rejects them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that \u201cpolitical will and readiness to discuss the Russian demands\u201d are needed to conduct negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia has demanded that Ukraine recognise Crimea as part of Russia and acknowledge other Russian gains. It also has repeated its earlier demands for \u201cdemilitarisation\u201d and \u201cdenazification,\u201d albeit with less vigour than in the past.<\/p>\n
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Russian forces have largely stopped deploying as battalion tactical groups because the formations have proved ineffective, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. In its latest intelligence update on Tuesday, the ministry said that while \u201cthe BTG concept has played a major part in Russian military doctrine for the last ten years\u201d it has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183518,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183516\/revisions\/183518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}