Being the Strongest: Sudden Praise of Russian Army by French General
© AP Photo / Mindaugas Kulbis
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If you need to comprehend the real meaning of the recent rather feeble ultimatum of Donald Trump to Russia, ordering us to end the Ukrainian war in 50 days, you may like to look at the words of a French general, praising the Russian army.
At least the unanimous verdict of Russian commentators is: Trump admits that there is not a single chance that Ukraine may win.
Why so? General Thierry Burkhard, Chief of the General Staff of the French Armed Forces, says that Russia goes on investing in its armed forces so much, that the West cannot even imagine it. Burkhard does not see anything that is lacking in the modern army in Russia, the nation that “owns a full-scale military model up to the tips of its fingernails”.
You may think it’s a sensation, and that’s so only since it’s definitely not what the wider public all over the world reads or hears about the state of the Russian army. What the politicians say on that matter is definitely not what you might hear from the military experts of the same nations. You may call in an artificial information bubble, or worse.
But the experts are very much around, and they keep track of all the things said on the relevant matters. Colonel Victor Baranets is currently the columnist of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in Moscow, and he does not care about empty political statements. Instead, he quietly collects (and regularly publishes) quotations from his military colleagues, notably from the West.
That’s how we know that those who commend the Russian army also include General John Murray, head of US Army Futures Command. He notes the obvious – that Russia’s newest weapon systems are way above their analogues in the US. In one case he says, the American experts were impressed by a combination of artillery and drones used to target the strikes. In other cases they noted the surprising range of the new missiles, that can easily destroy the fighter planes far from the frontline.
Then there is one more item in the Baranets dossier, and it’s the words of Valdemar Skshipchak, ex-commander of Poland’s ground forces. He says that Russia owns weapons that cannot be destroyed, they are based on AI, and no modern systems can fight these. Finally, there is Harald Khujat, a four-star General and the ex-Chief of German General Staff. His opinion is, no weapons delivered to Ukraine can prevent Russia from reaching its goals. To add, Donald Trump seems to know it well.
Colonel Baranets adds his own observations that are not about the hardware. He says that the Russian army, after more than three years of action, has become the most skilled armed force in the world. It easily withstands the assault of 30 of NATO’s 32 nations that are aiding Ukraine, and in the process has managed to modernize its arsenals, spending annually an equivalent of 126 billion dollars, while the US spends around 1 trillion.
That’s the general picture. And this is why the Moscow stock exchange has gained about 2.5 per cent on hearing Donald Trump’s so-called ultimatum on the mentioned 50 days to end the hostilities. “Theatrics” was the word, most often used in Russia to describe the meaning of that American threat.
There is nothing new in stern political statements used to obscure the impasse of American or European strategy. And that’s one of the valuable lessons of the current global crisis, that is, people spend an inordinate effort to keep up appearances. We are talking about a desperate attempt of the West to pretend it’s still all-powerful, economically or militarily.
But then there is another obvious lesson of the ongoing crisis. It sounds like, a war is becoming an alarmingly frequent way to solve problems, but it does not mean that all is fair in love and war. The methods of conducting operations may seem to be of no one’s concern today, but still some nations think about the future, when questions may be asked and verdicts may be passed. Targeting civilians may seem to be almost normal in modern wars, but, somehow, Russia does not do it, just like I haven’t heard of Indian army attacking civilians in the recent 3-day operation.
It’s absolutely shocking when the Western military brass admits quietly Russian army’s excellence. You still do not hear such words beyond the professional circles. But, wait. Imagine what will happen, when the same or other people start admitting that Russia has developed and perfected military tactics, that leaves civilians relatively unharmed and, also, keeps own losses to the minimum. We are talking about a huge precedent, in fact a military revolution, that will be felt in the future years, if not decades.
Look at what is not there. There were only feeble and clumsy attempts to accuse Russia of “atrocities” and “brutality”, and that was mostly in 2022. That music came to a complete stop after Izrael’s destruction in the Middle East.
What we see now in Ukraine is precision strikes at Ukrainian military targets, even though they are been hidden in places like former kindergartens. We see full access of the Russian side to hi-class intelligence, coming from Ukrainians as well as from drones, and micro-surgical strikes disabling weapon stockpiles and training grounds.
And, yes, that’s what it means having the most skilled army in the world. Not being brutal is a skill, too.
We also see a whole new network of military medicine, created in the course of these three years. A wounded soldier in Russia has dozens of times more chances of survival, than a Ukrainian or any other soldier in any other war in the world. I have talked to a couple of Moscow doctors, drafted to hospitals near the frontline in the former East of Ukraine. At first they were complaining that these territories did not even have decent pharmacies nearby. Today they have everything they need and complain about too many Ukrainian soldiers with numerous chronic diseases flooding their hospitals, some of them surrendering exactly with that idea in mind. All in all, Russia has developed a good know-how of caring for own and not only own troops on the battlefield.
There is also a lot of know-how on what to do in a territory, devastated before being surrendered to the Russian troops. It has been noted that Ukrainian strikes are almost exclusively targeting civilians, and that included the territories that have only recently been East Ukrainian, and therefore were meant for scorched earth tactics.
Now the Russian auxiliary forces know quite well how to aid the locals to return to normal life, how to help the children and temporary put them into shelters until the parents are found, how to restore quickly all the basic infrastructure ruined by Ukrainian retreating troops.
What we see now is the few admissions of superiority of Russian troops and hardware. It will be fun to see, later on, similar admissions of superiority of Russia in making wars - when these cannot be avoided - exemplary in decency.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
