Introduction

A ‘Black Day’ in European military culture is historically associated with a day on which the Army suffers its worse number of casualties. In the war so far, public information at the time of this analysis has identified that Russian military losses have been substantial.  Substantial losses during an invasion are to be expected: defenders classically have the advantage of setting up continuous killing grounds that an advancing force is compelled to cross. The other military problem faced by an invader: the deeper they penetrate an opponent’s territory, the more their security from attack dramatically decreases. The defender is forced to shift from maintaining a border to two modes of operations:

• Blunting Action: The advance column is road-blocked. This can be maintained as a static defence of a large terrain obstacle such as a city or built-up area. It can also be a fighting withdrawal, where bridges and lines of transport are destroyed, or torn up to slow the enemy’s advance.
• Interposing Tactics: This is where the defending force begins to transform into increasingly smaller units and individuals and combine with local civil-militia resistance fighters. The new forces saturate through the enemy-occupied area, attacking and destroying isolated soldiers, equipment, or supply columns.
• Historically, War in Europe has Specific Tactics: In the current Russo-Ukrainian Conflict, the evacuation of large numbers of women, children, and family to the Polish border, while persons (male and female) stay behind to fight if capable (or more fighting forces coming from outside Ukraine) has (historically speaking) been a traditional way of war in Europe. It largely points to a strategy where all-out attacks (suicide where necessary) are made feasible to kill or destroy as many Russian soldiers and vehicles as possible; and (as rapidly as possible) creating a Black Day scenario for the Russian military. The removal of civilian soft targets (that would be susceptible to Russian reprisals and punishments) grants Ukrainian forces greater latitude of action against the Russians.

The Asymmetric Relationship Between the Russian Invasion and Ukrainian Defence

A largely asymmetric relationship exists between the Russian invasion strategy and the Ukrainian defence. This can be characterised as Russian reliance on battalions of armoured vehicles moving along linear routes towards major targets i.e., the main Ukrainian cities. The advance is precipitated by heavy air bombardment, and rocket assaults on the target destinations and other locations identified as civil or military critical infrastructure.

Airborne seizures by Russian special forces have been used to secure crucial strategic transport hubs well ahead of the main column to create tactical-strategic bridgeheads. Asymmetrically, the Ukrainians operate as small teams across the landscape, with potentially better situational awareness of Russian vehicle formations, their strength, locations, and direction of movement.

Likely having access to Western satellite-based intelligence (and access to the growing civilian fleet of global survey-surveillance satellites) allows the Ukrainians to stalk, track, target, and attack with a variety of human portable anti-vehicle weaponry, including missiles and mines. The ability of Russian forces to detect and engage their opponents is potentially much harder.

Crucially, the major asymmetric difference between the Russians and Ukrainians is how Human losses are seen rhetorically. Almost universally, Ukrainian human civil and military losses have been seen as ‘heroes’, whereas mounting Russian losses have not been reported, apart from the information given by various Ukrainian governmental sources.  While these figures are naturally viewed with some scepticism, it is more than likely these are close to correct and reveal a worsening political-strategic problem for the Russian government. In the face of growing public opposition domestically and abroad, Russian losses are more ‘body bags’ coming home from an unjustified and illegal war.

Significantly, current Russian losses after only five days of conflict (beginning on 24 February 2022), are fast reaching the level of loss experienced in the 1979-1988 Soviet-Afghan War.

A day of extremely high losses that the Russian military and government are unable to hide, will lead to a Black Day scenario where the army suffers a moral crushing defeat. This defeat will garner blanket coverage in Russia and abroad through social media. This could lead to widespread dissent and open rebellion against the war. Ironically, on the Ukrainian side, the opposite effect of terrible losses may be a renewed national effort by a nation-at-arms, driven to evict the invader, no matter what the cost in human life.

Problematic is a Black Day for the Russian military that runs the risk of massive attacks with weapons of mass destruction to punish Ukraine and the world for standing up to the Russian invasion. Like Hitler ordering the destruction of Paris or Germany in the wake of a defeat or if he did not survive, then Ukraine should not be allowed to remain.

A Black Day could fully expose conventional Russian military weakness and its inability to pursue a modern war. The option left is to try to leverage between threats of using nuclear forces and its considerable Space Warfare capabilities. The Earth’s satellite layer could be attacked with nuclear space mines launched into Space disguised as satellites, as well as using laser and cyber-attacks from ground-based facilities against satellites to blunt the United States/Western power.
The Russian army could resort to exotic weapons—chemical, human blinding lasers, and directed energy generators aimed at human neurology–in an attempt to clear the battlespace of opposition. In the Afghan War, they indiscriminately ditched thousands of concealed landmines from the air to deter enemy freedom of movement over the landscape

What Next? The Potential for Direct Turkish-Russian Conflict

Turkish control of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles is a key strategic stranglehold on Russia’s capacity to manoeuvre at sea. This could lead to direct confrontation between Russia and Turkey (placing the city of Istanbul in the frontline) in an attempt by Russia to open the strait to their warships exiting into the Sea of Marmara (and the open Mediterranean). Given that Russian nuclear forces are now on alert, it is possible a direct threat could be made against Ankara to attempt to make the Turkish government comply with Russian demands.

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