UKRAINE IS NOT SYRIA

Everyone agrees: Russian aggression against Syrian civilians previewed the horrors now being inflicted on Ukraine. Hospitals bombed. Children slaughtered. Electricity and water shut off.

War-torn Syria is getting more public attention than it has in years, especially with the news that President Vladimir Putin made his former Syria commander top dog in Ukraine. To many, Russia’s bombardment of Mariupol feels like a repeat of the 2016 bombing of Aleppo. Once again, Russia is disregarding humanitarian corridors, spreading propaganda and committing war crimes.

As the war drags on, the parallels do indeed deepen. The ruthless tactics and bombing campaigns that Russia unfurled across the Middle Eastern nation served as something of a trial run for the Russian war effort in Ukraine. And, in less than two months, the battles are producing effects on the ground that are tragically familiar to anyone who experienced or watched Syria’s decade-long implosion.

But - and fortunately for Ukrainians it’a an important but - the two wars differ in some crucial ways. Syria is hardly a playbook for invading Ukraine, where Ukraine’s stronger-than-expected defense is now calling Russia’s military prowess into serious question.

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Number one: Russia could hide its military shortcomings in Syria, but not in Ukraine.

The incompetence of the Russian Army, from top general to most junior private has been on full display. From destroying all the 3G and 4G cell towers in Ukraine the first few days of the invasion that they needed in order to use their encrypted cell phones - thus forcing them to use uncoded communications that led to the deaths of ten Russian generals (so far) when they were located from their cellphone usage and then targeted, to losing their Black Sea Fleet flagship (Oh, I’m wrong, sorry - according to Radio Moscow the ship happened to “explode,” which “started a fire” that led to the entire crew being “evacuated” and then the “fire that just happened” got to the ammunition, which exploded, and it was all just this funny thing that “happened.” No! No! No! It was never the result of being hit by some nonexistent enemy missile that was probably designed for them by the filthy Americans who just can’t contain their hatred for all things good and pure and wonderful that were invented first in Russia before anybody else anywhere else.) And having their “40 mile convoy” picked off by guys in the woods firing Javelins at the sitting ducks, er, I mean the brave warriors for All Things Good in RosiyaMir.

I’m sorry, Barry McCaffery almost couldn’t contain his glee to hear of the sinking of the Moskva, and neither can I.

Putin only sent a few thousand troops in Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad’s effort to squash opposition groups. That allowed him to mask any deficiencies by rotating his best units in and out. The current army is primarily undisciplined and unmotivated conscripts, guys who wake up in the morning and say “100 days and a wakeup left here.” And in Russia they send conscripts to units before they know more than “if it moves, salute it.”

Russia’s military is on display to the world and it doesn’t look pretty, being a good reminder of the rear area thugs turned loose on Eastern Europe in 1945 to wreak Stalin’s vengeance on the women of Europe. It’s a clunky top-down bureaucracy operating with poor intelligence that doesn’t have the NKVD “special troops” at its rear to insure its “enthusiasm” that were key to Stalin’s victory in World War II.

The planning geniuses who came up with the campaign chose “the muddy season” in Ukraine to send 40-ton tanks advancing on Kyiv. The weather meant Russia approached Kyiv by sending a long column of tanks and other military vehicles which had to stay on the roads and were therefore vulnerable to attack by Ukrainians.

In Syria, Russia mostly stuck to giving air support. And there, their opponents had little to no anti-aircraft capability, either guns or missiles. The Russian crews didn’t know what to do against an enemy determined to blow them out of the sky with Stingers. Russia’s institutional shortcomings in manning, training, equipping and leading, and just operating an army came out very clearly.

This army was reminiscent of the Tsarist armies that were defeated by Turkey in 1877, by Japan in 1904, and by Germany in every battle from 1914 to 1917. That’s because like the Tsar’s army, this army is the tool of a government so corrupt the generals are probably selling equipment on the black market.

Unlike Syria. Russia is up against a united government this time

In Syria, Russia was aligned with the central government, controlled by Assad, against opposition groups who became fragmented over time. In Ukraine, Russian is up against the unified central government of Ukraine.

Assad promulgated a global propaganda campaign labeling all opposition groups — including peaceful protesters — as “terrorists” aligned with ISIS. The oppressive regime’s tactics forced divisions among the dozens of individual groups and clouded the initial rally cries for freedom. Eventually, the various groups lost the same vision for the way forward; for example, some just wanted Assad gone while others with more extreme views wanted to replace his regime with an Islamist government.

It’s different entirely in Ukraine. Russia’s annexation of Crimeain 2014 prompted Ukraine to start beefing up its military. IVolodymyr Zelensky is viewed as a strong uniter of the country. Ukrainians have better morale because they’re fighting together for their homes and families.

The Syrian resistance was never well-organized, whereas the Ukrainians have really held together and become even more united and well-organized.

Ukrainians are better armed than Syrians were.

In Syria, the Russians were mostly up against light infantry without heavy weapons and no air defense. Iin Ukraine, Russia vastly miscalculated the ability of its bombing campaign to take out the country’s air force and air-defense systems which still deny the Russians anything approaching air supremacy.

Since Ukraine enjoys broad international support, it has received a steady supply of weapons from the United States and allies. While the United States supplied some weapons to Syrian opposition groups, the scale was much smaller and the aid didn’t come until it was really too late.

When Russia first invaded seven weeks ago, Ukrainians were surprisingly successful using Turkish-made drones called Bayraktars to demolish Russian equipment. Now, the United States is bolstering its supply of weapons. The Biden administration is preparing to transfer armored Humvees and other sophisticated equipment.

Syrians are sharing their experience with Ukrainians.

The Syrian Civil Defense Force, known as the White Helmets has recently focused on helping Ukrainians. They’re preparing a series of videos that give Ukrainians practical advice on how to survive a Russian assault, with tips like using walkie-talkies instead of cellphones and watching for follow up attacks known as “double taps”seven to nine minutes after the first one to hit first responders.

Fighting continues in Mariupol, Ukraine said, denying Moscow’s claims that Russian forces have taken full control of the port city that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described as pivotal for the outcome of the conflict. This may become the “Stalingrad” of the war.

Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of Americans said in a poll published Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, as President Biden labeled Russia’s actions in Ukraine a “genocide,” sparking a mixed reaction among U.S. allies.

The poll, conducted via telephone between April 7 and 11 by Quinnipiac University among more than 1,400 U.S. adults, revealed that most 74 percent think the worst of the war in Ukraine is “yet to come” and 68 percent believe that the United States has a “moral responsibility” to do more to stop it.

Eighty-two percent said Putin is a war criminal, while 10 percent said he is not. Republicans were more than three times more likely than Democrats to say Putin is not a war criminal, but a large majority of people in both parties said he is.

Senior Pentagon officials met Wednesday with leading defense manufacturers to discuss the potential for “accelerated production” of certain weapons systems. Officials focused primarily on weapons and equipment that can be exported rapidly, deployed with minimal training, and prove effective in the battlefield.

The effect of Russia’s failure is bad inside Russia. After a month of fighting, the architects of Moscow’s war against Ukraine have had to explain to Russians why Kyiv had not fallen.

On state television, a military analyst doubled down on Russia’s need to win and called for concentration camps for Ukrainians opposed to the invasion.

Two days later, the head of the defense committee in the lower house of parliament said it would take 30 to 40 years to “reeducate” Ukrainians.

And on a talk show, the editor in chief of the English-language television news network RT described Ukrainians’ determination to defend their country as “collective insanity.”

Demonstrating the right wing’s attachment to projections, Margarita Simonyan, who also heads the Kremlin-backed media group that operates the Sputnik and RIA Novosti news agencies said, “It’s no accident we call them Nazis. What makes you a Nazi is your bestial nature, your bestial hatred and your bestial willingness to tear out the eyes of children on the basis of nationality.”

Russia’s astonishing shift toward genocidal speech has been swift and seamless. Moscow officials stepped up warnings that Russia was fighting for its survival. Pundits condemned peace talks and scorned troops’ withdrawal from Kyiv and surrounding areas.

This change of gears, signaling a brutal occupation, appears deliberate and coordinated in a nation where detailed Kremlin orders on messaging are given regularly to state media.

The chances that Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man with no history of reversing course when cornered, might back down as his military’s effort faltered were never very great. U.S. officials have questioned Russia’s seriousness about peace talks.

After Moscow’s failure to take Kyiv, the shift to a harder line in state media suggests that the Kremlin is girding the population for a tough and potentially long fight in Ukraine’s east, one that could see even greater destruction and casualties.

Given that the two armies are approximately equal, when common military wisdom says the attacker should outnumber the defender 3:1, the likelihood of Russia turning this around in any significant way is unlikely. “The Butcher of Aleppo” may have done well against rebel groups with no coordination and no weapons to oppose him. But that’s not the case in Ukraine.

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