System of troop management is based on lies and irresponsibility - Butusov
It is impossible to hold the front using the methods used by the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, to control the troops.
In an interview with Radio Liberty, Censor.NET Editor-in-Chief Yurii Butusov listed a set of factors that affect the current situation at the front.
Not in the order of relevance, but in the order of how it directly affects the organization and management of combat operations.
First. Manual control mode. The Commander-in-Chief himself has a manual control mode, interfering directly in the management of combat operations of battalions and brigades, through the OSGT (Operational-Strategic Group of Troops - ed. note), the OTGT (Operational Tactical Group of Troops - ed. note) through brigade commanders. And the same style of interference and jumping through the entire chain of command is used by the command of the OSGT. Therefore, unfortunately, we have such chaos and manual mode, there is no systematic work in principle.
Second. It is chaos in personnel work. Syrskyi is just constantly shuffling commanders. There are brigades where the brigade commanders have been replaced 6 times. Battalion commanders are constantly shuffled around. There is no logic or common sense in this process. Recently, I have given examples when two commanders of the 24th brigade were dismissed in 2 months and a third was appointed. Two people with a reputation were dismissed - Ivan Holishevskyi and Serhii Mazorchuk, experienced commanders who had authority in the team. Their main fault is that they honestly and truthfully reported on the situation. That the enemy was advancing, that we had to withdraw, that the enemy was seizing certain positions. This is called "panicking", it is called "lack of firmness", which should be held. Syrskyi himself destroys the trust of his subordinates. He is constantly shifting responsibility. Because of this personnel charade, it is simply impossible to accomplish the task. Because commanders who show independence and responsibility, who want to report honestly on the complexity of the situation, are immediately dismissed. This is just a massive phenomenon.
Third. Responsibility. There is simply no responsibility. We have responsibility, but it is scattered... We always have responsibility exclusively at the bottom. There are some problems at the front, and they have complex causes: ammunition, the use of troops, training, tactics, the ratio of forces and means, and enemy pressure, which is important. The enemy is advancing somewhere, pushing out our positions somewhere. We are always looking for the culprits. The culprits are always the executors, always soldiers, first of all, then battalion commanders and brigade commanders. It is never the generals, never the commanders of the OTG (Operational Tactical Group - ed.note), the OSGT, and never Syrskyi himself, who is constantly interfering in the management of troops at the tactical level and telling the battalion commanders where to go and for how long. Although this is completely absurd, this does not exist anywhere, not even in NATO, it is just pure Sovietism. Responsibility is constantly being blurred, and responsibility is being transferred down. This leads to a global problem.
Fourth. The problem of losing trust in the army. This continuous lying, building a system of command and control of troops on lies, on the subjective view of some irresponsible superiors who behave like watchmen, not leaders. The lack of leadership in the army kills trust. Because there is a caste of superiors who, like watchmen, have the right to shout at their subordinates, reprimand them, and dismiss them. And there is a caste of untouchables at the top who are never responsible for anything wrong. They just shout for the lines on the map, give orders to someone, and are not responsible for the combat capability of the troops, for losses, or for the order of use of subordinate units. And this complete breakdown in responsibility, in management, leads to a key problem: loss of trust. The army simply does not trust the command, because the system of total lies forces us to promote those who only think about reports, statements, and applications, while everyone else has to imitate this work and think about how to report it to their superiors. And it's not necessarily reliable information that needs to be reported, but the information that the management wants to hear. You have to guess what they will say. This is a completely inadequate management system, and it is impossible to fight with such a management system.
I write about lies in general, as a major problem, I have posts from 2022, back when Zaluzhnyi was still in office. Because of course, this story did not start with Syrskyi himself. When Mariana Bezuhla talks about this, unfortunately, the Servant of the People party and Mariana Bezuhla herself are part of this lie, because Bezuhla herself is constantly spreading it. As she recently said, the civil-military administrations and the president are building some kind of defense lines in Donbas. This is a round lie. Unfortunately, Mariana Bezuhla is lying in the same way as the generals, she has only a different task, she wants to shift, using the same principle, all responsibility for what is happening at the front from the president and the Servant of the People party, which allocates resources, is responsible for the defense lines, the distribution of funds, and wants to shift it to some generals who are allegedly fighting and managing everything themselves.
This is very indicative of our government. They never take responsibility. This includes Mariana Bezuhla and Syrskyi. They all behave the same in this atmosphere. And instead of being united and taking responsibility in the team, they are busy with only one thing - to throw, to point a finger at someone. Of course, this is coming from Zelenskyy and Yermak, and it is being continued by the people they appoint to command positions. It's the same style of "informers" people who are always looking for someone to blame and never say: "I have to do it, I have to check it." The deputy of the defense committee of the ruling party is busy just saying that some general is doing something.
Why the front is collapsing. The front is collapsing in this way, as a rule. It's not because the Russian command sends some tank columns somewhere. First, a certain military unit is sent to the front. It is assigned a defense line that far exceeds its ability to perform combat missions. The unit, battalion or brigade is forced to draw out in a thin line without any reserves, without a second line of defense. They cannot be told that it is unrealistic. If they say: "You've given us an unrealistic task," these commanders will be dismissed. That's the first lie.
The second lie. The unit is being committed into battle. We have no defense. In words, we are defending ourselves, but as a rule, the troops are used, thrown into an encounter battle. They are marked out a line where part of the positions are captured by the enemy. They cannot organize defense on some rear line. They are not given the opportunity. They are told: "Hold it here". If a commander starts to say honestly that there is an enemy there and he cannot enter, what do they do? They dismiss him. Therefore, he must either imitate this process or think about how to present his report in such a way that both his superiors are satisfied and not stick out his neck.
Third. The enemy is outflanking our positions. Since all the commanders are afraid to report the situation, no one reports that they have been broken through. A large number of commanders, we still have honest commanders at the front who report everything, unfortunately, there are very few of them left. Here we have Selydove, New York, and all the same problems, Hirnyk. The flanks are being broken through, and the commander whose positions have been broken through does not report it, because he will be dismissed. The neighbors report. Who is being dismissed in this case? The commander of the 15th Brigade of the National Guard, which was defending Selydove, was dismissed. Why? He reported that the situation was difficult and that the enemy was bypassing his flanks, and that there were no our positions there. He was dismissed and replaced by another who did not report. Who benefits from this, who wins?
The situation with the reserves is the same: commanders report that they do not have people on rotation, that they need people because they will not be able to hold the line of defense because they cannot change people. They are not given people, they are sent to some newly formed units and do not pay attention to the combat capability of the units on the line. Commanders who say that they cannot fulfill the task if they are not given people, what do they do? They are dismissed. As a result, instead of adequate planning of defense actions, deployment of forces and destruction of the systemic enemy, we have this kind of political game, which is set from above. And the country's leadership, starting with the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, with the Supreme Commander-in-Chief himself, demands positive news. These videos that Zelenskyy records are not just a figure of speech. He also demands good news from his subordinates for those videos. And generals like Oleksandr Syrskyi, who are more worried about their chair than their subordinates, accept these rules of the game. And Mariana Bezuhla accepts them. They all want to report good news. And everything bad is the fault of Syrskyi's soldier, the battalion commander. For Mariana Bezuhla, it's Syrskyi. Some other official - Bezuhla herself. They are all pointing fingers at each other, but they have no joint responsibility for the defense of Ukraine, which should be their common cause according to their official duties.
