Yuriy Butusov: Why do generals evade responsibility

At the front, there is a lot of criticism of the generals, that the headquarters of the OTU and OSUV control and punish the brigade commanders and combatants exclusively for stripes and points on the map, for holding positions, without paying attention to the state of the troops, to the tactical situation, to the problems of destroying the enemy and preserving their forces . The dramatic gap between strategic tasks and tactical capabilities led and leads to a constant repetition of the same mistakes, where planning is wrong from the very beginning, because it is tied to wrong tactical decisions.

This contradiction is embedded in the very organizational structure of our defense forces, and has no examples in world history during mass mobilization wars.

How do we manage?

In Ukraine, the highest organizational form at the front is a unit - a brigade. The brigade commander is responsible for the line of defense, combat capability of the brigade, the task of defeating the enemy and preserving his own personnel and equipment, that is, he is responsible for everything. Our brigade defense lanes range from 4 to 20 km, depending on the direction and conditions – the total front of active operations is currently approximately 800 km. If we count open sources, then we have deployed more than 100 ground forces brigades of all types, plus hundreds of individual divisions, battalions, companies, and detachments. Therefore, it would be logical to expect that such a large number of control objects, such a large front, require an increase in units to the size of divisions and the creation of units - corps or armies. But this is not happening.

To manage the troops, we have created operational-tactical departments - OTU, which are used to carve out areas that correspond to corps districts, and operational-strategic management of the troops - OSUV, the army's area of ​​responsibility.

But they are not responsible for the troops. Our troops are administratively included in the structure of separate operational commands - OK. The OK temporarily subordinates its forces to the front-line OTU and OSUV, which are directly responsible for the war.

Therefore, the combat capability of the brigades and the safety of people are the responsibility of the OC and the brigades. And the OTU and OSUV are responsible for the stripes and points on the map, and they are responsible for achieving results in combat operations. And all these are different headquarters, different generals.

That is why there is a gap. This is a gap in responsibility at the level of generals. Points on the map cannot exist in isolation from awareness of combat capability, from personnel, from planning and organizing the destruction of the enemy.

The generals are not comprehensively responsible for the result - only the brigade commanders are responsible, and that's all, then the responsibility is scattered.

In the history of world wars of the 19th and 21st centuries of mass mobilized armies, there have never been examples of such a strange state of affairs.

In all other armies, evolutionarily came to a single logic - the higher the coherence and responsibility, the higher the combat capability, the better the controllability.

And what is the controllability of our OTUs? How can the OTU headquarters manage effectively, if we have an OTU to which at certain times more than 20 brigades and more than 20 battalions of only different infantry, plus an even larger number of units of other branches of the military, were subordinated simultaneously? Can you imagine how effective management can be if you have 100 subordinate commanders at the same time, and each of them constantly needs planning and decisions? Nonsense.

And how can the combat capability of brigades and battalions be restored if they practically do not see their units, and detached from their use, cannot assess the problems? Any.

What is the reason?

I have written about this problem since 2014, when the management of hostilities in Donbas was transferred to temporary structures - sectors, and then to temporary operational management. Let me remind you that the structure of the army corps in Ukraine existed until 2014, but in 2011-13, President Yanukovych carried out a systematic destruction of Ukraine's defense capabilities and disbanded the army corps. The last 8th Army Corps was liquidated already in June 2014.

The then new Chief of the General Staff, V. Muzhenko, wanted to redo the entire structure of the army administration at his discretion. Therefore, the history of the disbanding of the corps, the creation of temporary headquarters, sectors, OTU, was convenient for manual control by the army, for the quick removal and appointment of any general, and that is why it was preserved then and is still preserved. That is, the lack of divisions and corps at the front - the reasons are political, which had nothing to do with the combat capability of the army.

After the replacement of Muzhenko, this temporary structure was preserved, as it turned out to be convenient for his successors as well. But for war, this solution worked horribly in both 2014 and 2024.

We need the reorganization of the troops - the creation of divisions and corps of permanent composition, because all the experience and logic of war require this. We need the generals to be personally responsible not for conducting selectors and marking points on the map, but for them, as combatants and brigade commanders, to be jointly responsible for the permanent stable set of troops subordinate to them, and jointly responsible for the result - for the destruction of the enemy, for the preservation of their , for maintaining the defense lines.

Yuriy Butusov