There are exciting stories about how governments, leadership, and armed forces have acted in wars and war outbreaks. Maybe not exciting for those involved, but when sitting in front of Netflix with two pizzas and a beer on a Friday night, one thanks the gods for all they have come up with throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was watching Gods and Generals, which came as a new release on Netflix here in the Dominican Republic, where General Burnside was supposed to take the shortcut via Fredericksburg to Richmond. He had 120,000 troops against General Lee’s 80,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Lincoln’s approval, a locked battle plan, prestige, he got upset over alternative proposals and pressed on. General Lee, who had been a colonel in the US Army, had personal profiles on everyone including Burnside, so he roughly knew how he would fight and used that against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For several days, Burnside sent regiment after regiment forward against a stone wall behind which the Confederates sat, employing a system where four men reloaded the rifles in stages and the man at the front just fired continuously. Enormous losses, Burnside was fired, life went on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, Burnside was given renewed trust a few years later and messed up again, but that is another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Initiative, numbers, incompetence, causing indescribable damage and allowed to continue because “that’s the way things happen in war.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quite common, probably more common than one thinks since there is a huge number of dinosaurs in countries that haven’t had war for a long time who shouldn’t be there. When you don’t need to perform in war, other abilities come to the fore that are not particularly useful in a war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then other mistakes can happen, France 1940 is also exciting \u2013 the summer of 1940 went so-so, so politics chose to show hands-on leadership, fired the Chief of Staff and flew in General Weygand from Syria. An old fox with soldier in his bones right out to the tips of his toes and matching scars, so a good candidate if anyone to turn the tide of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He traveled nonstop for a couple of days, took office, stopped all planned counteroffensives to get acquainted with the situation and after a few days opened the door and announced with a thunderous roar a violent counteroffensive, which was the same plan he had just stopped three days earlier, which would win the war \u2013 but by then the war was just over and France had lost by knockout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would it have made a difference \u2013 hard to know and in hindsight almost comical, but Europe’s strongest military power fell like a clipped-wing chicken because they had not grasped how the next war would be fought and had leadership, both political and military, that lagged behind the curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You probably can’t blame Weygand for having acute jet lag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hitler’s hands-on leadership and daring risk-taking paid off until it no longer did, and all the generals “just followed orders” hand in hand straight into the sunset. Everyone knows those stories about “make it a fortress and defend to the last bullet,” so it adds nothing new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukraine has had its fair share of problems since 2022, but I have had the feeling that the soldiers have prioritized fighting above all else, and over time a cadre of sensible troop commanders has emerged who have now advanced to corps commanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chief of Staff and the Armed Forces Commander are former long-term soldiers in combat units, and most corps commanders have worked their way up from the bottom. Before that, it was Syrskyi and Zalizhny who also had the expertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It hardly gets any better than that, and now they are probably at the top in leadership even though the USA and Russia are doing what they can to destroy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zelensky has also done his part \u2013 “I need ammunition, not a flight out,” paired with the film from Kiev of those in the government who did not flee the first days was also strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mistakes that have been made have been paid for by the infantry in blood, but it has been accepted, very few panic flights, desertions, or mutinies during the war. Plenty of mistakes that ended in much death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most notable is probably Zelensky’s refusal to mobilize at the start of the war where Zalizhny had to secretly mobilize around Kiev with what he had, and Budanov was probably involved with GUR?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I believe Syrskyi and a few others also chose to act in the absence of directives, which saved the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can’t recall the whole story exactly from memory, but there was a group of commanders who immediately showed capable leadership and soldiers at all levels who held their positions with 90% losses or were completely overrun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ATO force was already in eastern Ukraine, so there was no need to mobilize there, but the rest of the Armed Forces were not mobilized or in bases, which in Kherson resulted in columns being wiped out on the highway instead of already being deployed and taking the fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some blame can be placed on Macron and if not Scholz, some German twelve-pointer officer who assured that Putin would not attack \u2013 well played by Putin, one must admit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Europe, we are now at the level of political decisions, the stretch that takes us to war outbreak IF we get there. Now we have all the political opportunities to avoid war until we no longer can, and the decisions made now will have consequences for Europe for a long time to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that, our armed forces and staffs at various levels take over to conduct the war where the Chief of Staff is only the first step. A myriad of different decisions at all possible levels that can have direct war-impacting consequences by people who are either the right man in the right place or create their own chaos and death due to their limited ability to function as normal human beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For 4.5 years we have commented on politics, the amount of deficiencies and wrong decisions is absolutely deafening, but we have been spared thanks to Ukraine absorbing the entire impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, it is easy to sit and complain as an independent writer while those who have to make decisions have job descriptions, bosses, paid jobs, colleagues, opinions, elections, and competitors to consider \u2013 the system is unforgiving. The right decisions must be made at the right time, and in times of peace, often no decisions at all are preferable to sticking your neck out into the unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When moving on mined ground and there are dozens of unknown factors combined with the fact that a bad decision totally sinks your career with small children still at home, the easiest thing is to procrastinate. If you also have bosses who give you clear guidance, “I was just doing my job” is an easy way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the way, “I was just following orders” seems deeply ingrained; a obedient German general could sacrifice an entire army during WW2 not to refuse orders since that was apparently more important even though the general wrote furiously in his diary about the madness coming from the leadership. Then there is a bit of self-cleansing unfortunately, good troop commanders who make the right decisions in defiance of orders make their bosses look weak, so they are removed or marginalized quite quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now we are probably slowly getting organized as the show of force around Kaliningrad was a difficult decision taken \u2013 we should keep an eye on the USA in the coming weeks and what sanctions will come from there because Putin has definitely called Trump and complained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another difficult decision that has just been made is by Burnham, the new Labour PM in the UK, who not only allowed Ukraine to advertise that they are using English-made drones against targets in Russia but also provides Ukraine with the blueprints for Storm Shadow for domestic production. Very neat but not as neat as us in Sweden who have so clearly chosen a side that Ukraine counts us among its best friends. Gripen was an extremely difficult decision because it was on Putin’s top 10 list of weapons he absolutely does not want to see in Ukraine; surely the USA tried to stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taurus is another, but there Putin is doing better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a nagging feeling that our battle plan is not as NATO Europe described it a few weeks ago in Bild, and definitely not as the agreements we have signed with the Baltics. Or maybe it is exactly as BILD wrote, I will elaborate below if I confused you now, but if so, it was intentional to mislead the GRU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably we have understood what ground combat disadvantage we are in after all the exercises against Ukraine and we have a fairly simple plan \u2013 we defend the southern bank of the Daugava and then we strike with indirect capabilities. Instead of meeting RU head-on in open terrain, we have a river between them and us which improves our chances of eternal victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, we have a strength \u2013 our air forces and indirect capabilities are potent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have understood that our mechanized units are vulnerable until we have an anti-drone weapon, and fully offensive when we have our own drone weapon. The charm of drone warfare in 2026 is that if you have the advantage you fight mechanized yourself against an enemy who has to fight with dug-in infantry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Surely we have had communication with Lukashenko who has explained to us that he will not go to war \u2013 he is street-smart and under-the-table communication with us should be included because the last thing he wants is an overreacting Poland in the middle of the mess he is in and barely can handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kaliningrad is a fairly simple operation provided RU does not start moving army corps into the area but they cannot do that without it being visible, and then Europe has a clear time window to relate to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hope then is that one can bomb the Russians away from the area north of the Daugava and over time retake the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then what we are actually doing fits a bit better into the now clarified battle plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hope I am wrong and that we will see troops in the Baltics but BILD’s battle plan skipped that part by saying we will blow the Russians off the face of the earth and then go over the corpses to reestablish ourselves in the area. They skipped all the steps in between, everything I thought was important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My opinion is, however, that we then give Putin the small land gain he needs to survive so we only drag ourselves into a war but there is one more factor in this \u2013 Ukraine might succeed in toppling Russia during this time period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or maybe the Estonians and Latvians manage to hold out \u2013 who knows, after all they have just under 100,000 weapons after a 24-hour mobilization according to themselves and there is a lot of infantry in many trenches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am posting the plan again just so we have it for reference. The BILD article is locked and all the hits I get on Google report roughly the same. The BILD article is also in German which no normally functioning person can decipher, like Egyptian hieroglyphs roughly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.kyivpost.com\/post\/82637<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, Europe\/NATO\/USA’s agreements with the Baltics have, simply put, been that we have tripwires in the countries in the form of our units in small numbers which should be a threshold that deters Russia, because if they trip over that wire it becomes full war with NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In case of increased threat, we are to bring in some of our units into the Baltics early, and in case of war, the Baltics shall be fully defended. We have now been at the point of increased threat for some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we have done in today’s increased threat does not correspond with our entered agreements, and we have long pointed out the discrepancy \u2013 if we wait too long until Suwalki and the Baltic Sea are closed for transport, there will be no units of ours in the Baltics no matter how much we want it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pingrey’s battle plan above leaves some big holes and the weight is on indirect capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What has happened in the past year is that most of the NATO units have left the Baltics instead of the opposite, except for the area south of the Daugava where Germany has brought in a mechanized brigade and Poland is securing Suwalki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Baltics themselves have accepted that they will have to fight alone for two weeks before we come to their aid, which has now increased to a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n