I’m observing how the “swine-dogs” characterize Drapaty: fierce enemy, inhumane of the highest category, butcher, even a butcher-instructor, very experienced, there will be more daring, more movement, adventurousness, more improvisation.
And you can understand the insignificance. When the war began (back in the ATO), their Mumu-Gerassim was already the head of the army, while Drapaty was just starting as a combat commander. During this time, our combat commander has become the commander-in-chief, while theirs is still stuck as a talentless old man.
Solovyov is sitting there smugly, saying that young practitioners lack theoretical knowledge. Well, neither does the bureaucratic Gerassim.
Once, Russian propaganda inflated the “Gerassimov doctrine.” Military propaganda and the Zvezda TV channel crafted an image of Gerassimov as almost a second Kutuzov or Suvorov, claiming that the old man invented the concept of a “new generation of warfare”:
“The main goal of ‘non-linear combat operations’ is to achieve the necessary strategic and geopolitical results using a wide range of non-military methods and means: overt and covert diplomacy, economic pressure, winning over the local population.”
But if you read these narrow-minded musings of Gerassim about “new generation warfare,” it turns out it’s complete and harmful nonsense.
Military strategists since Sun Tzu and Sun Tzu himself wrote all this: before the invasion, send spies to the enemy, destroy the enemy from within—pull out, so to speak, logs from the fire that warms the enemy.
Gerassimov simply took what was written 2,500 years before him and rephrased it in a new way, calling it “hybrid warfare.”
But in reality, Mumu threw sand in the eyes of the bald-headed leadership that considered itself masters of multi-move special operations.
The problem with these ideas is that “non-military pressure” is not a military doctrine. A military doctrine is precisely military pressure. And sending spies is just a part of the military strategy (and not the main part). Gerassimov took a piece of the puzzle and inflated it into a “new theory of war,” which he called “hybrid.”
“In modern conflicts, the focus of the methods of struggle increasingly shifts towards a comprehensive application of political, economic, informational, and other non-military measures, supported by military force. These are the so-called hybrid methods.
Their essence lies in achieving political goals with minimal armed impact on the enemy. Primarily by undermining its military and economic potential, informational-psychological pressure, active support of internal opposition, guerrilla, and sabotage methods.”
In theory, “minimal military influence” sounded appealing, especially for Putin, who considered himself a master of special operations. But “minimal armed influence on the enemy” is a particular idiocy.
B. M. Shaposhnikov devoted three volumes to explaining why war requires all resources not only of the army but of the entire state. Because even Soviet marshals in post-war works, which Gerasimov was supposed to learn from, taught: if you aim, strike. And strike with full force.
It’s impossible to manage with half-measures in war. You spit on the enemy’s back, and he turns around and breaks your jaw. A bit over the top, because he wasn’t going to mess with half-measures – he hit with full force.
But General Gerasim dismissed all predecessors and came up with a “special path”: make a mess at the door, ring the bell, run away, then pretend it wasn’t you (“they are not there”).
As a result, Gerasimov’s doctrine actually taught only one thing: how to turn a neutral and even a closest friend (like Ukraine in 2013), on whom you decided to treacherously attack, into a sworn enemy. And at the same time, not to finish him off, but just to create a mess and ruin relations.
Those who knew the young Putin said that he and his friends, like that Roldugin in his youth, had a favorite prank: to foul the air in a bus and jump out at the stop. And people look around not understanding who did it.
So he liked the “Gerasimov doctrine” very much.
And Putin with Gerasim in 2014 fouled the air for everyone by attacking Crimea, and then disgustingly lying that “it wasn’t us.”
At that time, even the psychopath Girkin understood that many steps ahead was madness of the insane, and he called for attacking Ukraine with all forces, but the elders limited themselves to Gerasim’s doctrine.
But in reality, undermining the enemy from within as an element of invasion theory is not the army’s doctrine, but that of special services. For example, senior researcher at the Higher School of the KGB (FSB Academy), Oleg Khlobustov, wrote about it:
“The strategic goals of ideological diversions are – change of the “undesirable” political course of the state – the target of influence… Including the use of methods prohibited by international law – bribery, incitement, use of mercenaries, material stimulation of radical opposition forces resorting to violent actions, and the like.”
So, General Gerasimov essentially reinvented the wheel in this field.
A hundred years ago, Russian spies described all this in the first manuals and textbooks for Soviet special services:
“In one of the first Soviet works [on intelligence], the 1921 textbook ‘The Framework of Agency Intelligence,’ the deputy head of the Agency Intelligence Department of the Intelligence Directorate of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA), Alexander Ivanovich Kukk, emphasized: ‘One of the most important political tasks of intelligence is to exert targeted influence on the population of a hostile state through the press, propaganda, spreading rumors, disseminating certain ideas and views that undermine faith in the authorities of their own country.’
This is the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine of Hybrid Warfare.’ He simply put the army at the service of the special services and developed a theoretical basis for it.
Journalists, media, even military experts, 15 years ago picked up Gerasimov’s writings and fascinatedly inflated this misfortune into a genius of military art, while in reality the ‘new hybrid military strategy’ from Gerasimov was a hundred years obsolete.
And practice later showed that turning the army into a unit of special services for conducting ideological diversions is suicidal idiocy.
When on February 24, 2022, the whole world was astonished by Russia’s idiotic strategy to resolve the war with Ukraine using special forces, it was precisely from that doctrine that these plans originated.
At Gerasimov’s suggestion, Putin changed the very structure of the General Staff. Previously, their main department of the General Staff was the operational one – the war planners. But after Crimea, Putin made intelligence (GRU) the ‘Main Directorate of the General Staff.’ It was the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), and it became the Main Directorate of the General Staff (GU).
The organizational change, at first glance, was hardly noticeable to an external observer, but it concealed a hidden principle. Operators (planners, i.e., the brain of the army) became subordinate to intelligence (eyes). This led to intelligence planning operations.
And when in March all these Hostomel landings predictably failed, as intelligence plans usually boil down to ‘take by storm,’ massive losses began, destruction ensued, nervous endings began to signal pain to the brain, and then the brain woke up and started working. At the end of March 2022, the head of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, General Rudskoy (a traitor from Mykolaiv), took responsibility: announced a gesture of goodwill, withdrawal from Kyiv region, and that the special military operation now reduces its grandiosity from seizing all of Ukraine to seizing only Donbas. They had to wake up, announce mobilization, fight at full strength – and that’s how they continue to fight for the liberation of Donbas.
Everything without exception that Gerasimov dreamed of 10 years ago failed. The nonsense about the ‘minimal influence of armed forces in the war’ turned into a catastrophe for the Russian Federation, with millions of losses, sanctions for the country, entanglement of the army in an endless meat grinder, painful blows to the rear, and the need to start a full-scale war, for which Russia was not prepared.
Life itself forced Gerasimov and the Russian generals to abandon their own foolishness about hybrid interference with the enemy and to begin MAXIMUM use of the Russian armed forces.
But it all fell apart.
It’s not surprising that General Zaluzhny once said with disappointment: I have read everything Gerasimov has ever written about war, and… I expected more.
* * *
Our days.
The enemy’s military experts whine and sigh with envy that in Ukraine, there’s a path for the young. The Armed Forces will be led not by desk officers, but by young practitioners. Butchers and sadists – but how they would like to have such themselves.
And we wish that nothing changes in Russia. That Putin poisons anyone who threatens his power. All these Z-bloggers and fascists should find themselves punished for any crooked word against the nonentity. So that Gerasimov continues to dismiss and imprison all the young generals like Popov, who dared to commit heresy – defending the interests of soldiers.
Putin and the old-timers have turned this pseudo-civilization into primitive society, where the pharaoh wants to rule until death and take with him into the tomb gold, jewelry, servants, mistresses, and even warriors. All of them, according to his plan, are to fight endlessly, to the last Russian, without purpose, without a goal for themselves, but beneficial for him alone. Because as long as the war continues, he sits on this stinking pile.
We wish him not to change anything and gnaw Russia to the bones.
And for Drapatiy, to successfully drive a stake into this monster’s heart.
