Fall Like A Thunderbolt: Maskirovka is a Russian art form
by William Schryver

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Battle of Kursk - 1943

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Seventy-nine years ago what was arguably the single greatest battle of the Second World War took place in roughly the same area where battles are occurring again today.

Across a broad front in eastern Ukraine and southwestern Russia, stretching from Bryansk in the north to Izyum in the south, German and Soviet forces faced each other in the summer of 1943, with a substantial bulge in the lines in the area around Kursk. It was this bulge that was targeted by German commanders for envelopment and destruction.

The campaign commenced in the first week of July with a massive German counter-offensive, and continued for several weeks. Several hundred thousand soldiers and thousands of tanks and armored vehicles took part, with massive maneuvers and counter-maneuvers over a broad landscape of forests, fields, and rolling hills.

Much has been and could be written about the conduct of this battle, but this essay will focus on an aspect of the campaign that was unprecedented: it was the first battle in which the Soviet concepts of maskirovka were aggressively incorporated into every stage of the planning and execution of their operations.

Maskirovka is a Russian word meaning literally “masking” or “disguise”, but in the context of Russian military doctrine, it incorporates a wide spectrum of undertakings designed to deceive the enemy regarding strengths, weaknesses, disposition of forces, and the intentions of those forces.

In its simplest expression, it echoes the famous dictum from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War:

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In the summer of 1943, the Soviet army was the stronger force in comparison to the Wehrmacht. For this reason, Stalin was aggressively pressing his generals to go on the offensive. But Soviet commanders, cognizant of German preparations for a large counter-offensive, argued against this strategy. On April 8, 1943, overall commander Georgy Zhukov wrote to Stalin:

“I consider it inexpedient for our troops to launch a preemptive offensive in the near future. It would be better for us to wear down the enemy on our defenses, knock out his tanks, bring in fresh reserves, and finish off his main grouping with a general offensive.”

Glantz, David M., Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War, p. 148

The top Soviet commanders rushed to Moscow to plead their case to Stalin in an April 12th meeting. General Shtemenko, 1st Deputy of the Operations Department, later wrote:

“Ultimately it was decided to concentrate our main forces in the Kursk area, to bleed the enemy forces here in a defensive operation, and then switch to the offensive and achieve their complete destruction.”

Ibid, p. 148

The trick was going to be to assemble and conceal the forces for the envisioned counter-attack within the front-wide defensive preparations – to give the Germans the impression that they had been considerably weakened, and were therefore assuming a purely defensive posture until their offensive potential could be reconstituted.

Bear in mind, up until this point in the war, the Soviets had never undertaken a summer offensive, and therefore their apparent move to the defensive in the summer of 1943 was entirely consistent with prior practice.

Their employment of maskirovka would be of utmost importance in their preparations.

“… staffs prepared detailed maskirovka plans which included the concealment of preparations, creation of false troop concentrations, simulation of false radio nets and communications centers, construction of false air facilities and false aircraft, and the dissemination of false rumors along the front and in the enemy rear area. These plans emphasized secret movement of reserves, hidden preparations for counter-attacks and counter-strokes, and concealed locations of command posts and communications sites.”

“To deceive extensive German air reconnaissance … army commanders established 15 false airfields, complete with mock-up aircraft, runways, control towers, and aircraft shelters, and installed numerous mock-up tanks to simulate armored assembly areas. German aircraft responded by bombing these false airfields nine times.”

Ibid, p. 152

Lieutentant General I.S. Konev described the situation:

“The enemy thought that we were preparing only for defensive battle. Possessing a huge number of tanks and guns of a new type, the Germans hoped that it was impossible to stop them.

“Thus, as the enemy prepared, we prepared. The main thing was not to conceal the fact of our preparations, but rather the force and means, the concept of battle, the time of our counter-offensive, and the nature of our defense. Very likely it was the only unprecedented occasion in military history, when the strong side, having the capabilities for offensive action, went over to the defense.”

Ibid, p. 154, emphasis added

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German tanks and troops advance near Kursk - 1943

In addition to the masking of force preparations and concentrations, once the battle had commenced, the Soviets employed substantial offensive movements in other areas of the front to draw off German forces from the primary target of the major Soviet counter-offensive:

“The absence of any sizable element of these panzer forces would virtually condition Soviet success. The Soviet solution was to lure these units to other sectors of the front. Experience had shown that simulations or simple feints might not serve this purpose. What were required were full scale offensive preparations, if necessary in full view of German intelligence, and offensives of sufficient strength and credibility to both attract and tie up those German operational reserves until requisite damage was done in the key strategic sector …”

Ibid, p. 174

And what was the “key strategic sector”? Well, somewhat ironically, the great armored battle that unfolded in the vicinity of Kursk developed as a diversion from the primary Soviet objective: to defeat and conquer the primary locus of German power in and around Kharkov.

“Surprise was essential for Soviet forces to achieve victory around Belgorod and Kharkov, and surprise had to be a product of maskirovka. The Soviets applied maskirovka in all of its varied forms to deceive the Germans regarding the timing, strength, form, and location of the major Soviet counter-stroke.”

Ibid, p. 174

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Soviet tanks and troops at Kursk - 1943

Well, a full description of the elaborate maskirovka employed in the Battle of Kursk is beyond the scope of this article. I simply wanted to introduce and elaborate on some of its fundamental aspects in order to suggest possible parallels between what was done then and what is happening now in Ukraine.

There has been much ecstatic jubilation among Ukraine-supporters, and anguished hand-wringing among Russia-supporters, that somehow Russian forces were “surprised” and “humiliated” by the recent Ukrainian counter-offensive near Kharkov.

Let me therefore be perfectly clear: the notion that the Russian high command did not see this coming is, in my confident estimation, utterly absurd.

They observed its preparations over the course of many weeks. They knew much of the NATO-provided equipment shipped into Ukraine since the spring was not being used yet in battle, and had instead been diverted and hoarded to provide the backbone of firepower for an eventual counter-stroke.

They also knew that substantial numbers of the remaining cadre of Ukrainian professional soldiers had been pulled from the front lines to form the core of this attack, and that they were being supplemented by a significant infusion of “foreign volunteers”.

They knew that the cream of the thousands of new Ukrainian conscripts had been sent to Poland and Britain for rapid training according to NATO standards.

They knew NATO commanders had effectively assumed operational command of this force, and were calling the shots as to when and where it would be deployed.

And they certainly knew that, because this force was not present in the Kherson region for the limited counter-attack that took place there earlier in August, that the southern operations were almost certainly a diversion from the primary objective, which would be in the Kharkov region.

Indeed, as the true nature of the events of the past two weeks comes into clearer focus, it is now possible to see that the Russians acted deliberately to provide the NATO commanders of this reconstituted Ukrainian force with some low-hanging fruit to blood their untested army, and provide it with a victory that would not only bolster its battlefield confidence, but more importantly serve essential political purposes at a time when western public support was flagging to a very discernible degree.

More importantly, from the Russian perspective, providing NATO commanders a temptation they could not resist would draw this fresh army into the open field of battle where it could then be isolated and ultimately destroyed.

Therefore the Russians commenced, several weeks ago, to withdraw all but a token force from the area containing the towns of Balakliya, Kupyansk, and Izyum – thereby presenting an irresistible opportunity for the commanders of this NATO-trained, NATO-equipped, and NATO-led force to demonstrate, as they imagine it, the superiority of western combined-arms warfare.

The subsequent attack achieved seemingly extraordinary success against the relative handful of Donbass militia and Rosgvardia troops left to defend Balakliya and Kupyansk. The Ukrainians and their “foreign volunteer” shock troops advanced mostly unopposed and occupied a fairly significant piece of real estate extending all the way to the Oskil River.

Relatively little soldier against soldier fighting has occurred. In fact, Ukrainian reports euphorically trumpeted the fact that the Ukrainian advance could not even keep up with the speed of the Russian retreat!

The “glorious victory” of this quasi-NATO army has – at least for the time being – launched the western media narrative into an unprecedented spasm of triumphalism.

Delusional reports of hundreds of abandoned tanks, thousands of casualties, and tens of thousands of captured Russian soldiers are circulating widely, willingly believed by those whose biases find them pleasing.

Western think-tank monkeys and retired-generals-for-hire move from one mainstream news studio to the next spouting fantastical nonsense about next liberating the Donbass, then Crimea, followed by deposing Putin and hauling him before a tribunal at The Hague.

And if that were not enough, many have even begun to openly discuss the long-desired western pipe dream of dismantling Russia altogether; cutting it up into a dozen or more smaller republics that will then obediently fall in line with the rest of the “rules-based world order”.

It’s all quite breathtaking to behold.

Few seem to be aware that the triumphant army that marched forth into the power vacuum the Russians created for them have been continually savaged by long-range artillery fire and airstrikes, which have already inflicted nearly 20% casualties upon the relatively exposed force.

Few seem to appreciate that the pace of the initially rapid advance has now effectively ground to a halt, caught between the Oskil River to the east and the Seversky-Donets to the south, and it has proven unable to achieve appreciable success against the concentrations of Russian forces it is now encountering on the other sides of those rivers.

And no one seems to be asking the most pertinent question: What will the Russians do next?

There seems to be a pervasive assumption that this apparent battlefield “victory” has been so humiliatingly complete that the Russians have been ruined; psychologically broken; that they are no longer capable of operations; that they are now a beaten, trembling mob of frightened “orcs” nervously awaiting the next train back to wherever it was they came from.

Those cheering as the victory parade rolls down the streets of Kiev, London, and Washington appear to have forgotten that Russia’s “special military operation” up to this point has employed a minor fraction of its military capability, and that the Russian objective, from the beginning, has not been to conquer territory, per se, but to comprehensively destroy Ukrainian military capabilities.

I think the Ukraine supporters might be engaging in an orgy of premature exultation.

I am persuaded the events of the past few weeks have been largely orchestrated pursuant to Russia’s ultimate objectives.

I am convinced the Russians remain masters of the art of maskirovka, and that the masters of empire in Brussels, London, and Washington – as they always have – continue to underestimate Russian strategic acumen, operational capabilities, and clever resourcefulness.

Even as NATO commanders in Kiev clink champagne flutes filled to the brim with looted Dom Perignon, and congratulate each other on a brilliantly conceived and expertly executed plan, I strongly suspect the other shoe is about to drop – and when it does, I expect it to fall like a thunderbolt on their unjustifiably inflated heads.

Source
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/fall-like-a-thunderbolt

In War, Losers Lie The Most
Wednesday, August 31, 2022


Russian Ministry of Defense Spokesman, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov

Over the course of the Ukraine War – or the “Special Military Operation”, as Russia is careful to term it – I have confidently concluded that one of the essential sources for reasonably accurate information regarding the far-flung combat operations in the theater is … The Russian Federation Ministry of Defense daily briefing.

Of course, those inclined to support Ukrainian perspectives on this war immediately rise up in arms at such a suggestion. “How could you possibly believe anything the Russians have to say? They lie about everything!”

Well, I’m not typing out this brief missive in an attempt to disabuse the Russia-haters of the world of their fondest prejudices. That would be a fool’s errand, at best. But I will briefly explain the rationale I have employed to reach the conclusion that, in fact, the most accurate picture of ongoing Ukraine War combat operations available to the general public is, indeed, coming from the daily Russian MoD briefings.

First of all, I want to freely acknowledge that there is no way they can always be correct. The very nature of battle is fraught with inherent challenges to accuracy. Squad, company, and battalion commanders naturally inflate their successes and downplay their failures. Air defense crews and fighter pilots observe a clear hit on an aircraft, watch it fall to the full extent of their perspective, but sometimes fail to see that it somehow managed to recover before crashing into the ground, and then miraculously limped back to its base. These sorts of things are an unavoidable and not all that uncommon reality, and contribute substantially to the pervasive “fog of war” in any conflict.

Fully accurate data for a war takes years to emerge, and even then can be corrupted by inaccuracies that are never detected and corrected. So the best one can hope for in the midst of a war is a reasonably accurate “rough sketch” of what is really happening at any given time, as well as a constantly coalescing picture of what has really been happening over the course of time.

To achieve the latter, one must also examine the positional maps, taking into account which strategic locations are being won and lost, and what the general trajectory of operations suggests as reflected in the way the lines of contact move and evolve.

But the one thing, above all, that should be kept in mind is that, as a general rule, the side that is really winning is much more likely to tell the truth, and the side that is losing is, far more often than not, lying through its teeth.

Of course, this hardly means that the winning side always tells the truth. They may have very good reasons for lying, obfuscating, or simply having inaccurately ascertained what the truth really is.

On the other hand, the losing side, at the first realization they’re in over their heads, starts lying some of the time, and as their prospects deteriorate further, they quickly resort to lying nearly all the time.

Indeed, it becomes imperative to do so, both to shield troop morale from the full truth, and (as attested very notably in this particular war) also to reassure allies and benefactors that, despite a few “minor setbacks”, everything is actually going “according to plan”, and glorious victory is “just around the corner”, if only you keep helping us out with more weapons, guns, ammo, victuals, and coin to pay our ever-dwindling numbers of soldiers.

Also, it must be appreciated that, in any war, even a lopsided one, the dominating power is bound to make stupid mistakes on occasion, and incur an embarrassing setback that he will desire to deny, spin, or otherwise downplay. Similarly, if the weaker army pulls off a rare triumph, he will exaggerate its magnitude and relative significance, and will predictably forecast “much more of the same” going forward.

For these reasons, the determination of “things as they really are” in wartime can be a complex calculus – but nevertheless not outside the capability of the experienced observer/analyst to ascertain to a reasonably accurate degree.

And make no mistake, to any reasonably objective and knowledgeable observer/analyst not intellectually crippled by mindless bigotry or riven with ulterior motives, the Russians are winning this war, and winning it big. And therefore their natural inclination will be to tell the truth in order to lend weight to that perception in the public mind.

The mountains of propaganda that have dominated western media reports and the “expert analysis” of its stable of arms-manufacturer-funded think-tank monkeys and talking-head “retired generals-for-hire” have, unfortunately, irredeemably tainted the perceptions of those for whom these voices constitute their only sources of information.

I wish there were a way to scrape the scales of darkness from their eyes, but alas, I have concluded it is more or less futile at this juncture. For most, not even “settled history” many years down the road will dissuade them from resolutely clinging to their most cherished delusions.

In any case, as pertains to the regular daily briefings of the Russian Ministry of Defense, those who follow them closely, as I do, will observe that they are typically detailed, not apparently prone to exaggeration, and delivered in a totally matter-of-fact fashion – no superfluous commentary about “glorious victories” or “trampling the enemy under our feet”, etc. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Furthermore, it must be understood that the Russians are also in a far superior position to know what has actually occurred on the battlefield. They have access not only to high-resolution satellite-based imagery, but more importantly to the countless hours of video shot every single day from their hundreds (thousands?) of loitering observation drones that are a constant fixture over almost every engagement of appreciable size.

That said, it is important to understand that, for obvious reasons, they’re absolutely not going to permit the general public and the OSINT practitioners of the world to have access to imagery as they see it. Instead, they consistently downgrade the resolution of shared video and still photos, and employ edits to remove any video footage they deem to be “privileged information” – such as what weapon is being used for an airstrike, or the angle from which it came.

As for the Ukrainians, it is apparent they no longer have a significant drone capability over the battlefield, and are therefore “flying blind” in a great many instances.



In conclusion, all perceptions of battle are distorted to some degree. Some things which are claimed to have happened may, on occasion, be substantiated with incontrovertible evidence of some kind: conclusive imagery, multiple credible witnesses, or the frank admission of the other side to an effectively undeniable loss or setback.

I would roughly estimate that the perception of truth of any given event, under the best of conditions – even for the respective combatants armed with far superior intelligence and imagery – probably never exceeds 90% accuracy. The general public, using open-source intelligence and reasonably reliable on-the-ground reporting, can optimistically hope for maybe 60% - 70% accuracy.

For these reasons, the acquisition of a knowledge of "things as they really are” in war is never an exact science. But it is an art that can consistently produce conclusions highly consonant with the objective facts of the matter.

Source
https://www.imetatronink.com/2022/08/in-war-losers-lie.html?m=1

Thanks for the update , I learned so much from this write up .
The truth is never you underestimate the Russians ,they are good(best in their field =military wise) at what they do.