ISW: Russian Airborne Forces played no small role in failures during initial invasion

Russian military bloggers have openly criticized the Russian military for failing to address structural problems with Russian Airborne Forces (VDV).

They highlighted the VDV’s failure to fight the war as it had trained in peacetime, a failing that played no small role in the general Russian failures during the initial invasion, Caliber.Az reports referring to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on July 19. 

Experts say the Russian VDV has not adopted force structure and tactics reforms that the Russian military already knew were necessary prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"Lightly armoured Russian VDV vehicles (such as BMD and BTR-D) are too heavy to enable effective airborne mobility—especially in contested airspace—and too light to provide sufficient protection in manoeuvre warfare," according to the ISW.

Russian VDV forces' structural reliance on a small number of lightly armoured fighting vehicles is a liability.

Russian military blogger "Military Informant" praised how the Russian VDV previously practised using light unarmored vehicles for higher mobility in three consecutive years of annual capstone command staff exercises (Tsentr 2019, Kavkaz 2020, and Zapad 2021) but noted that these adaptations did not have time to “take root” before the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.