Georgian Army Proves to Be No Match for the Russian Bear

By MATTI FRIEDMAN

By Matti Friedman

The Associated Press

TBILISI, Georgia

U.S. military trainers – the only American boots on the ground – say the Georgian soldiers they knew who were sent to battle the Russians had fighting spirit but were not ready for war.

The Georgians were “beginning to walk, but by no means were they running,” said Army Capt. Jeff Barta, who helped train a Georgian brigade for peacekeeping service in Iraq. “If that was a U.S. brigade, it would not have gone into combat.”

Now on standby at the Sheraton Hotel, six of the American trainers offered a glimpse into the 5-year-old U.S. mission and into the performance of the outnumbered and outgunned Georgian military in its defeat by Russia.

The Americans arrived for work Aug. 7 to unexpectedly find training was over for the unit they had been assigned to for three weeks, the 4th Brigade: The Georgian soldiers were sitting on their rucksacks and singing folk songs .

Then buses and trucks took the troops toward Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, where there had been sporadic clashes and shelling the previous week. That night the Georgian army began an offensive to retake the Russian-supported region, and by the next morning Russian tanks were rolling across the border.

The Georgians do not lack “warrior spirit,” Barta said, but they weren’t ready for combat. They inherited bad habits from the Red Army and need to be taught to think on their own, Barta said. The Georgian army has five regular infantry brigades, each with some 2,000 troops. Only one of them – the 1st, which was rushed home from Iraq by U.S. planes after fighting broke out – has been trained to a NATO level.

There also are units of poorly trained reservists, men who do 18 days of one-time military training and then eight days a year into their 40s.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, some American trainers spoke bluntly about problems with the Georgian troops, who one veteran sergeant said “got torn up real bad.”

The Americans were training them to use the U.S. military’s M-4 rifles, he said. But when fighting broke out, the Georgians went back to the Soviet AK-47, the only weapon they trusted. They appeared incapable of firing single shots, instead letting off bursts of automatic fire, which is inaccurate and wastes ammunition, he said.

Another problem was communications: As soon as combat began, the army’s communications network largely collapsed, he said, so troops conducted operations using regular cell phones. That left communications easily accessible to Russian intelligence. By Vladimir Isachenkov

The Associated Press

MOSCOW

Russia’s lightning war against Georgia looks like a military triumph: An armada of Russian tanks crushed Georgia’s modest army in a show of muscle intended to punish its U.S.-allied neighbor, scare others and re- affirm Moscow’s influence on its former Soviet turf.

But the conflict also revealed weaknesses in Moscow’s military preparedness – including faulty intelligence, a shortage of modern equipment and poor coordination.

The swift Russian victory presented a stark contrast to the war in Chechnya in the 1990s, where Russian troops were bogged down for years, suffering losses at the hands of lightly armed rebels.

When Georgia launched an offensive Aug. 7 to regain control of the breakaway province of South Ossetia, Russia responded immediately, sending thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks through the mountain tunnel that cuts through Russia’s border with South Ossetia.

Dozens of Russian warplanes ranged over Georgia, attacking military bases, airports, and communications and transport facilities.

In the two wars in Chechnya, Moscow faced criticism for leveling the capital of Grozny with carpet bombings and airstrikes. This time, the military says, Russian aircraft used smart weapons to make precision attacks on equipment and installations.

Although Russian airstrikes for the most part seemed to pinpoint their targets in Georgia, AP reporters also witnessed heavy bomb damage to civilian areas in at least two places – the central city of Gori, where several residential structures were hit, and Ruisi, a village ravaged by Russian warplanes.

Human Rights Watch said at least 11 civilians were killed and dozens wounded by cluster bombs and urged Russia to stop using them. The Russian military denied using cluster bombs, which disperse small “bomblets” over a wide area. Moscow-based aviation analyst Konstantin Makiyenko said the civilian casualties appeared inadvertent.

Ruslan Pukhov of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies said the war showed the Russian air force is still short of precision weapons and continues to rely on older types of bombs and rockets.

Some civilian casualties could probably have been avoided if Russia’s equivalent to the U.S. GPS satellite navigation system was fully working, but the system doesn’t yet have the necessary number of satellites in orbit, and portable navigation devices are still a rarity in the Russian military, officials said.

Georgia said it downed at least 21 Russian warplanes. Russia confirmed the loss of four aircraft .

inadequate training

The Georgian army has five regular infantry brigades, each with some 2,000 troops. Only one of them has been trained to a NATO level. comparison with past

The swift Russian victory presented a stark contrast to the war in Chechnya in the 1990s, where Russian troops were bogged down for years.

Originally published by BY MATTI FRIEDMAN.

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