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The war in Ukraine has exposed a series of military vulnerabilities in the Russian armed forces, defence analysts say.
Ukraine's army is not only performing better than expected, it has also dogged the Russian invasion with a stockpile of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Most worrying for Moscow’s generals is that Ukraine defences have the ability to take out advanced tanks, jets and attack helicopters while Russian forces have lacked co-ordination.
“The initial handling has been quite surprising and at a tactical level we thought the Russians were better than this,” said Sam Cranny-Evans, a Russia military expert at the Rusi think tank. “We were expecting it to be a lot more co-ordinated than it has been, especially in combined arms operations. This is probably down to a combination of five or six things going badly wrong.”
However, the Russians might be undertaking what the military calls “reconnaissance in force”, with smaller units probing defences before heavier units arrive.
This might explain why images in Kharkiv show soft-skinned Russian TIGR vehicles – similar to the American Humvees – crippled by gunfire. Similarly, a number of eight-wheeled BDRM armoured vehicles, used by paratroopers and special forces, have been knocked out.
This perhaps accounts for the Ukrainian Defence Ministry's claim that 5,300 Russian servicemen have already been killed and 191 tanks, 816 armoured vehicles, 29 helicopters and 29 aircraft destroyed. Even if these figures are overestimated, they suggest that stiff resistance has hampered the Russian advance severely.
The assault has been a disjointed nature. The Russians were supposed to have highly competent and well-organised Battalion Tactical Groups that combined tanks, armoured infantry and artillery. Due to Ukrainian ambushes, poor planning or luck, these groups have become separated from the main battle tanks and artillery, and unable to support infantry.
There are reports of units running out of petrol with poor planning on fuel estimates.
However, it is far too early to say that the Russians have been defeated militarily. It may be that within a few days the heavy armour and artillery will arrive along with close air support to allow the infantry to take major cities such as Kiev and Kharkiv.
Many units are new to operations and the experience of combat will probably turn them into battle-hardened fighters.
But the Russian military is taking losses. Several of the new Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters have been shot down, with the fragmentation damage suggesting they were hit by Stinger missiles.
“The Ka-52 is one of Russia’s top-end military helicopters,” said Dr Richard Connelly, a Russia expert at the University of Birmingham. “They are using and losing them in Ukraine and really haven’t got vast quantities of them to lose.” Slightly more than 100 of the Ka-52s are in service.
Baltic states have supplied the Ukrainians with the short-range but highly effective Stingers but Ukraine might also have assembled a stockpile covertly, provided by others including the US.
Similarly, before the war began it was suggested that Russia's T-90 tank would prove highly effective, yet it too has been vulnerable to the modern NLAW (New Light Anti Tank Weapon) and Javelin missiles supplied by Britain.
Ukraine has a far more advanced local defence industry than many realised, with the ability to produce its own tanks, aircraft and missiles.
The Skif guided anti-tank missile, developed by Ukraine’s Luch Design Bureau, uses a laser beam for target guidance either against vehicles or hovering helicopters. It is widely distributed, either fired from a tripod or mounted on vehicles.
The combination has clearly blocked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hopes of a swift victory. There are also concerns that Russia’s tactics will follow those developed in Chechnya when its forces initially received a bloody nose but then flattened its capital city of Grozny.
“This mixture of overconfidence and under competence that we're seeing from the Russians at the moment feels exactly like when they moved on Grozny ... in December 1994, when they made exactly the same mistakes but then brought in a lot more resources and were much more ruthless,” said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist at Chatham House.
Boris Johnson told his Cabinet on Monday that it was becoming clearer by the day “that Putin had made a colossal mistake” in believing that “the guns of his tanks would be garlanded with roses when instead Ukrainian people had put up a fierce resistance in defence of their homeland”.
The British prime minister said the latest intelligence suggested that these “heroic efforts of the Ukrainian military” were inflicting significant casualties on Russian troops.
Ukraine crisis latest - in pictures
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A monitor displays a projectile striking the regional state administration building in Kharkiv, as the Russian invasion continues. Reuters -
People help a wounded woman in the aftermath of Russian shelling in Kharkiv. EPA -
Ukrainian emergency service personnel carry the body of a victim following shelling in Kharkiv. AP -
Students who fled the conflict rest in a refugee camp in Voluntari, Romania. AP -
Members of an Ukrainian civil defence unit pass new assault rifles to the opposite side of a blown-up bridge on Kiev’s northern front. AFP -
Civilians cross a river on Kiev's northern front. AFP -
A woman takes photos of a destroyed accommodation building near a checkpoint in Brovary, outside Kiev. AP -
The city hall of Kharkiv, damaged by Russian shelling. AFP -
Debris litters the square outside the damaged Kharkiv city hall. AFP -
A Ukrainian woman sleeps on the floor of the railway station in Zahonyi close to the Hungary/Ukraine border. AFP -
A medical worker attends to wounded man at a hospital in Brovary, outside Kiev. AP -
Refugees from Ukraine in a tent at the Medyka border crossing, Poland. AP -
Debris outside the regional administration building, which city officials said was hit by a missile, in Kharkiv. Reuters -
A student evacuated from Ukraine is embraced by her family after arriving at Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunisia. AFP -
Rescuers in a building damaged by a missile in central Kharkiv. Reuters -
An ambulance is visible through the damaged window of a vehicle hit by bullets in Kiev, Ukraine. Reuters -
Territorial defence members prepare to head out on patrol in Kiev. EPA -
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivers a speech on screen during the opening of the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. AP -
A policeman detains a young demonstrator during a protest against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St Petersburg, Russia. AP -
Local residents in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, prepare Molotov cocktails. Reuters -
Residents clean a bomb shelter under an out-of-service cinema in central Zhytomyr. Reuters -
Ukrainian volunteers tear cloth into strips to make camouflage nets in Lviv, western Ukraine. AP -
Part of the military convoy north-west of Invankiv, Ukraine. AP -
Mark Goncharuk, a young boy from Kiev, leaves his father behind as he travels with the rest of his family towards the border. Reuters -
People hold an anti-war protest outside the Russian Embassy in Mexico City, Mexico. Reuters -
A crater caused by shelling on the outskirts of Kiev. AFP -
People queue outside a grocery store in the Ukrainian capital. EPA -
Ukrainian soldiers stand at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kiev. EPA -
Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, second left, and Davyd Arakhamia, faction leader of the Servant of the People party in the Ukrainian Parliament, third right, attend the peace talks in the Gomel region of Belarus. AP -
People who have fled the Russian invasion in Ukraine, clamour to board a bus bound for a refugee centre established in Przemysl, Poland. Reuters -
Hanna Pavlovna Lukasz, from Mirhord, Ukraine, said her sons, aged 12 and 8, and her 66-year-old mother had been waiting on the Ukrainian side of the border crossing with Medyka, Poland, for four days. AP -
A volunteer from Kiev prepares a rear post with trenches in the city. AFP -
A child being treated for cancer rests in the bomb shelter of the oncology ward at a hospital in Kiev. Getty -
Police officers check occupants of a suspicious car in Kiev, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues. Reuters -
A woman from Ukraine uses a phone to listen to a speech by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a refugee shelter in Beregsurany, Hungary. Reuters -
Shelves empty of bread after a curfew was lifted as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kiev. Reuters -
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, left, and President Zelenskyy. AFP -
Snow-covered shoes donated for those fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland. Reuters -
People who have fled Ukraine wait for a bus to transport them away from the border crossing in Medyka. Reuters -
Norwegian soldiers of the Nato-enhanced forward presence battalion pose at a military plane as they arrive at an airport in Kaunas, Lithuania. AP -
A person fleeing Ukraine sits during snowfall at a temporary camp in Przemysl, Poland. Reuters -
Footage reportedly of Russian Buk missile system vehicles on a road before a drone strike near Malyn, Ukraine. Reuters -
An explosion after what are said to be Russian Buk missile system vehicles on a road are struck by a drone. Reuters -
The monument to Russian troops from the Second World War, after the figures’ hands were painted red, at the Red Army memorial in Sofia, Bulgaria. EPA -
The Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, is lit up with the colours of Ukraine’s national flag in a show of support. AP -
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the construction site of the National Space Agency on the premises of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, in Moscow. EPA -
A man looks out from a train, at the railway station in Lviv, Ukraine. The UN has estimated the conflict could produce as many as four million refugees. AP -
A Ukrainian boy waits for his mother after passing the border crossing point in Siret, northern Romania. EPA -
Russian policemen detain a demonstrator in St Petersburg, during a protest against the country's military actions in Ukraine. EPA -
Ukrainian soldiers at a check point in the city of Zhytomyr. Reuters -
Residents prepare petrol bombs to defend the city, in Uzhhorod, Ukraine. Reuters -
A pro-Russian fighter sits inside a tank in the separatist self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, in the Luhansk region, Ukraine. Reuters -
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, speaks to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, second left, and Head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and First Deputy Defence Minister Valery Gerasimov, left, during their meeting in Moscow. AP -
Ukrainians and supporters gather during a demonstration in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens against the Russian military's operation in Ukraine. AFP -
Ukrainian Territorial Defence fighters test an automatic grenade launcher taken from a destroyed Russian infantry mobility vehicla after a battle in Kharkiv. AFP
