When the Campaign Meets the City: Urban Battles and the Operational Level of War
Alec Wahlman | September 7, 2020
It was all about speed. Russian Army planners assessed that their combined-arms battalion tactical groups could cover the two hundred kilometers from the Belarus border to Warsaw quickly, in a few days, taking the direct approach along European Route 30. The Russians expected local resistance, but nothing that could stop the concentrated thrust of armor before it reached the objective. Once in possession of Warsaw, Moscow assumed NATO would have to negotiate, unwilling to stomach a brutal fight to retake a NATO capital. At that point Moscow could trade this prize for the ending of all post-Crimea sanctions—sanctions that had Russia’s economy on the brink of collapse. The plan was risky and bold, but offered the promise of saving Russia. Time was the key.
But Russian campaign planners failed to account for a crucial element—urban defense. As the lead Russian battalions bypassed a series of modest-sized cities—each inhabited by between fifteen and eighty thousand people—on the way to Warsaw, scattered Polish light forces were left behind the Russian advance. Clearing every city took time the Russians did not have, and forces they could not spare from the main thrust on Warsaw. While the NATO senior leadership was focused on the threat to Warsaw, and thus made that the focus of heavy NATO mechanized units, they managed to reinforce those bypassed small cities with a smattering of additional light forces. Helicopter or fixed-wing transport was too risky, given the Russian air defenses, so these light forces drove themselves into the various cities on side roads, perpendicular to the Russian advance, where gaps in the enemy forces allowed it.
https://mwi.usma.edu/when-the-campaign-meets-the-city-urban-battles-and-the-operational-level-of-war/
