Meat Part 1: Expendable Infantry in the Russo-Ukraine War

25 Minute Read

Those who follow the Russo-Ukraine War closely probably heard the term Meat used disparagingly to describe soldiers viewed as expendable even by their own leadership, who don’t value their lives, and use them cheaply. Is it true?

Long story short, the claims are absolutely true, Meat exists in the Russo-Ukraine War, and both sides are guilty too. But the long version is worth knowing, so strap yourself in for this first article in a five-part series on this shocking, sickening, and yet quite interesting phenomenon.

"A Rose by Any Other Name…"

The first time I heard the term Meat used was a few months into the war coming from Ukrainians describing the Russians. I initially thought it was a clever insult created right then, but on a hunch, I did some research online, and thanks to Google Translate, I discovered that the term is not new at all, it turns out that the Russians have their own cultural version of the term “Cannon Fodder,” they call the same concept “Pushechnoe Myaso,” literally “Meat for Cannons.”

Meaning that Meat is just the translated abbreviated Russian way of saying Cannon Fodder, which I’m going to define as expendable troops whose lives are viewed as of little significance by their society, government, and military chain of command, without much if any real value.

Who constitutes Cannon Fodder? Because of the inherent value of expensive and limited number of military aircraft, ships, and even armored fighting vehicles, I think it’s safe to suggest that Meat should refer to ground troops (though the American 8th Army Air Force heavy bomber crews in WW2 would give modern Russia a run for their money in how cheaply they were used). While Meat can also include sapper combat engineers, to keep things simple I’m only going to focus on infantrymen. I figure there are two ways that they can be used as cannon fodder:

Incidentally: Infantry and even SOF can occasionally be used callously, recklessly, and/or incompetently by their leadership resulting in extremely heavy losses, even if they weren’t intended as such. Everyone is guilty of this from time to time. For example, the histories of the US Army and Marines are filled with accounts of notoriously bloody campaigns in WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam too where commanders used their units poorly, treating their troops with little regard.

Purposefully: On occasion, certain military units have been created, task-organized, and given missions intended from the get-go to be used callously and recklessly because their value to their chain of command doesn’t necessitate survivability. Cannon fodder of this type exists as a design, not as an accident. It’s this manner that I’ll be focusing on in this series, when it’s deliberate.

Rotten to the Core

To understand why expendable infantry came to be used in the Russo-Ukraine War, we must first discuss the situation that led to the decision. Hardly anybody wakes up one day and decides that certain troops have the value of used toilet paper, it’s a very specific chain of events that leads to it. In the case of the Russo-Ukraine War, that started on the eve of the invasion, when Russian ground combat maneuver units averaged 75% strength, with most of those missing personnel being infantrymen.

Part of the reason for that dates back to the early 2010s and the Russian MOD’s New Look Reforms, which saw a large number of newly built maneuver brigades and divisions created but that growth was not accompanied by a successful recruitment campaign of Contraktniks, the Russian nickname for the volunteers that signed 3-5 year long enlistment contracts who provided the bulk of the Russian ground combat power.

To rectify that deficiency in manpower, the Russians could have relied on their annual allotment of approximately 300,000 conscripts, each serving twelve-month terms, with roughly half or more serving in the ground combat branches. But conscripts are forbidden from serving in combat outside a declared war, which Putin elected not to do, legally declaring it a “Special Military Operation.” So Russian conscripts couldn’t serve in Ukraine during the invasion (and still can’t).

Why was the deficiency among the infantry? Why not other jobs? That can be traced to doctrinal and culturally related choices. I’ll get into that a bit later in this article, but the Russians have very specific views on combat effectiveness that are driven by armored-centric doctrine, so shortfalls in manpower fell on the infantrymen serving in the dismount roles of Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV), viewed less critical to overall unit effectiveness than vehicle crews.

The effect was that on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the typical motorized/mechanized infantry squad might have as few as two or three dismounted infantrymen per squad, as opposed to the seven dismounts per squad they were supposed to have on paper. To put that in perspective, a full Russian infantry platoon could only dismount a single squad’s worth of infantrymen.

And that’s before losses.

A Stoppable Force Meets an Unmovable Object

It shouldn’t be shocking to read that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was one of the worst in modern history. That’s not hyperbole, it was horribly planned and executed even worse.

More than any other problem, beyond their many glaring issues with faulty doctrine, insufficient manpower, poor training, lack of competence, corruption, poor logistics, etc., the Russian invasion failed because the plan’s success hinged on an intelligence assessment that the Ukrainians wouldn’t resist the invasion. But the Ukrainians did indeed fight back, fiercely and stubbornly, and that took a heavy toll on the Russians.

The first phase of the war can be said to have ended in late March 2022, when the Russian strategic coup de main to conquer Ukraine as a nation-state had failed, forcing the Russians to conduct mass strategic retreats out of Kyiv, Chernikiv, Sumy, and Mylokaiv Oblasts, as well as tactical retreats in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts too. The Russians had gotten their teeth kicked in, with very visible losses distributed across their force structure, with few units not having gotten mauled.

The war then transitioned into what most consider the beginning of the second phase, “the complete liberation of the Donbas," when the Russians committed a significant part of their force structure and supply lines to conquer what remained of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts in Eastern Ukraine. Without any surprise, having telegraphed the offensive weeks in advance, without an operational pause to recover from the beating they took in the first phase, the Russian strategic leadership once again set up their forces for failure.

The Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine was insufficiently organized for the type of fight they were about to endure, specifically lacking the infantry manpower necessary to conduct aggressive assaults, part and parcel of any offensive against prepared defenses. They started the war unprepared for that reality, and everything that happened since the war started only made the infantry manpower situation worse.

As mentioned previously, before invading Ukraine the Russian Armed Forces relied on a partial mobilization force structure, primarily relying on Contraktniks, while in the event of a major conventional war they planned to use their conscripts and mobilize calling in further reserves. But without having done so to support the 2022 Donbas Offensive, the only option left to replace manpower was a continuation of a wartime volunteer enlistment recruitment program offering massive signing bonuses and debt relief as enticements for signing short contracts (three to six months) to fight in the “Special Military Operation,” with marketing aimed at Russian military veterans to limit the need to train them from scratch.

Miraculously, by the end of 2023 to the present, the Contraktniks recruitment program met Russian manpower needs to support their SMO, bringing in around 25-30k new troops per month, enough to replace monthly losses and grow to some extent. But whatever number they recruited during the Spring-Summer 2022 period wasn’t enough, their manpower demands were too high, needing to recruit enough individuals to not only bring existing units up to full strength, needing more to consistently replace future losses, while also needing even more new troops to build newer units. The Russians didn’t need a few tens of thousands of new recruits per month, they needed hundreds of thousands ASAP. And so with too few new Contraktniks signing up, their infantry manpower crisis fared no better.

Regardless, they went on the attack.

Death Before Dismount

Generally speaking, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) defensive template in mid-2022 relied on a positional defense, dominated by heavy fires supporting motivated troops manning a series of hasty and prepared defenses along the front lines. Their forward defenses were quite dispersed, the result of a need to limit forces in direct range of Russian attacks and fires, to better hide them, and because the overall strategic frontage was massive in comparison to the number of troops available; credible reports suggest an AFU infantry company held roughly 3 kilometers of frontage, translating to an AFU infantry platoon defending up to a full kilometer of frontage, if not more. Forward defensive positions tended to be squad or platoon-sized strongpoints dominating key terrain and avenues of approach, often screened by fireteam or squad-sized outpost positions.

Why do it that way? Well, like the Russians, the Ukrainians shared a common ancestor who wrote all their doctrine, so they knew exactly how the Russians would plan to fight. The Soviet “Army” was popularly described during the Late Cold War as an “Artillery army with tanks,” and that definitely applies to Russia (Ukraine too).

For example, while most Western militaries have a large number of infantry units that can be characterized as “light infantry,” within the Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian militaries all of their infantry units were effectively mechanized or motorized types, with all infantry squads possessing their own organic tracked or wheeled infantry IFVs, namely variants of the BMP, BTR, or BMD. Whatever the branch within the Russian Armed Forces, be it Ground Forces (their Army), VDV (Airborne, a separate branch from Ground Forces), or MP (Naval Infantry, under the Navy), there wasn’t any real conventional light infantry to be found at the start of the war.

That strange table of organization and equipment was deliberate, as Soviet-era and Russian offensive doctrine envisioned dominating the “fragmented battlefield” that would be found at the start of any major war, a non-linear, highly fluid environment with too few enemy military forces defending too large a frontage, with gaps everywhere, unguarded flanks everywhere, undefended roads everywhere, few if any prepared defenses. Pure maneuver warfare, dominated by overwhelming a highly mobile army with lots of fires.

Interestingly, had the Russians prepared properly for the invasion of Ukraine, the first weeks would have been the perfect environment for their doctrine and Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) to shine. Characterized by the meeting engagement with platoon, company, or battalion-sized tank-infantry maneuver forces, highly supported by fires, they planned to drive right into an unprepared enemy force and either destroy them in a vicious fires-centric meeting engagement skirmish, or the defenders would be bypassed to later be encircled.

Note, in this maneuver-centric warfare, dismounting infantry squads from their IFV was to be avoided when possible, as it was viewed as slow and wasteful. Hence why it was okay to staff a motor rifle infantry platoon of three IFVs while each squad not even have a fireteam’s worth of dismounts. No big deal, dismounting shouldn’t be happening anyway, right?

The Ukrainians knew all this. With their primary threat being Russian armored attacks, their tactical defensive scheme reflected that. With potential avenues of approach overwatched by recon drones and outpost positions, attacking Russian armor would drive right into long-range ATGMs or shorter-range anti-tank rockets, aiming at the lead vehicles, as artillery fire was directed on the other vehicles halted after coming under fire. And that’s exactly what happened in the invasion, and it’s exactly what happened throughout the Donbas Offensive.

However, every plan has a weakness, and the AFU plan was no different. While those dispersed, hidden, dug-in defensive tactics worked rather well against armored attacks, especially limiting the Russian’s capacity to conduct armored breakthroughs (read my earlier articles on Reconnaissance Fires Complex for more details on that topic), their antiarmor focus didn’t work so well against dismounted infantry attacks; there were both figurative and literal literal gaps in the AFU defenses.

But how could the Russians exploit the gaps to successfully storm defensive positions without an adequate number of dismounted infantrymen?

That’s it, I Quit!

Besides not having enough dismounted infantry during this period, the Russian Armed Forces couldn’t even have used their infantry aggressively even if they wanted. Get ready to learn one of the most insane military policies in history, this is going to blow your fucking minds:

Due to a totally asinine peacetime-era regulation within the Russian Armed Forces, initially meant to serve as an enticement to help recruitment, Contraktniks were allowed to resign from the RUAF whenever they wanted.

I’m 100% serious too, that’s legit. Let the ramifications of that sink in.

Is leadership a pain in the ass? Homesick? Life sucks in the Russo-Ukraine War? Scared of becoming a casualty? Well, good news for every Russian Contraktnik, be they junior enlisted, NCO, or officer. They could quit nearly as easily as walking out of a job at McDonald’s. The only stipulation involving combat was they had to wait until their unit was rotated off the immediate front line before they could be out-processed.

Think how batshit insane that is! As a combat infantry veteran myself, I can’t even imagine servicemen being allowed to quit whenever they want, especially in a combat zone. What maniac would give them that choice? More so, what maniac wouldn’t quit if they had the option?

And with Putin unwilling to legally escalate the conflict beyond its initial “Special Military Operation” status, the RUAF was stuck with that policy. At the time, their only recourse the Russian military had was a grossly ineffective shaming campaign meant to pressure soldiers not to quit or else their name and picture would be posted on social media and badmouthed. Or they’d catch unofficial threats from their chain of command. Hardly a successful deterrent.

Forced by circumstances and politics to conduct a meat grinder offensive, the Russian Armed Forces was stuck with that suicidal policy until Putin finally passed the Partial Mobilization in September 2022 after the Russians got their teeth kicked in again by Ukrainians during the Kharkiv and Kherson Counteroffensives, leading to legislative reforms that finally enacted a “Stop Loss” type policy where Russian Armed Forces discharges were frozen and they were no allowed to resign at will.

That insane policy had huge ramifications in mid-2022. Remember that the RUAF invaded Ukraine already understrength in dismounted infantry, then suffered heavy casualties in the initial invasion, and with even more losses in the months-long grinding Donbas Offensive. Then on top of that, their manpower crisis worsened due to Refuseniks quitting in record numbers.

And yet, the show must go on…

The Savior of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine: Ukrainians

Spring 2022 was characterized by lots of fighting throughout the Donbas, but two big urban battles stood out, at Mariupol and Severondonetsk. Neither was that important tactically or strategically despite becoming such a media spectacle, but they’re worth noting because the bulk of the Russian dismounted infantry assault troops involved weren’t Russian military.

While there were quite a few Chechen units involved, most of the infantry fighting were actually Pro-Russian Ukrainians who resided in the breakaway Ukrainian Donbas oblasts, self-identified as the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republic (L/DNR). Since the start of the Russo-Ukraine War in February 2022, the L/DNR committed their prewar “professional” veteran units and hastily raised mobilized troops (Mobiks) in the tens of thousands to serve under the Russian Armed Forces.

Initially serving along the old “JFO” demarcation Line of Contact from the 2014-2021 Donbas War to reinforce the Russian 8th Combined Arms Army, operating as part of the Southern Military District, as time went on L/DNR Mobiks were being attached throughout Russian ground units in Ukraine in company-sized light infantry companies to augment their offensive capabilities.

That makes total sense, in theory. The L/DNR could make up the deficit in dismounted infantry, allowing the Russian Motor Rifle, VDV, and Naval Infantry units to conduct aggressive sustained assault operations without dismounted infantry, which they didn’t possess in enough of their own.

In theory, it sounds like a nice solution, but what really happened?

Be Thankful For What You Have

Imagine you’re a Russian field commander. You have orders to conduct aggressive offensive operations and you must obey them. But the Ukrainian defenses are tenacious and effective. Your doctrinal bread and butter armor-centric attacks are both costly and often unsuccessful. However, there appears to be a gap in enemy defenses, but those require many dismounted infantrymen to exploit. Of which you are running low. Compounding your severe infantry manpower shortage is knowing that your Contraktniks can quit at will, requiring you be mindful of morale and losses.

Then your senior commanders give what appears to be a lifeline: large numbers of L/DNR infantrymen.

Hold off on the celebratory vodka, because upon receiving those L/DNR troops, you realize you got handed a bunch of barely trained Mobiks, who know as much about foot soldiering as I do about physics. What are your options to make this amalgamation of crap work? It’s time to get creative!

Check out this quote from the RUSI defense analyst Jack Watling, describing Russian operations during the 2022 Donbas Offensive:

So you, on the one hand, had LNR, DNR troops. They were often used to fix and force Ukrainian positions to light up. You had reconnaissance troops and Spetsnaz companies who would go and designate targets to get precision artillery against them, like Krasnopol. You would have Wagner companies and VDV companies who would be used to assault positions, and very often this would be done sequentially with the artillery. So you would force everyone to light up, fix them, smash them with the artillery all day, do them with a deliberate assault with those VDV companies. Once you took the ground, you'd put the LNR and DNR into the taken positions and then withdraw the VDV so that they didn't get hit in any counter-attacks.

Really, really attritional. Lost lots of people, although very disproportionate in terms of where they took the casualties…

And that wasn’t the only source I’ve found that described that exact same use of the L/DNR. In May 2022, a roughly brigade-sized Private Military Company named the Wagner Group took the key Donbas fortress city of Popasna using classic dismounted infantry assault tactics, supposedly also using L/DNR troops identically as Watling described above.

Bingo! That’s it, right there! That is the how, when, why, and where the use of Meat in the Russo-Ukraine War started.

The numerous and valueless Ukrainian Mobiks of the L/DNR were used to perform the only function that their callous and reckless Russian field commanders could find to get value out of them. Viewed as not competent enough to perform complex deliberate attacks, they were used to conduct reconnaissance-in-force probing attacks to find and fix Ukrainian outposts and strongpoint positions. Once those positions were identified, the Russians would hit them with heavy fires to attrit them, and then use a smaller number of more competent, more valued, more Russian assault forces to eliminate the positions, which at that time meant VDV or Wagner mercenaries.

Amazingly, that system worked rather well. Right up until the Russians ran out of Ukrainian Meat. Alas, all good things must come to an end, and by the autumn of 2022, the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics were pretty much tapped out of manpower left to mobilize.

But the seed was planted. The Russians had found a solution to the tactical and organizational problems they faced. If they had dismounted infantry to serve as Meat, their deliberate attacks against AFU prepared defenses could succeed, and they could keep attacking and taking territory, per their strategic orders.

But was there another source of Meat to tap into other than L/DNR Mobiks? More so, what if there was an even larger, more expendable source?

It wouldn’t take long to find out…

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Stay tuned for more on the topic in Meat Part 2, Wagner in Bakhmut.