Russia and Ukraine are building up huge armies, but they both have the same problem with using them in battle

• The Russian and Ukrainian militaries both lack junior officers who can lead large forces in battle.
• This is a longstanding issue for Russia, and it is affecting Ukraine's military more as it expands.
• Both militaries may struggle to train more officers as they continue combat operations.

The difference between an army and a well-armed mob often comes down to the presence of good junior officers. The same applies to staff work, which ensures that combat operations are properly planned, synchronized, and supplied.

Russia and Ukraine are both learning that lesson, as they field newly formed armies with masses of inexperienced soldiers who need cadres of capable and experienced officers in order to be effective.

"Both Russia and Ukraine have struggled to generate offensive combat power in 2023," Jack Watling, a defense expert at Britain's Royal United Services Institute think tank, wrote in a recent commentary. "The heavy attrition of experienced junior officers and trained field-grade staff has limited the scale at which offensive action can be synchronized."

Ukraine's military has had the unenviable task of absorbing a constant stream of inexperienced replacements to replenish losses as it trains its forces on new Western equipment and tactics — all while mounting a counteroffensive against strong Russian defenses.

Compounding the problem is that a Ukrainian headquarters unit in the field can only control a fraction of the troops under its command. "Essentially, you have brigade command posts commanding about two companies forward at a time," Watling said on a recent War on the Rocks podcast.

In many armies, a brigade headquarters is responsible for about 15 combat companies, plus support units. In modern warfare, those headquarters units have to coordinate maneuver and fire by multiple arms — infantry, armor, and artillery — while ensuring air support and resupply and coordinating operations with neighboring formations.

The limited capacity of Ukrainian headquarters is caused by a "lack of trained staff officers at battalion level who can receive intent and synchronize it," Watling said. "So there's been a lot of, let's say, criticism in the Western media about why [are] the Ukrainians not massing more capability. The answer is because if they do that then things start losing synchronization."

Instead of ambitious armored assaults, Ukraine has switched to short bite-and-hold attacks by small units, responding both to those synchronization issues as well as the difficulty of massing forces while under observation by Russian forces armed with long-range drones, artillery, and missiles.

The situation may be a bit easier for Russia, which has transitioned from attack to defense along much of the front in Ukraine. Holding a trench line is less taxing for small staffs and inexperienced troops than it is to mount an offensive against a well-entrenched opponent.

Nonetheless, Russia should know better than most the importance of good officers. Despite enjoying superior numbers, the Red Army's lack of officers and staffs hampered its effectiveness against German forces on the Eastern Front in World War II.

Though the Soviets were masters at planning strategic-level operations such as the Stalingrad offensive, German battalions and regiments — commanded by officers who were encouraged to exercise initiative — regularly outmaneuvered their Russian counterparts, leading to enormous Soviet casualties.

This same pattern can be seen today in Ukraine, where Russian operations have been characterized by rigid tactics and slow reaction times on the ground and in the air.

Another striking consequence is heavy casualties among Russian commanders, with more than 30 generals and colonels killed in Ukraine, according to some estimates. This problem dates to World War II.

Shortages of junior and mid-level officers, plus the lack of a solid noncommissioned officer corps like those in Western armies, means senior Russian officers are expected to go to the front and take charge. However heroic those officers may be, when they become casualties it disrupts the command structure.

Russia's military has long sought to attract more officer candidates. A 2018 program, for example, tried to entice soldiers and NCOs with a six-month course that would commission them as officers. "The problem was that the amount of applicants for the program was negligible, as most soldiers and sergeants did not plan to stay in the army for too long," Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military, noted in a recent article for the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank.

In July 2023, reserve personnel — Russians 50 to 70 years of age — became eligible to sign contracts to join a special mobilization reserve that could be called up for combat duty any time. "For soldiers, sergeants and NCOs in reserve, this would give some impetus for officer training," Luzin wrote.

Indeed, the Kremlin may be so desperate for officers that it calls up old Soviet-era personnel. Luzin believes that the special reserve means "the Russian top brass are likely planning to convert the last but still relatively massive generation of Soviet officers in reserve into the officers of the acting mobilization reserve, who are loyal enough and may be motivated for such service by additional pay."

Both Russia and Ukraine may be trapped in a vicious cycle, where a lack of officers results in less effective command and control, which complicates operations in the field and causes increased casualties, leading to the commitment of yet more inexperienced officers and soldiers.

Throughout the winter and into 2024, Kyiv and Moscow will likely continue raising troops, expanding their training, and building or buying weapons for them to use. But the lack of experienced junior leaders raises the prospect of a conflict fought by two clumsy armies incapable of waging more than static trench warfare.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.