How a General's Blunder Left Russia's Border Vulnerable

In the spring of this year, Moscow’s new military appointee overseeing security in the Kursk province dismantled a council tasked with protecting the vulnerable border region. Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin said the military alone had the strength and the resources to protect Russia’s border, according to an official in Russian security services.

That plan left yet another hole in Russia’s weak border defenses, which crumbled earlier this month when Ukrainian troops executed a lightning offensive across the border into Kursk. Ukrainian troops crossed the border to find Russian troops in disarray. They surged ahead and now say they occupy more than 400 square miles of Russian territory.

To be sure, Lapin alone didn’t open the gates to the first foreign invasion of Russian territory since World War II. He was faced with a critical shortage of men. But his misstep is characteristic of a top brass often out of touch with battlefield realities, which now plagues Moscow as it seeks to oust Ukrainian forces from its territory.

Since the start of the war, Russia’s centralized, top-down thinking, one of the defining features of Russia under President Vladimir Putin, has backfired on the battlefield. It has hampered sober planning in the Kremlin, and when those plans have failed, it has prevented Russian forces from improvising to react to fast-moving developments.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-a-general-s-blunder-left-russia-s-border-vulnerable/ar-AA1p9sf3