Russia Didn’t Stop the ‘Meat-Grinder’. It Downsized the Portions
By: Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine
Kramatorsk – Describing small groups of two to four Russian attackers attempting to penetrate vulnerable points in the Ukrainian defenses by moving on foot, often at night, and minimizing communications, “The Telegraph” used misleading language to claim that «Russia abandons ‘meat-grinder’ tactics». This phrase is incorrect because it confuses tactical form with operational logic.
As I’ve already explained, the concept of the front has become porous. In less than five years, the Ukrainian battlefield has gone from a line to a volume. Previously, it was conceived along a single axis, as a line of contact between two forces. Then the war of drones, guided artillery, and deep-seated rear areas added the Y axis, transforming it into a horizontal band extending for tens and then hundreds of kilometers. Today, with drones and reconnaissance balloons, mesh networks, loitering munitions, glide bombs, electronic warfare, and layered air defense systems, the Z axis has also been fully integrated: height. The front is a volume within which every man, antenna, vehicle, drone, and radio signal occupies a position, a trajectory, leaves a signature, and marks a vulnerability.
Consequently, the concept of rear areas has also evaporated. When the front becomes a volume, the attacker can no longer just push a line. They must work to insert themselves between the layers: beneath the drones, inside the ruins, in the sensor blind spots, in the gaps of electronic warfare coverage, within the folds of the defense, at night, during rotation periods, and in the spaces between one ISR node and another.
If we add a fourth implicit variable, time, this three-dimensional view of the battlefield gains an additional layer that helps explain why Moscow has not abandoned the meat grinder but has modified it to fit the new shape of war.
Seeing vast masses of human material destroyed over many months in such short timeframes that it becomes impossible to replenish losses, Moscow splits its infantry into small groups, disperses them in the gray zone, weakens their communications, moves them at night, and connects them via drones that act as eyes and guides. Then there’s tactical timing, which influences events we live on the ground and depends on factors like drone latency, the speed of the kill chain, and the cycle length needed to identify an infiltrator group, relay its position, assign a target, and execute the strike.
In the realm of volume, those who shorten the gap between discovery and destruction dominate. Russia aims to survive by lowering its signature; Ukraine aims to win by decreasing latency.
To an outside observer, Russian infiltrations may seem ‘new’ but in reality, they are a forced response to an increasingly transparent battlefield, whose stratification they measure.
Underground, tunnels run through a fortress belt that the occupiers have been unable to conquer for 12 years, along with those pipelines – like the gas ones near Kupiansk – they try to infiltrate through flames, floods, and landslides, often ending up trapped in dead-end tunnels. The ground is littered with sensors, passive mines, and now active ones, such as ‘sleeping’ drones, along with an ever-growing number of Ukrainian unmanned units that don’t bleed but – as the robots President Zelensky mentioned two weeks ago – have for the first time in history captured several Russian army positions, forcing the occupiers to surrender. At low altitudes, looping munitions and FPV drones – including fiber optics ones – escort infantry movements hidden among ruins, vegetation, and depressions. At intermediate altitudes, balloons, reconnaissance UAVs, relays, and radio nodes enable fire correction and continuous observation, allowing monitoring and real-time adjustment of fortifications, earthworks, dragon’s teeth, fences, and troop movements. At higher altitudes, long-range drones, missiles, glide bombs, radar, and air defense systems operate. Above and around all of this lies the electromagnetic spectrum, which is invisible but influences every level.
The form has changed, but the logic remains that of human attrition, which Moscow has granularized by no longer focusing on immediate breakthroughs but on progressive penetration.
This shift from human wave tactics to micro-infiltration is fundamental to the crisis facing the traditional front line. Moscow continues to use expendable troops to drain Ukrainian drones, ISR efforts, and the command time of Ukrainian operators who are forced to discover, track, pursue, and eliminate them. These small groups of cannon fodder are guided and supported by drones that ease the burden on ground command, shifting control upward. As I explained from Dobropillia, these expendable units can infiltrate, disrupt, outflank, and saturate Ukrainian attention, but they cannot produce a strategic breakthrough alone without reserves, logistics, firepower, equipment, engineering, rotations, and consolidation capabilities.
A glance at the real-time images on the Delta monitors (the unified system at the core of the interoperability of the Trident Armed Forces) is enough to see that the Russian ‘meat-grinder’ has not disappeared at all, but has changed, adapting to a new environment that no longer allows Moscow to grind men in the same crude way as before.
However, trying to spread them out across space by breaking the mass into micro-units does not mean a more modern or less wasteful approach.
The battlefield no longer rewards mass as such. It forces it to break apart.
But by fragmenting, the Russian mass loses effectiveness: more assaults, less territory, more human consumption per square kilometer.
It’s the ‘meat-grinder’ of the drone era: no longer a massive wave crushing the line, but thousands of small impacts within a monitored area, where each meter gained costs more than the last.
Moscow hasn’t stopped consuming men; it has just learned the hard way to do so in smaller doses, within a gray area that the widespread use of drones has made too visible for the old human wave tactics.
The Telegraph’s idea of ??an almost rationalizing or humanizing evolution of Russian tactics is wrong. There is nothing more inhumane than all this.
The equation is straightforward: no longer compensable losses plus increasingly widespread Ukrainian surveillance equal the impossibility of concentrating large masses without destroying them even before contact.
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俄羅斯並未停止“絞肉機”戰術，隻是縮小了份量
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻譯：旺財球球
烏克蘭前線報道
克拉馬托爾斯克 ——《電訊報》用“俄羅斯放棄‘絞肉機’戰術”這樣的誤導性表達來描述由兩到四名俄軍組成的小型小組；這些小組通常徒步行動、常在夜間推進、盡量減少通訊、試圖突破烏克蘭防線的薄弱點。這種說法是不正確的，因為它混淆了戰術形式與作戰邏輯。
（圖：我從烏克蘭戰壕裏出來——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
正如我此前已解釋過的，前線的概念已變得不合時宜。在不到五年的時間裏，烏克蘭戰場已經從一條線變成了一個立體空間。過去它被設想為兩軍之間沿單一軸線形成的接觸線。隨後，無人機、製導火炮和縱深後方的加入使戰場增加了Y軸，變成橫向延伸數十甚至數百公裏的帶狀地帶。如今，隨著無人機、偵察氣球、網格化網絡、包圍性彈藥、滑翔炸彈、電子戰和分層防空係統的出現，Z軸：高度，也被完全融入。陣線成為一個立體結構，在其中每個人、天線、車輛、無人機和無線電信號都有位置與軌跡、留下特征並構成漏洞。
（圖：Alla和我在烏克蘭赫爾鬆的殺戮區報道 – 版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
因此，後方地區的概念也隨之消散了。當前線成為立體時，進攻方不再隻是推動一條線。他們必須設法滲透入層與層之間：在無人機下方、廢墟內、傳感器盲區、電子戰覆蓋的缺口、防禦結構的褶皺裏、在夜間、輪換時段行動，以及一個情報監視與偵察（ISR）節點間的空隙裏。
如果再加入第四個隱含變量：時間，這種三維戰場觀又多了一層，有助於解釋莫斯科為何並未放棄“絞肉機”，而是將其調整以適應新的戰爭形態。
（圖：Alla和我一起在烏克蘭赫爾鬆的殺戮區為意大利報紙“La Ragione”報道——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
鑒於在極短時間內看到大量人員損失，補充損失變得不可能，莫斯科把步兵分散成小組，將他們分散在灰色地帶，削弱他們的通信，在夜間移動，並用無人機作為眼睛和向導將其連接起來。還有戰術時序問題，它影響我們在一線經曆的事件，取決於無人機延遲、擊殺鏈速度以及識別滲透小組、傳遞目標位置、分配目標並實施打擊所需的周期長度等因素。
在這個立體的戰場，能夠縮短發現到毀滅之間間隔的一方占優勢。俄羅斯的目標是通過降低自身特征來生存；烏克蘭的目標是通過減少時延來取勝。
（圖： Alla的人體攝像頭拍攝的我在一個烏克蘭戰壕內奔跑——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
對外界觀察者而言，俄羅斯滲透行動可能看起來是新戰術，但實際上它們是對愈發透明戰場的被迫回應，其滲透深度由這種透明度來衡量。
在地下，隧道穿過占領者十二年來未能征服的堡壘帶，還有那些輸氣管線，類似庫皮揚斯克附近的天然氣管道，他們試圖在火焰、洪水和山體滑坡中滲透，常常最終被困在死胡同隧道中。地麵布滿傳感器、被動地雷，現又有了主動式地雷，如“沉睡”無人機，以及數量日增的烏克蘭無人單元，這些無人單元不會流血，但正如澤連斯基總統兩周前提到的，曆史上首次有機器人奪取了若幹俄軍陣地，迫使占領者投降。低空有回旋彈藥和FPV（第一人稱視角）無人機，包括光纖型，護衛步兵行動，在廢墟、植被與低窪地帶中的隱蔽推進。中空有氣球、偵察無人機、中繼與無線節點支持火力校正與持續觀察，使得工事、土堤、反坦克刺樁、柵欄與部隊調動得以被監控並實時調整。高空有遠程無人機、導彈、滑翔炸彈、雷達與防空係統運作。所有這些之上與周圍是電磁頻譜，雖不可見卻影響每一層級。
形態變了，但邏輯仍是消耗人力，莫斯科通過不再追求即時突破而是逐步滲透來將其細粒化。
（視頻：Alla和我在烏克蘭赫爾鬆錄製了這段影片——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
從人浪戰術轉向微滲透是傳統前線所麵臨危機的根本所在。莫斯科繼續使用可犧牲的部隊來消耗烏克蘭的無人機、ISR能力以及烏克蘭操作員的指揮時間，後者被迫發現、追蹤、追擊並消滅這些滲透小組。這些小股炮灰由無人機引導與支援，以減輕地麵指揮負擔，將控製權上移。正如我在多布羅皮利亞所述，這些可犧牲單位能滲透、擾亂、迂回並占用烏克蘭注意力，但若沒有預備隊、後勤、火力、裝備、工兵、輪換與鞏固能力，它們無法單獨產生戰略性突破。
（圖：我在烏克蘭頓涅茨克頓巴斯的烏克蘭駐紮地——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
隻需瀏覽Delta監視器上“三叉戟武裝力量互操作性核心係統”的實時影像，就足以看出俄羅斯的“絞肉機”一點也沒有消失，而是改變了，適應了一種不再允許莫斯科以過去那種粗暴方式碾碎人力的新環境。
然而，把人群分散到空間中、把整體拆解成微單元，並不意味著更現代或浪費減少的新方式。
戰場不再單純獎勵規模。它迫使規模分解。
但通過碎片化，俄羅斯的整體力量卻失去效率：更多攻擊、占領更少領土、每平方公裏的人力消耗更多。
這就是無人機時代的“絞肉機”：不再是碾壓防線的巨大人浪，而是在受監控區域內成千上萬個小衝擊，每前進一步的成本都比上一步更高。
（圖：Alla與我在烏克蘭蘇梅的殺戮區報道時躲藏無人機——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
莫斯科並未停止消耗人力；它隻是在付出慘痛教訓後學會了以更小劑量這樣做，而這一切都發生在一個因無人機廣泛使用而變得過於透明、無法再容納傳統人海戰術的灰色地帶之中。
《電訊報》關於俄方戰術出現某種近乎理性或人性化演變的看法是錯誤的。沒有什麽比這更不人道。
等式很直接：無法彌補的損失+日益廣泛的烏克蘭監視 = 無法集中大規模部隊，否則甚至在接觸前就會被摧毀。
（圖：我從烏克蘭紮波羅熱的烏克蘭防線報道——版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
***
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