OT: Putin's War in Ukraine

[Vespers War]

Jack Watling of RUTI isn't sure it's even worthwhile to discuss BTGs any more, that Russia's level of effective unit coordination has devolved down to the company level. If that's accurate, then in addition to the general infantry shortages, there's going to be relatively little sharing of assets of different types, since AFAIK Russia still generally has the old Soviet 3:1 ratio where armor units have 3 of an armored unit size to 1 infantry unit of the same size, and infantry is vice versa.

Assuming they can still do their usual split of the smaller unit, that means a company of tanks might be assigned a platoon of infantry or a company of infantry might get a platoon of tanks, but those platoons still report up to their company leader, not the company leader they're being loaned to. Russia's very hierarchical command structure and lack of promoting initiative among junior officers makes coordination slower and more difficult.

And there are likely still infantry shortages in general, since the small(ish) professional core of the Russian military tends to emphasize more technical roles, and there are probably still motorized rifle platoons where you've got 3 BMPs and only enough men to have 4-5 dismounts when accounting for the fact that the infantry platoon provides the IFV crews. So you might end up with a tank company of 10 tanks having their loaned platoon of infantry being 3 BMPs with their crews and a half dozen guys who actually fight on foot.