Do you know where that quote comes from? People abuse this quote by Moltke a lot. To use Moltke (of all people) to defend Russia's performance is what I consider to be "shocking ignorance."
How sadly typical to ascribe a near-universally known fact by all mankind since the very first wars to a white man just because his words are most commonly used in the western dominated world to today.
NO RACISM ALLOWED.
Moltke didn't mean fall back to a battle of attrition whenever your plan fails. He trained his Officer Corps for exactly the opposite. His goal was to adjust to a fluid situation without getting bogged down in a battle of attrition.
Are you honestly not following what is going on in this war?! I had let similar remarks go before because I just assumed it was a weird turn of phrase, but do you actually not understand what is happening on the ground?!
Because it looks like you think the Russians are engaging in a classic battle of attrition of just evenly or even disadvantagedly trading lives with the Ukrainians because they got more blood to spare. That’s a battle of attrition and it is very much
NOT how the Russians are fighting and winning this war.
What the Russians are doing is attritioning away the manpower and equipment of the armed forces of Ukraine while minimising their own losses at the expense of time.
The Russians are neither bogged down or taking unsustainable losses, it’s the Ukrainians who are running short of everything and consistently losing ground. It’s a slow grind for sure, and not as ‘sexy’ as western thunder runs, but it’s undeniable effective and also provides enormous economic and political advantages to Russia as winter approaches.
But doing this requires a lot of initiative in the field (something the Russian command structure lacks), highly trained officers and great logistics. The results of this is what Moltke's General Staff demonstrated in the War of 1870, which unlike Russia's war in Ukraine, was not a war of attrition. It was a stunning victory at very quick speed, against a larger opponent. He wrecked the French so badly, the entire world was like 'WTF.' No one expected it.
Compare that to Russia in Ukraine. It's basically the exact opposite. Case in point:
Moltke (whose quote you used) had Paris surrounded in 2 Months, and he was fighting a larger country, when his own side wasn't even a unified country yet.
Russia, on the other hand, launched in February. We're in late August, and Kiev still stands after a failed attempt at encirclement. So yea... "results speak for themselves." If/When Russia wins this war (and everyone still expects them to win in attrition) they will definitely not be getting any "style points." This is yet another cautionary tale of how not to execute a war.
The Russians initially tried that and failed due to their botched penny-pinching BTG ‘modernisation’ attempt. But they demonstrated great initiative and adaptability to very quickly reconfigure their entire war strategy and turn things around very quickly.
Rather than recognise that things had movement on, you seem to just be hang up on how the Russians are not doing revolutionary tacticalKool warfare and have little to offer beyond pointless nit picking and moaning how things aren’t going perfectly. If you don’t like how the Russians are conducting this war, how about you suggest how they could have done better?
