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On December 27 2022 00:31 warding wrote: Ukraine has fewer men (?), fewer tanks, armored vehicles in general, fewer artillery (launchers and rounds), fewer planes, fewer rockets. The only place where they seemingly have an advantage in hard numbers is in long range precision artillery. Meanwhile Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands, is moving its economy into war production and some experts have been saying we overestimated the impact of sanctions and underestimated Russias industrial war production.
And yet, only Ukraine has made gains since the summer and seems to still have the initiative. Does this only come down to smarter leadership, better command and control, and more motivated troops?
Ukraine has way more men.
Warfare has a long tail, you don’t just need a tank crew, you need maintenance crews, logistics, people making and refining fuel, people making shells, people making chemicals to make shells, people making steel, people mining iron etc. For each guy in the army you need 50 men behind them. Ukraine has 50 Americans behind each man, Russia has 50 Russians.
Then we look at what the military is doing. Russia maintains, in theory, a global navy, a satellite network, ICBMs, missions in Syria and Africa, garrisons across the longest borders of any country, deployments in the separatist regions, an intelligence network, and so forth and so forth. Most of that has no relevance on this war and the parts that do are still expensive and take away from men on the ground. Again, Ukraine outsources that to its allies. Ukraine doesn’t need satellite intelligence analysts, it just needs to read its briefings.
Ukraine mobilized well over a million for the war within the first few months. It has enough that it can send divisions into Western Europe for training without compromising defence. It can fortify the Belorussian border while waging attrition in the north while liberating Kherson. It can rotate combat troops out regularly for r&r because it has men to spare while Russians have their experienced men die and replace them with newer men.
The Russians are hopelessly outnumbered in this war and will be until Western support dries up. They knew this before they started, they made a plan that identified what their win condition was. They knew that to win they would have to force the Ukrainian government into exile, create a Quisling government, get the Quisling government to legitimize their actions, and portray the resistance as a lost cause of Ukrainian terror cells. Just create enough smoke and deniability that the West felt uncomfortable about funding and arming a resistance.
Once that plan failed it was over. The West will happily fund the official Ukrainian government in Ukraine. Weapons shipments have someone in uniform signing for them, it’s all very normal and official and above board. Now we’re just waiting for Putin to take the L.
It’s comparable to WW1 in that regard, the German plan in 1914 was for a rush on Paris and a repeat of the 1870 victory. That would force France to make peace, keep Britain off the continent, and isolate Russia. When the French won the battle of the Marne in 1914 the war was essentially over, the Germans had identified exactly one win condition against the combination of France, Britain, Russia and Italy and had failed to achieve it. They waited another 4 years before acknowledging they couldn’t win but their opening strategy revealed their identified win condition.
The Russian plan failed because they most likely haven't updated on the modern strategy or heavily underestimated Ukraine. It is said that if you go against similar opponent (in terms of training, equipment etc.) you need to outnumber them 4 to 1 if you're the aggressor if you want to win. So, considering the size of active UAF forces at the time Russia needed to commit about 800k to 1 million men in its Blitzkrieg. They instead went with what, 150-200k? Now they're in a tight pinch as they're sending new recruits as a trickle so they can never build enough numbers to overwhelm Ukraine, especially that Putin doesn't want full mobilization (so can't even use enough numbers) while Ukraine has access to millions of potential recruits of which I assume quite a few would be willing ones as opposed to Russian forced draft of people who want to surrender the first chance they get.
Russia has also forgotten how propaganda or basic pr works. Their psas for local television are an absolute mess of what they're trying to say.
A rich guy leaves Russia forever and gets into his car to be driven away. Two youths who are just hanging out with no job help an old lady.
An old man who's factory doesn't pay their wages on a regular basis has to sell his really old clunker but don't worry his son has signed a contract to go off to war.
A father listens in on his daughter complain they have no money and she can't get a smart phone, her dad cant just go off to war because he fought in the last one and did his part in his tank. The father comes home with a new phone having sighed a contract to go fight.
Meanwhile Ukraine's leader does not care and goes to the trenches of bakhmut, hell on earth, and collects a flag from them to carry to the halls of the American congress. They conquer kherson and he arrives before the City is cleared out, by the time he leaves the supermarket is full and has wrapped pallets of coca-cola. I'm not even going to describe the drone footage.
If UAF can use drone strikes to target facilities over 600km into Russia it shows that their air detection and defense capabilities are more limited than everyone thought... Especially that Ukraine hit the same airport it did 3 weeks ago.
On December 27 2022 00:31 warding wrote: Ukraine has fewer men (?), fewer tanks, armored vehicles in general, fewer artillery (launchers and rounds), fewer planes, fewer rockets. The only place where they seemingly have an advantage in hard numbers is in long range precision artillery. Meanwhile Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands, is moving its economy into war production and some experts have been saying we overestimated the impact of sanctions and underestimated Russias industrial war production.
And yet, only Ukraine has made gains since the summer and seems to still have the initiative. Does this only come down to smarter leadership, better command and control, and more motivated troops?
Ukraine has way more men.
Warfare has a long tail, you don’t just need a tank crew, you need maintenance crews, logistics, people making and refining fuel, people making shells, people making chemicals to make shells, people making steel, people mining iron etc. For each guy in the army you need 50 men behind them. Ukraine has 50 Americans behind each man, Russia has 50 Russians.
Then we look at what the military is doing. Russia maintains, in theory, a global navy, a satellite network, ICBMs, missions in Syria and Africa, garrisons across the longest borders of any country, deployments in the separatist regions, an intelligence network, and so forth and so forth. Most of that has no relevance on this war and the parts that do are still expensive and take away from men on the ground. Again, Ukraine outsources that to its allies. Ukraine doesn’t need satellite intelligence analysts, it just needs to read its briefings.
Ukraine mobilized well over a million for the war within the first few months. It has enough that it can send divisions into Western Europe for training without compromising defence. It can fortify the Belorussian border while waging attrition in the north while liberating Kherson. It can rotate combat troops out regularly for r&r because it has men to spare while Russians have their experienced men die and replace them with newer men.
The Russians are hopelessly outnumbered in this war and will be until Western support dries up. They knew this before they started, they made a plan that identified what their win condition was. They knew that to win they would have to force the Ukrainian government into exile, create a Quisling government, get the Quisling government to legitimize their actions, and portray the resistance as a lost cause of Ukrainian terror cells. Just create enough smoke and deniability that the West felt uncomfortable about funding and arming a resistance.
Once that plan failed it was over. The West will happily fund the official Ukrainian government in Ukraine. Weapons shipments have someone in uniform signing for them, it’s all very normal and official and above board. Now we’re just waiting for Putin to take the L.
It’s comparable to WW1 in that regard, the German plan in 1914 was for a rush on Paris and a repeat of the 1870 victory. That would force France to make peace, keep Britain off the continent, and isolate Russia. When the French won the battle of the Marne in 1914 the war was essentially over, the Germans had identified exactly one win condition against the combination of France, Britain, Russia and Italy and had failed to achieve it. They waited another 4 years before acknowledging they couldn’t win but their opening strategy revealed their identified win condition.
This is a great post which is sorely needed since many still think that Russia somehow outmatches Ukraine by default. I would like to add that we are currently in a second phase of the war where Russia is trying a new strategy in order to convince the west to support ending the war on somewhat favourable terms, giving up (or at least postponing) their previous maximalist goals.
They do this by cutting energy to Europe (fair play all things considered) and trying to cause as much pain to Ukrainian society as possible by targeting energy infrastructure. The goal is to erode European (and with that all western) support by extreme energy prices and economic recession and a massive influx of refuges while at the same time eroding domestic Ukrainian support for the war. They want as much damage as possible with the prospect of this continuing for years or even indefinitely.
By doing this Russia has escalated their political, economical and military capabilities to the absolute maximum. They can't provide any less energy to the EU and striking electrical infrastructure during the winter is the most effective way of terrorising Ukraine. They are also likely operating at the maximum amount of force generation they can handle (since they had to pause conscription for their regular military service and send conscripts for training in Belarus).
The effect of Russia being at max escalation has already been seen. Ukraine has no problem with doing deep drone strikes inside Russian territory since there simply isn't any conventional way for Russia to "respond" that they are not already doing. In contrast Ukraine has a lot of room for long term escalation. Just for artillery their available shell production keeps going up allowing them to use more artillery (remember that many large orders of mobile artillery were made and keep trickling in, and this is not as limiting as available shells). The US alone has already decided on increasing 155 mm production of conventional shells by x3 in the medium term (from 14.000 to ~40-45.000) with the option of doubling it again to 80.000 a month by 2025 if the war doesn't end before that. Combined with increases in production domestically and in many other countries of all kinds of munitions, improved repair and logistics, improved drone warfare, improved counter-battery fires etc etc and the prospect of a step wise change in the artillery balance is probably enough to conclude that the war has already failed for Russia. That these kinds of long term commitments are done now is no coincidence.
This not counting the obvious lack of NATO aircraft and tanks. I do think that there is a serious desire to avoid a conventional war between NATO and Russia since that carries a risk of nuclear escalation and I think this is probably a big part of the reason why NATO isn't just dumping F-16 and Abrams on Ukraine to end this as soon as possible since you don't want to push Putin to hard at once when his only escalation options are chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. It's sad because it means we are at 1915 right now and have a year (or worse a few years) of senseless WWI style fighting before this ends. Russian society and leadership needs more time in the oven before they are done so to speak.
Of course I could be wrong. I do think that once the winter is over (about 2 months) we will have a much clearer picture of where this is headed because if energy prices aren't enough to deter EU countries by spring, the Ukrainian electrical grid is still mainly intact and the 200.000 new recruits doesn't amount to anything especially meaningful the writing is going to on the wall for everyone to see.
I guess that if there wasn't a nuclear threat US alone could probably make Russia capitulate within a week. Use other NATO forces to hold the borders and provide logistical backup and just go straight for Moscow. I don't really see how Russia could stop that seeing how they have trouble dealing with military that isn't as large, well trained, well equipped and advanced as US. They're outmatched on every front in any way imaginable. Sure, they do have some modern tech that could potentially compete with US stuff but then again US has a lot more of that and on par tech higher quantity will win.
I think the optimism is warranted regarding an eventual Ukrainian victory in the coming years. Unfortunately for us there's no reliable information on the size of the Russian army or the number of mobilized, so it's hard to say how strong the resistance is going to be, or even what it looks like right now.
Right now both Russia and Ukraine are to a large part resorting to WW1 tactics. This indicates that Ukraine does not at this moment have a clear overall superiority, or certainly not one that they're willing to utilize until a later point.
It does seem that territory and weather are the main reasons for the recent halt of movement. It was the same during WW2 in Russia, with the pace (and Germany-favoring direction) picking up mostly during summer. Russian troops in Ukraine have consolidated with the help of the Dnipro and the unwelcoming weather. But in terms of a numerical and tactical superiority, Ukraine likely still has the upper hand. The main question Ukraine is dealing with right now is figuring out where, when and how to start the next major offensive. I doubt it's a matter of "if".
It's becoming increasingly clear that Bakhmut is not only a WW1 Battle on repeat, but the reason is that it is an internal political battle for Russia as well. If Wagner captures Bakhmut then they show they are better than the Army etc. And the leader of the group becomes a defacto successor to Putin, PR wise etc. If they lose that threat is diminished now the only remaining question is what Putin thinks about all this, let Wagner bleed itself white thus limiting a potential adversary in the future or what?
It seems that Russia's plan to starve Europe of energy isn't really going well.
Indeed. Gas prices have been falling quite consistently, reaching pre-war levels today, indicating normalization. Lets hope the prices decline further.
The following is a report on the situation in Bakhmut, about the military and the civilians, e.g. soldiers, firefighters, families, teachers and such. A school has been shelled several times. A man is seen shoveling rain water from the street into a bucket. One family still lives in the city with their three kids. 90% of the population has left.
On one hand there is no grid-collapse panic visible as was the case early in December. It's very possible Russians are hitting diminishing returns with effectiveness of the strikes.
On the other Russians have been targeting air defense sites so this is unlikely to end come spring. Coincidently (or not) French defense minister might still be in Kiev so this could also serve as a message for Europe.
Regarding Russian capabilites on missile production, stumbled on this article from our MoD from 2017 https://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12134754@egNews "in the 2nd quarter of 2017 Russian Defense Industrial Complex provided the military 60 Kalibr missiles and brigade package of Iskander-M (that's 12 launchers and 24 missiles at least, since brigade includes also a transport-loading vehicles) among other armaments". So at least 84 in a quarter. That number doesn't include other types of missiles being produced, such as Kh-55/555, Kh-101 and Kh-22/32 air-launched cruise missiles, P-800 Onyx anti-ship missiles (also capable of land attacks and quite used in that role), and Iskander-K cruise missiles, so their number is unknown. And that was peacetime production.
That fact checking was inspired by our MoD todays official Telegram post: https://t.me/mod_russia/23017 Translation: "Kalibrs will never be depleted".
Well, I think this is the usual thing: "There is a middle ground between both sides euphoric descriptions".
No the common "soon they won't have any rockets anymore and can only throw rocks" articles, which people love to share on Twitter and Reddit are not really valuable. But at the same time, looking at what is thrown at Ukraine, it is also rather obvious that Russia neither has the quantities nor the production to fully supply those up to their military needs. Now obviously military needs in active wars are usually near endless. Still, we are seeing a steady increase in the usage of older and older or more and more rockets not suitable to the role they are used in.
So in the end the truth is simple: Can Russia sustain the initial pace of rocket attacks? No! - Will there be a time when Russia won't have rockets to throw at Ukraine: No.
On December 29 2022 22:16 mahrgell wrote: So in the end the truth is simple: Can Russia sustain the initial pace of rocket attacks? No! - Will there be a time when Russia won't have rockets to throw at Ukraine: No.
I think this succinctly describes the conclusion from the Perun's hour long presentation on strategic bombing (still highly recommended to watch):
Another Russian missile attack ends in disaster as their own air defense systems shoot down some rockets and a fighter jet. They even had to close off some air space as to not accidentally shoot down civilian air planes on their own turf.
I really hope Russia will hit with all in asap so they can end this war,all those sanctions EU countries put against Russia is more shot in their own leg. Im not sure how much more will EU citizens keep it quiet about bad life standard caused by those sanctions. But all normal people know the truth when this war finish i suppose USA and NATO will attack some other country to bring "democracy and peace" cause world is boring place without war :/
On December 30 2022 18:37 bracala wrote: Im not sure how much more will EU citizens keep it quiet about bad life standard caused by those sanctions.
What do you mean? Sanctions haven't changed a thing in my life. We had increased heating/energy prices for a bit but it's back to normal again. I haven't seen anything changing around either, life goes on as usual.
On December 30 2022 15:22 Manit0u wrote: Another Russian missile attack ends in disaster as their own air defense systems shoot down some rockets and a fighter jet. They even had to close off some air space as to not accidentally shoot down civilian air planes on their own turf.
Closing air space where a war is happening to civilian flight sounds like a normal thing to do, though.
EPT
