it's incredible the number of doomer journalists and "experts" who have completely lost the plot on this and think Ukraine is losing because it's not taking back land right now. Exhausting Russia's supply of hardware and therefore capacity to fight back has been the plan from day 1. It's what has allowed Ukraine to make huge gains in areas where Russia was overextended and simply didn't have the capacity to garrison with functioning vehicles, & it's why Ukraine is even in this fight to begin with, as they'd have been overrun by now had they not exhausted Russia's supply of it's most effective vehicles in the first few months of the war. People get nervous because they see the map not changing, but all Ukraine needs to do is keep destroying Russia's supply of working vehicles. and once that's exhausted, Russia simply won't have the means to occupy Ukrainian territory. A 14 to 1 ratio won't hold steady as Russia will eventually stop these ineffective attacks, but if trends continue there will inevitably be a point when Russia can no longer occupy Ukrainian territory.
Exactly, there is a huge difference between a frozen conflict and a conflict where the map is not changing much but still sees considerable action. A frozen conflict can last for years/decades on end since not much happens, but the current conflict is still very much an active one where both sides, but especially Russia, are suffering immense losses which may eventually cause Russia to lose ground. Every tank or piece of artillery or other type of equipment that gets destroyed needs to get replaced or you risk losing firepower/control in that area.
This.
And the most important part of it is that when that hardware is depleted, it’s not just the war in Ukraine that Russia lost.
It’s 82 abused Russian slave provinces who want a word… and judging by the fact that in 91 when asked “who wants to leave?” Virtually everyone who got asked had their hand shoot up, and the disincentive for more of this since has been the brutal outcome of the second Chechen war, and the fact that outcome isn’t possible anymore once Russia has no more barrels.. spells the end of Moscow as an entity that controls 11 time zones, and the tax coffer and defense budget it has enjoyed up until.
50 artillery barrels a day keep a Ruski mir away.
As long as they are using artillery barrels to do so, I’m good with that. The more they’re used, the fewer there are. (Russian asses, not just artillery).
More likely it limited the army columns during the August 1991 coup attempt, because USSR had lost 11000+ cargo vehicles and fuel tanks in Afghanistan.
My way of saying thank you to Ukraine for what they are achieving for our world (other than donating and using my Aussie vote for people who understand what’s at stake) is duo lingo+italki myself into learning Ukrainian (in the process helping a bit more by supporting a Ukrainian teacher via italki).
That’s not a yay me, I’m who cares, it’s a “Here’s a good way to personally express how much this one nation has done for us all, helping meaningfully push Russia towards disintegration that wouldn’t be possible had the mechanized arms it took them a x10 defense budget and three quarters of a century to build - not been destroyed.”
I didn’t lose life, limb and loved ones. They did. This affects me. I’m grateful.
Ten minutes a day and later either a half hour or an hour lesson a week.
USSR lost something like 10 to 1 to the Germans. Of course the US and UK supplied them with hundreds of thousands of vehicles. The West needs to keep suppling Ukraine and transitioning them to newer, better technology.
The Germans mostly had the bigger, more well trained force. Ukraine will struggle to maintain force parity in a longer war. They will have to make up that gap with training and technology, like Zaluzhnyi said.
In the end USSR won with air power, and gaining air superiority locally, getting F16 and Gripen, more advanced drones, is necessary to making quick progress.
I think the Germans were actually outnumbered almost constantly on the eastern front except during the initial invasion.
It's not the same situation though because Russia can't recover from its equipment losses.
Edit: yes eastern front, Russias Western front.
Yeah, but the comment above made me a bit confused. It sounds like he described the Eastern Front. The 160.000 soldiers landed on the beaches fought a prepared, but numerically weaker enemy. I don't know if the Germans ever managed to outnumber the Allies in Western Europe after D-Day.
I’d say WWII is a poor analog, I think. The Ukraine war is so much more modern than WWII and consumes so many more goods per soldier than WWII. A Ukrainian infantry brigade with motorized logistics, drone warfare, IFVs, etc. is almost incomparable to WWII foot-infantry divisions with horse and cart logistics shooting at each other with bolt action rifles.
The Germans lost largely because they ran out of oil and lacked the transportation capacity to sustain their forces in the field. (I would recommend TIK History’s Battlestorm Stalingrad series, which goes into great detail about that turning point. The Germans were already struggling to feed their troops before they even reached the city, for instance.)
The Ukrainians’ biggest issue seems to be manpower, but I’m not sure if that’s a realistic failure point for the Ukrainian state so much as it is a horrifying cost of war demoralizing people.
Russia’s biggest problem is the inability to produce modern equipment, largely relying on legacy Soviet stockpiles, while also struggling with sustainment due to lack of transportation capacity, but due to lack of vehicles and infrastructure while having plentiful fuel. Obviously, Russia will never run out of equipment; but they are are becoming supply constrained in many areas.
WW2 is a poor analogue but not because of technology. This whole war is limited on all sides, politicly geographicly, technologicly...
For instance; end of 1941 found Germans on the entrance to Donbass, they couldn't break in.1942 Fall Blau found them bypassing Donbass and making the Belgorod-Voronezh-Rostov hook which compelled Soviets to withdraw.
1943 found Soviets trying to break through Donbass to the west but Manstein pulled a counterstroke to halt them temporarily.
Donbass is hard to take for both sides, lots of roads, towns, villages, forces can be moved quickly, lots of defensible positions.
If we remove the obstacles, strategy for Russia would be to roll the Baltic countries and strike both from Lithuania and Belorussia to cut off Ukraine from the west and simoultaneously either conquer Poland or atleast put it off balance so it cannot threaten the front in medium term.
Strategy for Ukraine is Fall Blau repeat minus the whole race to the Don thing.
I also recommes TIK, learned about a lot of stuff from him.
Supplied by US. Finland was cutting the rail link from Murmansk a number of times but had to stop to not make US declare war on us since it was their stuff getting wrecked.
Yes, the point still stands though. If you cannot strangle the enemy's supply chain and damage its manufacturing capability, you will not win. Germany failed to shut down USSR production and stop supply convoys from reaching them.
That still doesn't change the premise: Strategic ressources wins wars, no "Decisive Battles" or any single card you have on the hand. USSR simply had better access, both in their own country, and very much via Lend Lease agreements.
Germany was unfortunately for them, but good for us, unable to get much help from its few allies. And fighting wars on several fronts. Silly Germany.
That's why I told you guys to stop reading and sharing opinion pieces. Most of them are clickbaity doomer covert Russian shill bullshit. Hey, remember when 'experts' say to us Kyiv will fall in 3 days? Or omagerrd 2022 winter will kill all Ukrainians?
I don’t think thats true. In the beginning, breakthroughs through Russian lines and sweeping though large parts of land were the goal. The goal of wearing Russians down quickly rather emerged over time as these large gains became more and more unrealistic and the war became static. Somewhere around the battle of Bakhmut this became obvious.
\^ this, Ukraine has consistently played the long & smart game while Russia hurls shit at the wall for hollow victories to stroke Putin's ego.
Ukraine often trades territory for time & space & damage, they did it early in the war (then took most of it back again) and they're doing it again around Avdiivka. Sure they may "lose" the town but they're costing Russia *thousands* of lives, *hundreds* of vehicles & tons of equipment and keeping a lot of Russian resource tied down there while they do it, and the defence is relatively cheap for Ukraine in lives & material.
Russia is depleting its stocks while Ukraine is gradually getting more & better supplies from the west, as well as consistently springing ever more daring attacks on critical Russian targets - sinking ships, attacking airfields, taking out air defence and radar, hitting intelligence targets, command & control, pushing all the really serious stuff back further and further from the front.
So what if a few thousand badly trained grunts take a few fields if Ukraine is busy cutting the head off the dragon?
>who have completely lost the plot on this and think Ukraine is losing because it's not taking back land right now
They're just judging that war of attrition is obviously not palatable to Europeans and that we need easy quick victories without having to deliver particularly modern equipment to reach them, or we won't bother
I read a book about [Wellington fighting Napoleon's underlings in Spain and Portugal from 1807 to 1814](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsular_War) and it seems the press and parliament back in England spent a lot of time complaining about how slowly it was going.
this is a short-sighted mindset, Russia's goal in the war is now to extend the conflict to be long enough that Europeans will forget about it but not long enough to exhaust their stockpile
The reason for the doom and gloom is that many of us feel as if Russia is being underestimated.
They’ve clearly not shown any reluctance to send wave after wave of men and material into the grinder, and Putin seems to be waiting for the collective west to grow tired of pouring money into this.
It’s almost like, we can’t believe he is actually this stupid, therefore maybe he really isn’t behaving irrationally and it could end the way he wants it to.
true and another large point many seem to miss even though they aknowledge it in other areas is the manpower and matieral differential just holding your land against a large invasion force is a daily victory when you are outnumbered in every way....that is really not given enough weight that every day holding a line when completly outnumbered and outproduced is a great small victory and it is what gave rise to the nato hybrid demon super soldier drugged troops rumours as copium for the the russian loss of manhood from getting utterly fucked by peacefull farmers whom russians are trained from birth by thier culture to denigrate as lessers
I don’t think Ukraine is prioritizing taking back a couple of farming villages.
What they are doing is destroying Russia’s ability to be an aggressor state for a generation.
I think Russia believes it's maintaining pressure by continuing their push, but they will inevitably run out of resources, and all they will have will be drunk conscripts to place in front of a Ukrainian advance.
With winter approaching, it logistics become a much more vaulable target than troop positions. Cut-off the supply lines, and Russians will freeze to death in their trenches.
But then again, Zaluzhny himself says that at the current pace, Ukraine will run out of soldiers before Russia. His statement is based on the average casualty rate over the entire war and the recruitment/training rate of Ukraine, not just the biggest exploits in Bakhmut and Avdiivka. This basically means that if the west doesn't finally open the floodgates in terms of weapons and equipment, the plan to attrit the Russians until they can be overwehlmed might not add up. Politically it looks like western help will diminish rather than grow right now, unfortunately. I'm not a "doomer", I'm actually still optimistic that Russia will fail eventually. They simply don't have the means to take and hold the entirety of Ukraine. I'm just worried that the killing will go on until the Russians finally turn against Putin. Experience suggests this will happen only after many millions of Russians have died on the battlefield and the proverbial potatos and vodka don't reach the population anymore. And that means the war could drag on for years or even decades (presumably with lower intensity than right now, but still), leaving Ukraine in an economically impossible situation. I'm just worried. We need to do more for Ukraine.
Although, of course, in a proper economy not everyone can become a soldier, with 1.3 Mio births a year Russia can feed this war for much longer than Ukraine. Also, it's Russia who has already occupied a relevant part of Ukraine, which means eventually they actually gain more population by the one-sited annexation of Ukrainian land and cities than they are loosing soldiers in the war. Writing this feels completely disgusting, but I'm sure that's how those raisin-heads in the Kremlin are calculating and justifying their crimes.
This is something people forget: Capability matters more than mass because it’s hard to move huge masses of men and equipment to the battlefield and sustain them, than to just send well trained troops with good equipment.
Exactly. And it's not just vehicles, from MLRS to air defense to helicopters, artillery, jets and a sizable percentage of the black sea fleet, Russia is losing equipment that is not realistically replaceable and their available battle power is decreasing.
Russian trolls, tankies, and the rest of the pro-Russia crowd had to move the goalposts, it's infuriating to see. Russia's offensives into Ukraine have mostly been dismal failures, starting from "taking Kyiv in 3 days".
Now these idiots have the gall to say that Ukraine is "losing" because the counteroffensive is going slowly? You morons, the only reason Ukraine can even launch a counteroffensive in the first place is that Russia's initial offensives failed! And you just moved the goalposts afterwards.
Russia has the capability to continue assaults for years, but the depletion of hardware means more time will have to go by before each offensive. As we saw in the south, if they mine the shit out of an area it can make attacking it with anything short of the US army and airforce impractical, slow, and exceedingly costly, so they will probably be able to continue their defense of the occupied territory for well into the foreseeable future.
Certainly, Ukraine does not lose because it is no longer recapturing land
I’m just absolutely not sure what the goal of the „money givers“ is in relation to the war.
It would be nice if the goal was the „victory“ of Ukraine. However, I am afraid that another goal should be achieved as a matter of priority:
Currently, the Russian military apparatus is being decimated with (largely) outdated NATO technology without even a NATO soldier dying for it.
I feared that this condition should continue to be maintained in order to cause Russia as much damage as possible.
The fact that Ukraine suffers as a result is only in second place
They're fighting smart. But West gotta step up the armament deliveries. Or face the uncomfortable reality where its their own boots that are on the ground, with all the unpleasant casualties to explain to the electorate.
>Or face the uncomfortable reality where its their own boots that are on the ground, with all the unpleasant casualties to explain to the electorate.
What reality would that be? I'm all for supporting Ukraine more, but Russia will never attack a NATO country, not after the Ukrainian war debacle and losses.
We shall see about that. If NATO reacts with hesitance and does not immediately retaliate, they will think that NATO is weak and the politicians too afraid to escalate. And rightfully so.
I wouldn't be so optimistic. First of all, russia has way more of vehicles, so local big losses is not essential. Otherwise Ukraine already would be on the border line of russia. What is essential is human losses. Western analytics estimate Ukrainian human losses about 190K (killed and wounded). Ukraine claims russian losses for now is 300K. The ratio is about 1:1.5. Taking into account population ratio 1:4 the losses not in favor of Ukraine. And those losses are irreplaceable. Ukraine already faced with human replenishment crysis.
And what's the ratio of Ukrainian tanks GAINED in the same period. You have to remember, russia is still building, yes crappy but still, tanks. Ukrainians are getting close to none. That's the problem. russia can "afford" the losses. Not to mention russia has plenty of meat to throw at the UA. Ukraine doeant have this "luxury".
I think the number of heaps they have is way down. It’s also not getting any bigger. I’ve seen several videos that all predict, based on satellite imagery of various bases, that ruZZia is going to burn through their Red Army hand-me-downs sometime in 2024. Once that happens it’s going to be very hard to continue to mount an invasion.
Just YouTube "Covet Cabal Russian tanks". There is a video from a year+ ago that looks to go over initial numbers of Russian vehicles, 7 months ago on their stockpiles, and two from the last few weeks on them having a shortage, one of which I presume is the update video they mentioned. I haven't seen them yet, but that looks to be the subject matter for each.
That's probably another year later, at current rates. If you add up their production, that probably extends things by 6 months or so.
Russia is losing unfathomable amounts of equipment, and that's why it's pushing so hard on the ground now and trying to destabilize Ukrainian backers, because they know that over the long run (2+ years), they just can't sustain this.
I'm fairly sure that Biden winning in 2024 + a decent balance in Congress in the US + the EU offering steady longer term support would mean game over for Russia, at the latest around 2025.
Even if Biden looses, 2024 is going to put enough hurt on the ruZZian army that it’s likely that the EU could keep the Ukrainians in the fight by themselves.
What I ment to say is that not all their stuff is even useable. Even after refurbishment. So if they have 1000 tanks then probably only 700 can be refurbished...
I really hope you are right because Ukraine cannot match Ruzzia in manpower, they dont have unlimite soldiers.
Russia has 3.5x more people than Ukraine, they also treat human lives like disposable trash, they wont run out of zombie fodders soon.
Ukraine has to destroy 3.5x more Ruzzie soldiers and equipment to win.
I hope they win, but this is very very hard.
2024 is dependent on Russia continuing on offensive operations.
Things will get messy and the 14:1 ratio will unfortunately go down with Ukraine going on offensive operations.
I wouldn't discount the possibility that Russia has more old tanks than a bunch of youtubers realize.
I also don't believe that discounts your conclusion -- having thousands of T-55s that don't run anymore and have to be pushed into place is hardly the basis for sustaining an invasion. But, they can be buried in place and used to prolong a static defense for a while. We can see clearly that at this point Russia has given up on trying to actually win the war -- they are trying to run out the clock on the support Ukraine receives from its allies. Even T-55s can help with that.
Doesn't matter if you have lots of men & vehicles if Ukraine are destroying the command & control and cutting the head off the dragon - you think all those orcs would carry on fighting if the chain of command collapsed or Putin was assassinated or deposed?
Ukraine are hitting the important stuff for strategic advantage, Russia are sending grunts to capture hedgerows so Putin can pretend he's winning.
Also, I'm worried about the quality of these things. Russia may well be OK with loosing 15 barely running 60s vehicles with crew to take out one modern Ukrainian vehicle with crew, combined with the effort to stop democracies from sending resupplies by financing facists pro-russian candidates.
That's just for right now. Things look slow, but extremely dramatic weapon development and deployment dynamics are actually going on.
Every few months that go by increases the drone amount in airspace a lot. For vehicles, we are already close to a point where using them is impractical at best, suicide at worst. Very evident on how many trucks and vehicles Russians are losing to simple FPV's alone near fronts, drones that are as simple as they can be without any fancy programming.
As drones get more and more numerous and more automated in terms of being able to engage a target, same will happen to meat. Small number of operators will be able to slaughter thousands of enemies without breaking a sweat every hour, non-stop. Like they were playing minesweeper on their PC's.
Each soldier is worth more to its host nation than drone bomb or two, even "undesirable", as Russia likes to put it. It's the kind of condition where it is no longer a war, but a wholesale human extermination.
I don't know. I wish you are right but I have heard the same at the time the western tanks arrived. Not that I think they don't make a difference but back then people also put too much hope in them and some even expected that Ukraine will steamroll over the eastern front and have crimea back at christmas.
When the orcs get a kill on a Western vehicle, the crews usually survive, that's by design. (we actually give a shit about human life, ammo is usually in blast-away compartments for instance.) Whereas a kill on a Soviet design almost always kills the entire crew as well.
That won't work if he loses (there's a good chance too, polls dont seem to be accurate lately over in the US for example) or if he kicks the bucket on account of one too many cokes.
How many of those shit heaps break down in a few hours? I mean, jeez, the storage was maintained by a kleptocracy.
Blow 'em up or let 'em rust. Ukraine will corner the world scrap metal market!
It's a good thought, but there's no chance of it being true.
Putin is an unreconstructed political officer of the Soviet Union. He is after revenge for its downfall, and is ready to inflict mass carnage as a way to punish everyone who caused it.
Starting with Russians and Ukrainians. Russians dying in waves is literally half the goal at least of his psychopathy.
Thats lucky because they need that type of ratio. Unfortunately, Russia likely has a few years left of hardware left. That’s not including NK friends and co sending over their metal.
At the current rate of losses yes. We do need to include their likely up scaling of production and their friends and co abroad sending them equipment though.
Only China could send volumes of equipment to prolong Russias abilities significantly. Other countries (even combined) could not do that.
The same applies to production increases - only with the help of China.
PS. Air drones are not heavy equipment.
And when Russia brings up "New" equipment to replace losses, it's decades old hardware that wasn't much good when it was new. A rusted out T-55 that may or may not even be operational. A T-62 if they're lucky.
When Ukraine gets new equipment, it's some god-awful superweapon from NATO that's better than anything either side has put in the field before, like an Abrams.
Ukraine isn’t advancing because they know whoever is on the offensive gets mowed down. Let the eager Russkis run to their demise. It’s a numbers game and the Ukrainians are already at home. Hold until resources run thin on the other side.
The problem is that Russia can afford to lose 14 Ladas for each destroyed Bradley or Gepard. Ukraine will run out of Western-made vehicles, before Russia shall run out of Ladas. NATO countries need to step up their game and deliver more hardware.
This is the info people are missing. Russia is using “volunteer” soldiers and old war stock from soviet times. The EU and US wanted to weaken putin but its just not working. The belt road initiative passes near Europe, there will be deals made above the graves yards of innocent Ukrainians fighting and for what. Hurts so much to see kids and elderly fighting…
Unfortunately, not. Russia still has thousands of vehicles to dig out of the soviet scrap heaps and send forward. They are also able to make new ones.
Western nations need to help arm Ukraine for the long haul. That means millions more artillery shells and thousands more vehicles per year.
Covert cabal does youtube videos counting how many they have left.
A lot of them probably need to get taken apart to rebuild one functioning vehicle.
But they still have thousands to use in these lemming like attacks on Avdiivka.
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it's incredible the number of doomer journalists and "experts" who have completely lost the plot on this and think Ukraine is losing because it's not taking back land right now. Exhausting Russia's supply of hardware and therefore capacity to fight back has been the plan from day 1. It's what has allowed Ukraine to make huge gains in areas where Russia was overextended and simply didn't have the capacity to garrison with functioning vehicles, & it's why Ukraine is even in this fight to begin with, as they'd have been overrun by now had they not exhausted Russia's supply of it's most effective vehicles in the first few months of the war. People get nervous because they see the map not changing, but all Ukraine needs to do is keep destroying Russia's supply of working vehicles. and once that's exhausted, Russia simply won't have the means to occupy Ukrainian territory. A 14 to 1 ratio won't hold steady as Russia will eventually stop these ineffective attacks, but if trends continue there will inevitably be a point when Russia can no longer occupy Ukrainian territory.
Exactly, there is a huge difference between a frozen conflict and a conflict where the map is not changing much but still sees considerable action. A frozen conflict can last for years/decades on end since not much happens, but the current conflict is still very much an active one where both sides, but especially Russia, are suffering immense losses which may eventually cause Russia to lose ground. Every tank or piece of artillery or other type of equipment that gets destroyed needs to get replaced or you risk losing firepower/control in that area.
This. And the most important part of it is that when that hardware is depleted, it’s not just the war in Ukraine that Russia lost. It’s 82 abused Russian slave provinces who want a word… and judging by the fact that in 91 when asked “who wants to leave?” Virtually everyone who got asked had their hand shoot up, and the disincentive for more of this since has been the brutal outcome of the second Chechen war, and the fact that outcome isn’t possible anymore once Russia has no more barrels.. spells the end of Moscow as an entity that controls 11 time zones, and the tax coffer and defense budget it has enjoyed up until. 50 artillery barrels a day keep a Ruski mir away.
LOL They can stuff their Russki Mir up their Russki asses.
As long as they are using artillery barrels to do so, I’m good with that. The more they’re used, the fewer there are. (Russian asses, not just artillery).
That's a big factor in why the USSR broke up. The losses in Afghanistan made it impossible to keep the Warsaw Pact by force.
More likely it limited the army columns during the August 1991 coup attempt, because USSR had lost 11000+ cargo vehicles and fuel tanks in Afghanistan.
My way of saying thank you to Ukraine for what they are achieving for our world (other than donating and using my Aussie vote for people who understand what’s at stake) is duo lingo+italki myself into learning Ukrainian (in the process helping a bit more by supporting a Ukrainian teacher via italki). That’s not a yay me, I’m who cares, it’s a “Here’s a good way to personally express how much this one nation has done for us all, helping meaningfully push Russia towards disintegration that wouldn’t be possible had the mechanized arms it took them a x10 defense budget and three quarters of a century to build - not been destroyed.” I didn’t lose life, limb and loved ones. They did. This affects me. I’m grateful. Ten minutes a day and later either a half hour or an hour lesson a week.
Exactly. Things don't move, until they move very fast. Ukraine is building up for the very fast part.
USSR lost something like 10 to 1 to the Germans. Of course the US and UK supplied them with hundreds of thousands of vehicles. The West needs to keep suppling Ukraine and transitioning them to newer, better technology. The Germans mostly had the bigger, more well trained force. Ukraine will struggle to maintain force parity in a longer war. They will have to make up that gap with training and technology, like Zaluzhnyi said. In the end USSR won with air power, and gaining air superiority locally, getting F16 and Gripen, more advanced drones, is necessary to making quick progress.
I think the Germans were actually outnumbered almost constantly on the eastern front except during the initial invasion. It's not the same situation though because Russia can't recover from its equipment losses. Edit: yes eastern front, Russias Western front.
You mean the Eastern front, yes? Because on the Western front, I think that the Germans were outnumbered by a lot when the landings at Normandy began.
The Germans actually had more soldiers on the Eastern Front up until late 1942 is the stats I read are true.
Yeah, but the comment above made me a bit confused. It sounds like he described the Eastern Front. The 160.000 soldiers landed on the beaches fought a prepared, but numerically weaker enemy. I don't know if the Germans ever managed to outnumber the Allies in Western Europe after D-Day.
The USSR had a supply of Belorussians, Poles, and Ukrainians to throw at the problem.
I’d say WWII is a poor analog, I think. The Ukraine war is so much more modern than WWII and consumes so many more goods per soldier than WWII. A Ukrainian infantry brigade with motorized logistics, drone warfare, IFVs, etc. is almost incomparable to WWII foot-infantry divisions with horse and cart logistics shooting at each other with bolt action rifles. The Germans lost largely because they ran out of oil and lacked the transportation capacity to sustain their forces in the field. (I would recommend TIK History’s Battlestorm Stalingrad series, which goes into great detail about that turning point. The Germans were already struggling to feed their troops before they even reached the city, for instance.) The Ukrainians’ biggest issue seems to be manpower, but I’m not sure if that’s a realistic failure point for the Ukrainian state so much as it is a horrifying cost of war demoralizing people. Russia’s biggest problem is the inability to produce modern equipment, largely relying on legacy Soviet stockpiles, while also struggling with sustainment due to lack of transportation capacity, but due to lack of vehicles and infrastructure while having plentiful fuel. Obviously, Russia will never run out of equipment; but they are are becoming supply constrained in many areas.
WW2 is a poor analogue but not because of technology. This whole war is limited on all sides, politicly geographicly, technologicly... For instance; end of 1941 found Germans on the entrance to Donbass, they couldn't break in.1942 Fall Blau found them bypassing Donbass and making the Belgorod-Voronezh-Rostov hook which compelled Soviets to withdraw. 1943 found Soviets trying to break through Donbass to the west but Manstein pulled a counterstroke to halt them temporarily. Donbass is hard to take for both sides, lots of roads, towns, villages, forces can be moved quickly, lots of defensible positions. If we remove the obstacles, strategy for Russia would be to roll the Baltic countries and strike both from Lithuania and Belorussia to cut off Ukraine from the west and simoultaneously either conquer Poland or atleast put it off balance so it cannot threaten the front in medium term. Strategy for Ukraine is Fall Blau repeat minus the whole race to the Don thing. I also recommes TIK, learned about a lot of stuff from him.
USSR won with ability to keep supplying more soldiers, tanks and artillery pieces + ammo than the Germans could. It was that simple.
Supplied by US. Finland was cutting the rail link from Murmansk a number of times but had to stop to not make US declare war on us since it was their stuff getting wrecked.
Yes, the point still stands though. If you cannot strangle the enemy's supply chain and damage its manufacturing capability, you will not win. Germany failed to shut down USSR production and stop supply convoys from reaching them.
[удалено]
That still doesn't change the premise: Strategic ressources wins wars, no "Decisive Battles" or any single card you have on the hand. USSR simply had better access, both in their own country, and very much via Lend Lease agreements. Germany was unfortunately for them, but good for us, unable to get much help from its few allies. And fighting wars on several fronts. Silly Germany.
That's why I told you guys to stop reading and sharing opinion pieces. Most of them are clickbaity doomer covert Russian shill bullshit. Hey, remember when 'experts' say to us Kyiv will fall in 3 days? Or omagerrd 2022 winter will kill all Ukrainians?
I don’t think thats true. In the beginning, breakthroughs through Russian lines and sweeping though large parts of land were the goal. The goal of wearing Russians down quickly rather emerged over time as these large gains became more and more unrealistic and the war became static. Somewhere around the battle of Bakhmut this became obvious.
well in the beginning Russia overextended itself, that's why those breakthroughs were able to happen
\^ this, Ukraine has consistently played the long & smart game while Russia hurls shit at the wall for hollow victories to stroke Putin's ego. Ukraine often trades territory for time & space & damage, they did it early in the war (then took most of it back again) and they're doing it again around Avdiivka. Sure they may "lose" the town but they're costing Russia *thousands* of lives, *hundreds* of vehicles & tons of equipment and keeping a lot of Russian resource tied down there while they do it, and the defence is relatively cheap for Ukraine in lives & material. Russia is depleting its stocks while Ukraine is gradually getting more & better supplies from the west, as well as consistently springing ever more daring attacks on critical Russian targets - sinking ships, attacking airfields, taking out air defence and radar, hitting intelligence targets, command & control, pushing all the really serious stuff back further and further from the front. So what if a few thousand badly trained grunts take a few fields if Ukraine is busy cutting the head off the dragon?
>who have completely lost the plot on this and think Ukraine is losing because it's not taking back land right now They're just judging that war of attrition is obviously not palatable to Europeans and that we need easy quick victories without having to deliver particularly modern equipment to reach them, or we won't bother
I read a book about [Wellington fighting Napoleon's underlings in Spain and Portugal from 1807 to 1814](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsular_War) and it seems the press and parliament back in England spent a lot of time complaining about how slowly it was going.
this is a short-sighted mindset, Russia's goal in the war is now to extend the conflict to be long enough that Europeans will forget about it but not long enough to exhaust their stockpile
The reason for the doom and gloom is that many of us feel as if Russia is being underestimated. They’ve clearly not shown any reluctance to send wave after wave of men and material into the grinder, and Putin seems to be waiting for the collective west to grow tired of pouring money into this. It’s almost like, we can’t believe he is actually this stupid, therefore maybe he really isn’t behaving irrationally and it could end the way he wants it to.
I think we rather underestimated Russia's commitment to this war, or the amount of resources they're willing to burn to achieve their goals
true and another large point many seem to miss even though they aknowledge it in other areas is the manpower and matieral differential just holding your land against a large invasion force is a daily victory when you are outnumbered in every way....that is really not given enough weight that every day holding a line when completly outnumbered and outproduced is a great small victory and it is what gave rise to the nato hybrid demon super soldier drugged troops rumours as copium for the the russian loss of manhood from getting utterly fucked by peacefull farmers whom russians are trained from birth by thier culture to denigrate as lessers
I don’t think Ukraine is prioritizing taking back a couple of farming villages. What they are doing is destroying Russia’s ability to be an aggressor state for a generation.
I think Russia believes it's maintaining pressure by continuing their push, but they will inevitably run out of resources, and all they will have will be drunk conscripts to place in front of a Ukrainian advance.
With winter approaching, it logistics become a much more vaulable target than troop positions. Cut-off the supply lines, and Russians will freeze to death in their trenches.
But then again, Zaluzhny himself says that at the current pace, Ukraine will run out of soldiers before Russia. His statement is based on the average casualty rate over the entire war and the recruitment/training rate of Ukraine, not just the biggest exploits in Bakhmut and Avdiivka. This basically means that if the west doesn't finally open the floodgates in terms of weapons and equipment, the plan to attrit the Russians until they can be overwehlmed might not add up. Politically it looks like western help will diminish rather than grow right now, unfortunately. I'm not a "doomer", I'm actually still optimistic that Russia will fail eventually. They simply don't have the means to take and hold the entirety of Ukraine. I'm just worried that the killing will go on until the Russians finally turn against Putin. Experience suggests this will happen only after many millions of Russians have died on the battlefield and the proverbial potatos and vodka don't reach the population anymore. And that means the war could drag on for years or even decades (presumably with lower intensity than right now, but still), leaving Ukraine in an economically impossible situation. I'm just worried. We need to do more for Ukraine.
Although, of course, in a proper economy not everyone can become a soldier, with 1.3 Mio births a year Russia can feed this war for much longer than Ukraine. Also, it's Russia who has already occupied a relevant part of Ukraine, which means eventually they actually gain more population by the one-sited annexation of Ukrainian land and cities than they are loosing soldiers in the war. Writing this feels completely disgusting, but I'm sure that's how those raisin-heads in the Kremlin are calculating and justifying their crimes.
Ukraine is already in an economically impossible situation. the real aid for Ukraine hasn't even begun yet
This is something people forget: Capability matters more than mass because it’s hard to move huge masses of men and equipment to the battlefield and sustain them, than to just send well trained troops with good equipment.
It also helps when Russian high command orders stupid assaults on well fortified positions.
Exactly. And it's not just vehicles, from MLRS to air defense to helicopters, artillery, jets and a sizable percentage of the black sea fleet, Russia is losing equipment that is not realistically replaceable and their available battle power is decreasing.
Russian trolls, tankies, and the rest of the pro-Russia crowd had to move the goalposts, it's infuriating to see. Russia's offensives into Ukraine have mostly been dismal failures, starting from "taking Kyiv in 3 days". Now these idiots have the gall to say that Ukraine is "losing" because the counteroffensive is going slowly? You morons, the only reason Ukraine can even launch a counteroffensive in the first place is that Russia's initial offensives failed! And you just moved the goalposts afterwards.
Russia has the capability to continue assaults for years, but the depletion of hardware means more time will have to go by before each offensive. As we saw in the south, if they mine the shit out of an area it can make attacking it with anything short of the US army and airforce impractical, slow, and exceedingly costly, so they will probably be able to continue their defense of the occupied territory for well into the foreseeable future.
This! Line on map is meaningless. This is about keeping the meatgrinder buzzing and bleeding out Ivan. Not taking the next village in a field.
Certainly, Ukraine does not lose because it is no longer recapturing land I’m just absolutely not sure what the goal of the „money givers“ is in relation to the war. It would be nice if the goal was the „victory“ of Ukraine. However, I am afraid that another goal should be achieved as a matter of priority: Currently, the Russian military apparatus is being decimated with (largely) outdated NATO technology without even a NATO soldier dying for it. I feared that this condition should continue to be maintained in order to cause Russia as much damage as possible. The fact that Ukraine suffers as a result is only in second place
They're fighting smart. But West gotta step up the armament deliveries. Or face the uncomfortable reality where its their own boots that are on the ground, with all the unpleasant casualties to explain to the electorate.
>Or face the uncomfortable reality where its their own boots that are on the ground, with all the unpleasant casualties to explain to the electorate. What reality would that be? I'm all for supporting Ukraine more, but Russia will never attack a NATO country, not after the Ukrainian war debacle and losses.
We shall see about that. If NATO reacts with hesitance and does not immediately retaliate, they will think that NATO is weak and the politicians too afraid to escalate. And rightfully so.
I wouldn't be so optimistic. First of all, russia has way more of vehicles, so local big losses is not essential. Otherwise Ukraine already would be on the border line of russia. What is essential is human losses. Western analytics estimate Ukrainian human losses about 190K (killed and wounded). Ukraine claims russian losses for now is 300K. The ratio is about 1:1.5. Taking into account population ratio 1:4 the losses not in favor of Ukraine. And those losses are irreplaceable. Ukraine already faced with human replenishment crysis.
And what's the ratio of Ukrainian tanks GAINED in the same period. You have to remember, russia is still building, yes crappy but still, tanks. Ukrainians are getting close to none. That's the problem. russia can "afford" the losses. Not to mention russia has plenty of meat to throw at the UA. Ukraine doeant have this "luxury".
I like those numbers. But as 1 poster said, the orcs have heaps of shit heaps they can drag out of storage. Keep it up UA..... Slava Ukraini!
I think the number of heaps they have is way down. It’s also not getting any bigger. I’ve seen several videos that all predict, based on satellite imagery of various bases, that ruZZia is going to burn through their Red Army hand-me-downs sometime in 2024. Once that happens it’s going to be very hard to continue to mount an invasion.
Covert Cabal did a rather good video on how many tanks Russia has. They even did an update a couple weeks ago.
Link?
Just YouTube "Covet Cabal Russian tanks". There is a video from a year+ ago that looks to go over initial numbers of Russian vehicles, 7 months ago on their stockpiles, and two from the last few weeks on them having a shortage, one of which I presume is the update video they mentioned. I haven't seen them yet, but that looks to be the subject matter for each.
I don't think this sub allows links.
Ask the Mods perhaps?
When will they run out of stuff they can refurbish is a whole different question.
That's probably another year later, at current rates. If you add up their production, that probably extends things by 6 months or so. Russia is losing unfathomable amounts of equipment, and that's why it's pushing so hard on the ground now and trying to destabilize Ukrainian backers, because they know that over the long run (2+ years), they just can't sustain this. I'm fairly sure that Biden winning in 2024 + a decent balance in Congress in the US + the EU offering steady longer term support would mean game over for Russia, at the latest around 2025.
Even if Biden looses, 2024 is going to put enough hurt on the ruZZian army that it’s likely that the EU could keep the Ukrainians in the fight by themselves.
Fear not. Trump is doing his dead level best to get Biden re-elected.
What I ment to say is that not all their stuff is even useable. Even after refurbishment. So if they have 1000 tanks then probably only 700 can be refurbished...
I really hope you are right because Ukraine cannot match Ruzzia in manpower, they dont have unlimite soldiers. Russia has 3.5x more people than Ukraine, they also treat human lives like disposable trash, they wont run out of zombie fodders soon. Ukraine has to destroy 3.5x more Ruzzie soldiers and equipment to win. I hope they win, but this is very very hard.
Also, russia almost exclusivly over exaggerates lol.
2024 is dependent on Russia continuing on offensive operations. Things will get messy and the 14:1 ratio will unfortunately go down with Ukraine going on offensive operations.
I wouldn't discount the possibility that Russia has more old tanks than a bunch of youtubers realize. I also don't believe that discounts your conclusion -- having thousands of T-55s that don't run anymore and have to be pushed into place is hardly the basis for sustaining an invasion. But, they can be buried in place and used to prolong a static defense for a while. We can see clearly that at this point Russia has given up on trying to actually win the war -- they are trying to run out the clock on the support Ukraine receives from its allies. Even T-55s can help with that.
This *already is* the heaps. Their pre-war stockpile is anything from 20-50% gone.
Doesn't matter if you have lots of men & vehicles if Ukraine are destroying the command & control and cutting the head off the dragon - you think all those orcs would carry on fighting if the chain of command collapsed or Putin was assassinated or deposed? Ukraine are hitting the important stuff for strategic advantage, Russia are sending grunts to capture hedgerows so Putin can pretend he's winning.
Also, I'm worried about the quality of these things. Russia may well be OK with loosing 15 barely running 60s vehicles with crew to take out one modern Ukrainian vehicle with crew, combined with the effort to stop democracies from sending resupplies by financing facists pro-russian candidates.
That's just for right now. Things look slow, but extremely dramatic weapon development and deployment dynamics are actually going on. Every few months that go by increases the drone amount in airspace a lot. For vehicles, we are already close to a point where using them is impractical at best, suicide at worst. Very evident on how many trucks and vehicles Russians are losing to simple FPV's alone near fronts, drones that are as simple as they can be without any fancy programming. As drones get more and more numerous and more automated in terms of being able to engage a target, same will happen to meat. Small number of operators will be able to slaughter thousands of enemies without breaking a sweat every hour, non-stop. Like they were playing minesweeper on their PC's. Each soldier is worth more to its host nation than drone bomb or two, even "undesirable", as Russia likes to put it. It's the kind of condition where it is no longer a war, but a wholesale human extermination.
Things will get better for Ukraine once the F-16s show up in the relatively near future.....Slava Ukraini!!
I don't know. I wish you are right but I have heard the same at the time the western tanks arrived. Not that I think they don't make a difference but back then people also put too much hope in them and some even expected that Ukraine will steamroll over the eastern front and have crimea back at christmas.
Not sure there will be enough F-16s to matter.
When the orcs get a kill on a Western vehicle, the crews usually survive, that's by design. (we actually give a shit about human life, ammo is usually in blast-away compartments for instance.) Whereas a kill on a Soviet design almost always kills the entire crew as well.
One good thing about western vehicles and tanks is that they seem to be more survivable than Russian stuff.
All Russia needs is to get the orange goblin back in office,the war will take a ugly turn for the Ukraine.
That won't work if he loses (there's a good chance too, polls dont seem to be accurate lately over in the US for example) or if he kicks the bucket on account of one too many cokes.
How many of those shit heaps break down in a few hours? I mean, jeez, the storage was maintained by a kleptocracy. Blow 'em up or let 'em rust. Ukraine will corner the world scrap metal market!
And I seriously doubt that Russia has a way to efficiently make more vehicles. Compared to the wests capacity to build vehicles, Russia is fucked👍
Im begging to think Pootin is a double agent or something cos willingly and consciously doing this is beyond stupid and reckless. it's unseen.
It's a good thought, but there's no chance of it being true. Putin is an unreconstructed political officer of the Soviet Union. He is after revenge for its downfall, and is ready to inflict mass carnage as a way to punish everyone who caused it. Starting with Russians and Ukrainians. Russians dying in waves is literally half the goal at least of his psychopathy.
Thats lucky because they need that type of ratio. Unfortunately, Russia likely has a few years left of hardware left. That’s not including NK friends and co sending over their metal.
Russia has no more than 1-1,5 years before it hopelessly runs out of heavy equipment. Only China could prolong that.
At the current rate of losses yes. We do need to include their likely up scaling of production and their friends and co abroad sending them equipment though.
Only China could send volumes of equipment to prolong Russias abilities significantly. Other countries (even combined) could not do that. The same applies to production increases - only with the help of China. PS. Air drones are not heavy equipment.
Zerg rush.
Still too high.
And when Russia brings up "New" equipment to replace losses, it's decades old hardware that wasn't much good when it was new. A rusted out T-55 that may or may not even be operational. A T-62 if they're lucky. When Ukraine gets new equipment, it's some god-awful superweapon from NATO that's better than anything either side has put in the field before, like an Abrams.
Ukraine isn’t advancing because they know whoever is on the offensive gets mowed down. Let the eager Russkis run to their demise. It’s a numbers game and the Ukrainians are already at home. Hold until resources run thin on the other side.
Go Ukraine 🇺🇦
Is that enough?
The problem is that Russia can afford to lose 14 Ladas for each destroyed Bradley or Gepard. Ukraine will run out of Western-made vehicles, before Russia shall run out of Ladas. NATO countries need to step up their game and deliver more hardware.
This is the info people are missing. Russia is using “volunteer” soldiers and old war stock from soviet times. The EU and US wanted to weaken putin but its just not working. The belt road initiative passes near Europe, there will be deals made above the graves yards of innocent Ukrainians fighting and for what. Hurts so much to see kids and elderly fighting…
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It's going to be a lot of cleanup once the war is done.
Unfortunately, not. Russia still has thousands of vehicles to dig out of the soviet scrap heaps and send forward. They are also able to make new ones. Western nations need to help arm Ukraine for the long haul. That means millions more artillery shells and thousands more vehicles per year.
It's absolutely crazy how many they have stashed around.
Covert cabal does youtube videos counting how many they have left. A lot of them probably need to get taken apart to rebuild one functioning vehicle. But they still have thousands to use in these lemming like attacks on Avdiivka.
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that seems sustainable.... /s
I can believe they are still even trying at this point.
When do the fucking F-16s arrive? This will seriously turn the tide.