12:25
Comparing the warring parties from AB’s compilation, we must also remember that Russia has already deployed the best they had. Now this is mostly an attempt with broad strokes and there are probably other figures.
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Active Soldiers
Ukraine – 200,000, this is probably at least double today if not more as combat-experienced have enlisted in fighting units and national guards that are good enough to become operational.
Russia (active) – 900,000, at least 200,000 have zero combat value.
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Reserves
Ukraine – 900,000, considering the people’s defense we see, this number should be a couple of million, mostly because they don’t have weapons for everyone but hunting rifles have been used.
Russia – 2,000,000 and they probably have extremely low combat value and cannot reinforce brigades that have ceased to exist so they cannot utilize experienced command structures. They would then throw completely inexperienced brigades into combat against a qualified opponent.
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Tanks
Ukraine – 1,000, this number should be unchanged where losses have been replaced by captured or those smuggled in from the EU’s eastern states.
Russia – 3,000, the best +500 are probably unusable in these convoys and most of what remains are older T64 and T72 models.
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Armored Vehicles
Ukraine – 1,000
Russia – 5,000, they have already lost 1,000 and many are probably abandoned or out of fuel in these convoys so only older models remain, BMP1-2, BTR-60, etc.
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We can almost ignore the artillery as they have run out of ammunition and are well-prioritized targets for drones and infiltrating units.
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The air force is sour but you don’t win wars with air power.
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I really don’t see how Russia can win this. There is no 4:1 ratio of key materiel even if Russia manages to mobilize everything in a few weeks. Now this is Russia so there will come a trickle of reinforcements sent into Ukraine and knocked out as they appear like a glorified shooting gallery. It’s only a matter of time.
13:13
Just a reflection that Poland has an army on par with Ukraine but better armed and better trained, though difficult terrain to defend. Finland is obstacle number 2 and they are proven very tough.
Behind them are the EU’s better units and the USA as well as endless qualified weapons.
Russia is not a threat and media that writes “which country Russia will attack next” have no clue or an agenda.
Possibly the Baltics will be overrun and under Russian rule for a few weeks.
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China is probably a harder nut to crack if they get the feeling but it is a country with an incredibly many ethnic groups and economically vulnerable so sanctions should bite fast and the US has promised to defend Taiwan with weapons so they would get the whole West against them, same result.
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There will be no nuclear weapons either, that is an empty threat, and as the blogger constantly writes, a nuclear weapon is not the end of the world as we were taught growing up.
13:33
This thing about food shortages that is now emerging as a big concern.
Again an attempt by Russia to force peace, stock market crash, electricity crisis, refugee crisis and nuclear weapons are the other pressure tactics.
Don’t fall for this! I have worked as an engineer in countries where the population barely had a bowl of rice per day and survived. At the same time, I was probably sitting in hotels eating lobster but that is another story. We have vitamins in abundance and Europe would do well with a little less overconsumption, Sweden in the 70s and 80s was no food surplus directly and that raised many of us in this thread 🙂
11:57
Last night in a Swedish newspaper “Russia resumes its offensive”. Ukraine has recaptured territory conquered by Russia, no newspaper writes about this or that Ukraine has struck brigade-sized units in several places and captured army commanders.
Russia, which has not struck any brigade or captured any army commanders, gets all the media coverage…
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I want to go one step further than just saying this is demoralizing for Ukraine. If the world’s media could write on their front pages about this MONUMENTAL failure, the overthrow of Putin would happen very quickly. But they keep supporting him by portraying this as an ongoing Russian invasion still. I find it hard to understand the thinking here. No newspapers write “tens of thousands in Russian losses” either despite Ukraine publishing staggering figures of Russian losses every day.
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It is also notable that Belarus has not invaded Ukraine. Had that happened, we would have seen videos with place names and vehicles with red stars on them.
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The question has been asked a few times now, first two days ago by someone in the thread – where are all the soldiers for all the abandoned and destroyed vehicles? My guess is that of the 60% of 200,000 who were in the operational units deployed in the first days of the attack (US estimate about 2/3), the majority now have zero combat value. The remaining 40% who were reserves in the first echelon (these are just rough guesses!) have now been thrown into the areas where advances are happening, around Mariupol, the southern offensive, Kherson-Mykolaiv, and in a couple of attempts in Kyiv. I cannot see that the Russians have operational units in reserve anymore; what might remain is some naval infantry, VDV, Spetsnaz, and Rosgvardia/Omon/Chechens, but they will be deployed against cities in the largest flytrap in world history and the Russians’ own Stalingrad.
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Even in the thread, I think I read “can Ukraine really go on the offensive”. My interpretation is that if you strike brigade-sized units and capture army commanders, then you have done quite well. The remaining question is whether Ukraine has the capacity to clear its territory. The absolute best scenario is if they do, because then the humiliation is total; if they don’t, there is a gap for Putin to slip into, freeze the conflict, and claim victory. Ukraine and the US are surely very aware of this. It should be two rather lively weeks where Ukraine tries to throw out Russia before they mobilize their third-tier forces.
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There are 3,000 American citizens in the international legion and probably 18,000 foreign fighters in total. I’ll eat my hat if many of them are not Western special forces. In interviews with volunteers, it was striking how many came in groups of four. The West has sent weapons so they can even fight with their own arms.
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Russia, in its liberation movement against Ukraine’s Nazis, has now decided to deploy strategic bombers against cities. This enormous suffering is completely unnecessary as the war is lost and extremely tragic. Especially Mariupol will become a Grozny with thousands of civilian deaths. The risk that Mariupol will fall probably still exists but with each passing day their chances of survival increase.
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I see zero Russian advances and they must have almost used up most of their artillery ammunition soon, unfortunately this does not apply to the air force. What remains is probably the southern front but there they seem to be focusing on Odessa and Mariupol instead of taking east of the Dnipro, which is likely a mistake. There is so little to report that it is mostly crimes against humanity and who said what nowadays. If Russia manages to bring forward its third-tier forces in T64s, it is actually only a matter of time before they too become unusable; it can’t be more than 200,000 – 300,000 poorly motivated soldiers driving museum pieces.