the real outcome will be somewhere in the middle between the two scenarios. i don’t think it will be a stalemate like iraq/iran at borders different from 1991. but it is possible.
meanwhile in poland.
only some of this is going to ukraine, but the juxtaposition with videos of old soviet tanks on trains west to the front is pretty stunning.
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I mean your case for being a Debbie downer requires the GOP to win the 2024 election, and then resist the defense lobby for the first time in their history. You see how that’s a long shot run out right?
But I don’t think there’s any chance Russia can hold the stalemate until the end of 2023. Ukraine knows that the longer this takes the more risk they have of their supply lines drying up. That’s why they wanted battle tanks ASAP, and now they have them.
The Ukrainian military is better equipped, better trained, and fighting on home soil in the closest thing to a ‘good war’ anyone has fought in quite a while. When you see the Russians attacking and the Ukrainians defending you’re seeing the Russians losing weapons and equipment that they clearly can’t replace and the only reason the men are replaceable is because they already lost the vast majority of their trained/veteran combat troops. Meanwhile more Ukrainian soldiers are exiting training every day and their equipment is getting better. When fresh Ukrainian troops arrive at the front line they’re getting integrated into units that have been fighting for a year straight. When fresh Russian recruits arrive at the front they have received almost no training (as opposed to months on the UKR side) are very poorly equipped, and the veterans that could maybe give them a clue were put out of action last year.
This is what losing a war looks like. At first it’s kinda close but then one side starts to pull away. I would draw correlations with other wars but honestly in most of those cases the start of the war went way better for the aggressor than this one did.
The military death spiral that is losing most of your trained troops and then not being able to train new ones really can’t be ignored here. The tracks on the Russian war machine have already been blown off.
I don’t see why not. Russia has a population advantage and still thousands of tanks. They have more artillery shells. They have missiles and airplanes.
Even if we believe the official Ukrainian estimate of a 7:1 loss ratio
The recruitment of prisoners has stopped for now but Ukraine can’t keep this up forever.
I don’t think russia is really going to be able to leverage their larger overall population either.
willing to make a categorical statement that if an invading force depends on a private military contractor to recruit from prisons to hold a stalemate, its prospects are worse than it lets on.
fwiw ussr also sent prisoners to war, and condemned many soldiers to “prisoner battalions”. to win the war they needed 32m mobilized and be largely supplied by usa#1. there’s tons of variance involved too, because both sides lost million strong armies to stupidity.
That was when they faced 6 million German soldiers plus however many Italians, Romanians, Hungarians etc.
What does Ukraine do when artillery shells run out (and they absolutely will at some point in the not too distant future)?
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My main source for evenhanded analysis is https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael, he does ~bimonthly appearances on the War on the Rocks podcast, and he has identified ammunition shortages as a top 3 problem for Ukraine in the near to medium term. He also agrees that as of the last few months, the Russians do enjoy a significant manpower advantage that they didn’t at the start of the invasion. But I’ve personally been off in my gut feels about how capable Ukraine is going to be, but I don’t foresee any big changes in who controls what in Donbas this year.
are you assuming that russians will not run out? because that will dictate what ukrainians will have to do when they run out.
generally, in times of shortage you start relying on other resources more, similarly how ukrainians already went through an artillery shortage, before 155mm howitzers were provided. they used more uavs, more manpads, and more himars, for similar targets but using different tactics
Russians will run out, too, but Ukrainians need artillery to defend against Russia’s armor.
what russian armor? majority of russian armor was taken out via javelins
There is still plenty left.
While your statement is technically true (no military can fight forever) won’t Ukraine be battle hardening other brigades and also be training new brigades? The best brigades Ukraine has now might not be the best they’ll ever have in this conflict. In WWII Russians basically lost all their best troops before they started winning. As long as the flow of supplies continues from the west (as it did for the Soviets) then troops and commanders will develop even as others are dying.
Any chance Russia will be re-supplied from other countries? I assume this is a bridge too far from China as of now.
I don’t think China wants to give Russia anything, at least not like NATO is doing to Ukraine. They might be willing to sell things, for the right price and especially if it can be done on the DL, and they’ll buy oil and gas, too. Not sure how much arms sales they think they can get away with, and how much Russia can and is willing to pay.
Seems like not good for Russia.
Armies with insufficient ammo rarely fight well when attacked.
maybe. china gdp is 10x that of russia. running into sanctions for supplying a terrorist state seems like a big gamble. especially since a much weakened russia greatly improve china’s prospects.
i think they are going to negotiate the best return for their non-involvement. can putin offer even more? maybe if he offered half a kingdom.
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selling things on the DL may indeed be happening. there’s lots of talk about what was chinese freight ship carrying to russia when it sank next to sakhalin. it was important enough for russia they forced the crew to continue the voyage until it became impossible
grain of salt to this theory obv, there weren’t many other reputable sources on this except Reuters and
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I hope he knows what he’s doing
Bluffing? Most mil analysts I’ve seen (ok just the one guy I linked to earlier) do not think the main Ukraine Spring offensive will be on this front, and he thinks continuing to use ammo/lose men may weaken that offensive.