Invasion of Ukraine by Russia and War

[Ming]

So Poland formally asked for permission to send Leopards and Germany said they won't prevent export to Ukraine. I take it that means the Leopards are going.

Meanwhile the Brits who have been just fantastic in this are saying they haven't ruled out longer range stuff that can take out targets in Russia from which attacks on civilian infrastructure are being carried out.

This war could still leak by accident but not by escalation towards any NATO country by Russia on purpose in my opinion anyway. Putin needs to keep an army/navy/air force of some sort as opposed to losing it all in 72 hours.

[hi-rev]

You are posting old news Ming
the latest is; (be sure to sit down when you read this) that Germany is going to send a company of tanks to Ukraine. Yes. Germany is actually going to send a dozen or more Leo 2A6 of their own tanks to Ukraine.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deuts...e-482d58fd850f

Aaand what is more, the USA is considering sending Abrams tanks too.

[trurl]

The Russians are not infinite. Let's see the numbers.

Before the invasion started there were about 1 million Russian soldiers, and another 1 million support (hospital staff, musicians, etc). But only on paper, because these numbers were never realized - it was never a great career path to become a Russian soldier. The real number was about 800-850k, minus the 260k conscripts. It's important, because these conscripts are not supposed to be deployed abroad. Some say this was the reason annexing parts of Ukraine, so they can be deployed there. So we have about 600k. In November the EU admiral claimed that there are 250k dead or wounded. There is a Russian phrase, "unrecoverable loss" for people who are dead or so seriously wounded that they cannot fight again. That's about 100k in total.
There are also soldiers needed in the Caucasus, they need them to operate the submarines, guard the Chinese and Nato borders.

About the equipment. They had about 3300 tanks, about 1600 of these are documented by open source pictures as destroyed. During the summer they realized they are running out of tanks, so they started to release/repurpose them from storage. However instead of the T72s, they started to bring the T62s to the war. (imagine the tanks are twice as old as the people operating them). The problem (for them) is that these are so outdated, the Ukrainians are blowing them away. At the current rate of loss, they will run out of tanks by the end of the summer. And - just as well as with the army - they cannot use them all up, they need those T72s protecting the borders. The only thing the T62s are good for is being dug in and used as defense artillery.

The real high tech stuff they have (Kamov 52 helicopter, or Armata tanks) are nowhere to be seen since the beginning of the war. (The Armata's testing hasn't even finished yet.) They were probably expecting Nato tanks to appear in the war, and they are going to need something to respond to that too, that could be another the reason for these not being deployed yet.

Of course they are going have recruitment drives, but considering the losses, who will sign up? What equipment will they have? Finally about the people who supposed to train them. There are almost none, the soldiers "joined" in the autumn were mostly trained by the ones "joined" in the spring. Considering it takes 10-15 years to train a high ranking official, they don't have enough of them either, even if they stopped dropping like flies after the first 10 died because they went too close to the front-line.

And there is a presidential election in 2024 in Russia.

[Titan]

Some good points there trurl, but I don't think winning an election is going to
be keeping Putin awake at night somehow.

For the foreseeable, I think he won't be losing an election for a while anyway.

[mikerd4]

The Ukrainians shot 3 KA-52's down this morning within 30 minutes. There cant be too many left at this rate

[Titan]

Meanwhile over in America, the Doomsday Clock is getting a bit more perilous looking

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64390663

[Cold]

I've had a thought for a while, that trurl's post alludes to, which is that maybe it was better to let the Russians waste a lot of their good people and material at the start in a failed offensive that was relatively easy to defend against and then roll in with the proper hard hitting western kit now that Russia is on their knees to get maximum value out of it and there is more time to train people up.

[trurl]

True, the elections are not going to keep him awake, the 340k (!) national guards, the secret service, the interior police and the propaganda will serve him well. About 25-30% of the population is pro-war, 20% is against the war (a big portion of them, over 3 million people are escaped to abroad) but the majority of people don't care, not interested in what's going on beyond the parish borders. Not a surprise, really, other than a decade in the 90s, the majority of the Russians were not active/political going back to the tzars' era.

The silent majority only started to make their voice heard when their standards of life went lower than what they were accepting - and that says a lot. That was the end of the cold war, the Russians had to cut back on their military spend to feed the masses. I think this is the only reason the war will stop on their side. Otherwise the Russians are OK to dig in, declare ceasefire and only shoot back when they are attacked, building fortifications, attempting to keep all their current positions, very much what was going on since 2004 in other parts of Ukraine.

The Ukrainians won't be able to get the Crimea back - there is a salty marsh around the single road leaving the peninsula, it's a miracle, or rather Russian intelligence infiltrating the Ukrainian forces that the Russians could break out of the Crimea and almost got Odessa last year. The tanks will help the Ukrainians to overcome the defenses the Russians are building now, but it's going to hurt. It also helps them that everybody who served in the Ukrainian army since 2004 has combat experience (Donbas, Luhansk), while those convicts-conscripts on the other side have none, most of them don't even have basic training. The major difference is that the 85-95% support for defending their own country could go down if tens of thousands of Ukrainian people die, but losses twice as big won't even register on a national level in Russia, thanks to the chef operating those internet troll farms who made Brexit and Trump happen. The Ukrainians need the hardware, they need as much as possible, and they need it now to get acceptable results before a lot more people have to die.

It may sound cynical, but all the interested parties except the Ukrainians are already winning. The US and Nato are weakening Russia - the USA spent $2.313 trillion on the war in Afghanistan without any impact, so it's a pittance what they are spending now, with a lot more efficiency to weaken the "shaft bearing" of the "axis of evil" (it's a motoring forum after all). Russia is happy to dig in and take what they currently have. China is happy to see its strong neighbour weakening, hoping to have its influence extended in Siberia for the minerals (there are already a lot of Chinese companies operating there and even more further east) and getting cheaper gas, while the other enemy, the US is running themselves bankrupt.

It's a horrible, barbaric war, last time a war this long was fought in Europe, was the War of the Spanish Succession -- over 300 years ago.

[Ming]

Just a couple of thoughts about the above (just observations at random to support some points):

On the Russian army and recruitment, their model before the war was 2 brigades in a BTG operational and one training the new recruits. So it is absolutely is correct to ask who will do the training as they just poured the third battalion into the fighting in a pretty stupid way, so they can't actually train their recruits properly. And they have used their best special forces and naval infantry and paras as assault troops. Those guys are (were) well regarded and will take a couple of years at best to replace.

On the KA-52s, they had I think about 124 of them in service. I haven't been counting (there is a crowd called Oryx who do) but it seems to me they must have lost about half of them. And they can't make their kit with washing machine chips. The Armata has been produced in numbers that are irrelevant such that it isn't worth risking them as they are probably going to be just as vulnerable to a Javelin as a T64/72/80/90 and why risk the propaganda value of having one knocked out, or more embarassingly, abandoned.

On Crimea, all things being equal, it isn't an assault target. It's a knock out the bridge, cut off any other land route (or just have it in artillery/HIMARS/Brimstone truck range) and wait, target. As per Kherson.

Russia has replaced the butcher Surovikin (sp not sure sorry) who immediately said there is bad news coming in Kherson and set about blowing up civilian infrastructure. He succeeded in his Kherson bad news but the other bit didn't work. A further change is coming. They aren't stupid. Demented and wrong and mistaken hopefully, but not actually stupid, but they will do something to change this. It will be their last real game changer play. if it fails it may be collapse (not actually exclusively good) or dig in and keep it going forever.

[Titan]

Some good and valid points I think from this former NATO General

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S66Pz396gwE

In other words, give the equipment required to Ukraine now or this thing will just drag on and on.

[Cold]

I’d say the “interesting” thing now is what Russia will do, as one of their red lines has been crossed. No doubt the usual appalling terror attacks on Ukrainian civilians will be part of it. They might do something visible with nukes also and leak some orders about increased readiness. Beyond that not sure what levers they have left. Cause civil unrest in Germany somehow?

[Mike205]

So it looks like Abrams are going to Ukraine, I'm reading all morning that US is finalising the process and will send 30-50 tanks to Ukraine. For everyone who says "but they use so much petrol", "they require maintenance". Yes they do, but US would not agree to send them without providing proper support. US will provide ALL of this in addition with their tanks.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01...-officials-say
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/24/p...ine/index.html

[Cold]

I think you can chalk that down as a diplomatic victory for Germany. They wanted the US carry the bulk of the burden and got there in the end.

[trurl]

Just one thing to consider about the western tanks. The Leopard weights 50 ton, the Abrams 55. The T72 is very light compared to these two, about 42 tons. Why does it matter? Because the roads and the bridges were built to be able to take the weight of the T72, but not the heavier Nato tanks. The Ukrainians will have to be very careful about the deployment, and make sure they don't fall into Russian/Chinese hands.

[trurl]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/why-th...ainian-victory