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Russia/Ukraine Conflict

Mountain Man said:
A Russian newspaper posted then deleted a story about the death toll being about 9800 Russian soldiers. This whole thing may completely destroy the Russian military, and for what?
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Yeah there are estimates as high as 15,000 I believe. Even at 9,800, that is around 6% of the forces they’ve committed to the invasion, and 1% of their entire standing army wiped out in less than a month, along with a massive contingent of high level military leadership (5 colonels, and 15 total high-ranking officials). An absolute humiliation and unequivocal failure. They’ve only managed to secure the capital of one (out of 22) Oblast so far… they thought the entire nation would fall in less than a week.
 
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The report cited by MountainMan stated 9,861 dead and 16,153 wounded. That is 26,000 soldiers out of commission, equating to around 15% of their committed forces (175 - 190,000). This figure doesn’t include thousands of defectors, deserters, and POWs.
 
I'd like to know just how many logistical vehicles the Russians have lost. The Russian military relies heavily on rail to support its troops logistically but the Ukrainians destroyed all rail infrastructure at the start of the war. The Russians have a very small number of support vehicles to rely on compared to similar sized militaries. The trucks they have also appear to have issues resulting from poor maintenance and disuse.
 
Duck Lightning said:
I'd like to know just how many logistical vehicles the Russians have lost. The Russian military relies heavily on rail to support its troops logistically but the Ukrainians destroyed all rail infrastructure at the start of the war. The Russians have a very small number of support vehicles to rely on compared to similar sized militaries. The trucks they have also appear to have issues resulting from poor maintenance and disuse.
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The cracks in Russia's army have shown during this invasion. I guess that's what happens when you are the 11th largest economy in the world, but trying to remain the world's second largest military.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
This is simply a vanity project for Putin. He has not come to grips with the fact that even if the Russians are successful, they will occupy a country where infrastructure and thousands of buildings have been severely damaged; the economies of both countries will be reduced to zero so there will be no money to rebuild; the people of Ukraine who remain will hate Russia for the rest of their lives and also rebel at every opportunity; and the rest of the world will treat Putin and Russians in general, as pariahs.
No ....Putin is not a 'genius', Donald Trump ... he is as stupid, callous and vain as you.
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No real win of any kind will come out of this. with the 11th largest economy in the world (smaller than Canada's economy) trying to support the world's second largest military force has been a struggle, now they'll have to spend even more for thousands of troops to stay there and occupy, not to mention losing more lives.
This will be another chapter in the history books focusing on mistakes made by leaders.
 
Surrealplaces said:
The cracks in Russia's army have shown during this invasion. I guess that's what happens when you are the 11th largest economy in the world, but trying to remain the world's second largest military.
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Russia is a kleptocracy, so it shouldn't surprise that equipment has been looted or poorly maintained, that troops are poorly trained and unmotivated and that deficiencies have been hidden from the higher ups.
 
DougB said:
Russia is a kleptocracy, so it shouldn't surprise that equipment has been looted or poorly maintained, that troops are poorly trained and unmotivated and that deficiencies have been hidden from the higher ups.
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For sure. I'm sure a lot of those funds going to the military end up in people's pockets.
 
Surrealplaces said:
For sure. I'm sure a lot of those funds going to the military end up in people's pockets.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1502673952572854278

I make no claims about the reliability of the source (claims to be a fellow at the Wilson Center), but this is an interesting (and long) twitter thread examining why the Russian military is so weak. The TD;DR is: the Russian military has been kept purposely weak so that they pose no threat to the Kremlin. Their weakness has come from marginalization relative to domestic state security agencies (separate from the military) and organized crime organizations (aligned with the Kremlin) have been allowed to ransack the military at every level.
 
I have to be honest, I thought myself the invasion would be over in about a week. I’ve seen lots of information coming out showing how surprisingly poor Russia’s military is. It has been surprising, but circling back and looking at it from a different angle with all the power struggles within Russia it shouldn’t be that surprising. The oligarchs and the agencies like the FSB is where the power and the graft is.
 
Silence&Motion said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1502673952572854278

I make no claims about the reliability of the source (claims to be a fellow at the Wilson Center), but this is an interesting (and long) twitter thread examining why the Russian military is so weak. The TD;DR is: the Russian military has been kept purposely weak so that they pose no threat to the Kremlin. Their weakness has come from marginalization relative to domestic state security agencies (separate from the military) and organized crime organizations (aligned with the Kremlin) have been allowed to ransack the military at every level.
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That sounds very plausible. If the Kremlin was aware of its true military capabilities, did it assume that lesser capacity would still be enough to roll over Ukraine? Or did it think that the a potemkin military would scare Ukraine into submission before the tanks, real and fictitious, rolled into Kyiv? Regardless, Putin took a huge risk. Authoritarian states are built around maintaining facades. Doing so would be much more difficult in democracies with free press, which is perhaps the real threat of the EU and NATO moving eastwards.
 
DougB said:
That sounds very plausible. If the Kremlin was aware of its true military capabilities, did it assume that lesser capacity would still be enough to roll over Ukraine? Or did it think that the a potemkin military would scare Ukraine into submission before the tanks, real and fictitious, rolled into Kyiv? Regardless, Putin took a huge risk. Authoritarian states are built around maintaining facades. Doing so would be much more difficult in democracies with free press, which is perhaps the real threat of the EU and NATO moving eastwards.
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At least some of the commentary suggests that Putin actually believed his own propaganda: that Zelensky was a weak, unpopular leader who was being propped up by the West and that he'd flee the country the moment Russian tanks crossed the border. As well, Putin probably assumed that Ukrainian security forces would accept a Kremlin-backed president and help Russia force this decision on any resistant members of the Ukrainian public.

It's not a completely unreasonable assumption. Zelensky was very unpopular, and the Ukrainian police have a history of siding with Russia. If it turned out to be true, you'd only need a Potemkin military the projected a sense of inevitability. But it turned out to be the complete opposite.
 
I guess when you tell an entire nation of 42 million people that their 1000+ years of history doesn’t exist and that they are merely a creation of Russia (the opposite is true, in fact), then immediately after this speech you begin bombing every city in the nation, you lose a lot of support from the public. Who knew? 🤪
 
Silence&Motion said:
At least some of the commentary suggests that Putin actually believed his own propaganda: that Zelensky was a weak, unpopular leader who was being propped up by the West and that he'd flee the country the moment Russian tanks crossed the border. As well, Putin probably assumed that Ukrainian security forces would accept a Kremlin-backed president and help Russia force this decision on any resistant members of the Ukrainian public.

It's not a completely unreasonable assumption. Zelensky was very unpopular, and the Ukrainian police have a history of siding with Russia. If it turned out to be true, you'd only need a Potemkin military the projected a sense of inevitability. But it turned out to be the complete opposite.
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I saw a video on Youtube that talked exactly about that. As an example from the video it explained how there were some neo Nazi militia members who helped battle the Russians in the Crimea, and even though their numbers are very small, word back to Russian leadership made it sound like Nazis were taking over Ukraine. And of course we all remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, shows it's possible for leaders even in a proper democratic system to be sucked into things like this.
Still, Putin has looked either stupid or insane with this latest move.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I saw a video on Youtube that talked exactly about that. As an example from the video it explained how there were some neo Nazi militia members who helped battle the Russians in the Crimea, and even though their numbers are very small, word back to Russian leadership made it sound like Nazis were taking over Ukraine. And of course we all remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, shows it's possible for leaders even in a proper democratic system to be sucked into things like this.
Still, Putin has looked either stupid or insane with this latest move.
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Those neo-Nazis (called the Azov regiment) are among the fiercest Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol. They are the only reason why Russia has not taken the city over completely and instead resorted to bombing it to pieces.
I can't believe Putin and his inner circle would be that stupid to think that this small group was representative of the political leanings and beliefs of all of Ukraine. Some pre-invasion intelligence from Kyiv, Karkiv or Odesa would have ascertained that the country was very much operating like a free and fair democracy. Democracy is what Putin fears the most, not nazism.
 
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