Despite things bogging down on the Eastern Front. Well, for the Russians it’s the Western Front, but I figure a shout-out to WWII is not inappropriate here.

A couple of weeks ago I put up a post with what I thought were some interesting links analysing the performance of the Russian and Ukrainian militaries – mainly the former – in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine (The Ukrainian Invasion and the Russian Military). The consensus of those links was that the Russians were not performing well on the ground nor in the air, but that sheer weight of numbers would still likely see them win.

That last may still be true but even sheer numbers don’t mean much if you actually cannot bring them to bear in combat situations. Then there’s also the attrition the Russians are suffering. While 99% of what you read coming from the two sides is propaganda there are plenty of external sources who’ve made it their business for years to study the Russian military – and their estimates of losses of planes, helicopters, tanks and other armoured vehicles, plus trucks and other support vehicles, indicate that Russia has likely lost thousands of men as casualties, since each of those machines carried men in varying numbers.

Then this happened yesterday:

As the link shows the Komsomolskaya Pravda story 404’d mighty fast, but too late. It’s all rather reminiscent of what happened a few weeks ago when multiple Russian news sources had a story that was all too revealing about Russian plans and goals, and even more revealing when the story was pulled:

“The Russian Offensive and a New World” is a document that was released through Russian news outlets on the third day of the Russian offensive against Ukraine, February 26, and then quickly withdrawn (original was available at https://ria.ru/20220226/rossiya-1775162336.html). It appears to have been intended as a declaration of victory, which Russia apparently expected to have been achieved in three days. Although the author is unknown, the document is broadly consistent with President Vladimir Putin’s statements, made at various points during his presidency, last summer, and on the eve of the invasion, about Russia and Ukraine.

That article is interesting in itself, even if dated, because it may serve as a good guide to how this war ends with something less than what Putin hoped for.

But this latest piece is instead a violent slap in the face to Russia. Almost 10,000 deaths and another 16,000 wounded or injured is a casualty rate of 17% of the pre-invasion Russian force. In modern warfare that is a phenomenally high loss rate and one that I don’t think is sustainable for offensive combat operations.

Put another way, The Red Army lost 15,000 men during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Over 10 years.

As that article points out such numbers are in line with estimates made by US intelligence sources (“conservatively 7000 killed”) and claimed Ukrainian intercepts of Russian military stats (12,814). On that last point this article argues that the Ukrainian propaganda on numbers killed may not be that far off:

Over the last few days, the official Ukrainian numbers of Russian casualties have slowed considerably, in line with Western assessments of a stalling Russian advance on all fronts. This fact alone gives a certain level of credibility to the Ukrainian claims—if Kyiv’s reports of Russian casualties didn’t reflect the pace of war as reported by the West or other independent sources, then that would be a red flag with respect to the veracity of the Ukrainian claims. In short, a stalled Russian advance means fewer casualties, and the official Ukrainian claims reflect that.

Then there’s some very basic, technical analysis of the Russian military logistics problems, starting with … tyres. It’s a fascinating thread by a former US DOD guy:

Alright Lady’s & Gentlemen, boys and girls, it is time for another Truck logistics thread for this latest Russian Invasion of Ukraine. In it we are going to discuss the concept of “Operational Attrition” as applied to the Russian Army truck fleet in combat.
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In my now widely read thread on poorly maintained, cheap Chinese made, truck tires, I explained how Russia lost trucks & mobility by not maintaining tires. This loss of vehicles without a shot being fired is referred to as “Operational Attrition“.
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That is, just by operating vehicles, you lose some of them because they break. This gets a lot worse in combat. Each mile traveled by a military truck in war is between 10 and 20 miles wear. This is simple. Truck drivers abuse trucks because they don’t want to die.

Or as the accompanying giff has it….

Amidst the (black) humour he writes of his experiences with US trucks in Afghanistan and Iraq, the damage they took, and then looks at photos and video of Russian trucks in use in Ukraine.

One of these videos very much reminded me of one of my Dad’s stories of traveling with the Red Army after they swept through the POW camp in 1945: a captured German staff car full of Red Army officers screamed past them at one point – and the car was running on the rims. Looks like nothing has changed:

Jesus H Christ! How long can an army run like that? The thread estimates a few more weeks at most.

Every truck is being sent out in whatever condition, overloaded with ammunition. The engines are running white hot and no one has checked the oil or other fluid levels, let alone does an oil change, in these last three weeks.

Then there’s the attrition of Russian military leaders; the number of generals killed is also amazingly high for a 21st century conflict. That article includes an interview with General Petraeus, the guy who turned around the Iraqi conflict for the US in 2007/2008:

The column gets stopped. An impatient general is sitting back there in his armored or whatever vehicle. He goes forward to find out what’s going on because there’s no initiative.

Again, there’s no non-commissioned officer corps. There’s no sense of initiative at junior levels. They wait to be told what to do.

Gets up there. And the Ukrainians have very, very good snipers. They’ve just been picking them off left and right. And at least four of these five are absolutely confirmed. And I think the fifth, we will hear today.

Given this situation the Russians have begun using hypersonic missiles to take out key targets like military barracks and ammo dumps. But the use of such strategic, stand-off weapons is yet another sign of failure; such targets should be able to be hit by jets using JDAM bombs or even low-level attacks, plus helicopter gunships at night. Clearly the Russians can’t do that.

So what does all this add up to now?

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), in its daily assessment, argues that a stalemate is developing:

Our assessment that the Russian campaign has culminated and that conditions of stalemate are emerging rests on our assessments, laid out carefully in many fully documented reports published on our website (not just maps) and increasingly validated by reports from various Western intelligence communities, that the Russians do not have the capability to bring a lot of fresh effective combat power to the fight in a short period of time. The kinds of mobilizations the Russians are engaging in will generate renewed fighting power in months at the earliest. Unless something remarkable happens to break the stalemate now settling in, the stalemate is likely to last for months.

That article is typically very technical, even down to explaining exactly what they mean by terms such as “stalemate”, which they go on to explain. They’re also honest in explaining why they might be wrong and that Ukraine loses – but they lay out the conditions now needed for that to happen and leave it to the reader to judge each condition.

If you don’t want to read something that technical there’s this article – which links to that ISW piece but also others, such as an interview with retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. It also includes reports and satellite photography that shows Russian troops digging in and building trenches, which is definitely a sign that the offensive is halting.

There’s also this article on the Russian economy that’s backing this military effort. To put it bluntly, even before the sanctions, that economy wasn’t doing well:

  • Russia’s transition to a market economy was badly bungled, with state enterprises being sold off to those well-connected oligarchs rather than people that could actually grow and modernize industry.
  • Foreign firms were largely excluded from the privatization process.Lots of oligarchs took at the sad state of the Russian economy in the 1990s, and decided it was safer to park their money outside the country (hence all those Russians buying up housing in London).
  • Per capita GDP has dropped from $16,000 in 2013 to just over $10,000 today.

The interview with General Hodges.