Ukraine is losing up to 20 sq km of territory per day, Russians have seized 3,600 sq km in past year – Militarnyi
Ukraine is losing up to 20 sq km of territory per day, Russians have seized 3,600 sq km in past year – Militarnyi
20 square km? Wow at that rate, Russia will have conquered all 233.000 square km of Ukraine by 2057.
Yes and Russia is losing 100 soldiers per square km (2000 casualties per day). By 2057 they will have lost 23 million soldiers!
That was the plan from the beginning... "It will only take 3 daycades", they said.
You generally get the areas logistically cut off as a bonus, unless they are defended by something like pre-war Azov. And even in that case, despite propaganda advantage, qualified men of Azov could have been used better.
You also start losing territory faster the more your troops are exhausted, and that's important when your population is a third of your enemy's population.
And by exhaustion I mean human losses and morale, and general qualifications dropping. Which is why qualified men of Azov and plenty other units could and should have been used to train new mobilization waves better non-stop while Russians had problems.
And damn fucking obviously with such numeric imbalance the late 2023 attempt at an offensive the Soviet way, with numbers and firepower and not brains, shouldn't have been attempted. That's the "liberated" number. It was very expensive.
What I mean is that right now Ukraine has manpower shortage.
If I were the God-Emperor of Ukraine and could make any kind of decision, I'd devise a new, far shorter line of contact and undertake mass evacuation beyond and near it. I'd perform a planned, organized, in many well thought-out small steps, retreat towards it (preferably laying minefields as vast as life in process). And I'd squeal all over the world that I'm losing the damned war, because if Russia doesn't just implode soon, that will happen.
One ironic thing is - if Russia wins the war, it will soon probably have a coup, or even a restoration of democracy. But Ukraine can't allow Russia to win the war for it to lose the war.
The mark of a great army is how well they retreat, regroup, and fight on. Ukraine is doing well.
Well, they also face quite some serious desertion issues at the moment too.
War is hell on both sides. The difference is Ukraine is fighting to survive, Russia is fighting for a pipe dream.
I've read one of the loudest recent cases is a brigade most of the personnel of which was sent to train in France.
I suppose a lot of those are kids of rich parents or something like that, picked for that for a bribe, and they probably expected war to end before they return.
It can be that similar dynamics affect other units with lots of desertions, but that's just guessing from news.
No it's not.
Ukrainian troops' qualification levels are dropping and they have manpower shortages. You can train a man in realistic time during war (if you have competent men free to do that, and not fighting), but you can't grow a baby into a man and then train him in realistic time during war.
Mercenaries are not a complete replacement.
I mean, for an ex-Soviet army they've shown class (and by the way, nothing in that was about inferiority of Soviet doctrine or something, just using it right). But they can't fight a trice stronger adversary with more than trice stronger economy on their own territory (which means that their own economy is half-dead), without some other component, and the amount of Western help right now is just not sufficient.
It's easy to look at the side of a war of attrition where you have more information and say that they're losing because you don't have as much information on the other side. Russia has every reason to present itself as still having massive reserves to call upon because it helps their case.
Many people thought that Germany was on the cusp of winning WWI during the spring offensive in 1918.
That being said I think Ukraine's situation isn't great. I was surprised at the seeming depth of the Russia's reserves. They have been sustaining incredible losses for the last year almost, and yet continue to advance. During previous phases of the war we saw them overextend themselves and then have to retreat against Ukrainian advances.
Russia's reserves are finite both in terms of manpower and equipment. They are demonstrating strain in both categories and will presumably start to have sustainment issues soon. If Ukraine can hold together and stop the advance then presumably the next phase would be a negotiated peace hopefully. There's always a chance that some shoe could drop though. Putin could die or get overthrown, the west could withdraw all support, China could start providing blank-check support to Russia, Russia could successfully go into full-mobilization mode.
They'll get them back.
Don't forget that russia brought in new meat for the grinder. Slava Ukraini
This is in line with what most sources agree on. And although these losses may sound like a lot, it's not much more than the area of Luxembourg, when Ukrainian gains in Kursk Oblast are counted too.
This is a war of attrition, meaning Ukraine is giving up land, so they can draw back and spare their soldiers, while taking down a higher ratio of advancing Russian soldiers.
These advances by Russia come at extreme cost, and the idea is that Russia will not be able to sustain such losses.
And that russian losses, economy, production cannot go on more than some 3-6-12 months depending on who you listen to. It won't stop stop ofc but just make the russians less and less effective until it's more or less useless.
Absolutely, Russia is already slowly collapsing, and it will get a lot worse in 2025. I'm guessing around summer or autumn so many things in Russia will disintegrate that they can't continue effectively anymore. Real estate market can collapse at any time, collapsing the financial market, but the financial markets are already so hard stressed it's basically the same as if it was collapsing. In practice neither people or businesses can borrow money.
bankruptcies are already high despite a heated economy, and this will only get worse as inflation rises. Russia is beginning to price regulate to keep inflation in check, but that will only lead to shortages and more bankruptcies.
There is no way Russia can continue this war and get its economy together. The cracks are showing everywhere now. Air traffic is having safety regulations lifted to keep flying, and just the other day, 2 passenger planes had to emergency land, because of engine failure.
Russia is out of options and out of reserves, from this point the decline will only accelerate.