The Russian army entered the war with a strong reputation, and a sense that once the huge army was mobilised and entered battle, it would simply steamroll over the opposition. In truth, hidden corruption, poor training and command, lack of transport and logistic resources, poor planning, and a failure to use modern technology (such as sending out its orders in clear), all quickly showed that the Russian Army was greatly overrated. Losses quickly mounted.
That’s a great joke. I’d like it even MORE if it was made current by making it about Ukrainian soldiers instead of Finns. I almost rewrote the joke here with those changes just to see it.
Before we gloat too much about the incompetence of the Russians, remember it’s only the 17th day of actual fighting. It took the Germans 18 days to capture Belgium and 27 days to capture Poland. Hell, it took the U.S. 19 days to capture Baghdad in 2003.
And I’d feel a lot more confident if Ukraine would blow up some of its major rail lines to foul up the Russian logistics even more.
Regardless of the outcome, the Russian army’s logistical incompetence and the poor quality of their equipment is on display for all the world to see. It’s a PR nightmare for Putin who can only deal with it by imposing draconian censorship and blocking outside media. Russia stands exposed as devoid of the most basic morality, devoid of leadership, and devoid of the kind of effective military technology most of us thought they had. Once a world power, they’re now more of a laughingstock, with only the ability to wreak indiscriminate carnage and, if their nukes still work, to destroy the world including themselves.
We are seeing little evidence there is anything wrong with their equipment. There are few stories to be had of T-72 guns not working, or Su-25s failing to acquire targets, or artillery failing to fire. After all, the Ukrainians are using essentially the same equipment. And they’re fighting very well. When equipment fails, like stories of tires blowing out, it goes to training.
What we are seeing are failures of leadership, organization, and training. If you gave this army the finest equipment the USA, Britain and France could provide, their results would be essentially the same.
Those are valid points, though the problems with tires were attributed to using poor quality Chinese tires – not that all Chinese tires are bad, but the better ones don’t blow out in normal use. The rest of the problems seem to be due to poor maintenance, poor logistics (tanks and other vehicles running out of gas or getting stuck in the mud) and simply being attacked and destroyed by Ukrainian forces. And bad morale among the Russian troops. Putin has now committed virtually the entirety of Russia’s ground forces, and lost nearly a third of it.
Russia has certainly not lost a third of their ground forces. They haven’t lost a third of a third of a third. Even Ukraine’s highly optimistic claims of inflicted losses aren’t anywhere near that. Losing a third of their entire army in 16 days would be one of the bloodiest and most destructive military losses in human history, a disaster on par with Germany’s losses at Kursk, and what was left would be in open flight. They would be incapable of further operations and Ukraine would be crashing into Russia by now.
Not quite the entirety of their ground forces, and losses not quite one-third, but according to post #2143, not too far off, either. I’m skeptical about Ukraine’s claims about Russian casualties, but the equipment losses seem reasonably credible, or at least consistent with what we’re seeing on the ground and the Russian army’s lack of progress:
The article says that Russia has about 170 BTGs in total. From other sources, about 120-125 of those have already been committed to the war in Ukraine.
As I posted above, Ukraine is saying that 18 battalion tactical groups have completely lost their combat capability, and 13 have been completely destroyed. So 31 are out of action.
Even assuming these numbers are true - and believe me, there is zero chance they are true - Russia started this war out with a lot more than 36,000 troops, 3485 light armored vehicles, 375 artillery pieces, etc. Those losses are a tiny portion of Russia’s army, which fields 300,000 regular soldiers and at least 500,000 reserves, and has well over 10,000 armored vehicles in regular service.
Even if 31 battalion groups have been destroyed or put out of service - which I don’t believe - they don’t just vanish. 13 BTGs haven’t been literally wiped out with 18 mauled, plus air losses; that would actually be far more individual losses than Ukraine has even claimed (A BTG has about 800 men.) A beaten up battalion, and 20-30% fatal losses would be very beat up, is shattered and incapable of effective offensive operations, will be withdrawn and reorganized with replacements or by being merged with other units.
If Ukraine has killed eight thousand Russians - which would be just one percent of their army, counting reserves - that alone would be a incredibly significant loss for Russia. Eight thousand is a very high fatality total for two weeks. Canada only averaged eight thousand fatalities per year in World War II and we were fighting all the time against the NAZIS. We didn’t have eight thousand men killed in France during the two months of Operation Overlord.
That works in favor of the original claim, though. If a battalion that’s suffered 25% losses is incapable of offensive operations, then it has lost 100% of its combat capability. You don’t need to kill/destroy nearly 1/3 of the enemy for 1/3 to count as “out of action.” At least until they reorganize, but that takes time, and Russian forces don’t seem to be very well organized to start with.
From Ukrainian sources [1, 2] the Sviatohirsk Lavra Orthodox Monastery in Donetsk oblast was hit yesterday by an airstrike.
The monastery is under the Moscow Patriarchate, with 100+ monks and currently 500 refugees, mostly women and children.
It’s outside the town of Sviatohirsk, on the other side of the river. The head of the monastery says that there are no military units stationed in or near the monastery or town.
Several were wounded, but nobody killed. Most of the windows were blown out, and some of the buildings damaged.
You really have to wonder what the Russians are thinking. They are failing militarily, and their only plan now seems to be to inflict indiscriminate casualties on civilians.
Wendover had a similar video piece last week: Inside the borders of Russia logistics works very well, thanks to its rail system. Outside Russia, not so much.
One thing interesting about this war is the increased awareness of the world concerning logistics. In a very long WWII YouTube video (and no need to watch if you aren’t a WWII buff, author D. M. Giangreco of Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 discusses with the author of the YouTube channel Military History Visualized how people aren’t interested in logistics, even military historians, and the authors tend to brush over the topic very quickly, if they address it at all. It’s much sexier to write about the tank battles rather than the mundane accounts of how they get the ammunition in place.
The MHV author agrees, and says that any of the videos with logistics in the title automatically get only half the views.
Carl Bildt, Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former Prime Minister of Sweden:
There’s an interesting thread in the replies about how these losses could be particularly problematic to the functioning of the Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) system:
Here’s a paper on The Relationship of Battle Damage to Unit Combat Performance, investigating “the historical basis for the assumption that a military formation will cease to be effective after having lost a certain pre-ordained percentage of its strength.”
It does not support the idea of some fixed percentage, but has this to say, which doesn’t sound too good for the Russians:
