The front is heating up and moving in Ukraine’s favor.
Three Russian divisions would be? Maybe 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers? Maybe more?
Link Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 24, 2023 | Institute for the Study of War
U.N. inquiry confirms what we already knew:
The 42nd includes(or -ed) a couple of Chechen battalions and at one time had an authorized strength of 15,500 as a garrison division in Chechnya, but has been restructured since. However even before the war Russian formations were often under strength. Since the war it can be assumed they usually are and at times by quite bit.
The VDV divisions have much smaller authorized strengths - about 6,000 since they were reorganized on a smaller scale than the old Soviet divisions.
So on paper that would be ~27,000-28,000 troops. But no way are they at paper strength. Regardless it says ‘elements of’ which could mean just about anything in terms of actual troop count.
In another illustration of what the Russian justice system is like, Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov published a video on his Telegram channel of his son Adam kicking and beating a man in custody who was accused of burning the Koran. “Without exaggeration, yes, I am proud of Adam’s action”, Kadyrov wrote.
Hid off-topic post, please do not reply to it.
A little off topic, but I have a question and a bit of a rant:
Why do military analysts always talk about the “divisions”, “battalions”, etc under command of General so-an-so,without specifics?
Whether they are talking about history of World War II, or current news from Ukraine, they always use the same language, which is meaningless to most readers.
A "division’ could be any number of men. and vehicles. So who cares?
What I want to know is how many soldiers and how many tanks are shooting at each other.
When in WWII they tell me that Patton’s 3rd army defeated the German 2nd Panzer division…that means nothing. And now in Ukraine, this most recent post from the respected ISW talks about “elements of three Russian divisions” the 42nd, the 76th and the 7th --that also tells me nothing.
Why can’t they give us numbers of men and machines?
(Note to mods: this post is a bit off topic, but I don’t know if tf deserves a thread of its own…so I put it here. I hope that’s okay)
Well, they have a theoretical fixed size according to their Table of Organisation & Equipment, although they may not necessarily be at full-strength, especially during a war.
They probably don’t know the current numbers of personnel of those units.
my (uneducated) guess: b/c today’s writers have no idea about what those terms mean in headcount and are to embarrassed to ask … (or there is nobody to be asked around anymore)
I am seeing this a lot … wonky phrases (e.g. in macroeconomic context) are being repeated as nobody really knows what that means
The specific size of fighting units is kept secert during wartime. By your own example of Patton once held command of I think 3 totally made up divisions in England before D-Day.
But enough history and specualtion on a slightly off topic question, let’s get back to this totally interesting present war.
Moderating:
It is not OK, do not do this again. But you got your answer and so I’ll let it go for now.
Rough numbers helps me to visualize the scope of the battlefield.
The current battle near Zaporizhia Oblast reportably is quite a large force. That’s a lot of artillery and small arms fire. Must be pure hell for both sides.
It does help that Ukraine is moving forward and capturing territory.
That last video reminds me of this 30 year old Doonesbury comic.
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 24, 1991 - GoComics, minus that least two panels.
One consequence of Russia getting bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine is that it’s been unable to fulfil its commitments to its existing allies.
Armenia is Russia’s ally through its NATO-style Collective Security Treaty Organization. Due to fighting with Azerbaijan, Armenia triggered Article 4 of the treaty, calling for military assistance from fellow treaty members. Russia did not come to Armenia’s aid, and the overall lack of support has led Armenia to consider realigning with the US, the EU and NATO.
Today, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted this:
This is just too much. It’s like the Monty Python parrot sketch.
Weekend at Viktor’s!
He’s just very sleepy. Shhh. Don’t wake him, he’s had a very bad no good day.
I thought it was more like the Death of Mary, Queen of Scots sketch.
He just shows up in a video conference among a larger event, not in a “look this guy’s actually alive” way. That seems…subtle…to be fake propaganda. Isn’t more likely Ukraine was wrong in this case?
We don’t know when video was recorded. It could be a still image of Sokolov from what we can see of him in the video. This is not proof of life, just as the Ukrainian claim is proof of his death.
This is how to do a proof of life video, after Russia claimed Zaluzhnyi had been killed during a visit to the front line:
That’s what I mean, that doesn’t seem to be a Proof-of-Life video at all, not even a badly done one, just a routine Russian meeting of some kind. As if they weren’t interested in proving he was alive, he just logged in to a normal meeting via zoom.
ISW issues a strong statement of support for the Ukrainian counter offensive. I can’t recall ISW issuing a editorial like this before. I believe it is based on their daily analysis of Ukraine’s strategy and effectiveness.
BBC issued a similar report about Western War Fatigue.