That’s kind of what’s been happening. Russia is now employing ‘human wave’ attacks with very little armor support. That suggests they have lots of mobiks to throw at Ukraine, but they are getting short of machinery. Those human wave attacks are failing miserably as well.
If the limiter in this war is soldiers, then Russia still has a chance. If the limiter is the availability of armor and artillery, I don’t see how Russia wins. Well, there is one way - they drag China into the war as an arms supplier to offset NATO. That’s one way this war could break out of Ukraine and start flash points elsewhere.
But if China substantively stays out of the conflict, Russia can’t win without nukes, and probably not with them, either. They can’t stand an artillery standoff, because with HIMARS and other weaponry Ukraine out-ranges them and has more accurate fire. With unlimited ammunition from the west, Ukraine arty can hold back beyond the range of Russian artillery and just pummel them from a distance.
The number of artillery shells required to maintain a fixed-front war of attrition is insane. In WWI, something like 1.5 BILLION artillery shells were fired. You need constant, high speed production of these shells. The U.S. was making 14,000 155mm shells per month before the war, and is ramping that up to 90,000 shells per month as fast as they can. That’s a cost of about $1-2 billion per year just to make artillery shells. Then there’s the depletion of armor, small arms ammo, missiles, drones, artillery pieces, trucks, yada yada. If Russia can’t manage ongoing production to replace these things, the clock on the war is ticking.
Estimates are that Russia was firing off close to 50,000 shells per day in the early war, and that has dropped off to somewhere between 6,000 and 20,000 artillery shells per day.
The entire world production of artillery shells cannot sustain a depletion rate of 20,000 per day. Even after the U.S. expands production, it’s not even close to replacing that level of depletion. So both sides are running down their current stockpiles of artillery. But Ukraine can get replacements from the West, and Russia has no way to replace theirs without making them themselves. A 155mm artillery shell costs around $3,000-$5,000 to manufacture, so shooting off 20,000 per day has a replacement cost of $100 million, or $3 billion per month. Russia cannot afford that, and doesn’t have the factories to make them. Also, their mobilization has caused some of their best engineers and workers to either flee the country or get drafted into Ukraine.
Something has to break, and it will happen when Russia depletes its stockpiles of artillery rounds. The question is, how many shells did the Soviet Union make and stockpile? I can’t find that number. I’m guessing North Korea has a gigantic stockpile, some of which might make their way to Russia. China as well. But ultimately, I don’t think Russia can sustain firing 20,000 shells per day for years.
As for the missiles that have been raining down on Ukrainian cities, Russia has almost shot its wad. Estimates are that it only has about 13% of its Iskander missiles and 37% of its Kaliber cruise missiles left. And it only started using those a few months ago. That’s also unsustainable, and those are wickedly expensive to replace. Russia is trying to make 100-120 Iskanders per year, but they are having difficulty doing so. In the meantime, they’ve fired over 800 of them in less than a year. So that’s unsustainable as well.
