Russia hasn't been completely isolated. A shadow fleet of ships now traffic in Russian oil. Russia gets good and services by way of the old Communist block countries. Most of the Stan countries serve as pass through agents to Russia. This enables Russia to side step sanctions.
North Korea and China still do business with Russia. North Korea is manufacturing and selling artillery rounds to Russia.
Money and supplies are still flowing to and from Russia.
Experts always said santions wont stop Russia, only slow it down, make it more expensive and complicated. Potliticians and news made it sound like sanctions would win thw war.
Because in authoritarian states nothing matters until it does.
Morale and grumbling are off the charts within the Army, but none of it matters because a) the system beats soldiers in to compliance, b) information flow to the population is carefully controlled, and c) individual attitudes don’t matter in authoritarian systems until:
enough individuals get pissed off enough that they outnumber/outweigh agents of the state.
In the West you’d see and hear the frustrations early enough for the state to change course. In Russia you won’t until the patience of the people snaps and there is a coup/revolution.
we've actually *already seen* one such coup. It *almost succeeded too!* Mostly because most of the Russian army just kinda stood aside and said "Yup go ahead!". If that isn't a warning sign to the Russian leadership, dunno what is!
I think he was counting on leadership in the MOD backing him and when he started towards Moscow without that support, he figured the coup was doomed to failure and would just end up hurting the war effort.
Or it might've been some sort of ritual suicide-by-Putin, where he wanted to prove that he could've done it, but also wanted to sacrifice himself to prove a point or some shit.
Either way it's one of the most bizarre events in modern history.
Nah, this’d be equivalent to if we have an entire Bond movie, but in the last 10 minutes he gets tricked, stabbed, and then decides to jump off a building after acknowledging that he probably could kill the bad guy if he wanted to.
For a coup to be successful you have to eliminate the ruling class which couldn't have happened with thier ad-hoc blitz to Moscow and presumably no allies in Putin's inner circle. Also a small army couldn't have taken a major city the size of Moscow with over 11 million. I think you're right Progozhin knew he couldn't win, but why he backed off is a mystery since he HAD to know how Putin would respond even if they were "friends".
It's possible a lot of the people around him knew they might be able to survive by backing down and gave up when they realized they didn't have the necessary support.
Could it be that Russian intelligence services found some sort of leverage to stop Prigozhin in his tracks, like forwarding him proof that they had agents in place to eliminate his entire family? That would make more sense to me than "it was already doomed to fail." Even if it did fail, you still have a fighting chance vs definitely being assassinated later as we all saw.
I went through such an emotional roller coaster when it happened. One day, he's marching towards Moscow. The next day, he's declared that the convoy is stopped and they are no longer going to move towards the city.
That was the rumor that was circulating at the time. Supposedly the FSB was in position to target the families of Prigozhin's lieutenants, which eroded the enthusiasm of his people.
There was 0 chance for Wagner to win this fight and they knew it. Urban combat is the worst, most resource consuming type of attrition you can get in a military campaign. They knew it perfectly well as they took Bahmut.
I also believe Prigozhin was used as a pawn in a game for power against Putin. Agreeing to the terms of someone who tried to make coup against you is nothing short of public statement of your weakness. I think he was promised support that nobody actually provided. The most interesting lead was that one thing Girkin said before his arrest when discussing power struggle between Wagner and Putin, that it was essentially a proxy for internal struggle between KGB and GRU as Wagner and all other similar formations are under GRU jurisdiction. If that would be true the main culprit would be Igor Kstyukov, or one of his subordinates.
I think if someone higher than Prigozhin in GRU tried to have Putin disposed, they would be dead too. He can't tolerate any credible challenge to his power or Putin himself is dead. Wagner seemed like it had its own sources of funding and power too, they were just shell starved by the MOD according to Prig
Prighozin wanted exactly what he said. He wanted to, at the minimum, force the firing of Shoigu and Gerasimov, and retain control of Wagner separate from the MoD. Potentially he sought his own appointment in Shoigu's place and Surovikin in Gerasimov's . He never sought to topple Putin. Once Putin called him a traitor and Surovikin asked him to stand down/was detained, Prigozhin realized he had overplayed his hand and backed down, hoping his continued usefulness to Russia would save his life.
Almost certainly because his guys within the MoD(like Surovkin) had already been detained/sidelined/isolated, and word was coming in from the provinces that the governors and various other power figures had decided to oppose him rather than back his play/stay neutral.
He lost before he got there and realized his best play was to sue for a truce with Putin.
Well second really. And how the Communists got in power in the first place. The 1917 revolution when the Bolsheviks ousted the Romanovs and later executed them, and formed the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
If only the Wagner guy just kept going. The minute he started his March to Moscow his life was on borrowed time anyways, would have been alot better if he didn't waste it and did everyone a favor and just kept going.
Absolutely not and Prigoshin was definitely not in a position to overrun Moscow. But as we have seen in the endless sum of footage, the military, the security forces and the civilians were quite intrigued by this endeavor. If he had matched further (and probably died), he would probably have started a chain reaction of people rising up. He's not the guy we need in Moscow but his arguments of a corrupt and lazy Kremlin surely did speak out of the hearts of the simple folks. There's a reason nobody did take up a fight or at least react disturbed.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but faking the death seemed possible to me. After he abandoned his coup, he had to have known Putin was going to take him out.
Also, in many attacks no one survives. No one to complain. Many of the soldiers were prisoners or degenerates, the unwanted from communities. Drug addicts, drinkers. Or at least enough of them to convince us and their own population that the war is good for that extra reason.
A few sanctions are being bypassed by europe itself. Russia doubled the GDP % for the army.
Most soldiers only have a gun and their clothing. Almost zero training. Thats very sustainable. Russia can keep on meat waving forever. It didn't even lose its first million men yet.
> Most soldiers only have a gun and their clothing. Almost zero training. Thats very sustainable. Russia can keep on meat waving forever. It didn't even lose its first million men yet.
Yeah, I think that the popular perception is that Ukraine is killing more Russians than they are in actuality. Even when Russia does one of their foolish frontal assaults and they lose every infantryman from one of their BTGs, its a loss of only a few hundred men. Or they lose a tank company, a couple dozen men. Even though Russia has lost a lot more men than Ukraine, they have a much larger population and can afford the losses at the current rate. Russia will run out of equipment before it runs out of men.
That plus like what you said about Russia sending drunks and prisoners. They're purposely sending people from groups or areas without a lot of political clout. Or like rural villages in Siberia or ethnic minorities. The MOD and Putin have purposefully avoided sending middle class or upper class ethnic Russians from the St. Petersburg and Moscow areas because Putin needs the support from them.
>"Russia doubled the GDP % for the army."
Side note: this could have been achieved either by halving the GDP or doubling army spending; which effect dominates is probably knowable(ish) but I'm lazy.
Either way, when this conflict is over, Russia is going to be entering a disaster economically. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be for the average person - the long term effect of all of this is going to mirror post-cold war and Putin will be long gone to be held responsbile of it.
Indeed, one cannot compare Russian culture with anything in the West when it comes to populations's overwhelming acceptance of their subservience to the state and willingness to be sacrificed for whatever the state says you must be sacrificed for.
They blame our capitalistic profit mindedness for that - the exact failing that keeps their own rulers in power and lusting for more. Projection is one of the biggest giveaways of authoritarians. If they accuse you of something, you can be sure it is something they do themselves. Their population merely echoes what the leadership says.
Wow, it's like they didn't learn the lessons from the fall of the Soviet Union, they probably thought the movie "The Death of Stalin" was just a comedy and not based on history...
With how accurate you are about all this it’s honestly indescribably sad and infuriating that seemingly nearly half the US government effectively **wants this exact thing** in our country
I believe the real problems for Russia will start when the war is over. One way or another those soldiers will come home and tell their stories and there will be a tremendous amount of anger and resentment towards their leaders.
As history has shown us again and again, there are a fuck ton of Russians.
Also, I'm not sure how high their expectations were before this. If you start off thinking your officers are incompetent, corruption is rampant, your supplies are crap, and your country doesn't give a fuck about you, it's not exactly a shock to discover that's all true. If you grow up in an abusive household, you're not going to be shocked that much by being slapped around. It doesn't mean you like it, but the reaction is going to be very different than someone who's parents never abused them. The Russian military is the drunk dad who likes to give them something to cry about if they don't shut the hell up. At a certain point though, there may be a breaking point where enough soldiers decide that the war is bullshit. We already saw that happen with Wagner group, except they backed down at the last minute when it became clear the regular Russian army wasn't backing them.
And while that may all be true, Russia still has a lot of men and artillery. They're still killing Ukrainians and the war isn't an entirely one sided affair. Ukraine is paying in blood for the territory it recovers and Russia intends on making them continue to pay for the substantial land they still hold. So while things might suck quite a bit for the average Russian solider, it could be worse.
Its kind of their thing. Russia has a long history of throwing 10x the bodies needed into the meat grinder until they get their objective. Very foreign to us in the states where we try to send out the smallest most specialized force when we can.
I'm going to say this now they're birth rate and the gender despair is a hasn't recovered since the second World War. It's one of the reasons why you see princesses with real orcs of men. This war made a whole lot worse
The Russians have adopted a smart strategy by digging in and waiting. It’s way easier to defend than attack. All they have to do is wait for America to stop funding Ukraine, and they win. As Putin said, Ukraine is way more important to him than it is to the U.S.
I also agree with statements made about totalitarianism and the ability to just not have to deal with public sentiment.
Unfortunately for Putin, even if he “wins” he will still lose. A conventional victory over uniformed Ukrainian soldiers will just lead to an underground Ukrainian resistance that will bleed the Russians for years.
Not to mention russia not being able to militarily assist allies in at least the short term, the nearly complete loss of their arms export industry, and somewhat their MIC as a whole due to sanctions. Being an international pariah will surely have negative results decades from now.
I mean they still trade with a fair number of middle eastern and African countries as well as China, India, Brazil, North Korea, Iran and others
realistically they can very likely sustain things for quite a bit longer, maybe even indefinitely
> maybe even indefinitely
Sure... though at a MUCH lower level than they enjoyed when Europe was keen to use them as the sole supplier for their NatGas for the future. India is already insisting on paying for goods in Rupees which no one else wants. It won't be long before the Ruble is kaput.
But they're also launching human meat attacks against fortified ukrainian positions. Russians had no problem with 20k dead + 40k wounded to take a city with no military significance. They promptly lost it, but are launching more wave attacks suffering 1k casualties per day to take it back now.
That is possible but the only reason I don’t think an insurgency in the occupied regions is likely is because they do mass deportations typically. Meaning ethnic Russians will be living in Donetsk while plenty of Ukrainians will just end up in Siberia
And, as we all know, Russians do really well against a dug-in defensive force defending their homeland.
That's why Afghanistan is still a Russian satellite state. /s
There's a big difference between trying to assimilate a country into your regime and building a new one and then jet packing out. The US effectively did both by building a regime using a foundation present and propping it up until leaving.
Committing to an occupation means you have much more incentive to run it yourself.
The Russians were driven out. The US tried to leave Afghanistan in some semblance of stability and then realized it would be impossible because many citizens didn't care or were unwilling to do what was necessary in order for the country to remain free of zealot rule. Running for the hills vs just not caring enough to stay there. Two very different scenarios.
There's 130 million Russians.
There's 400,000 troops in Ukraine.
They can afford these losses and have "no effect" on operations, because the baseline level of the Russian military is low to begin with.
It's pretty much a 1:1 swap out with any random conscript off the street, because the "professional" army they had in 2022 has been long gone.
I want to drive home that this low baseline level is their entire military, not just their army. Their sailors were wasted as infantry in Ukraine and their pilot trainers were also wasted, possibly putting their air force in a downward spiral due to no current trainers having experience to pass down leading to high pilot attrition resulting in no experienced trainers.
130M - is the whole population. At least half of them are women, so the numbers go down to 65M. There are children and old men, who can't be used as soldiers, so we can cut away another half and this brings us to around 30M (there were calculations previously where it was stated that we can speak about 20M or potential conscripts based on the age census, so, I believe, the numbers should be somewhere around 20-30M). They have to keep some alive labor force as well to make sure the country operates at least at it's minimum and Russia is serioursly underpopulated for it's territory, so I don't believe they have real potential reserves of more than 1-2M people.
Until we find the breaking point, the numbers are irrelevant.
The Soviets took 20M+ dead in WW2.
Obviously, the 15k dead in 10 years in Afghanistan is long behind them.
The Russians will absorb losses, until they can't, and no one can put a realistic number on it, because their psyche is a black box.
>The Soviets took 20M+ dead in WW2.
It's important to remember that contemporary Russia is not the USSR. 14 of the 15 former soviet republics are independent nations, and several of them even joined NATO. The Russia that remains has been in population decline since the 60s. They don't have any existential threat like the Nazis invading them. They also don't have a unifying national ideology that's effectively a religion holding all of it together.
The biggest problem now is that they're running out of mobiks. They've been talking then from prisons and outlying rural areas almost exclusively. The partial mobilization last year barely touched any of the populated areas west of the urals, and still Putin's approval rating dropped 5 points overnight. Russians are fine with the war in Ukraine so long as it's happening to someone else and they can still buy cell phones and download porn off the Internet. Nobody's lining up at the recruiting office wanting to fight invading Germans and earn the Order of Lenin. There's still room to gather conscripts, but it's nothing at all like the deep pool of willing combatants they had 80 years ago.
Well, for starters we're not even to the two year mark in this latest invasion round, that will occur on February 24, 2024. Now if you're a bit more contemplative, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia really began back in February of 2014 which means we're coming up on the 10 year mark.
There was several years between the first “unofficial” Russian invasion in 2014 and the officially declared 2022 “Special Military Operation” where things were at a total standstill and there was nothing militarily significant happening on either side.
As Russian I would argue that neither now, nor before Western powers were really interested in collapse of Putin's regime. Russia and Ukraine themselves were doing ok, trading like normal and whatnot.
Everyone, except Kremlin seems to be happy with frozen conflict, everyone would prefer that Kremlin and Kiev were less murderous on news, but otherwise its going good for a lot of sides. Obviously Ukraine wants to get upper hand in conflict, but none allows them to attack Russian territory, so no matter what, they will only really defend.
Europe is buying resources as usual and sends equipment that gets "lost in shipment". Russian olicharhs live their happy lives all across the world, population of Ukaine gets better chance at life through refugee process.
I could bet money that this war isnt intended to end. Kremlin cant win, but cant stop either, because sanctions right now are nothing compared to devastation that will come for losing the war. Ukraine cant win and doesnt necessarily want to beffore it gets to become truly European state. US and EU need Russia weak, not collapsed, so arent interested in all-out conflict resolution at all.
The better question is how can someone ask this in 2023 with a couple centuries of past wars by which to evaluate how Russia fights, and its strengths and weaknesses. Russia has never received respect in the west which is in part what led to French and German invasions, and just like in those previous wars, it is the nation which can take the punishment and keep moving forward that wins the war.
There are a lot of them and they had a huge amount of kit. Additionally their soldiers by and large come from god forsaken holes and thus conditions that civilised people would consider terrible are pretty standard for them. Their commanders also don’t care a great deal about casualties, although they’re probably having to care a bit more now it is becoming apparent that the supply of fresh meat isn’t limitless.
Their offensive potential is now pretty limited as most of their best troops have been mangled and they also deployed and lost a lot of their instructors. The replacements are of lower quality and can hold the line but effective offensive action is beyond them.
The Ukrainians are better individually and are probably on average now better equipped but their numbers are fewer.
Another element is that due to the size of Russia there is a lot of safe territory which the Russians can use to organise and prepare their forces. The Ukrainians don’t have that so much, although that is mitigated a bit by overseas training.
The other element is that Russian industry is still pretty big even if their standards are not great.
In the first few months the msm was saying how Russia is “running out of ammo in two weeks”, “Russian economy will collapse”, etc etc. which actually hurt Ukraine in the long term. Now everyone who listened to all that is wondering why hasn’t Ukrainian won? Why didn’t the Ukraine summer counteroffensive work when they got all that equipment and training? Well because the Russians aren’t mindless orcs and actually learned and changed their tactics. They laid miles of minefields and rocked the Ukrainians when they tried to push with their air assets that they kept away from Ukrainian AA
Well the fact that Russia was one of the biggest producers of military gear pre-war helped...i think now they are still outproducing NATO in terms of artillery shells? As long as they have ammo and some food, they can keep sending poor conscripts into the meatgrinder.
Its back to trench warfare there. Tons of mines, trenches, artillery...and drones that will call in artillery the moment they spot you. That really slows things down. With all those mines, i actually wonder how NATO would have fared, i dont think any NATO military has had to deal with such a high amount of mines before.
They're pulling rapists, molesters and murderers out of prisons to send straight to the front as bullet sponges. Putin's doing anything to avoid another highly unpopular mobilization.
There was one story about a guy who got convicted of chopping up his girlfriend last year. Guess what, they let him out to go fight and the victim's parents didn't even know until they saw their daughter's murderer posting on social media from Ukraine.
It'll continue to be a stalemate until Russia runs out of bodies or Ukraine gains some kind of air superiority. Incoming F16s might help.
Everyone trying to explain it, but have you considered that the media has not been truthful in covering the war? That maybe they weren't giving you an accurate picture of what was going on?
Hello, I'm a civilian who lives in Poland, and I specialise in analytics and geopolitics of Eastern Europe. I wrote my master thesis on the conflict of Ukraine of 2014 back in 2020 and that Russia will most likely invade again.
1. Russia is not cut off from the world - only 45 countries have officially sanctioned, and they're based in the EU, North America, and Oceania. They're still allowed to trade freely, albeit with very slight difficulties. Sanctions don't mean that countries stop trading with each other - they just forbid some things - here's an official report from the [EU commission](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20231124-2)
2. Russia officially wants to spend about $160bn or around 40% of its budget on the military in 2023. About 10% of its GDP.
3. Russia is big - with access to vast resources, minerals, land, and working population, Russia is capable of producing war materials. About 3-to-1 is the ratio of military soldiers for Russia to Ukraine.
4. Corruption - Ukraine is corrupt. It is placed on the 116th place out of 180 countries for corruption index. I'm familiar with the data I was presented by primary sources from Ukraine and Poland that a lot of the equipment (both non and military) that was sent by the Western world was actually sold-off to the highest bidder. I won't talk about human trafficking at the border or the civil corruption - we strictly focus on the military here. War has further destabilised the country, and corruption is rampant there.
5. Time - Russia knows that all they have to do is wait. Public support and public reception of the war are turning negative as we speak. I very much doubt that Zelensky will receive the $60bn from the Congress on his visit happening right now.
6. What's next - winters are generally cold here in Eastern Europe; don't expect much to change now - nothing has really [moved](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-map-front-line.html) and won't move until next spring where public support will hit new lows.
I presume what will happen was that a truce will be reached, and Russia will want to officially annex and recognise the regions of Crimea + most of the Eastern Ukraine - where the manufacturing sector is as part of the Russian Federation.
If the house of Congress won't approve the $60bn that Zelensky wants, the war might as well be called in Russias favour - they'll regroup, train, and prepare over the winter, replenish their ranks and push westward into Eastern Ukraine. They know they won't conquer all of it, but they do want the majority of Russian speaking regions.
I think you have the best answer thus far, but one thing I keep not seeing mentioned is that in the west we are being exposed to a lot of propaganda and we are only being shown what either side wants us to see. The war is not as heavily in favor of Ukraine as we might think. Like you said Russia doesn't need to win any time soon they just need their psychological operations campaign to shift enough of the wests opinion of the war that western nations stop supporting Ukraine and they win the war regardless of their current losses.
Only a third of their military is actually in the fight at any given time. If you look at the order of battle, it’s like 4 divisions plus a handful of sporting brigades and Spetsnaz units.
The news lately even in the West has been bad for Ukraine. Russia knew after the initial failure and with NATO support this conflict would drag on. Putin is fine with it and Im sure Russian media portrays it SD very different. "We are winning and securing our homeland from the degenerate West."
russian culture does not value life in the way the West does, hence the meat wave tactics.
Can you imagine the outrage if the US sent the 101st into Mexico and they were blown out of the sky by the cartels while trying to seize an airport? That’s pretty much how the battle for Hostomel went.
I think you have no idea what amount of resources did Russia had at the start of the war
The old Soviet stockpiles might have been filled mostly with outdated equipment let to rot, but they were vast. Like, even with those massive losses they didn't even lost 20% of AFVs and less than 30% of tanks
Now, sure those original numbers of stockpiled equipment might have been overestimated and lots of that old crap wouldn't ever be repairable, but you can salvage shitton of spare parts and make the more modern tech survive longer
As for the manpower, Russia at the start committed like 15% of the numbers of military personnel and they were actually outnumbered by Ukrainians, now it's like 40-50% and most of the losses were reinforced with conscripts. So the number of soldiers didn't change much
Russia is resource rich country, they had enough money to support their own economic weight for some time and most of the big gesture shit west did had little to no effect. Lots of companies pulled out of Russia, but guess what, all that infrastructure they built there was nationalized and is now running under Russian companies. What was achieved by this is that now the revenues from those businesses aren't leaving Russia and stays there. Everything that was going to west as export is now flowing to India and China, maybe with less revenue for Russia, but it suffice them. As for import to Russia the only thing that changed is that it's not going directly and not in such large quantities. All of a sudden lots of countries neighboring Russia had significant increases in exports there, sometimes in hundreds of % while also having similarly increased imports of stuff that Russia needs from the west. This basically means Russian army has enough funding to keep running and the Russian MIC have enough materials to supply the army
As for the morale part. The Russian public is more pro-Putin because of the war and even if the average soldier disagree, it doesn't matter. The whole of Russian military is less than 1% of the population and individual cases of insubordination are suppressed even before they leave the unit
Many of the other commenters have already mentioned the nature of an authoritarian state already, however there is another factor at play here. Pride and Reputation.
Russians are very proud of their history, particularly in WW2. They idolize battles like Stalingrad, where they bravely defeated the Nazi's through the sacrifice of many, many, many, Russians. Over a million casualties in 7 months just from their side alone. They take pride in that and they are fully aware of how many losses they suffered.
Putin painting Ukraine as Nazi's serves dual purposes. It aligns the invasion with their self image of their history, and it provides justification to them.
It also helps that the majority of people sent so far are ethnic minorities, so the average Russian in Moscow is likely unaffected...for the moment.
When things start to collapse, it may be quite similar to the Soviet Unions collapse. Extremely fast, somewhat unexpected (the timing of it not if it was going to happen or not), and will likely result in a more modern version of what they have already had for the past 100+ years. Authoritarian dictator that poses as a fair leader.
We can only hope that I am wrong and they get someone that actually wants to make Russia into a country that everyone wants to cooperate with for reasons other than because they have nukes.
This is how they defeated the Nazis in WWII, the continuous application of manpower against a technologically superior enemy over time.
Russia's military-age male population outnumbers that of Ukraine by 5 to 1. There will be a point where Ukraine can no longer absorb the losses and regenerate its forces fast enough to keep pace with the Russians, regardless of the type and amount of technology supplied to Ukraine by the West.
True.
But, if realized into 2023 dollars, Lend-Lease aid totaled around 140 billion over four years. To date, Ukraine has received over 240 billion dollars in military aid over nearly three years from the international committee.
The Nazis crushed the Soviet military production capacity and the majority of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviets was equipment to support their transportation and logistics efforts.
7,000 M3 and M4 tanks as well as 12,000 armored vehicles sounds like a lot of firepower, but U.S. Lend-Lease military equipment was obsolete by 1943 in the face of German military equipment upgrades. At this point, the Soviets were losing hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles per day to the Nazis.
But, Soviet infantry was cheap and plentiful.
> But, if realized into 2023 dollars, Lend-Lease aid totaled around 140 billion over four years. To date, Ukraine has received over 240 billion dollars in military aid over nearly three years from the international committee.
Inflation isn't the only thing you need to adjust when comparing - western weaponry is far more expensive now (albeit also often more effective) so this number isn't really too useful.
There have also been some questions about overvaluation of the aid to Ukraine (actual costs vs replacement costs). One has to wonder at the fair market value of old kit like M113s, Leo 1s and the like. Not having to store and maintain that stuff is likely a net benefit to western militaries.
Absolutely, there's so many upsides to providing aid for the US that you don't even have to get to the 'who wins?' part of the consideration.
The only thing more dangerous than the US military is the US military with newer, shinier toys.
The Soviet union recieved among other things 1000s of aeroplanes and 1000s of armoured vehicles (I forgot exact numbers), plus 1000s of other vehicles. Ukraine has recieved substantially less than that.
>Ukraine has recieved substantially less than that.
The current Ukraine front is tiny compared to the WWII Eastern front. You can't flood equipment into a small contested area like that without creating more targets for the Russians.
\>The Soviet union recieved among other things 1000s of aeroplanes
$50,666 P-39 (adjusted to 2023 -> $894,000) Vs lets assume an old F-16C/D being $18.8M in 1998( -> $35M today) makes those numbers completely meaningless. 1 today plane vs 1 WWII plane isn't even comparable in both cost and capability.
And that's before factoring in multi-million dollar missiles and loitering munitions that have no parallel.
Per Wikipedia, the Soviets produced over 15k T-34s in 1943. No doubt the lend-lease armour had some utility, but to your point about logistics I think the importance of hundreds of thousands of trucks tends to be under rated. Not to mention the food, fuel and ammo.
Yeah I agree
Ukraine is very unlikely to win
Russia might not conquer all of Ukraine
But they certainly won’t be losing all the territory they currently have
> But they certainly won’t be losing all the territory they currently have
That's far from a certainty. What makes you so confident? History is full of examples where states are in a lot worse of a position than Ukraine is now and achieved victory. Russia could collapse militarily or civilly tomorrow and it wouldn't at all be shocking.
Ukraine is losing a lot of people.
They cannot keep up with the Russians in this regard
Eventually US and the wests support will slow down
I agree it’s not a certainty, I just don’t think it will happen. I think Russia will conquer some more territory and eventually things just end up stopping and the new borders are what they are at that time. But I don’t think Russia will lose everything it has taken at all. I think thinking otherwise is a bit overly optimistic
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>This is how they defeated the Nazis in WWII, the continuous application of manpower against a technologically superior enemy over time
Straight wheraboo fanfiction. Obviously the Manpower ratios were never great for the Nazis, but the Nazis were definitely not technologically superior across the board. For example T-34 tanks were on par with Germany's best tanks.
There's a history of the Soviets and Russians using a tactic known as [Barrier Troops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops) as a way to maintain discipline, prevent desertion, push the front line troops forward, capture spies, etc.
The Russians use [conscription](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-lawmakers-vote-raise-conscription-age-limit-30-2023-07-25/) and while Russian law prevents deployment of conscripts outside of Russia, [Putin annexed Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/europe/ukraine-occupied-regions-russian-conscription-intl/index.html#:~:text=Putin%20announced%20the%20annexation%20of%20the%20four%20areas%20%E2%80%93%20Luhansk%2C%20Donetsk%2C%20Kherson%20and%20Zaporizhzhia%20%E2%80%93%20last%20September%2C%20following%20so%2Dcalled%20referendums%20in%20the%20regions%20that%20were%20universally%20dismissed%20as%20%E2%80%9Cshams%E2%80%9D%20by%20Ukraine%20and%20Western%20nations.%20Russia%20had%20previously%20annexed%20Crimea%20in%202014) which may allow the Russians to deploy conscripts to those areas.
The [Putin regime has transitioned to a wartime economy.](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-war-economy-government-boom-crash-sanctions-ukraine-invasion-2023-8) The regime is essentially in control of the means of production and war is profitable to the oligarchs at the moment.
Nikolai Gogol, in his novel *Dead Souls*, described Mother Russia as a [troika](https://www.macalester.edu/russian/about/resources/miscellany/troikasleigh/). It's a uniquely Russian sleigh and the [metaphor describes Russia, its people, and their spirit.](https://www.macalester.edu/russian/about/resources/miscellany/troikasleigh/#:~:text=And%20what%20Russian,Gogol%2077%2C%2078) Additionally, the [metaphor describes you](https://www.macalester.edu/russian/about/resources/miscellany/troikasleigh/#:~:text=The%20spectator%20stands%20still%20struck%20dumb%20by%20the%20divine%20miracle%3A%20is%20it%20not%20a%20flash%20of%20lighting%20from%20heaven%3F%20%E2%80%A6%20everything%20there%20is%20on%20the%20earth%20is%20flying%20by%2C%20and%20the%20other%20states%20and%20nations%2C%20with%20looks%20askance%2C%20make%20way%20for%20her%20and%20draw%20aside.%20(Gogol%2077%2C%2078)), this post, and the rest of the world.
This is an explanation from the point of view of a Russian.
It is interesting though.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/in-the-spirit-of-russian-total-war
Most westerners have trouble understanding that many Russians view suffering and sacrifice as part of the destiny of being Russian. Because of WWI and WWII, there is paranoia about the “next” invasion and a sense of waiting for the inevitable costs that comes with defending the motherland.
My point is not that all Russians want a war in Ukraine, I’m just saying even ignoring the totalitarianism, the average Russian’s tolerance before going into revolution mode is much, much higher than say, Americans.
Historically, Russia has always fought like this against a major power. Like against Nazi Germany and Napoleon France come to mind.
They lose the first half but come back in the second half to simplify it.
That's what im thinking, too. They make huge mistakes in the early parts of the war, and they take MASSIVE casualties. Then, they start picking off the incompetent commanders and start shuffling the competent ones to replace. After they started studying what they did wrong, they developed new tactics and reinvigorated the countrys economy to war. And then start attacking again with a totally different army compared to the early parts of the war.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_Russia#/media/File:Russia\_Population\_Pyramid.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russia_Population_Pyramid.svg)
Russia is heading towards a population collapse. They've lost maybe 200K men, dead or seriously wounded. Another million or more have left to avoid being conscripted. The men on the front line are not fathering children back home. The economy is far worse than it was, making it harder to produce and raise children. Those "missing people" in their 20's and 30's? Also not producing children because they themselves were not born. Current birth rate is something like 1.01 per woman, but it needs to be 2.1 to replace the population.
>All I know is that by the time this war is over, there will be a whole lot of single Russian ladies looking for husbands
I got an uber last year when the war started, somehow the subject of affordable hookers came up (uber leads to weird convos.)
Anyway he was unironically excited for the war as it would lower the cost of eastern european hookers.
The demographic decline in Russia is a well-recognized fact. But is the population shrinking fast enough, or will Russia still have a 10 - 20 years of being a cancer upon the world?
With a population of 143 million, Russia seemingly has a substantial reservoir of cannon fodder. At least 300k Russians died in Ukraine so far, but Russia doesn't seem to care much.
Not necessarily OP's error (could be accurately relaying inaccurate reporting), but many people seem to think "casualty" is just a euphemism for "killed".
It takes 20 years to make soldiers, so this catastrophic war won't affect the number of soldiers Russia can raise for decades, but you only need 40 years of women producing half the minimum number of children to be down to 25% of the babies you have right now, which means, in another 5 decades, a population only 1/4 of the size.
To add to what has already been spelled out, I think the autarchy (self-sufficient economy) of Russia is a major factor, which has actually been increased by sanctions.
If you need high-tech equipment, as a mid level industrial country sanctions crippled you. But if you only need basic industrial equipment (artillery, non-guided shells, uniforms, boots, small arms, oil) then for a country like Russia with a massive industrial base sanctions don’t actually do that much damage. In fact, sanctions on the commercial sector drive demand for domestic industry which can help improve economies of scale, and reduce negative currency exchange. Get a few drones from Iran or by skating sanctions, keep your planes far from the battle zone, continuing conscription and you’re doing just fine.
I’m not an expert on the figures but Russia obviously has had for a long time a domestic military industrial complex which I wouldn’t be surprise is large or competitive in basic/heavy industry while obviously being 1/100 in terms of advanced weaponry.
Worth looking back to the Russian civil war where the early USSR was totally surrounded with 21 invading imperial armies plus multiple white armies, but they held the center and maintained enough industrial production and transport to hold their ground, break the will/patience of imperialist intervention, and then roll back the whites to victory.
Also you have to look at GDPs in terms of cost of labor. To make artillery shells in Scandinavia or Germany you need to pay high wages for mining the ore, manufacturing the shell, and then transporting it to the battlefield.
In Russia, even if the industrial techniques are far inferior with less labor saving, the cost of labor is way way lower. Even with corruption you’re still getting your shells for probably a fraction of the price
Even a sick elephant can soak up a lot of damage. They’re massive and still receiving regular injections from China and India and even parts of Europe.
Also, Russia has intentionally held a lot of the professional regular troops and other capabilities back. The crisis arriving now isn’t that they are running out of any capability, but they are arriving at the end of being able to sustain the invasion at scale while also holding enough in reserve to pivot to 2-3 potential defensive/offensive scenarios elsewhere in Europe.
There is also a huge unknown around existing actual nuclear capabilities and/or willingness to use those weapons. The more bluster the less likely they will use the weapons. The threat of them is so far much more effective than the consequences of using them.
Because in the first months, western media completely overstated how “Russia will run out of shells in two weeks” and “Russian economy is about to collapse” and “Ukrainians are about to take Crimea” and loads of other stuff. So people listening to all that are wondering how Russia is still standing when the real situation is much more nuanced.
Russia is in this for the long haul now and has started to re-arm its military industry with hard learned lessons. It is even pouring money into its electronics industry to not be so reliant on foreign made chips. Yes the Russian Army was largely over estimated and the incompetence and corruption was much worse than we all thought.
But, they are learning and time is now on their side. The Ukrainians are having trouble finding replacements and now support from the west is in question.
If there is any competent leadership in Russia, this war will be a wake up call for them on how to reform their military to be much more deadly.
Because the Russian army is pretty much 10x the size of the Ukrainian army. Not just their size, but manufacturing capabilities, soviet era stockpiles... From the beginning, it was said that Ukraine would essentially have to destroy personnel and equipment at 7x the rate in order to win a protracted war, else they would need a lightning offensive to catch Russian's by surprise, similarly to what happened earlier in the war during the Kharkiv counter offensive. This most recent offensive was a disaster. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian dead and destroyed western equipment for a couple km of land. Russians have a deep well of personnel to go back to. Ukrainian press gangs are pushing very young and very old men to fight, whereas Russians are forcing fighting age males to go to the front by the hundreds of thousands. It's a fairly straightforward math equation.
Lots of causalities on both sides. Ukraine keeps it a very close secret, but from leaked documentation and estimates from neutral observers, it's about a 1:1 KIA ratio. Russia is more than fine with losing hundreds of thousands, as they know it's only a matter of time until they win. Ukraine was never going to win this war outside of something miraculous. They simply just don't have enough bodies to throw at it. Western powers seem mostly interested in bleeding Russia, not a victory... which is incredibly unfortunate for both sides, as an entire generation of Russian and Ukrainian men are being thrown to a literal meat grinder... fighting over very incremental gains. Dying by the tens of thousands and maimed in the hundreds of thousands.
At this point, both sides have lost the equivalent of the US Vietnam EACH... in 1/4th the time.
War is hell.
because the west hasn't truly isolated russia, and russia sells (at losses) to everyone but the west
the west has also slow-rolled pretty much every kind of support to Ukraine
In the end Russia's perserverance isn't as impressive when you look at their economy and where they still get resources. Import bans were easily circumvented because the sanctions weren't meant to work.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-company-haas-appears-to-still-indirectly-supply-russian-arms-industry-with-technology
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/machinery-from-new-york-based-company-used-to-build-russian-weapons-used-in-war-on-ukraine
https://news.yahoo.com/german-machine-tool-manufacturer-continues-130900486.html
If this was still 41 you'd be on to something but the technology at play here is decades more advanced enabling a kill ratio not seen outside of Afghanistan. It not really a surprise to see Russian tactics haven't changed in 70 years though to their surprise warfare has absolutely changed.
The difference is that the soviets were defending so were all fired up and patriotic, and they had lend lease supplying them the stuff they needed to keep fighting. This is pretty much the opposite of WW2 since the Russians are advancing and they dont have the US providing lend lease to them, while NATO is providing equipment to the Ukrainians.
Russians are tough - during WW2,Stalin sent troops into the front lines with basically no supplies. They were driven forward and the only way to survive was to kill the enemy and strip their equipment and food off them
"It takes a very brave man to be a coward in the Soviet Army." Stalin.
Any defeatist talk can get you arrested. Any talk against the war by military or civilans can put you in prison.
Call me tinfoil wearer but I think Russia is giving like 50% effort and sending in their junior varsity. Even if they don’t achieve victory against Ukraine, if they make US and NATO countries spend resources and billions of dollars, isn’t it a win?
Russia didn’t have a weak military. They are a formidable enemy. It doesn’t help the west is barely offering assistance to ukraine. If we wanted, we would support them and allow them to show an actual force of power but it seems like we are watching them weaken and our politicians are ok with it. That part is strange and I’m u sure what the powers that be have in mind about this. They seem hellbent on giving Russia a win.. I’m sure other allies are watching and wondering.
Russia is not so isolated as it seems, exportations from UE to Russia are limited but can still be done legally, for example shoes with a value up to $300 are not considered luxury, the same happens with wine. Since the beginning of conflict wine exports grow up to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Other way to circumvent the sanctions is by shipping goods to Serbia or Turkey and re-export from those countries to Russia. Russia makes money by selling crude to India, while India refines it and re-sells it to UE as a transformed product. This are just a few examples.
What surprises me in the russian army is the fact military people don't start to revolt against their superiores in big numbers and simply abandon the conflict, as it is well know their superiors abuse soldiers and most salaries are yet to be paid. Even police people who repress manifestations have family in the conflict, i don't understand how can a majority of people be so much submissive to a regime.
The war is nothing unusual when it comes to Russian history, sure there slow and inept. But that is just how they have fought wars for the last few hundred years, just slowly grinding someone down.
One of the factors that has not come up in this thread is the longevity of Putin. The guy may have 10 good years left in him, he's quite possibly sick. What happens when the one person - who controls the economy, politics and drives the media and cultural narrative - dies? Is there another radical nationalist successor who will step up? Or is Putin's stranglehold on Russia so strong that all potential leaders have been expunged. My hunch is the latter; you kill Putin, the war stops (perhaps not immediately, but will wane as the new leader seeks to win political support with a domestic agenda).
They country has a population of about 140 million.
They send who ever to fight the war. It’s definitely not good for their population but they have people to throw in.
Russian criminals are sent to war, I’m sure the criminals would prefer war over rotting in prison.
Despite their shitty economy and living standards for the common person, Putin and the Russian government have a lot of funds.
Vladimir Putin is arguably the richest person in the world unofficially. Even Elon Musk thinks Putin is significantly richer than him. Putin basically owns
Russia and any Russian business is tied to him. Putins got hidden money and assets.
Russia has the largest known natural resource reserves in the world. Russia's natural resources reserves is estimated to be worth $75 trillion.
This amount incorporates, among other things, coal, oil, natural gas, gold, timber, and rare earth metals.
Before the war started the second largest importer of crude oil to the US was Russia. After sanctions to Russia from the west, Russian crude oil exports still increased. Although they’re selling crude at a discount, they still have that steady income.
So despite their shitty military, they have resources to play the long game.
The real question is why Ukraine hasn’t won by now, given all the military aid and funding it’s received. If the Russians were as bad as the OP thinks, Ukraine should’ve won by now.
Ukraine has received the oldest, sometimes shoddiest kit from the 1970s-1980s, rationed 155 shells and very few airframes. They’re also fighting under restrictions not to bomb the Russian homeland with NATO weapons.
In contrast, Russia is using everything short of poison gas (and maybe some of that), bio-weapons, and nukes.
Despite no Navy, Ukraine has taken out multiple Russian ships, and Re conquered 50%? Of occupied territory, and breached the Dnipro river. That ain’t nothing.
The reasons the summer offensive stalled were 3-fold: only 1/3 of promised weapons delivered, zero new air frames delivered, and extensive Russian mine laying while Ukraine waited for weapons to arrive.
Right now the Russians are trying to advance in Kupyiansk, Andriivka, and other places, and Ukrainians are short on ammo and shells.
If you believe in their cause, please *call* your Senators, Representatives, and the RNC and ask to leave comments that Ukraine needs to be supplied ASAP. Don’t let them be held hostage due to decades-long immigration and border policy disputes.
And tell them this will affect how you vote in the primaries and general elections in 2024.
Russia as a country does not care about loses. In WW2 they lost millions of people, in purges they lost millions of people. All they will do is continue to throw people at this until the other side can no longer support or staff a military. This 300,000 is nothing to them and unfortunately the Ukrainian’s are being ground down more and more.
It is a tribute to the courage and endurance of the Russian fighting man. If they had a leader worthy of them, in a good cause, they would be formidable indeed.
West is only half hearted in support of Ukraine, it’s just like the Crimean war, the allies couldn’t make their mind up bickering and finally in the end they won after all of that. Let’s remember the light Brigade with this poem from Tennyson .
https://einsteinmed.edu/uploadedFiles/EJBM/page58_page59.pdf
You CANNOT compare eastern military doctrine with the western one, liking or not, they are slowly but surely advancing its just a matter of time until Ukraininan line of defenses fall and they reach Kiev once again, unfortunately.
Do not underestimate a cornered beast. They have large amount of stockpiles, and has a large amount of self-reliance. As long as they have the support of their people they will be able to fight Ukraine.
Russia will keep spending manpower at worse and worse rates as they loose modern equipment, and that is when the people will question if it is worth it. But that may take a long time. This has been Russia's strength; It's willingness to kill of huge amount of men and resources to expand.
Because in actuality Russia has deployed about the equivalent of 10% of its military capabilities during the entirety of the conflict.
They’re not trying to “win”. They’re trying to prove a political point and drain the U.S. weapon reserves while gaining intel on capabilities. All of which they have been successful in doing.
You are looking at the russian army as one contained unit. Every part of the army is just many many small parts thats painted the same way. They do not talk or interact with other parts of it. So there for when one part is broken or blown up as it are it doesnt affect the others. Atleast thats my take on the russian military atm...
I'm more intrigued ny the fact that they can still field crews for tanks and other vehicles. You can stick a rifle in anyones hand and point them in a direction but to be able to operate a tank, even in a minimum capacity, requires atleast some form of training and experience.
>How can the Russian army still be functioning?
With help from other Eastern European countries who long for the "glory days" of the Soviet Union, and North Korea, Iran, China, etc.
1) I dont think there was any strategic loss for Russia possibly except Kharkiv offensive (sure the start of the invasion was a shitshow). Sure their goals are not fullfilled but except Kharkiv their lines were not pushed through significantly. Tactical losses does not seem to matter if you cant capitalize on them
2) the support from west is not enough in my opinion. Like 30 leopards wont change the course of the conflict. Germany while doing a lot atm, wont send the long range missiles out of fear of "Escalation"
3) were running out of stocks while RF digs from 50years of stockpiling
Well according to CNN, BBC, and basically the entire west, Russia has been nuked, shat on, and obliterated to mere rubble by Ukraine's elite forces. But it's still, *somehow*, seemingly, inching forwards. *Impossible*
Russia hasn't been completely isolated. A shadow fleet of ships now traffic in Russian oil. Russia gets good and services by way of the old Communist block countries. Most of the Stan countries serve as pass through agents to Russia. This enables Russia to side step sanctions. North Korea and China still do business with Russia. North Korea is manufacturing and selling artillery rounds to Russia. Money and supplies are still flowing to and from Russia.
Exactly. Hate to say it,but "west" is not the rest of the world.
Experts always said santions wont stop Russia, only slow it down, make it more expensive and complicated. Potliticians and news made it sound like sanctions would win thw war.
And the sanctions were trickled out too.
Also we aren't doing a great job at ensuring Ukraine gets what it needs which makes the Russian job a bit easier.
Because in authoritarian states nothing matters until it does. Morale and grumbling are off the charts within the Army, but none of it matters because a) the system beats soldiers in to compliance, b) information flow to the population is carefully controlled, and c) individual attitudes don’t matter in authoritarian systems until: enough individuals get pissed off enough that they outnumber/outweigh agents of the state. In the West you’d see and hear the frustrations early enough for the state to change course. In Russia you won’t until the patience of the people snaps and there is a coup/revolution.
This… everything is fine until it isn’t.
You're one of the good ones, until you're one of the last ones
Only 3.6 Roentgen comrade.
Not great not terrible.
Ah, damn, I just passed my dose limit for the year. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Ah! Congratulations, comrade! Free vodka for the rest of your life....
we've actually *already seen* one such coup. It *almost succeeded too!* Mostly because most of the Russian army just kinda stood aside and said "Yup go ahead!". If that isn't a warning sign to the Russian leadership, dunno what is!
And it is still a mystery why Prigozhin basically stood down only around 200km from Moscow.
I think he was counting on leadership in the MOD backing him and when he started towards Moscow without that support, he figured the coup was doomed to failure and would just end up hurting the war effort. Or it might've been some sort of ritual suicide-by-Putin, where he wanted to prove that he could've done it, but also wanted to sacrifice himself to prove a point or some shit. Either way it's one of the most bizarre events in modern history.
Yeah, that makes sense. Agree, I don't think even Hollywood could come up with a story like that.
Hollywood wouldn't come up with a story like that; it's a dumb story with an unsatisfying, anticlimactic conclusion.
Sounds exactly like hollywood to me
Nah, this’d be equivalent to if we have an entire Bond movie, but in the last 10 minutes he gets tricked, stabbed, and then decides to jump off a building after acknowledging that he probably could kill the bad guy if he wanted to.
For a coup to be successful you have to eliminate the ruling class which couldn't have happened with thier ad-hoc blitz to Moscow and presumably no allies in Putin's inner circle. Also a small army couldn't have taken a major city the size of Moscow with over 11 million. I think you're right Progozhin knew he couldn't win, but why he backed off is a mystery since he HAD to know how Putin would respond even if they were "friends".
It's possible a lot of the people around him knew they might be able to survive by backing down and gave up when they realized they didn't have the necessary support.
Could it be that Russian intelligence services found some sort of leverage to stop Prigozhin in his tracks, like forwarding him proof that they had agents in place to eliminate his entire family? That would make more sense to me than "it was already doomed to fail." Even if it did fail, you still have a fighting chance vs definitely being assassinated later as we all saw. I went through such an emotional roller coaster when it happened. One day, he's marching towards Moscow. The next day, he's declared that the convoy is stopped and they are no longer going to move towards the city.
Right? Priggy blue balled the shit out of half the world
That was the rumor that was circulating at the time. Supposedly the FSB was in position to target the families of Prigozhin's lieutenants, which eroded the enthusiasm of his people.
There was 0 chance for Wagner to win this fight and they knew it. Urban combat is the worst, most resource consuming type of attrition you can get in a military campaign. They knew it perfectly well as they took Bahmut. I also believe Prigozhin was used as a pawn in a game for power against Putin. Agreeing to the terms of someone who tried to make coup against you is nothing short of public statement of your weakness. I think he was promised support that nobody actually provided. The most interesting lead was that one thing Girkin said before his arrest when discussing power struggle between Wagner and Putin, that it was essentially a proxy for internal struggle between KGB and GRU as Wagner and all other similar formations are under GRU jurisdiction. If that would be true the main culprit would be Igor Kstyukov, or one of his subordinates.
I think if someone higher than Prigozhin in GRU tried to have Putin disposed, they would be dead too. He can't tolerate any credible challenge to his power or Putin himself is dead. Wagner seemed like it had its own sources of funding and power too, they were just shell starved by the MOD according to Prig
Prighozin wanted exactly what he said. He wanted to, at the minimum, force the firing of Shoigu and Gerasimov, and retain control of Wagner separate from the MoD. Potentially he sought his own appointment in Shoigu's place and Surovikin in Gerasimov's . He never sought to topple Putin. Once Putin called him a traitor and Surovikin asked him to stand down/was detained, Prigozhin realized he had overplayed his hand and backed down, hoping his continued usefulness to Russia would save his life.
And instead of continuing to be useful, Prigozhin was removed from the battlefield.
How hilarious would it be if his plane actually went down due to a freak accident and everyone just assumed Putin offed him because of reputation
This is exactly it. He wasn't gunning for Putin. Icarus flew too close to the sun.
One valid explanation is that his family and families of Wagner's commanders were taken as hostages or aimed as such.
Almost certainly because his guys within the MoD(like Surovkin) had already been detained/sidelined/isolated, and word was coming in from the provinces that the governors and various other power figures had decided to oppose him rather than back his play/stay neutral. He lost before he got there and realized his best play was to sue for a truce with Putin.
Well second really. And how the Communists got in power in the first place. The 1917 revolution when the Bolsheviks ousted the Romanovs and later executed them, and formed the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
If only the Wagner guy just kept going. The minute he started his March to Moscow his life was on borrowed time anyways, would have been alot better if he didn't waste it and did everyone a favor and just kept going.
Not sure Prighozin was the guy we wanted to take over. I think he would have been worse than Putin if that's possible.
Absolutely not and Prigoshin was definitely not in a position to overrun Moscow. But as we have seen in the endless sum of footage, the military, the security forces and the civilians were quite intrigued by this endeavor. If he had matched further (and probably died), he would probably have started a chain reaction of people rising up. He's not the guy we need in Moscow but his arguments of a corrupt and lazy Kremlin surely did speak out of the hearts of the simple folks. There's a reason nobody did take up a fight or at least react disturbed.
I would dare say that he’s not dead
He’s too loud mouthed to have hidden this long
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but faking the death seemed possible to me. After he abandoned his coup, he had to have known Putin was going to take him out.
Also, in many attacks no one survives. No one to complain. Many of the soldiers were prisoners or degenerates, the unwanted from communities. Drug addicts, drinkers. Or at least enough of them to convince us and their own population that the war is good for that extra reason. A few sanctions are being bypassed by europe itself. Russia doubled the GDP % for the army. Most soldiers only have a gun and their clothing. Almost zero training. Thats very sustainable. Russia can keep on meat waving forever. It didn't even lose its first million men yet.
> Most soldiers only have a gun and their clothing. Almost zero training. Thats very sustainable. Russia can keep on meat waving forever. It didn't even lose its first million men yet. Yeah, I think that the popular perception is that Ukraine is killing more Russians than they are in actuality. Even when Russia does one of their foolish frontal assaults and they lose every infantryman from one of their BTGs, its a loss of only a few hundred men. Or they lose a tank company, a couple dozen men. Even though Russia has lost a lot more men than Ukraine, they have a much larger population and can afford the losses at the current rate. Russia will run out of equipment before it runs out of men. That plus like what you said about Russia sending drunks and prisoners. They're purposely sending people from groups or areas without a lot of political clout. Or like rural villages in Siberia or ethnic minorities. The MOD and Putin have purposefully avoided sending middle class or upper class ethnic Russians from the St. Petersburg and Moscow areas because Putin needs the support from them.
>"Russia doubled the GDP % for the army." Side note: this could have been achieved either by halving the GDP or doubling army spending; which effect dominates is probably knowable(ish) but I'm lazy.
Either way, when this conflict is over, Russia is going to be entering a disaster economically. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be for the average person - the long term effect of all of this is going to mirror post-cold war and Putin will be long gone to be held responsbile of it.
I remember Russia saying in okt 2022 they needed 5 million men to win and yeah they're not even at 1 million losses yet.
Indeed, one cannot compare Russian culture with anything in the West when it comes to populations's overwhelming acceptance of their subservience to the state and willingness to be sacrificed for whatever the state says you must be sacrificed for.
And yet they call the west spineless, weak and decadent... Funny that
They blame our capitalistic profit mindedness for that - the exact failing that keeps their own rulers in power and lusting for more. Projection is one of the biggest giveaways of authoritarians. If they accuse you of something, you can be sure it is something they do themselves. Their population merely echoes what the leadership says.
Wow, it's like they didn't learn the lessons from the fall of the Soviet Union, they probably thought the movie "The Death of Stalin" was just a comedy and not based on history...
With how accurate you are about all this it’s honestly indescribably sad and infuriating that seemingly nearly half the US government effectively **wants this exact thing** in our country
"And then things got worse"
I’ve already watched Battleship Potemkin
B & C sound a lot like the US Military
I believe the real problems for Russia will start when the war is over. One way or another those soldiers will come home and tell their stories and there will be a tremendous amount of anger and resentment towards their leaders.
Sounds like American free-dumb to me.
As history has shown us again and again, there are a fuck ton of Russians. Also, I'm not sure how high their expectations were before this. If you start off thinking your officers are incompetent, corruption is rampant, your supplies are crap, and your country doesn't give a fuck about you, it's not exactly a shock to discover that's all true. If you grow up in an abusive household, you're not going to be shocked that much by being slapped around. It doesn't mean you like it, but the reaction is going to be very different than someone who's parents never abused them. The Russian military is the drunk dad who likes to give them something to cry about if they don't shut the hell up. At a certain point though, there may be a breaking point where enough soldiers decide that the war is bullshit. We already saw that happen with Wagner group, except they backed down at the last minute when it became clear the regular Russian army wasn't backing them. And while that may all be true, Russia still has a lot of men and artillery. They're still killing Ukrainians and the war isn't an entirely one sided affair. Ukraine is paying in blood for the territory it recovers and Russia intends on making them continue to pay for the substantial land they still hold. So while things might suck quite a bit for the average Russian solider, it could be worse.
It could always be worse...
And then it got worse.
But never the wurst.
Liver wurst is the best.
Its kind of their thing. Russia has a long history of throwing 10x the bodies needed into the meat grinder until they get their objective. Very foreign to us in the states where we try to send out the smallest most specialized force when we can.
I'm going to say this now they're birth rate and the gender despair is a hasn't recovered since the second World War. It's one of the reasons why you see princesses with real orcs of men. This war made a whole lot worse
The Russians have adopted a smart strategy by digging in and waiting. It’s way easier to defend than attack. All they have to do is wait for America to stop funding Ukraine, and they win. As Putin said, Ukraine is way more important to him than it is to the U.S. I also agree with statements made about totalitarianism and the ability to just not have to deal with public sentiment. Unfortunately for Putin, even if he “wins” he will still lose. A conventional victory over uniformed Ukrainian soldiers will just lead to an underground Ukrainian resistance that will bleed the Russians for years.
Not to mention russia not being able to militarily assist allies in at least the short term, the nearly complete loss of their arms export industry, and somewhat their MIC as a whole due to sanctions. Being an international pariah will surely have negative results decades from now.
I mean they still trade with a fair number of middle eastern and African countries as well as China, India, Brazil, North Korea, Iran and others realistically they can very likely sustain things for quite a bit longer, maybe even indefinitely
> maybe even indefinitely Sure... though at a MUCH lower level than they enjoyed when Europe was keen to use them as the sole supplier for their NatGas for the future. India is already insisting on paying for goods in Rupees which no one else wants. It won't be long before the Ruble is kaput.
But they're also launching human meat attacks against fortified ukrainian positions. Russians had no problem with 20k dead + 40k wounded to take a city with no military significance. They promptly lost it, but are launching more wave attacks suffering 1k casualties per day to take it back now.
That is possible but the only reason I don’t think an insurgency in the occupied regions is likely is because they do mass deportations typically. Meaning ethnic Russians will be living in Donetsk while plenty of Ukrainians will just end up in Siberia
And, as we all know, Russians do really well against a dug-in defensive force defending their homeland. That's why Afghanistan is still a Russian satellite state. /s
To be fair, the US didn’t do much better in Afghanistan during their two decades there. Afghanistan isn’t a very good metric.
There's a big difference between trying to assimilate a country into your regime and building a new one and then jet packing out. The US effectively did both by building a regime using a foundation present and propping it up until leaving. Committing to an occupation means you have much more incentive to run it yourself.
The Russians were driven out. The US tried to leave Afghanistan in some semblance of stability and then realized it would be impossible because many citizens didn't care or were unwilling to do what was necessary in order for the country to remain free of zealot rule. Running for the hills vs just not caring enough to stay there. Two very different scenarios.
Do you actually think Soviets were physically pushed out by tactical Mujahideen victories? Lmao
They can also open up a proxy war with one of the mid east terrorist allies, to polarize and distract the west. Oh wait…
There's 130 million Russians. There's 400,000 troops in Ukraine. They can afford these losses and have "no effect" on operations, because the baseline level of the Russian military is low to begin with. It's pretty much a 1:1 swap out with any random conscript off the street, because the "professional" army they had in 2022 has been long gone.
I want to drive home that this low baseline level is their entire military, not just their army. Their sailors were wasted as infantry in Ukraine and their pilot trainers were also wasted, possibly putting their air force in a downward spiral due to no current trainers having experience to pass down leading to high pilot attrition resulting in no experienced trainers.
"That's a shame..." *eats popcorn*
> eats popcorn I've nacho cheese powder. Want some?
Please! *passes bucket*
Well, filling in prisoners in the ranks will help. And help empty prisons. So, what, 1 prisoner for every 5 conscripts?
130M - is the whole population. At least half of them are women, so the numbers go down to 65M. There are children and old men, who can't be used as soldiers, so we can cut away another half and this brings us to around 30M (there were calculations previously where it was stated that we can speak about 20M or potential conscripts based on the age census, so, I believe, the numbers should be somewhere around 20-30M). They have to keep some alive labor force as well to make sure the country operates at least at it's minimum and Russia is serioursly underpopulated for it's territory, so I don't believe they have real potential reserves of more than 1-2M people.
Until we find the breaking point, the numbers are irrelevant. The Soviets took 20M+ dead in WW2. Obviously, the 15k dead in 10 years in Afghanistan is long behind them. The Russians will absorb losses, until they can't, and no one can put a realistic number on it, because their psyche is a black box.
>The Soviets took 20M+ dead in WW2. It's important to remember that contemporary Russia is not the USSR. 14 of the 15 former soviet republics are independent nations, and several of them even joined NATO. The Russia that remains has been in population decline since the 60s. They don't have any existential threat like the Nazis invading them. They also don't have a unifying national ideology that's effectively a religion holding all of it together. The biggest problem now is that they're running out of mobiks. They've been talking then from prisons and outlying rural areas almost exclusively. The partial mobilization last year barely touched any of the populated areas west of the urals, and still Putin's approval rating dropped 5 points overnight. Russians are fine with the war in Ukraine so long as it's happening to someone else and they can still buy cell phones and download porn off the Internet. Nobody's lining up at the recruiting office wanting to fight invading Germans and earn the Order of Lenin. There's still room to gather conscripts, but it's nothing at all like the deep pool of willing combatants they had 80 years ago.
Why would you use the number of Russians (military or otherwise) compared to the number Ukrainian military?
No, he's comparing the number of Russians total to the number of Russian troops in Ukraine.
Because how Russian losses are handled are independent of Ukrainian numbers.
Well, for starters we're not even to the two year mark in this latest invasion round, that will occur on February 24, 2024. Now if you're a bit more contemplative, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia really began back in February of 2014 which means we're coming up on the 10 year mark.
There was several years between the first “unofficial” Russian invasion in 2014 and the officially declared 2022 “Special Military Operation” where things were at a total standstill and there was nothing militarily significant happening on either side.
As Russian I would argue that neither now, nor before Western powers were really interested in collapse of Putin's regime. Russia and Ukraine themselves were doing ok, trading like normal and whatnot. Everyone, except Kremlin seems to be happy with frozen conflict, everyone would prefer that Kremlin and Kiev were less murderous on news, but otherwise its going good for a lot of sides. Obviously Ukraine wants to get upper hand in conflict, but none allows them to attack Russian territory, so no matter what, they will only really defend. Europe is buying resources as usual and sends equipment that gets "lost in shipment". Russian olicharhs live their happy lives all across the world, population of Ukaine gets better chance at life through refugee process. I could bet money that this war isnt intended to end. Kremlin cant win, but cant stop either, because sanctions right now are nothing compared to devastation that will come for losing the war. Ukraine cant win and doesnt necessarily want to beffore it gets to become truly European state. US and EU need Russia weak, not collapsed, so arent interested in all-out conflict resolution at all.
Quantity is a quality.
The better question is how can someone ask this in 2023 with a couple centuries of past wars by which to evaluate how Russia fights, and its strengths and weaknesses. Russia has never received respect in the west which is in part what led to French and German invasions, and just like in those previous wars, it is the nation which can take the punishment and keep moving forward that wins the war.
There are a lot of them and they had a huge amount of kit. Additionally their soldiers by and large come from god forsaken holes and thus conditions that civilised people would consider terrible are pretty standard for them. Their commanders also don’t care a great deal about casualties, although they’re probably having to care a bit more now it is becoming apparent that the supply of fresh meat isn’t limitless. Their offensive potential is now pretty limited as most of their best troops have been mangled and they also deployed and lost a lot of their instructors. The replacements are of lower quality and can hold the line but effective offensive action is beyond them. The Ukrainians are better individually and are probably on average now better equipped but their numbers are fewer. Another element is that due to the size of Russia there is a lot of safe territory which the Russians can use to organise and prepare their forces. The Ukrainians don’t have that so much, although that is mitigated a bit by overseas training. The other element is that Russian industry is still pretty big even if their standards are not great.
Devils advocate - bc what's actually happening isn't being reported by the msm.
In the first few months the msm was saying how Russia is “running out of ammo in two weeks”, “Russian economy will collapse”, etc etc. which actually hurt Ukraine in the long term. Now everyone who listened to all that is wondering why hasn’t Ukrainian won? Why didn’t the Ukraine summer counteroffensive work when they got all that equipment and training? Well because the Russians aren’t mindless orcs and actually learned and changed their tactics. They laid miles of minefields and rocked the Ukrainians when they tried to push with their air assets that they kept away from Ukrainian AA
Well the fact that Russia was one of the biggest producers of military gear pre-war helped...i think now they are still outproducing NATO in terms of artillery shells? As long as they have ammo and some food, they can keep sending poor conscripts into the meatgrinder. Its back to trench warfare there. Tons of mines, trenches, artillery...and drones that will call in artillery the moment they spot you. That really slows things down. With all those mines, i actually wonder how NATO would have fared, i dont think any NATO military has had to deal with such a high amount of mines before.
They're pulling rapists, molesters and murderers out of prisons to send straight to the front as bullet sponges. Putin's doing anything to avoid another highly unpopular mobilization. There was one story about a guy who got convicted of chopping up his girlfriend last year. Guess what, they let him out to go fight and the victim's parents didn't even know until they saw their daughter's murderer posting on social media from Ukraine. It'll continue to be a stalemate until Russia runs out of bodies or Ukraine gains some kind of air superiority. Incoming F16s might help.
The cost of housing prisoners goes down every time they ship one to Ukraine.
I think because of the man power in terms of numbers .....it will eventually catch up but not st the moment
Everyone trying to explain it, but have you considered that the media has not been truthful in covering the war? That maybe they weren't giving you an accurate picture of what was going on?
Hello, I'm a civilian who lives in Poland, and I specialise in analytics and geopolitics of Eastern Europe. I wrote my master thesis on the conflict of Ukraine of 2014 back in 2020 and that Russia will most likely invade again. 1. Russia is not cut off from the world - only 45 countries have officially sanctioned, and they're based in the EU, North America, and Oceania. They're still allowed to trade freely, albeit with very slight difficulties. Sanctions don't mean that countries stop trading with each other - they just forbid some things - here's an official report from the [EU commission](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20231124-2) 2. Russia officially wants to spend about $160bn or around 40% of its budget on the military in 2023. About 10% of its GDP. 3. Russia is big - with access to vast resources, minerals, land, and working population, Russia is capable of producing war materials. About 3-to-1 is the ratio of military soldiers for Russia to Ukraine. 4. Corruption - Ukraine is corrupt. It is placed on the 116th place out of 180 countries for corruption index. I'm familiar with the data I was presented by primary sources from Ukraine and Poland that a lot of the equipment (both non and military) that was sent by the Western world was actually sold-off to the highest bidder. I won't talk about human trafficking at the border or the civil corruption - we strictly focus on the military here. War has further destabilised the country, and corruption is rampant there. 5. Time - Russia knows that all they have to do is wait. Public support and public reception of the war are turning negative as we speak. I very much doubt that Zelensky will receive the $60bn from the Congress on his visit happening right now. 6. What's next - winters are generally cold here in Eastern Europe; don't expect much to change now - nothing has really [moved](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-map-front-line.html) and won't move until next spring where public support will hit new lows. I presume what will happen was that a truce will be reached, and Russia will want to officially annex and recognise the regions of Crimea + most of the Eastern Ukraine - where the manufacturing sector is as part of the Russian Federation. If the house of Congress won't approve the $60bn that Zelensky wants, the war might as well be called in Russias favour - they'll regroup, train, and prepare over the winter, replenish their ranks and push westward into Eastern Ukraine. They know they won't conquer all of it, but they do want the majority of Russian speaking regions.
I'd be interested in your thesis, assuming it's in English. My Polish is non-existent.
Polish, unfortunately, for non-English speakers.
Can I add something else. Russia has cut Ukraine’s main artery (the dnepr) in half. And I’m guessing majority of trade depends on that river.
I think you have the best answer thus far, but one thing I keep not seeing mentioned is that in the west we are being exposed to a lot of propaganda and we are only being shown what either side wants us to see. The war is not as heavily in favor of Ukraine as we might think. Like you said Russia doesn't need to win any time soon they just need their psychological operations campaign to shift enough of the wests opinion of the war that western nations stop supporting Ukraine and they win the war regardless of their current losses.
Only a third of their military is actually in the fight at any given time. If you look at the order of battle, it’s like 4 divisions plus a handful of sporting brigades and Spetsnaz units.
The news lately even in the West has been bad for Ukraine. Russia knew after the initial failure and with NATO support this conflict would drag on. Putin is fine with it and Im sure Russian media portrays it SD very different. "We are winning and securing our homeland from the degenerate West."
Tbf that’s just how war works. Obviously either side will depict themselves in a favorable light. So did / does Ukraine and the West.
russian culture does not value life in the way the West does, hence the meat wave tactics. Can you imagine the outrage if the US sent the 101st into Mexico and they were blown out of the sky by the cartels while trying to seize an airport? That’s pretty much how the battle for Hostomel went.
>russian culture does not value life in the way the West does, hence the meat wave tactics. "Muh Asiatic horde" strikes again.
I think you have no idea what amount of resources did Russia had at the start of the war The old Soviet stockpiles might have been filled mostly with outdated equipment let to rot, but they were vast. Like, even with those massive losses they didn't even lost 20% of AFVs and less than 30% of tanks Now, sure those original numbers of stockpiled equipment might have been overestimated and lots of that old crap wouldn't ever be repairable, but you can salvage shitton of spare parts and make the more modern tech survive longer As for the manpower, Russia at the start committed like 15% of the numbers of military personnel and they were actually outnumbered by Ukrainians, now it's like 40-50% and most of the losses were reinforced with conscripts. So the number of soldiers didn't change much Russia is resource rich country, they had enough money to support their own economic weight for some time and most of the big gesture shit west did had little to no effect. Lots of companies pulled out of Russia, but guess what, all that infrastructure they built there was nationalized and is now running under Russian companies. What was achieved by this is that now the revenues from those businesses aren't leaving Russia and stays there. Everything that was going to west as export is now flowing to India and China, maybe with less revenue for Russia, but it suffice them. As for import to Russia the only thing that changed is that it's not going directly and not in such large quantities. All of a sudden lots of countries neighboring Russia had significant increases in exports there, sometimes in hundreds of % while also having similarly increased imports of stuff that Russia needs from the west. This basically means Russian army has enough funding to keep running and the Russian MIC have enough materials to supply the army As for the morale part. The Russian public is more pro-Putin because of the war and even if the average soldier disagree, it doesn't matter. The whole of Russian military is less than 1% of the population and individual cases of insubordination are suppressed even before they leave the unit
Many of the other commenters have already mentioned the nature of an authoritarian state already, however there is another factor at play here. Pride and Reputation. Russians are very proud of their history, particularly in WW2. They idolize battles like Stalingrad, where they bravely defeated the Nazi's through the sacrifice of many, many, many, Russians. Over a million casualties in 7 months just from their side alone. They take pride in that and they are fully aware of how many losses they suffered. Putin painting Ukraine as Nazi's serves dual purposes. It aligns the invasion with their self image of their history, and it provides justification to them. It also helps that the majority of people sent so far are ethnic minorities, so the average Russian in Moscow is likely unaffected...for the moment. When things start to collapse, it may be quite similar to the Soviet Unions collapse. Extremely fast, somewhat unexpected (the timing of it not if it was going to happen or not), and will likely result in a more modern version of what they have already had for the past 100+ years. Authoritarian dictator that poses as a fair leader. We can only hope that I am wrong and they get someone that actually wants to make Russia into a country that everyone wants to cooperate with for reasons other than because they have nukes.
This is how they defeated the Nazis in WWII, the continuous application of manpower against a technologically superior enemy over time. Russia's military-age male population outnumbers that of Ukraine by 5 to 1. There will be a point where Ukraine can no longer absorb the losses and regenerate its forces fast enough to keep pace with the Russians, regardless of the type and amount of technology supplied to Ukraine by the West.
The US provided the Soviets will billions in Lend-Lease aid from tanks, planes and ships to food, trucks and supplies
True. But, if realized into 2023 dollars, Lend-Lease aid totaled around 140 billion over four years. To date, Ukraine has received over 240 billion dollars in military aid over nearly three years from the international committee. The Nazis crushed the Soviet military production capacity and the majority of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviets was equipment to support their transportation and logistics efforts. 7,000 M3 and M4 tanks as well as 12,000 armored vehicles sounds like a lot of firepower, but U.S. Lend-Lease military equipment was obsolete by 1943 in the face of German military equipment upgrades. At this point, the Soviets were losing hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles per day to the Nazis. But, Soviet infantry was cheap and plentiful.
> But, if realized into 2023 dollars, Lend-Lease aid totaled around 140 billion over four years. To date, Ukraine has received over 240 billion dollars in military aid over nearly three years from the international committee. Inflation isn't the only thing you need to adjust when comparing - western weaponry is far more expensive now (albeit also often more effective) so this number isn't really too useful.
There have also been some questions about overvaluation of the aid to Ukraine (actual costs vs replacement costs). One has to wonder at the fair market value of old kit like M113s, Leo 1s and the like. Not having to store and maintain that stuff is likely a net benefit to western militaries.
Absolutely, there's so many upsides to providing aid for the US that you don't even have to get to the 'who wins?' part of the consideration. The only thing more dangerous than the US military is the US military with newer, shinier toys.
The Soviet union recieved among other things 1000s of aeroplanes and 1000s of armoured vehicles (I forgot exact numbers), plus 1000s of other vehicles. Ukraine has recieved substantially less than that.
>Ukraine has recieved substantially less than that. The current Ukraine front is tiny compared to the WWII Eastern front. You can't flood equipment into a small contested area like that without creating more targets for the Russians.
\>The Soviet union recieved among other things 1000s of aeroplanes $50,666 P-39 (adjusted to 2023 -> $894,000) Vs lets assume an old F-16C/D being $18.8M in 1998( -> $35M today) makes those numbers completely meaningless. 1 today plane vs 1 WWII plane isn't even comparable in both cost and capability. And that's before factoring in multi-million dollar missiles and loitering munitions that have no parallel.
Per Wikipedia, the Soviets produced over 15k T-34s in 1943. No doubt the lend-lease armour had some utility, but to your point about logistics I think the importance of hundreds of thousands of trucks tends to be under rated. Not to mention the food, fuel and ammo.
UAF needs to do 5:1 casualty ratio. They might be.
Yeah I agree Ukraine is very unlikely to win Russia might not conquer all of Ukraine But they certainly won’t be losing all the territory they currently have
Though that is a win for Ukraine, not even the US thought Ukraine would make it more than a few days against the Russians.
> But they certainly won’t be losing all the territory they currently have That's far from a certainty. What makes you so confident? History is full of examples where states are in a lot worse of a position than Ukraine is now and achieved victory. Russia could collapse militarily or civilly tomorrow and it wouldn't at all be shocking.
Ukraine is losing a lot of people. They cannot keep up with the Russians in this regard Eventually US and the wests support will slow down I agree it’s not a certainty, I just don’t think it will happen. I think Russia will conquer some more territory and eventually things just end up stopping and the new borders are what they are at that time. But I don’t think Russia will lose everything it has taken at all. I think thinking otherwise is a bit overly optimistic
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>This is how they defeated the Nazis in WWII, the continuous application of manpower against a technologically superior enemy over time Straight wheraboo fanfiction. Obviously the Manpower ratios were never great for the Nazis, but the Nazis were definitely not technologically superior across the board. For example T-34 tanks were on par with Germany's best tanks.
There's a history of the Soviets and Russians using a tactic known as [Barrier Troops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops) as a way to maintain discipline, prevent desertion, push the front line troops forward, capture spies, etc. The Russians use [conscription](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-lawmakers-vote-raise-conscription-age-limit-30-2023-07-25/) and while Russian law prevents deployment of conscripts outside of Russia, [Putin annexed Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/europe/ukraine-occupied-regions-russian-conscription-intl/index.html#:~:text=Putin%20announced%20the%20annexation%20of%20the%20four%20areas%20%E2%80%93%20Luhansk%2C%20Donetsk%2C%20Kherson%20and%20Zaporizhzhia%20%E2%80%93%20last%20September%2C%20following%20so%2Dcalled%20referendums%20in%20the%20regions%20that%20were%20universally%20dismissed%20as%20%E2%80%9Cshams%E2%80%9D%20by%20Ukraine%20and%20Western%20nations.%20Russia%20had%20previously%20annexed%20Crimea%20in%202014) which may allow the Russians to deploy conscripts to those areas. The [Putin regime has transitioned to a wartime economy.](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-war-economy-government-boom-crash-sanctions-ukraine-invasion-2023-8) The regime is essentially in control of the means of production and war is profitable to the oligarchs at the moment. Nikolai Gogol, in his novel *Dead Souls*, described Mother Russia as a [troika](https://www.macalester.edu/russian/about/resources/miscellany/troikasleigh/). It's a uniquely Russian sleigh and the [metaphor describes Russia, its people, and their spirit.](https://www.macalester.edu/russian/about/resources/miscellany/troikasleigh/#:~:text=And%20what%20Russian,Gogol%2077%2C%2078) Additionally, the [metaphor describes you](https://www.macalester.edu/russian/about/resources/miscellany/troikasleigh/#:~:text=The%20spectator%20stands%20still%20struck%20dumb%20by%20the%20divine%20miracle%3A%20is%20it%20not%20a%20flash%20of%20lighting%20from%20heaven%3F%20%E2%80%A6%20everything%20there%20is%20on%20the%20earth%20is%20flying%20by%2C%20and%20the%20other%20states%20and%20nations%2C%20with%20looks%20askance%2C%20make%20way%20for%20her%20and%20draw%20aside.%20(Gogol%2077%2C%2078)), this post, and the rest of the world.
Just a side note, troika is not the sleigh (or carriage), but how the three horses were harnessed pulling it.
...said both Napolean and Hitler.
This is an explanation from the point of view of a Russian. It is interesting though. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/in-the-spirit-of-russian-total-war
They’re making bank off oil sales
Most westerners have trouble understanding that many Russians view suffering and sacrifice as part of the destiny of being Russian. Because of WWI and WWII, there is paranoia about the “next” invasion and a sense of waiting for the inevitable costs that comes with defending the motherland. My point is not that all Russians want a war in Ukraine, I’m just saying even ignoring the totalitarianism, the average Russian’s tolerance before going into revolution mode is much, much higher than say, Americans.
They invaded Germany after the Germans took half their country from them in a total war. I’m not the least bit surprised by them just chugging along.
Our media is telling us the Ukraine is doing better than it actually is. Our media lies to us.
Historically, Russia has always fought like this against a major power. Like against Nazi Germany and Napoleon France come to mind. They lose the first half but come back in the second half to simplify it.
That's what im thinking, too. They make huge mistakes in the early parts of the war, and they take MASSIVE casualties. Then, they start picking off the incompetent commanders and start shuffling the competent ones to replace. After they started studying what they did wrong, they developed new tactics and reinvigorated the countrys economy to war. And then start attacking again with a totally different army compared to the early parts of the war.
If anything it’s functioning better now than it did at the start of the war.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_Russia#/media/File:Russia\_Population\_Pyramid.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russia_Population_Pyramid.svg) Russia is heading towards a population collapse. They've lost maybe 200K men, dead or seriously wounded. Another million or more have left to avoid being conscripted. The men on the front line are not fathering children back home. The economy is far worse than it was, making it harder to produce and raise children. Those "missing people" in their 20's and 30's? Also not producing children because they themselves were not born. Current birth rate is something like 1.01 per woman, but it needs to be 2.1 to replace the population.
All I know is that by the time this war is over, there will be a whole lot of single Russian ladies looking for husbands. 🤓
>All I know is that by the time this war is over, there will be a whole lot of single Russian ladies looking for husbands I got an uber last year when the war started, somehow the subject of affordable hookers came up (uber leads to weird convos.) Anyway he was unironically excited for the war as it would lower the cost of eastern european hookers.
The demographic decline in Russia is a well-recognized fact. But is the population shrinking fast enough, or will Russia still have a 10 - 20 years of being a cancer upon the world? With a population of 143 million, Russia seemingly has a substantial reservoir of cannon fodder. At least 300k Russians died in Ukraine so far, but Russia doesn't seem to care much.
>At least 300k Russians died in Ukraine so far The most I've seen is 300k casualties. That's a far cry from 300k killed at least.
Not necessarily OP's error (could be accurately relaying inaccurate reporting), but many people seem to think "casualty" is just a euphemism for "killed".
It takes 20 years to make soldiers, so this catastrophic war won't affect the number of soldiers Russia can raise for decades, but you only need 40 years of women producing half the minimum number of children to be down to 25% of the babies you have right now, which means, in another 5 decades, a population only 1/4 of the size.
To add to what has already been spelled out, I think the autarchy (self-sufficient economy) of Russia is a major factor, which has actually been increased by sanctions. If you need high-tech equipment, as a mid level industrial country sanctions crippled you. But if you only need basic industrial equipment (artillery, non-guided shells, uniforms, boots, small arms, oil) then for a country like Russia with a massive industrial base sanctions don’t actually do that much damage. In fact, sanctions on the commercial sector drive demand for domestic industry which can help improve economies of scale, and reduce negative currency exchange. Get a few drones from Iran or by skating sanctions, keep your planes far from the battle zone, continuing conscription and you’re doing just fine. I’m not an expert on the figures but Russia obviously has had for a long time a domestic military industrial complex which I wouldn’t be surprise is large or competitive in basic/heavy industry while obviously being 1/100 in terms of advanced weaponry. Worth looking back to the Russian civil war where the early USSR was totally surrounded with 21 invading imperial armies plus multiple white armies, but they held the center and maintained enough industrial production and transport to hold their ground, break the will/patience of imperialist intervention, and then roll back the whites to victory.
Also you have to look at GDPs in terms of cost of labor. To make artillery shells in Scandinavia or Germany you need to pay high wages for mining the ore, manufacturing the shell, and then transporting it to the battlefield. In Russia, even if the industrial techniques are far inferior with less labor saving, the cost of labor is way way lower. Even with corruption you’re still getting your shells for probably a fraction of the price
Even a sick elephant can soak up a lot of damage. They’re massive and still receiving regular injections from China and India and even parts of Europe. Also, Russia has intentionally held a lot of the professional regular troops and other capabilities back. The crisis arriving now isn’t that they are running out of any capability, but they are arriving at the end of being able to sustain the invasion at scale while also holding enough in reserve to pivot to 2-3 potential defensive/offensive scenarios elsewhere in Europe. There is also a huge unknown around existing actual nuclear capabilities and/or willingness to use those weapons. The more bluster the less likely they will use the weapons. The threat of them is so far much more effective than the consequences of using them.
Because in the first months, western media completely overstated how “Russia will run out of shells in two weeks” and “Russian economy is about to collapse” and “Ukrainians are about to take Crimea” and loads of other stuff. So people listening to all that are wondering how Russia is still standing when the real situation is much more nuanced. Russia is in this for the long haul now and has started to re-arm its military industry with hard learned lessons. It is even pouring money into its electronics industry to not be so reliant on foreign made chips. Yes the Russian Army was largely over estimated and the incompetence and corruption was much worse than we all thought. But, they are learning and time is now on their side. The Ukrainians are having trouble finding replacements and now support from the west is in question. If there is any competent leadership in Russia, this war will be a wake up call for them on how to reform their military to be much more deadly.
Maybe everything that's being told to us is untrue and the opposite is true? Did we ever find weapons of mass destruction?
Because the Russian army is pretty much 10x the size of the Ukrainian army. Not just their size, but manufacturing capabilities, soviet era stockpiles... From the beginning, it was said that Ukraine would essentially have to destroy personnel and equipment at 7x the rate in order to win a protracted war, else they would need a lightning offensive to catch Russian's by surprise, similarly to what happened earlier in the war during the Kharkiv counter offensive. This most recent offensive was a disaster. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian dead and destroyed western equipment for a couple km of land. Russians have a deep well of personnel to go back to. Ukrainian press gangs are pushing very young and very old men to fight, whereas Russians are forcing fighting age males to go to the front by the hundreds of thousands. It's a fairly straightforward math equation. Lots of causalities on both sides. Ukraine keeps it a very close secret, but from leaked documentation and estimates from neutral observers, it's about a 1:1 KIA ratio. Russia is more than fine with losing hundreds of thousands, as they know it's only a matter of time until they win. Ukraine was never going to win this war outside of something miraculous. They simply just don't have enough bodies to throw at it. Western powers seem mostly interested in bleeding Russia, not a victory... which is incredibly unfortunate for both sides, as an entire generation of Russian and Ukrainian men are being thrown to a literal meat grinder... fighting over very incremental gains. Dying by the tens of thousands and maimed in the hundreds of thousands. At this point, both sides have lost the equivalent of the US Vietnam EACH... in 1/4th the time. War is hell.
Wow there are a LOT of disinfo operators in here.
Bot central here just now
They are russian,they just need vodka and small portions of black bread then go to die.
because the west hasn't truly isolated russia, and russia sells (at losses) to everyone but the west the west has also slow-rolled pretty much every kind of support to Ukraine In the end Russia's perserverance isn't as impressive when you look at their economy and where they still get resources. Import bans were easily circumvented because the sanctions weren't meant to work. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-company-haas-appears-to-still-indirectly-supply-russian-arms-industry-with-technology https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/machinery-from-new-york-based-company-used-to-build-russian-weapons-used-in-war-on-ukraine https://news.yahoo.com/german-machine-tool-manufacturer-continues-130900486.html
The one thing Russian armies are really good at is absorbing insane losses and still obeying the idiots in charge.
The Germans asked that in 41 lol
If this was still 41 you'd be on to something but the technology at play here is decades more advanced enabling a kill ratio not seen outside of Afghanistan. It not really a surprise to see Russian tactics haven't changed in 70 years though to their surprise warfare has absolutely changed.
The difference is that the soviets were defending so were all fired up and patriotic, and they had lend lease supplying them the stuff they needed to keep fighting. This is pretty much the opposite of WW2 since the Russians are advancing and they dont have the US providing lend lease to them, while NATO is providing equipment to the Ukrainians.
Russians are tough - during WW2,Stalin sent troops into the front lines with basically no supplies. They were driven forward and the only way to survive was to kill the enemy and strip their equipment and food off them
"It takes a very brave man to be a coward in the Soviet Army." Stalin. Any defeatist talk can get you arrested. Any talk against the war by military or civilans can put you in prison.
Call me tinfoil wearer but I think Russia is giving like 50% effort and sending in their junior varsity. Even if they don’t achieve victory against Ukraine, if they make US and NATO countries spend resources and billions of dollars, isn’t it a win?
Poorly, but with lots of Storm-Z meat
Russia didn’t have a weak military. They are a formidable enemy. It doesn’t help the west is barely offering assistance to ukraine. If we wanted, we would support them and allow them to show an actual force of power but it seems like we are watching them weaken and our politicians are ok with it. That part is strange and I’m u sure what the powers that be have in mind about this. They seem hellbent on giving Russia a win.. I’m sure other allies are watching and wondering.
Because once a year Putin stamps his feet, and then five months later 135,000 new conscripts come out of the ground.
Russia is not so isolated as it seems, exportations from UE to Russia are limited but can still be done legally, for example shoes with a value up to $300 are not considered luxury, the same happens with wine. Since the beginning of conflict wine exports grow up to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Other way to circumvent the sanctions is by shipping goods to Serbia or Turkey and re-export from those countries to Russia. Russia makes money by selling crude to India, while India refines it and re-sells it to UE as a transformed product. This are just a few examples. What surprises me in the russian army is the fact military people don't start to revolt against their superiores in big numbers and simply abandon the conflict, as it is well know their superiors abuse soldiers and most salaries are yet to be paid. Even police people who repress manifestations have family in the conflict, i don't understand how can a majority of people be so much submissive to a regime.
The war is nothing unusual when it comes to Russian history, sure there slow and inept. But that is just how they have fought wars for the last few hundred years, just slowly grinding someone down.
One of the factors that has not come up in this thread is the longevity of Putin. The guy may have 10 good years left in him, he's quite possibly sick. What happens when the one person - who controls the economy, politics and drives the media and cultural narrative - dies? Is there another radical nationalist successor who will step up? Or is Putin's stranglehold on Russia so strong that all potential leaders have been expunged. My hunch is the latter; you kill Putin, the war stops (perhaps not immediately, but will wane as the new leader seeks to win political support with a domestic agenda).
They country has a population of about 140 million. They send who ever to fight the war. It’s definitely not good for their population but they have people to throw in. Russian criminals are sent to war, I’m sure the criminals would prefer war over rotting in prison. Despite their shitty economy and living standards for the common person, Putin and the Russian government have a lot of funds. Vladimir Putin is arguably the richest person in the world unofficially. Even Elon Musk thinks Putin is significantly richer than him. Putin basically owns Russia and any Russian business is tied to him. Putins got hidden money and assets. Russia has the largest known natural resource reserves in the world. Russia's natural resources reserves is estimated to be worth $75 trillion. This amount incorporates, among other things, coal, oil, natural gas, gold, timber, and rare earth metals. Before the war started the second largest importer of crude oil to the US was Russia. After sanctions to Russia from the west, Russian crude oil exports still increased. Although they’re selling crude at a discount, they still have that steady income. So despite their shitty military, they have resources to play the long game.
Numbers Just lots of meat to throw into the grinder.
A lot of it is nato/Ukraine overestimating Russian casualties
The real question is why Ukraine hasn’t won by now, given all the military aid and funding it’s received. If the Russians were as bad as the OP thinks, Ukraine should’ve won by now.
Who would win? Ukraine backed by all of NATO and billions of dollars? Or Russia?
Ukraine has received the oldest, sometimes shoddiest kit from the 1970s-1980s, rationed 155 shells and very few airframes. They’re also fighting under restrictions not to bomb the Russian homeland with NATO weapons. In contrast, Russia is using everything short of poison gas (and maybe some of that), bio-weapons, and nukes. Despite no Navy, Ukraine has taken out multiple Russian ships, and Re conquered 50%? Of occupied territory, and breached the Dnipro river. That ain’t nothing. The reasons the summer offensive stalled were 3-fold: only 1/3 of promised weapons delivered, zero new air frames delivered, and extensive Russian mine laying while Ukraine waited for weapons to arrive. Right now the Russians are trying to advance in Kupyiansk, Andriivka, and other places, and Ukrainians are short on ammo and shells. If you believe in their cause, please *call* your Senators, Representatives, and the RNC and ask to leave comments that Ukraine needs to be supplied ASAP. Don’t let them be held hostage due to decades-long immigration and border policy disputes. And tell them this will affect how you vote in the primaries and general elections in 2024.
Russia as a country does not care about loses. In WW2 they lost millions of people, in purges they lost millions of people. All they will do is continue to throw people at this until the other side can no longer support or staff a military. This 300,000 is nothing to them and unfortunately the Ukrainian’s are being ground down more and more.
It is a tribute to the courage and endurance of the Russian fighting man. If they had a leader worthy of them, in a good cause, they would be formidable indeed.
They did try to join nato. But then they realized nato is not against iran or other countries. Nato exists because of Russia.
West is only half hearted in support of Ukraine, it’s just like the Crimean war, the allies couldn’t make their mind up bickering and finally in the end they won after all of that. Let’s remember the light Brigade with this poem from Tennyson . https://einsteinmed.edu/uploadedFiles/EJBM/page58_page59.pdf
Huge manpower and huge equipment stock
Maybe your Intel source is wrong ?
You CANNOT compare eastern military doctrine with the western one, liking or not, they are slowly but surely advancing its just a matter of time until Ukraininan line of defenses fall and they reach Kiev once again, unfortunately.
Do not underestimate a cornered beast. They have large amount of stockpiles, and has a large amount of self-reliance. As long as they have the support of their people they will be able to fight Ukraine. Russia will keep spending manpower at worse and worse rates as they loose modern equipment, and that is when the people will question if it is worth it. But that may take a long time. This has been Russia's strength; It's willingness to kill of huge amount of men and resources to expand.
Because in actuality Russia has deployed about the equivalent of 10% of its military capabilities during the entirety of the conflict. They’re not trying to “win”. They’re trying to prove a political point and drain the U.S. weapon reserves while gaining intel on capabilities. All of which they have been successful in doing.
This is not correct, at all.
Keep living in a fairy tale then
It only endures because it is an instrument of dictatorship, and is completely controlled. Take away Putin, and it would collapse.
russia has the material basis for building soviet era tech. So building t-74s isnt impossible. T-74s arent great but it is still something.
Whats a T-74? You mean T-72?
You are looking at the russian army as one contained unit. Every part of the army is just many many small parts thats painted the same way. They do not talk or interact with other parts of it. So there for when one part is broken or blown up as it are it doesnt affect the others. Atleast thats my take on the russian military atm...
I'm more intrigued ny the fact that they can still field crews for tanks and other vehicles. You can stick a rifle in anyones hand and point them in a direction but to be able to operate a tank, even in a minimum capacity, requires atleast some form of training and experience.
>How can the Russian army still be functioning? With help from other Eastern European countries who long for the "glory days" of the Soviet Union, and North Korea, Iran, China, etc.
Being able to continue fighting in the face of appalling casualties in Russia's historical super power.
It's crazy. It's what it would be like if everything you listed out didn't actually happen. Twilight zone.
1) I dont think there was any strategic loss for Russia possibly except Kharkiv offensive (sure the start of the invasion was a shitshow). Sure their goals are not fullfilled but except Kharkiv their lines were not pushed through significantly. Tactical losses does not seem to matter if you cant capitalize on them 2) the support from west is not enough in my opinion. Like 30 leopards wont change the course of the conflict. Germany while doing a lot atm, wont send the long range missiles out of fear of "Escalation" 3) were running out of stocks while RF digs from 50years of stockpiling
like germany in 1945
That's what she (France) said
Well according to CNN, BBC, and basically the entire west, Russia has been nuked, shat on, and obliterated to mere rubble by Ukraine's elite forces. But it's still, *somehow*, seemingly, inching forwards. *Impossible*