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Vadym Ivchenko, Member of Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence of Ukrainian parliament has said, in public and over the internet, that Ukrainian armed forces have likely sustained at least half a million dead.. He is from Tymoshenko's party, with a pro-Western record.
So, at least around 2.5x more than is the Mediazona estimate of Russian casualties, and assuming identical age distributions, the per capita losses are 10x higher.
Seems like Russians are employing a simple if sound strategy to win a war of attrition as manoeuvre is sort of dead because nobody has enough counter-surveillance technology. The only remotely safe way of moving forces up to the front is sending infantrymen in small groups into prepared positions.
According to this report on Ukrainians training in Poland, nobody told NATO, at least the lower ranks, that the nature of war has changed.. Even though it's been 3 years of heavy recon drone use in Ukraine, NATO units still mostly trains and operate as if the drones weren't there, which is surprising to observe in a force that prides itself on being reliant on technology and good training.
That is ... not exactly BS, but somewhat distorted. The only reason the war in Ukraine is as it is - is because no air superiority exists on the Ukraine side. In a large scale conflict Nato vs Russia we will have orders of magnitude more jets than Ukraine has and probably enough to make sure that Russian airforce won't be able to lob KABs at their leisure, their Geran launch sites will be exposed, their fiber drones C&C will be easier to neutralize and we will be totally free to conduct as deep strikes in russia's territory as we feel is needed with whatever weapons we have in our arsenal.
So don't rush drawing a conclusions about what the nature of the war is. Ukraine has been fighting with limited resources, some of them with strings attached and Russian airforce is far cry from the USSR numbers - and russians don't seem to be able to mass produce them.
And completely automatic jets are at least some years away.
I don't know, is the NATO:Russia air advantage much bigger than the Russia:Ukraine air advantage? Being able to lob KABs is one thing, but Russia at no point dared overflying Ukraine freely, because the economics and optics of losing even one manned plane every now and then because an AD launcher was successfully hidden in a nondescript warehouse somewhere are too painful. The dynamics of a hot war with the involvement of the entirety of NATO would of course be different, but despite everything it seems implausible to me that they would look like the comfy desert turkey shoot war that NATOcore acolytes live for.
(I would also expect that the opening move after a NATO entry into the war is that at least all the NPPs in Ukraine - and quite possibly also everything in Europe east of the centerline of Germany - get blown up, since the only thing that kept them safe so far is Western sensibilities. As for what effect this would have on warfighting capabilities, I honestly can't tell - do we have contingencies to maintain our economy if there is actually no energy grid? Would the sudden need to cook on an open fire in your block's courtyard shatter Europe's heiwa-boke and result in rapid return to WWII-era buff doge form, or a quick noping out and licking of wounds?)
The critical difference is the ability to assert mutual air denial via active air defense systems.
The Russian airforce dared to overfly Ukraine for about a weak, but stopped because even the rare active-detection radar system was enough to get good aircraft shot down, while Russia lacked the sort of EW / counter-emitter capabilities to suppress those air defense systems. However, this was a mutual paradigm- Russia couldn't intrude, but Ukraine couldn't either, and both stayed behind their lines in the air-defense bubble.
The issue is that NATO has a lot better tools to conduct suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD), most notably stealth aircraft that aren't so vulnerable to that sort of 'pocked AD' strategy. You turn on that sort of active radar, you (generally) still don't detect the aircraft for a weapons lock, but those weapons it has can lock onto you. Once high-altitude air defense systems are cracked, you can 'simply' fly over the lower air defense systems, use the gravity advantage to extend the range of your strikes, and progressively widen your air operation area to progressively strike more things.
It's not as absolute or one-sided as that, and it's certainly not a turkey shoot setup. Russia has absolutely invested a lot in mitigating those sort of stealth investments. But the Soviet anti-air concept that Russia inherited was much more of a 'buy time for the ground forces to win' model, as opposed to 'we have nothing to fear.' With time, you can take care to gradually peel back a defense envelope and act within the safe margins, which is exactly what we see in the current environment with the Russian glide bombs. However, the NATO countries have much better air penetration options, and air munitions, than the Russian airforce whose design purpose was to keep the NATO aircraft delayed by days/weeks/months so the army could run over the ground defenders and then get entrenched.
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Ukraine is instructive - Americans knew Russians would either cuck or fight.[1] Either cost Americans little and hurt Russians, so it was all fine by them. Who gives a shit about half a million dead Slavs, right?
Now, what do you think would happen if Americans attacked Russia directly, eh?
No, in a conflict with Russia what would happen would be that the moment Russian air defense situation got critical, they'd launch tactical nuclear weapons at American air bases in Europe and the air war would abruptly cool down to manageable proportions. Or the world would end, I guess.
I guess it's all up to how lucky the Americans feel, I guess.
[1]>“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I’m using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
Hey, at least we'd get a chance to test my personal conspiracy theory that the US has at least 10x as many counter-ballistic missiles as it has advertised.
I have literally no evidence of this, but it seems like it'd have been a pretty obvious good idea to have done quietly years ago (and not a good idea to advertise the end of MAD), and would maybe explain why we were so open to using them in Israel earlier this year.
This was the only thing that made sense to me given:
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I feel we end up talking in circles discussing casualty estimates that are wide apart, but I'm always interested in the pro Russia (Ukraine skeptic? How would you define it?) side.
Based on the above, would you suggest Putin should sign up to Trump's deal?
Sounds like everything is going all to plan for him based on your assessment, NATO support totally failed to help Ukraine and so annoying the US doesn't move the needle on the conflict, and the Ukrainian army is basically gone based on the estimate above if true: why accept a deal today (even if you're going to break it soon) if you'll win tomorrow?
Of course, Putin could be not really serious about the negotiations and is just running the clock/trying to drive a wedge between the US and Ukraine (which is my opinion too). But based on the pro Russia narrative, the USA doesn't have the power at this point to do much to Russia? US stocks of relevant systems are depleted or earmarked for a fight against China, sanctions aren't working, and past shipments of kit did little. Is that about right?
What would you suggest to Putin? Hold out till you can roll all of Ukraine and dictate terms? What should they be? One poster a few weeks ago suggested annexing everything Ukrainian east of Poland as a demonstration of Russian power, do you think that's the most credible outcome based on the fact that Ukraine is on the ropes in your assessment?
First - no ceasefire ever. Just work on the treaty. Hammer Ukraine until they relent on this point. Second - take only majority Russian territories. Third - Ukraine is forbidden to be in military alliances, but allowed to have whatever and how much they want of conventional forces. No foreign peacekeeping force, but are allowed generous amount of observers/trainers as long as they are not affiliated with NATO. Also allow security guarantees. Fourth - give USA and EU the frozen assets to reconstruct Ukraine in trade for sanctions lift. Not Ukraine. They are allowed to draw for them for paying EU and US companies that do work there. Fifth - Create international company that gets ownership of the gas transit infrastructure of Ukraine with ownership split between Germany Italy and couple of other countries. Ukrainians will squeal like pigs, but bribing parts of EU is always a good idea. Sixth - offer Ukraine discounted hydrocarbons for couple of years. Seventh - make Ukraine take blame for Nordstream and make them pay reparations to Germany that will be used for rebuilding it. There is not a chance in hell of Ukraine having the money to pay, but a nice pressure point.
For casualties - I would say probably parity. Ukrainians having favorable ratio before 2025 and giving more from Kursk onwards.
Russia is hurting now so it actually needs peace.
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I'm still overwhelmingly globohomo, but let me channel the other side.
What is the realistic amount of success Putin can expect? Even if Ukrainian frontline finally collapses, the rate of Russian advance reaches 10km/day, Zelensky is deposed and the provisional government capitulates, it's super easy for the EU to recognize some Ukrainian government-in-exile and keep Russia under sanctions.
Is this better or worse than a negotiated peace? Depends on its terms. Every article in a peace treaty should be viewed through a very specific prism: how is it enforced, what will happen if one of the parties violates the terms of the treaty? It's like buying drugs from a dealer you don't trust.
Anything that goes "will be determined via additional negotiations" is a massive trap. Given that Russia currently has the initiative, any ceasefire agreement has to be sweetened with something concrete and immediate.
In general, if I could guarantee the original 28-point agreement would be implemented by all parties in good faith, I would suggest signing it. It's not a massive win, but a massive win is already impossible. But since it will be interpreted in bad faith, to the letter of the agreement, by all parties, I would advise examining every letter of the agreement with a magnifying glass first.
I’d say one destructive consequence of the Versailles ‘Treaty’ is that the notion of any great power terminating a war through a just and negotiated peace treaty has become a laughingstock. It’s no wonder no great power has ever waged war under such delusions since 1919. Everyone fights to win or to the death. If neither option is on the table, you get a trainwreck of a ‘settlement’ like that in Korea.
The historic critiques of the Treaty of Versailles regarding Germany were themselves derived from the terms Germany imposed on France beforehand. If there's any historical denunciation to be had for ruinous reparations as a way to peace, it well predates WW1.
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One of the consequences of propaganda culture that I think is not discussed enough is how having too effective control of public opinion in your camp can actually work against you in contexts where treaties have to be made. Similarly to the concept of "right to be sued" I have seen in the context of trade agreements, being able to assert that some party will judge and appropriately punish you should you violate the terms actually gives you more freedom to offer terms. In the case of international agreements, when the world police (US) has a stake in the game or is aggressively indifferent or both, the only one that could stand in judgement whether a treaty is being adhered to is public opinion (which could enforce its judgement by boycotts, protests or simply non-cooperation when a treaty party needs the general public to cooperate e.g. by enlisting to fight in the military or maintaining social exclusion). However, this does not work if a treaty party has the part of the public it is sensitive to (usually its own populace) around its finger to the point that it will always be able to convince it that it is in the right. In this way, Russia has crippled itself long ago, and the collective West has by now followed suit.
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You may feel you're talking in circles. My perception has always been that the million dead Russians line of thought was bullshit and you and others like @Dean never presented any arguments that could overturn the extremely simple calculation based on the similarity of both countries and simple weight of material on either side.
I mean, you're free to bet on Polymarket on there actually being only 100k Ukrainian KIA which could imply they suffered only 2.5x relative casualties of Russians.
Based on how much ordinary Russians hate the deal, and how the front is deteriorating, no..
They're sure to get a better deal soon once all the reserves are gone.
Pretty sure everyone would be happier if there was a Ukrainian nationalist containment zone left. Western Ukraine has no interesting economy or mineral deposits. Russians don't want to run a harsh occupation, Americans would prevent not having to deal with ten thousand war hardened drone operators. I mean, imagine what would happen if some of them wanted to displace the blame from the war from themselves onto Americans? How many FPV snuff compilations featuring US elites would be one too many is the question FBI doesn't want to ask itself.
I actually do think that a million Russian dead is clearly too high for the same reason that half a million dead Ukrainians is too high: we would see the evidence everywhere in both economies if that were true. For example, this interview with Russia's former deputy energy minister was a year ago but seems credible where he pushes back on Russia taking a million people out of the economy not being likely at that point https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/war-deficits-and-the-russian-economy . No disagreement there, where we differ as I understand is that I would guess Ukraine is taking 1 casualty for every 2 Russians (which could be an issue, given the 1:3 pop ratio), and you assume it's actually something like 10:1 in favor of Russia? For example, I think this is fairly credible https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/desertions-and-loss-ratios-trends, which was in spring this year, and estimated that Ukraine was trading at 1:1.8, which in itself is not enough to be a central theory of victory for the same reason, they need Russia to run out of money or will or something else before men at that rate if Russia can keep recruiting. Not sure what @Dean 's opinion is, I do not want to put words into their mouth.
I actually do bet on Polymarket, and have been making good money versus those bullish on Russia by putting bets on "no" across a spread of markets where Russia takes city X by date Y. When I win I roll the original sum over and take the winnings, some I lose when the point eventually falls but I'm $5k up on $5k in just over a year thanks to Russia under performing their expectations. https://polymarket.com/event/will-russia-capture-all-of-pokrovsk-by-september-30?tid=1764080674035 Pokrovsk has been particularly good so far, so close but so far for so long. There isn't a market for casualties exactly because it's kind of impossible to resolve (our problem here), plus possibly Polymarket thinks its too spicy, but I would be very interested if there was one. I might bet.
Thanks though for your thoughts on the war, it is very interesting to hear, we disagree but I would guess fundamentally we're all just observers trying to understand. I find this conflict interesting from a cultural perspective: there are two narrative bubbles that are often a bit surprising, and we will have to see where the chips land in the end. I would personally would be surprised if Russia takes Kharkiv or anything past the Dnieper full stop even if the war runs through 2026, and would bet on Polymarket to that effect, but lets see.
Side note, how do I embed links? I look like my father using emails here.
Comments here, like on Reddit, follow Markdown formatting.
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Thank you. I appreciate not being assigned a position I've never taken.
My position for some time (years) has been neither side is running out of manpower in an absolute sense. The somewhat less than 2-to-1 in favor of Ukraine is reasonable-ish, with emphasis on swings on which part of the front when. When Ukraine does localized counter-attacks over time, such as trying to delay the fall of defense line that has gotten supply-interdicted by fires (drone or artillery), it's worse. When Ukraine is doing 'generic' line defense, it's higher. Per-capital casualty rates of national populations aren't really relevant, since neither side is being limited by the size of the population per see, but rather political considerations for accessing significant parts of it.
In Ukraine, this limitation the political willingness to draft the younger age cohort to fill the infantry with more fit bodies. This is bad, and people can feel free to add more emphasis if they like, but it's not the 'there is nothing left' metaphor either. Every year of the war, an entirely new year of potential conscripts leaves the protected age bracket, and when you compare that number to casualties per year, the number of potential 'new' conscripts far outnumbers the casualties by a large degree in absolute terms. The issues are separate about opportunity costs and so on, so the decision on what to prioritize is a political / policy decision, not a physical limit. Bad politics or policy can and do lead to bad results. But this is also not as bad in the same way / to the degree most people might conceptualize, because the Ukraine War- and particularly the drone dynamic- has changed what sort of 'fit body versus support force' ratio actually is, in ways that military science, let alone social understanding, haven't caught up with. A few years ago, a 'healthy' infantry-drone balance might have a drone user per platoon, with X platoons for Y amount of territory. Now we are looking at multiple drone operators per squad, with Z squads per Y' territory. Whatever the ratio 'should' be, the amount of infantry 'needed' for a certain level of frontage is changing. Ukraine can simultaneously not have enough, and people have outdated / over-inflated assumptions of what 'should' be.
In Russia, the limitation is the economic willingness off older age cohorts to take volunteer enlistment bonuses. Russia tried to leverage its population via a conscription model in the first year of the war, and it went so badly that somewhere between half a million to a million Russians left the country in the first year, and Putin preferred to pay significant other material and other costs to avoid a reoccurance. This works as long as the Russian volunteer base is willing to take the offered salaries, but the issue with market-rate enlistment bonuses are you actually have to pay them, and any model that relies on pre-saved money to fund deficit spending to avoid other issues will, eventually, run out of pre-saved money. Market-rate military expenses are fickle as well as fiscal, and are prone to spiking when shortages occur, such as if fewer people want to volunteer because parts of the contract bonuses (such as regional government bonuses) are cut for fiscal constraints. Difficulty does not mean absence, and Russia has already gone through various long-term costs to provide the short-term funds to meet needs, but shell-games come with tradeoffs and the functional recruitable base is not a simple total-population-size ratio between Russia and Ukraine.
This all matters because much of the discussion about casualty ratios is applied to total population sizes (Russia is X times bigger, so Ukraine needs an Y kill ratio to compensate). This misses the manpower limitation on both sides, and that casualty ratios matter more as a factor of the relative recruitable bases, which are far less clear / even less consensus.
This is approaching my position, but with a whole lot of context / framing that would take a rather long post in and of itself.
In so much that I present a definition of 'victory' for Ukraine, my inclination has generally leaned towards 'terms that are sufficient to allow Ukraine to deter yet another continuation war by Russia.' As a result, my general stance since the first two years of the war have been that victory in the war is more about the final terms than the terrain.
(The 2022 invasion is arguably the 3rd continuation war since the 2014 Crimea incursion, which was followed by the Nova Russia campaign and then the direct intervention when that failed.)
By this standard, the 'peace terms' offered by Russia in the first month of the war would have been a loss as they were basically disarmament demands that would have reduced the Ukrainian army to fewer tanks than the Ukrainian army lost in the next year or so of actually fighting the war. The Ukrainians would have 'won' more land in the short term, but at an extremely high risk of Russia just reorganzing and launching another mechanized invasion that Ukraine would likely have been unable to resist without a reoccurance of the 2022 fuckups, which would have led to the strategic defeat. By contrast, while Ukraine has taken [insert McBigNumber] casualties in the three years of war since the invasion, in the process it has largely depleted the Soviet strategic stockpiles of tanks / ammo / etc. that were what allowed Russia to replenish mechanized formations. Now those reserves are largely gone, and so even if Ukraine loses all of the Donbas and the fortress belt fighting rather than merely turning over uncontested, it's still a 'better' [victory] than if Russia still had the perceived mechanized invasion capacity it had a few years ago.
Similar points exist in other aspects of deterrence credibility. If the war had not continued, the limits of the Russian ammunition stockpiles (since supplemented by purchased North Korean munitions) would not have been so clear to all, and thus strengthened the Russian negotiating leverage were Russia still at 10-to-1 artillery advantage as opposed the more contemporary 3-to-1 estimates. If the war had not continued past the first month, Russia might still have had a unilateral advantage in terms of its long-range strike capability of operational stockpiles of cruise missiles, and Ukraine would not have gradually increasing its own long-range strike campaign credibility to the point where it now routinely hits highly-visible, and budget-significant, Russian infrastructure. Had the war ended sooner, when Russia was still aggressively using Soviet AA missiles against everything it could, the deterrence narrative might have been stuck on the question of 'has Ukraine / the West run out of air defenses,' rather than flip that to 'if Russia struggles against these drones, how safe is it against NATO airpower?'
None of this is to say that Russia hasn't advanced its own capabilities in various areas over the war. Drone warfare is absolutely a thing. But deterrence isn't about 'can the attacker win,' but rather 'can the defender make it not worth the cost.' And in that sense, and for that purpose, increasing Russian costs now, in the present, shapes Russian future cost calculus later, when Russia (particularly Putin) might try again.
This is an attritional struggle, but it's not an attritional struggle to 'win' this war in terms of 'Russian military collapses and Ukraine regains territory.' While I'm sure the Ukrainian public would love it if some sort of Russian balance of payments default led to the Russian army leaving the field or mutinying in mass and marching on Moscow, that's neither likely or necessary. Rather, the war is an attritional struggle that seeks to add enough military and economic and political-will costs such that even Putin will think about starting another invasion, and go 'I'd rather not.'
And in that context, the attritional goal for Russian infantry and such isn't 'there are literally not enough men to fight,' but rather 'future!Putin does not want to pay the costs he'd have to to get enough men to fight.'
That could the direct economic costs to the Russian state budget and fiscal planning if he has to pay market costs. That could be the political costs if Putin in this war has to supplement the volunteers with conscripts. That could be the material costs, if Russia feels it needs to replace the stuff it already lost in this war before it tries again. That could be reconstitution costs, if the survivors of this war decide they'd rather not join the next war because they got their signing bonus and intend to live with it. It could be any or all of these, so long as the sum-total is enough that Putin, when he's out of sunk-cost-fallacy mode, would rather not try.
But all of this framework derives from a theory of victory that doesn't really define victory in this war in terms of territory lost or gained, or even Ukrainian casualties.
Apart from the very expensive nuclear early warning radar Ukraine wrecked..what are they hitting that's budget significant? From oil & gas exports alone Russia gets $300 million a day. That can pay for loads of refinery repairs.
Reuters reported that despite all these strikes on refinery, actual refining is down just 3% this year.
They don't have to. They have more shells, more drones and more bombs - they can keep killing Ukrainian soldiers at a favorable ratio until Ukraine agrees not to be a US proxy, which is their goal.
If the Russian goal was 'Ukraine isn't a US proxy' then they could have just not invaded in the first place. The idea that the invasion of Ukraine was really Russia defending itself against the US is a bizarre fantasy. The goal was conquering Ukraine to eliminate it as a sovereign state, and to eliminate the identity of the Ukrainian people as distinct from the Russians. Putin literally wrote an essay on why the invasion was justified, it's nothing to do with America.
Russia is against Ukraine joining NATO because NATO membership might prevent Russia invading again once it has built up more strength.
It's no more bizare a cope than the idea that refinery repairs are a trifling expense in the midst of a war that was draining reserves even before primary income sources started going boom, or that progressively smaller relative material advantages negate manpower limits.
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Ukraine is controlled by US thru selective prosecutions.
What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate?
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That makes an awful lot of sense from my point of view, and I would update my position wherever it differed before to what you've just said - that was a really good summary.
One thing we have discussed less in these threads is the economic pressure Russia is under - selling gold reserves, burning through its foreign currency, losses to its refining capacity and tightening sanctions all seem to be having a rising impact, though it's really hard to judge exactly how much. Putin seems willing to pay a very high cost to make this invasion seem a victory to the domestic population and pro Russians worldwide, possibly as the consequences of embarrassment are possibly deadly, but like you say the really important thing is if the costs are high enough to swing his calculus for another round.
I also find it really interesting how Russia's tank storage is basically empty, Uralvagonzavod is cutting employees by 10% despite the presumably desperate need for equipment, and there have been several strikes on Russia's airforce this year and even this week, hitting vital airframes that they no longer even produce (some of the industry was in Ukraine for a start).
Ukraine is definitely proving a tougher nut to crack than anyone thought, and it's already one of the strangest and most embarrassing wars for what claims to be a major power that I've ever known. 0.2% of NATO GDP spent annually in a proxy war to wreck pretty much the entire stockpile of Soviet equipment would be paid in a heartbeat by the Reagan era Republicans I assume, from my point of view the Ukrainians can keep the change if they want to keep fighting.
Well, if you like a contribution enough, you know what to do with it.
I will carry your point about NATO GDP a bit further, though. The economic implications for NATO go beyond even that. It isn't '0.2% on top of normal.' That 0.2% spent going to directly shape what the new-normal in the future is, since future defense spending will have to adjust to what is needed, not what used to be needed. Any critique of 'it's unreasonable to spend so much to help Ukraine fight Russia' can be fairly asked to state a position on 'how much spending is reasonably needed to fight Russia without Ukraine.'
A lot of the NATO defense spending discussion is framed in media in terms of 'Europe needs to spend more to catch up to Russia.' There is truth there, but it's not the entire truth, just as another refrain- 'we need to create capabilities the Americans may withdraw' is a part-but-not-whole of the truth. An additional element is that a lot of the NATO spending European states need to is to just dig themselves out of the hole of the post-Cold War defense cuts that lowered their various institutional, not just military, capabilities. Resolve deficit capabilities in things like administration, communication architecture, procurement agencies, legacy system commitments, and so on, and then you can better modernize the actual hardware in inventory and try to train new people to actually match the Russian threat once ignored / discounted.
But if part of spending requirements is 'resolve the deficit' and another part of 'match the adversary,' how much you need to spend to match the adversary depends on, well, the adversary's capabilities. Which, a half decade ago, included a Soviet Union's worth of stockpiles of ammo, reactivatable vehicles, and weapons. 'Reasonably sufficient' defense spending to reasonably counter such a threat had to be able to match / overcome both [ongoing Russian military industry from the current economy] and account for [the vast reserves of Russian reserve material]. And that was a huge amount of capacity, the sticker shock of which contributed to the European defense spending paralysis, since it's easy to be dwarfed by the magnitudes involved. Russia lost more tanks in the first year of the war than most of the major EU NATO members had total. To 'match' that, you'd be talking trippling or quadrupling tank orders.
But that's if you have to match the Soviet stockpiles. Now that much (though not all) of that Cold War inheritance is squandered, Russia is increasingly dependent on [modern economy funded production], as opposed to [inherited mountains]. And Russia's [modern economy funded production] is far, far, far more practical for the European states to match or keep up with. When you take away Soviet stockpile reactivations, which is how Russia gets 'more than 1000 tanks produced* a year' over the war, back in 2020 Russia was producing around 200 new tanks a year.
It takes a lot less NATO expenditures to overcome 200 tanks a year compared to 1000 tanks a year. Or to overcome 10,000 missiles that have been shot rather than still could be shot. Or suppress a black sea fleet that's already on the sea floor.
None of this means there isn't a great deal more spending to be done, or that the NATO countries can coast without spending. The Europeans have decades of investment deficit to make up for, everyone needs to modernize for drones, and that's without other competing priorities. The Russians may have a smaller economy than many European nations, but they have a significant head start in certain relevant sectors.
But it is magnitudes easier- and cheaper- to keep up with someone who can't out-spend you rather than to try and catch up with someone with a seemingly insurmountable lead who still continues to spend.
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They tried drafting everyone btw 25-60 or so.
They won't get much from 18-25. Smaller cohorts too, lower birthrates.
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No, I said in per capita it's 10x higher. If we go by the mediazona estimates for Russians (~200k) and this leak of half a million, it's 1:2.5 in favor of Russia. I believe I estimated lower numbers earlier, 300k and up.
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I wonder if we're seeing the sort of issue that historians have in assessing ancient wars, where a lot of people just stop being counted in the official population numbers. That doesn't necessarily mean they're dead. I imagine there's a lot of men, especially on the Ukrainian side but also in Russia, who would prefer to not let the state know that of their existence right now. Obviously it's better overall that not as many people are dying, but from the state's cynical view it's sort of the same whether they're actually dead or just unreachable.
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The articles about stunning and brave Ukrainian girlbosses taking over the coal mines and shipyards because all the men were... uh.... somewhere else started popping up like a year and a half ago.
https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/g-s1-40964/in-a-workforce-transformed-by-war-ukrainian-women-are-now-working-in-coal-mines
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/12/as-ukrainian-men-head-off-to-fight-women-take-up-their-jobs
Ukraine's workforce is clearly under pressure, but adding 5% of women to a mine/industry (from what I read in your article there) is entry level mobilization shit surely? In the UK in WW1 or WW2 we would call that a Tuesday, and the UK wasn't under a manpower collapse in either war.
Again, Ukraine is clearly under pressure, but if 1 million were out of action from deaths/wounds it would look like the Ukrainian military not existing and Russia strolling forwards, which is not the case (Pokrovsk has been contested for over a year now, and within walking distance of the pre war lines).
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Embed with [text](link): text.
Nice post, too. I always appreciate it when someone plays the
adult in the roommarket rationalizer on predictions.Thanks a million, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaking of Texas in your tagline and the Ukraine conflict, did you hear that Mary from Texas Oblast may not actually be from Texas? If twitter always showed locations I bet the bot/shill account founders would have used VPNs and they would all be US/European, not showing locations and then suddenly changing it created the perfect storm of hilarity.
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Same as Reddit: surround the hyperlink text with [square brackets] and immediately follow it with the (URL in parentheses).
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Crude translation but this is pretty brutal. I swear I've been reading articles like this for the last year where the NATO trainers go 'drive around the minefield lol' or similar. Nothing seems to be learnt, it's very slow going. Later in the article they say 'oh the Ukrainian command never said anything was wrong with our training, we totally include drones' but it's always the military officials talking, not the soldiers journos are speaking to on the ground. It is warming me to the '140 million population Russia poses a threat to 600 million population Europe' idea we see so much.
Inertia is definitely proportional to the size of the bureaucracy. Be glad that NATO hasn’t discovered Agile methodology.
On the other hand, the Russian MIC hasn’t covered itself in glory. They’ve got a significant head start. I would expect that to disappear within a few months of an open (non-nuclear!) conflict with Europe, if only because of massive casualties leading to rapid NATO turnover.
If I was NATO enemy I would pray for them to discover Agile. They would defeat themselves before reaching the battlefield.
So far the whole Agile/Scrum and similar silver bullets industrial complex is roughly split into 3 parts - grifters, useful idiots and just idiots. Sorry - there is tiny sliver of people that work in small companies and teams - but there agile comes naturally.
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Has anybody covered the whole proposed ceasefire situation at present on the Motte? Can't remember seeing it in last week's thread
Well, here's a quick summary:
That's about where we are. Right now, all we know is that it's a 19-point proposal now and the question of frozen Russian assets has been dropped from it. Presumably, the most sensitive points (Donetsk oblast withdrawal and NATO (non-)membership) will be discussed between Zelensky and Trump.
The most likely outcome is that Trump is once again not able to get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride: he can't force a ceasefire through but can't wash his hands of the war either. A few more Ukrainian towns are turned into rubble, let's meet again in three months.
Yes, either Zelensky/Rubio will be successful in convincing Trump that completely unrealistic demands on Ukraine's behalf should be added, in which case Putin will reject it and the neocons will push Trump for more sanctions. Or Z fails and Trump has an excuse to finally bail and pull intel and support, dumping it on Europe. Either way the war continues and the outcome is the same, just the timeline changes.
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Probably not going to happen. The European proposal is delusional. The Russians probably don’t have an actual interest in ending the war at this point and their own proposal is only being made because they know that Ukraine will refuse.
Why is it delusional? What I mean is, what has the state of the war to do with Europe's willingness to concede anything? Say countless Ukrainians are dead, and the Ukrainians are nearing collapse. Not Europe's problem. I wouldn't even give russia a guarantee that Ukraine not join nato. All the pressure is on ukraine, and russia. Europe will just go along with ukraine’s decision. All the leverage europe has over russia (sanctions, confiscated assets) has been gifted to ukraine, to do with as they please. I have no idea why everyone acts like europe is the one who gets to decide to keep fighting.
It is Europe’s problem, or at least they feel it is. That’s why they got involved in the first place. There’s a big strategic difference between Russia controlling Donbas, and Russia controlling Ukraine all the way to the Polish border.
But why?
Anyway, I don’t think Europe was thinking about this as logically as you are, I suspect they just don’t know how bad things really are.
I assume the Ukrainians know more about how much more they can take than us comfortable westerners.
This is what the EU should say, according to you: "Okay, Ukraine, thanks for all your sacrifices defending our sphere from an aggressive rival power, heroic stuff, but based on our 2000 km away expert analysis, you're going to lose everything momentarily, and this hypothetical outcome would be embarrassing for us. So to give you the proper motivation, we're going to cut off aid until you sign a terrible deal where you keep some rump state."
Does that make sense? Or does this EU sound like it’s being fed lines by russia?
Because the better the deal ukraine gets, and the least russia gets, the better it is for us. While we do care about the well-being of ukraine, we also care about damaging russia, because russia is an enemy and a threat. If ukraine wants to keep on fighting, and russia takes some more losses, that is fine with us. We're certainly not going to pressure our vassal to sign a deal favourable to our enemy; that's not how any of this works.
Everybody kinda conspires to ignore the agency of the ukrainians; trump and the americans always have main character syndrome, while putin’s entire ideology, and his main reason for the war, dogmatically depends on ukraine’s lack of agency. So Putin keeps trying to talk to trump, who doesn’t care besides the vanity boost of ‘ending another war’ and certainly doesn’t control zelensky, or the europeans, who have no concession to give to him because they are not hurting, and also don’t control zelensky.
No, what the EU should say is: "it looks like the amount of aid we're giving you is not enough to stalemate Russia completely. We don't want to give more, so tell us which option you prefer: we can just let you keep on grinding and waiting for a black swan or you tell us how much you're willing to give up to stop the war sooner and we'll try and get Russia to accept the smallest amount of concessions possible. It can't be 'nothing', because that's just the first option in disguise".
Instead, it's always the first option is disguise, which makes the EU look either idealistic, stupid or callous, depending on how you want to interpret this.
Should we increase aid to Ukraine? I think so, but I'm not in charge. So based on current realities, I can… still not do anything. Again, what are you suggesting I do, concretely? That I ‘advise’ ukraine? Fine, I will tell them that based on the august opinion of russian and american commenters, a total collapse of their frontline would be bad for them.
And having been so informed, what am I supposed to do if they prefer continuing the war to accepting russia’s terms? Force them against their will, ‘for their own good’, to accept the terms? Withdraw support, threaten war maybe? How much am I supposed to sacrifice to harm my own ally so that my enemy can get good terms?
I'm all for that. But this is achieved by increasing pressure on Russia, not Ukraine. For example, we could be far more open to threatening putin with war, like sending 'peacekeepers' to lviv, for 'security purposes'.
But I appreciate the chutzpah of a russian trying to reframe europe’s unconditional support for ukraine as somehow morally responsible for ukrainian deaths at the hand of russia.
Maybe after we threaten to withdraw support and zelensky tells us to go fuck ourselves, putin will decide he wants all of ukraine anyway, which is far easier now that ukraine has less equipment. I don’t believe putin wants peace. I don’t even believe he wants peace on the terms he just proposed. It’s all a charade for trump’s benefit, putin and zelensky playing hot potato.
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There was some discussion. I think the consensus was that it was a joke, and people were arguing over which side ought to take it seriously.
More discussion from last month. Personally, I think that analysis still holds.
There’s also the Transnational Thursday threads to consider.
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The main problem isn’t the drones, it’s the massive imbalance in tube artillery. HIMARS systems are neat but they are vulnerable to counter-battery fire and can’t substitute for Russia having ten times as many standard howitzers. NATO’s main advantage is air power, which is politically untenable to deploy and logistically untenable to give to Ukraine.
There was also an imbalance in FPV drones too, with Ukrainian drone forces commander claiming Russians were using several times more last year.
More recently, they were also saying the Russian state-supported drone program is overwhelming and the very modern, very gamified Ukrainian drone ecosystem one isn't up for scaling sufficiently.
So I'm guessing situation hasn't changed drone wise much.
I can't find anything on this, and I severely doubt the Ukrainians would state this.
The contents of the article don't corroborate the claim made in the caption of the hyperlink. Do you have any evidence to support the claim that Russians had several times more drones in 2024 or that the Russian drone program is "overwhelming" or that anyone on Ukraine's side actually claimed this?
I was mildly surprised too.
Pretty clear, no?
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What makes them more vulnerable? Aren’t they supposed to be “highly mobile”?
This is a genuine question. I don’t fully understand how they’re utilized compared to traditional artillery. I know the U.S. is converting some howitzer battalions to HIMARS; they cite improved long-range lethality, which makes sense for the intel-heavy approach to fire support. But that’s not really a privilege enjoyed by Ukraine, is it?
Drones. Russia has finally been able to amass enough recon drones that HIMARSes have to keep well away from the line of contact. This subtracts a couple tens of kilometers from the GMLRS range, allowing Russian logistics to edge closer to the line of contact.
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The fact that most of your artillery strike capacity is reliant on the survival of four vehicles. You lose one of those, now your strike capacity is down 25 percent (not a perfect figure since the Ukrainians do have some tube artillery of their own too, but you get the idea).They used to be pretty resistant to counter-battery fire due to their mobility, but the Russians developed better ways of tracking and eliminating them after a year or two. That’s why you don’t hear a lot about them anymore. There are only about 400-700 HIMARS systems in existence and the rumor is Ukraine has gone through about 75-100.
HIMARS ammunition capacity is a problem too. Plus the Russians got better at distributing logistics so there aren’t as many huge ammunition depos within strike range. HIMARS only carry about 4-6 rockets, and are best suited for strikes against a few large key targets, not doing 40 artillery strikes a day against small infantry positions for weeks at a time. French Caesar systems and other similar systems have the same issues. Intel isn’t much of a problem since they get live satellite coverage from US systems.
The few sources I saw showed closer to a 1:1 ratio on replacement. I’m not sure what effect that has on volume of fire. Sure, the HIMARS are only tossing 6 rockets each, but they’re much larger warheads than even the 155mm shells.
I agree that they’ve got to lose out on sustained fire, especially given the cost per round…but that’s a separate issue from vulnerability to counter-battery fire. Shoot and scoot should be much safer than setting up one of those monster cannons, right?
I'm not an expert, but it sounds like this isn't meta anymore in this war
counter battery radar seems to not be as strong/precise as "you have 2 minutes after you shoot before the place you shot from explodes". This could be a "lol Soviets" issue, or maybe a limitation of the systems in practicality. I also wonder if emitting as a counter battery radar is dangerous. So there isn't profound pressure to move after firing.
scooting is really really dangerous. The prevalence of ISR drones means ripping down a road is very dangerous. They might not find you if you pop out, fire, and pop back into your hide sight. It's much more likely they'll find you on one of the handful of roads in the region, which they're likely watching regardless. Plus your hide site can be hardened against drones.
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They aren't that much larger.
The warhead is a mere 200 lb, twice as heavy as a howitzer round. While missiles can be thin-skinned and with fragmentation cover a larger area, it's not massively better than a common modern howitzer shell.
Very good against targets in the open, yes. If you wanted to target people in the basement of a reinforced concrete building, you could spend millions of $. Needless to say, the fragmentation warheads is probably useless even against sturdier dugouts, which must be hit with the unitary warhead.
It's a decent weapon especially with the ISR Ukraine is given, but they're getting too little ammo for some reason. Daily rate of fire was allegedly <10. Military artisanal complex strikes again!
The systems countering HIMARS is Tornado (250 kg warhead, 200km range) and Iskander (~500 kg, 500km range) are both similarly mobile and capable of leaving the launch site quickly. They're also vulnerable to stuff such as Lancet drones, but these are less common now, perhaps bc they can be intercepted with electric drone interceptors that are more common now.
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Sure, for each individual unit. But Russia has 4-5 thousand individual artillery pieces in the field, including around a thousand to fifteen hundred that are also self propelled (though not as accurate). Ukraine has 1500 tube artillery plus a handful of western MRLS systems. So individual Russian artillery pieces and systems get destroyed too, but it’s not going to change the overall disparity in volume of fire.
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