Ukraine: Holding

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

OTOH, unless I'm forgetting something, this is the closest we've ever gotten to two modern armies fighting each other. Everything else has been a modern army versus an incredibly outdated one or against insurgents. Maybe this is just what an all-modern conflict looks like.

Ignoring everything that makes this impossible and nonsensical, if the US had invaded the UK in 2003 instead of Iraq, maybe the US would've seen similar casualty numbers after a week as well.

Although, it does seem like Russia has had remarkably poor planning for a modern army.

I agree, if two modern armies are genuinely set on destroying one another, I would expect casualties to be very high indeed.  But the Russians (thus far anyway) have also been making some very questionable decisions on military strategy, which are likely to only drive that number further up.  Sending out small detachments of armored vehicles to occupy crossroad towns, without any preparatory bombardments is extremely dangerous if the opposing side has handheld anti-ground weapons (which Ukrainians do).  Doubly so when the detachments involve troops of questionable morale and training.  I expect that practice has either already ended or will end very soon. 

And responding to Wert's point, if the Russians set up for a protracted siege/starvation campaign of Kyiv and Kharkiv that would be dramatically worse than what we've seen thus far.  I am not sure what the political ramifications of that would be.  Surely pressure on Russia not to starve a million civilians to death would be pretty substantial, although who knows how much higher pressure can really go.