Ukraine War: incompetence vs fecklessness

[Toth]

4 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I am starting to wonder about something here...

The claim is Russia now has momentum, owing in part to Ukraine's munition shortage.

Yet, suppose, just suppose, this munitions shortage is not as severe as advertised. Suppose that this is 'public knowledge' because Ukraine is setting the Russians up for a sucker punch - they let the Russians advance, and fall back, with comparatively modest artillery fire. Then, the Ukrainians launch a devastating counterattack with long-range munitions that are supposed to be expended. Suppose this attack cost the Russians 100,000+ troops over a day or three. What might the effects be?

Would be a pretty a pretty optimistic take on things, huh? But unfortunately it seems mostly to be the case that the territory directly behind Avdiivka seems to be rather flat and sparsely settled with few defensible positions. So right now Ukraine is forced to fight a mobile retreat towards the next line of defense, which is rather messy. Meanwhile across the front Russia is pressing the ammunition advantage, apparently also aggressively deploying their aircraft to break Ukrainian positions. This weekend I saw a report on TV where they interviewed Ukrainian soldiers near Robotyne and I found it particularly odd they specifically stated the worst is the heavy air strikes they have to weather against, not the artillery or drones. Which makes the continued news of shot down aircraft not particularly surprising. In the end, I don't think this is some kind of elaborate trap, but instead Russia throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the Ukrainians to force them to spread their limited ammunition across the entire front line and make gains before the election.

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I am starting to wonder about something here...

The claim is Russia now has momentum, owing in part to Ukraine's munition shortage.

Yet, suppose, just suppose, this munitions shortage is not as severe as advertised. Suppose that this is 'public knowledge' because Ukraine is setting the Russians up for a sucker punch - they let the Russians advance, and fall back, with comparatively modest artillery fire. Then, the Ukrainians launch a devastating counterattack with long-range munitions that are supposed to be expended. Suppose this attack cost the Russians 100,000+ troops over a day or three. What might the effects be?

The Ukrainians are pretty good at Xanatos Gambits, but not that good.

However, Russia is also sustaining significant shortages of material, and very significant shortages of high-quality material (getting a million North Korean shells isn't worth as much as you'd think when 40% of the shells misfire, fail to detonate or even explode in the tube). That means Russia has not been able to capitalise on Ukraine's supply issues as much as it could have done. Ukraine is lucky in that sense.

They're even luckier that the Czechs have found these 800,000 artillery shells that fell down behind the sofa. As long as they can be delivered into the Ukrainian theatre in the next couple of weeks, that would go some way to forestalling the Russian advantage and preventing it turn into a more dangerous problem when Russian's own production pipeline starts kicking in more effectively.

[Werthead]

Russia has been attacking on a wide front in the area around Avdiivka since 26 February, making good on their capture of the town and harrying Ukrainian forces back to their next-prepared defensive lines. Russia experienced significant success, capturing Berdychi, Orlivka, Tonenke, Krasnohorivka , Pobieda and Novomykhailivka. This was an extremely broad advance on a wide front, if shallow, and if it had continued, could have become alarming.

However, since the night of 29 February, Ukraine has mounted a significant, wide-ranging counter-attack. The Russian advance has been halted in Berdychi and some reports that Russian forces have been driven back. Russian reinforcements heading for Berdychi have been destroyed. It appears that the very heavy Ukrainian forces formerly holding Stepove had withdrawn via Berdychi, laid a trap, and counter-attacked as the Russians advanced, halting them in their tracks. Some suggestions that Berdychi may have even been fully retaken.

Orlivka fell after a glide-bomb-driven assault, but the Ukrainian 3rd Assault has retaken the village after destroying a bunch of Russian IFVs and a T-80.

Tonenke was hit by glide bombs and then assaulted by the 1st Motor Rifle Brigade of the Donetsk People's Republic. However, the Ukrainian 53rd Mechanised Division were able to repulse the attacks. The Russians reinforced with the 1439th Motor Rifle Regiment, a formation of low-quality mobiks, but were defeated. Ukraine retook the town and some indications they may have even counter-attacked the retreating Russians back towards Sieverne.

Krasnohorivka was retaken by the 3rd Assault shortly after it fell into Russian hands.

Pobieda is now contested, with the Ukrainian 33rd Mechanised holding the western side of the village after fierce combat.

Novomykhalivka was retaken by the 79th Airbone, who drove Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade out of the village in fierce battle. One Ukrainian T-64 was destroyed. The 155th NIB claims to be "Russian Marines" but is actually sailors from the Russian Navy re-deployed as infantry.

We've also seen the 98th VDV Division and 11th VDV Brigade being driven back with heavy losses from Bohdanivka and Ivaniske on the outskirts of Bakhmut. It now appears that the Russian counter-assault on Robotyne by the 42nd Motor-Rifle Division has also halted due to very heavy losses, despite some hair moments.

All of this has contributed to around 900 Russian deaths per day for the last two weeks, which is in the uppermost loss ratios of the entire war for the Russians, outdone only by the fiercest fighting for Bakhmut and Avdiivka and the twin cities in 2022.

Ukraine is achieving all of this despite conserving its artillery ammunition.

Some reports that Russia will impose an export ban on diesel for the next six months, after Ukrainian drone attacks were so success in damaging Russian terminals that all diesel supplies are now needed for the war effort.

New theories emerging that Ukraine has integrated multiple radar solutions with Patriot, breaking up each Patriot "unit" into 4-8 batteries capable of independent operation. This has allowed Patriot batteries to cover vaster areas of territory than Russia believed possible. Also speculation this may be a practice run allowing these radar systems to communicate with F-16s from the ground, allowing F-16s to engage Russian targets without activating their own radar systems (making them more vulnerable to AA fire).

Possibly a brewing UK-German dustup, with the UK suggesting it could buy Taurus missiles from Germany to replenish its cruise missile reserves with promises not to resell to Ukraine, and Britain would then release additional Storm Shadows to Ukraine. The Germans seem to not be keen, which is weird.

Edited March 3 by Werthead

[Makk]

Navalny's funeral was held over the weekend. Estimated to be more than 16000 people during the funeral itself and many more kept coming to visit the grave the next day. People were chanting "Ukrainians are not the enemy", "Bring the soldiers home", and "Putin is a murderer". There were around 100 people arrested, obviously far too many people there for widespread arrests but the FSB might be very busy this week, there was a lot of surveillance. This is worth a look

Comments from the funeral

Also after Ukraine has shot down 14 jets in 15 days there have been no new Russian glide bombs dropped in the last 24 hours. Big relief for the troops on the front line which seems to have stabilised after a massive number of Russian assaults all along the line over the last week.

 

[Loge]

On 3/3/2024 at 1:26 AM, Werthead said:

Possibly a brewing UK-German dustup, with the UK suggesting it could buy Taurus missiles from Germany to replenish its cruise missile reserves with promises not to resell to Ukraine, and Britain would then release additional Storm Shadows to Ukraine. The Germans seem to not be keen, which is weird.

Everybody wonders why Scholz doesn't want to give Ukraine these missiles. There's some kerfuffle in Germany about a conference (not sure if it was video or audio only) that has been wiretapped and published by the Russians. Four generals of the German air force discuss Taurus and if the Ukrainians could use it without German service personnel being involved. Apparently it's possible (Sholz claims it isn't), but would take some extra effort and time. They also imply the presence of UK and US service personnel in Ukraine.

The Russian propaganda makes a big fuss about their discussion of how to destroy the Kherch bridge.  

[Wilbur]

8 hours ago, Loge said:

The Russian propaganda makes a big fuss about their discussion of how to destroy the Kherch bridge.  

Who is the Russian propaganda supposed to influence?  I can't imagine any Americans giving a damn if the Ukrainians turn the Kerch Bridge into metallic fragments.  Do Europeans care?  Why?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

10 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

Who is the Russian propaganda supposed to influence?  I can't imagine any Americans giving a damn if the Ukrainians turn the Kerch Bridge into metallic fragments.  Do Europeans care?  Why?

Divide and conquer. They are trying to create/increase divisions among Ukraine's backers in the west. Scholz now has quite a bit of explaining to do regarding his no to Taurus.  Domestically, and I can't see the UK or France being too impressed wih Germany's BS no to Taurus.

[Bironic]

11 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

Who is the Russian propaganda supposed to influence?  I can't imagine any Americans giving a damn if the Ukrainians turn the Kerch Bridge into metallic fragments.  Do Europeans care?  Why?

In this case mainly internal german politics, in a broader sense european/western politics in general. The support for Ukraine is waning in a lot of countries and the idea of becoming ever more involved in this war is less and less popular. The destruction of the Kerch Bridge is seen by a lot of people and politicians as an "escalation" of the war and thus should be avoided if possible. Aside from the fact that a lot of military analysts think that the destruction of the Kerch bridge is not really useful and tactically not very sound anyway, even if it were possible...

[Maithanet]

Perun has a good video about where the war stands in 2024.  A few key takeaways for me:

 - The war has something of a WW1 in 1916 feel, where both sides are under significant strain, but are not really showing signs of faltering just yet, and in some ways the war just keeps getting bigger.

 - There have been several huge swings in momentum and popular opinion that have mostly been wrong.  The war has had several swings in the initiative and it is always tempting to assume that the latest swing is the important/last one, but it probably isn't. 

 - The amount of drones in this war is approaching truly colossal levels.  Both sides (combined) are expending 100k or more drones per month.  Over a million drones will be lost/used up in 2024 alone!

 - 80% of Russian tanks/IFVs delivered to the front are refurbished, reactivated vehicles, not new ones.  The quality of the Russian vehicles and artillery that can be reactivated is steadily declining.  Plenty of T-62s with no visible upgrades were used in taking Avdiivka.  Likewise Russia has begun deploying and using 1940s era D1 artillery pieces.  Now, this equipment is not worthless, an old artillery piece can still lob explosives that kill people.  But it will do so less accurately, with less range and less reliability than a piece from the 1980s (to say nothing of 2024 equipment). 

 - Russia's artillery fleet is transitioning from 70% self propelled pieces in 2022 to ~80% towed pieces now (you can see a graph at 51:40).  Self propelled artillery is better, it is usually newer and has greater survivability in the face of counterbattery fire.  However, self propelled artillery is usually harder to maintain and more expensive.  Russia would prefer to be reactivating self propelled artillery, but there isn't any left in storage.  In fact, Russia's stores of some types of artillery are basically gone, and for many other types, all that is left is equipment that is 70+ years old.  Even if you can refurbish a 1950 artillery piece to work again, finding usable ammo for that piece is going to be tricky, and getting any more once stores run out will be basically impossible. 

 - Important to note that "out of units in storage" doesn't mean Russia doesn't have any artillery pieces.  It still has huge numbers of them at the front, and probably more deployed elsewhere on the border.  What it does mean is that replacing destroyed/worn out pieces is already getting difficult for Russia.  If it is reduced to only the IFVs or artillery it can produce and purchase from overseas, that will be a significant limiting factor in Russia's ability to fight the war, something it hasn't had to deal with in the first two years. 

 - Across the board, Russian production ramped up earlier and faster than NATO production.  This is particularly true of ammo production, where Russian ammo ramped up dramatically from 2023 to 2024, but is basically at its peak.  To significantly expand ammo production beyond 2024 levels, Russia will need to build new factories and buy new equipment, which will take many years.  In contrast, NATO artillery production is still ramping up and in Europe alone will come pretty close to matching Russian production by mid 2025 (and likely continue expanding from there).  If the US ever passes a Ukraine bill, it will similarly be pretty near Russian production levels within a year.  For both Europe and the US, if the political will exists, it could expand much more quickly and broadly than Russia is capable of in the 2025-2026 timeframe.  The problem is for the US that political will does not yet exist, and if Trump wins it certainly won't in 2025. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

The really interesting bit in the Perun video was what we discussed a few pages ago about Russia's war economy and sustainability.

Also interesting, Russia's problems with producing certain components. Namely engines for planes and ships. Which is on the one hand not that surprising, since fighting jet engines are very complicated to contruct and easy to mess up, but on the other hand kinda surprising, since you'd assume they have retained some expertise (at least that's what I'd assumed). So that's where sanctions bite.

[Kalbear]

Would love to see some kind of analysis of the cost per kill or cost of destroying pieces of equipment that each side is doing. I suspect that the Russian side is doing a much better job in that respect, especially now, and while Ukraine has better stuff the cost of using it relative to its effectiveness is way too high for them to sustain without major help from anyone else. 

The western way of warfare continues to not at all be designed for attitive or longer term fighting.

[Ran]

51 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Would love to see some kind of analysis of the cost per kill or cost of destroying pieces of equipment that each side is doing.

This Ukrainian site offers an estimate on the cost of Russian losses. Note, however, that it appears to draw it data from the Ukrainian military and a Forbes Ukrainian-language article that tries to estimate the values. This site doesn't try to estimate values, but does track equipment losses by both sides based on open source intel.

I'm sure there's probably some Russian site doing the same is estimating cost of Ukrainian losses, but I admit I've not found anything at all like the above sites. I suspect partly this has to do with the disparate sources of equipment Ukraine has, whereas most of the Russian equipment is domestically produced and part of long-established supply chains.

Edited March 5 by Ran

[SpaceChampion]

Another important dimension is the degrading ability to transport cargo around Russia.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/27740

Not enough locomotives, lack of ability to get parts and materials (special lubricants, bearings, etc.), lack of personnel for maintenance and repair as they've deployed to Ukraine, etc.

It looks like it's slowed the economy down but it isn't in a "Russia is collapsing as a nation" degree.  Potential coups in my mind is just replacing one asshole with another.  But lack of ability to maintain the engines of the economy would the canary in the coal mine making possible for distant oblasts to actually break away.  Maybe in 20 years after the effects of this war and Russians is in the midst of a worsening population crisis.

[Maithanet]

Another thing that I thought was interesting in the video was his discussion of why using older equipment is bad, but not crippling.  Older guns are more likely to misfire and fall on your own troops.  They can catastrophically fail, killing or injuring nearby troops.  Even when things are going right, they have less range so you have to get closer to the lines in order to fire.  They have a worse rate of fire, so it takes longer to put out whatever amount of shells has been called for.  They are less accurate, so it will take more shots to destroy your target.  All of this means exposing yourself to counterbattery for MUCH longer.  Skilled artillery crews are not nearly as easy to come by as half-trained conscripts with a rifle.  The more that Russia relies on older artillery pieces, the more casualties they will sustain amongst those crews.   

It is safe to say that using 50 or 70 year old artillery is likely to be very bad for morale in both the artillery and nearby infantry.  But firing from a 70 year old gun is still better than artillery that isn't firing at all. 

Edited March 5 by Maithanet

[Luzifer's right hand]

I think one thing that even the most pessimistic of us overlooked is that getting men of other ethnic groups killed is not really a problem for Russia. More a side benefit.

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Bironic said:

The support for Ukraine is waning in a lot of countries and the idea of becoming ever more involved in this war is less and less popular. The destruction of the Kerch Bridge is seen by a lot of people and politicians as an "escalation" of the war and thus should be avoided if possible. Aside from the fact that a lot of military analysts think that the destruction of the Kerch bridge is not really useful and tactically not very sound anyway, even if it were possible...

I'm not sure about all of that.  I've seen surveys that say that other Europeans are much less confident that Ukraine can win the war.  But I haven't seen anything in Europe that says that there has been a significant increase in people thinking  European countries should reduce their involvement.  I could easily have missed some surveys in other countries though.

For example, I doubt many Europeans know anything about the Kerch bridge. If they are asked about it, the way they are asked about is would be very leading.

People are probably worried about whether Europe has a plan around Ukraine and would be unsure of spending money on something when a plan doesn't exist.  But that isn't the same thing as not supporting Ukraine.

[Werthead]

38 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I think one thing that even the most pessimistic of us overlooked is that getting men of other ethnic groups killed is not really a problem for Russia. More a side benefit.

I think that Moscow sees it as a benefit, but they might be wrong. Multiple Russian regions and oblasts are now running at a relatively high level of anti-Moscow feeling, including outright riots in several areas. Keeping casualties away from St. Petersburg, Moscow and the big Russian-European cities to avoid a repeat of Afghanistan is a good idea, but you're piling massive death rates in demographics that can't afford it in places like Buryatia, which has suffered insane losses for such a tiny region (I've seen estimates of 5,000 deaths out of a total population of 970,000). If Russia's ability to move troops around internally seriously falters, and somewhere like Buryatia (which is many thousands of miles away on the border of Mongolia) says, "fuck this, we're out," especially if they cut a deal with, say, China, immediately afterwards, there's not going to be a lot that Moscow can do about it.

I'm pretty certain Dagestan and Tatarstan would have already gone if they weren't relatively close to Russian security forces reinforcing them (Tatarstan is also landlocked within other Russian regions, which is a problem). But if Chechnya were to secede, I suspect at least three or four other regions would follow. Kadyrov will probably stick with Russia as long as Putin is alive, but if he dies without a clear succession plan, Kadyrov might either secede or try a Prigozhin-style death drive to take over in Moscow directly (this will be fiercely opposed). Kadyrov was, at various points, a close ally of Prigozhin and seems to have complicated issues over how that situation was handled.

Edited March 5 by Werthead

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

This Ukrainian site offers an estimate on the cost of Russian losses. Note, however, that it appears to draw it data from the Ukrainian military and a Forbes Ukrainian-language article that tries to estimate the values. This site doesn't try to estimate values, but does track equipment losses by both sides based on open source intel.

I'm sure there's probably some Russian site doing the same is estimating cost of Ukrainian losses, but I admit I've not found anything at all like the above sites. I suspect partly this has to do with the disparate sources of equipment Ukraine has, whereas most of the Russian equipment is domestically produced and part of long-established supply chains.

Thanks! And that second link has sort of some of the things that I was really thinking about. This is a good example:

Quote

This graph, however, highlights the challenges Ukraine still faces. When the sheer scale of Russian tanks are considered (13,300 vs. 2,100 for Ukraine), the steep Russian losses are not yet bringing parity. In general, Ukraine loses 1 tank for every 3 it takes from Russia. This ratio has to get to 4 or higher to be sustainable. Note that this estimate factors in verified tank captures by both Russia and Ukraine.

It does note that Ukraine's tank losses are negative overall, however - that Ukraine is gaining more tanks than it loses. 

But yeah, it's that sort of thing that interests me. Clearly Russia can and will spend more to win than the West is choosing to do, so looking at the overall cost isn't all you need - but you also need to make sure that every piece of equipment that the West is donating or giving to Ukraine is taking out significantly more pieces of Russian kit, especially when you factor in how so much of Russian's weaponry is effectively sunk costs now - things that have been in mothballs for decades - and costs them nothing other than some ammunition and lives. 

And the lives, as far as I can tell, are either not an issue for Russia or are a net positive. 

[Wilbur]

One thing that the USN had better be on top of is the way that the Ukrainians have been so successful in attacking naval resources without any real Navy of their own.

Drone attacks on Russian Black Sea elements could very easily be replicated on American ships off Yemen pretty shortly, given how Ukraine has shown the world how to do it.

[Bironic]

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

I'm not sure about all of that.  I've seen surveys that say that other Europeans are much less confident that Ukraine can win the war.  But I haven't seen anything in Europe that says that there has been a significant increase in people thinking  European countries should reduce their involvement.  I could easily have missed some surveys in other countries though.

In Slovakia a pro russian government was elected (not necessarily because it was pro Russian but it was a side effect). In Italy two out of the three parties in government are pro Russia and the third one is halfway there. In France there is a reasonable chance that the next president will be pro russian (either right wing extreme or left-wing populist), in Germany you have constantly around 40 % of the population that thinks there should be less or no military aid to Ukraine. In the US Trump and the Republicans have a reasonable chance to win the elections (white house and/or Congress) If you look at the statistics who supports Ukraine and who doesn't do as much, you have a clear divide within Europe/the West and there is no sign that the countries that are at the lower end will step up, while there are clear indications that the more supportive countries seem to run out of material, money etc.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

but you're piling massive death rates in demographics that can't afford it in places like Buryatia, which has suffered insane losses for such a tiny region (I've seen estimates of 5,000 deaths out of a total population of 970,000). If Russia's ability to move troops around internally seriously falters, and somewhere like Buryatia (which is many thousands of miles away on the border of Mongolia) says, "fuck this, we're out," especially if they cut a deal with, say, China, immediately afterwards, there's not going to be a lot that Moscow can do about it.

Buryatia doesn't border China and I don't think there is any movement there to join China, they're not of Han-Chinese ethnicity, in fact the majority of the people in Buryatia identify as russian and it would only change one oppressive regime with another one. Who's to say they won't be the first ones on the beaches in Taiwan? And let's say Buryatia would try to join the PRC, then China would have to accept an enclave that is internationally regarded as legitimate russian territory, why should they do that? And how would they get there? waltzing through mongolia? Through other russian territories? A lot of those are mountainous and full of forests, with freezing winters, little infrastructure, broad gauge railways... I am no expert on chinese military but that seems like a really bad plan...

Russia is still Chinas best ally, they don't have that many other states on their side with permanent UNSC seats, Nukes, large military, G20 economy, tons of natural resources, immense size, strategic location etc.  And while I am generally of the opinion that Putin isn't going to use nukes, something I could see him doing in such a scenario is dropping a nuke somewhere in siberia/arctic/central asian deserts where there isn't much people anyways as a sign to the chinese that the next one might be aimed at Beijing. And he could do more: like enter in a treaty with Taiwan or encourage North/south Korea, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, India to take back Chinese territories that are populated by minorities (Uyghurs, Mongols, Koreans, Tibetans etc.) and claimed at least partially(in the case of India) by those countries.

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

One thing that the USN had better be on top of is the way that the Ukrainians have been so successful in attacking naval resources without any real Navy of their own.

Drone attacks on Russian Black Sea elements could very easily be replicated on American ships off Yemen pretty shortly, given how Ukraine has shown the world how to do it.

I agree! All the major naval powers in the world should better prepare for Ukrainian style attacks on their ships...

 

Edited March 5 by Bironic