The continuing stalemate in the Ukraine War
In the past few months the situation in the war between Russia and the Ukraine has had some significant battlefield events that suggested the situation is becoming unstable. First, Russia began an offensive campaign along the northern border of the Ukraine near the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, pushing back into the same territory it had abandoned during its major retreat and defeats in the fall of 2022.
This offensive, combined with the gains Russia has made in the past few months in eastern Ukraine, suggested that it had completely recovered from those 2022 defeats, and was now moving forward in its effort to conquer the Ukraine in its entirety. At least, that’s how it seemed from a cursory outsider’s view.
Then, last month, the Ukraine launched its own offensive across the border into Russia’s Kursk region, the first time any Russian territory had been invaded since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022. That same cursory view suggested that the situation was becoming unstable, and that Russia now faced a serious problem of its own.
To me, the only way to find out how serious these changes are since my last Ukraine War update six months ago, in February 2024, is to do another, and to compare the territorial changes on a map, as I have done every time previously.
Not surprisingly, a look at the map brings clarity to the situation.
The two maps above are taken from the maps produced by the Institude for the Study of War (ISW). The map on the left shows in pink Russia’s territorial gains within the Ukraine as of November 2022, shortly after it was forced to retreat along the front in many places. The red striped regions are the territories Russia conquered in its first invasion in 2014.
The map on the right is taken from today’s ISW report, and shows the present territorial situation, with the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk province indicated by the tiny blue dot north of the city of Sumy. The Russian push south to Kharkiv is indicated by the small pink splotches to the east and north of that city.
Compare the two maps. Not only are these new border incusions by both nations small, the new territory Russia has captured in the last six months along eastern front of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has been as small and relatively insignificant. Russia has certainly made gains, but they have had to fight hard for every foot, and thus have only won territory in tiny increments.
In April 2023 I predicted that this war was turning into a stalement, the equivalent of the trench warfare seen for most of World War I. The Ukraine did not appear to have the capability to execute any major offensive, while Russia was unwilling to declare a full war against the Ukraine and thus harness its full nation in the battle.
Nothing has changed since then. Russia’s gains have continued to be small and gained with great cost. The Ukraine meanwhile has attempted its small invasion near Kursk not to conquer Russia but to force it to spread out its limited invasion forces more widely. The invasion is likely not to extend much deeper into Russia, but its existence now forces Russia to strengthen its defenses all along its entire border with the Ukraine.
As a result, it appears that this war will continue to drag on for years to come. And unlike World War I, there is no giant third party in the wings that can enter the war and tip this balance of power one way or the other. In World War I, after almost four years of stalemate, the U.S. entered the war in 1918, and its addition of one million troops made an Allied victory almost certain. Germany thus quickly came to the negotiating table and sued for peace.
No outside force is going to do the same for the Ukraine. And based on Russia’s relatively mild reaction to the Ukrainian incusion into Kursk, we should not expect Russia to declare war in order to mobilize its whole nation, the only action that might possibly allow Russia to win this thing more quickly. Putin apparently realizes that the Russians are not interested in participating in a full scale war, especially because they understand what the rest of the world does, that the Ukraine poses no threat to them. They will support his partial mobilization that leaves them mostly free to continue their lives as before, but if he demands more from them, they will object, and do so strongly, to the point where Putin himself could be pushed out.
Thus, we continue to have a stalemate. Russia might eventually win, but it will only do so after many years of fighting, all the while draining the nation’s wealth and military strength.
From a purely realpolitik point of view, this situation is excellent for both Europe and America. It ties up Russia and reduces its ability to invade other nations.
From a more idealistic point of view, the larger goals remain the same. Russia must not win, because if it succeeds in conquering the Ukraine it will certainly go on to try to conquer other bordering nations, most especially those nations that were part of the Soviet Union. This type of aggression needs to be stymied, or else it grows.
That the war remains a stalemate thus serves both the realpolitik and idealistic goals, and does so without requiring that much from the West. In fact, the financial aid given so far, in the many billions, is probably more than was necessary for the Ukraine to hold Russia in check.
A good future policy would be to quietly limit future aid packages (because we really cannot afford them any longer), while maintaining a loud alliance with the Ukraine and its effort. Such a policy would limit the damages to our own country while helping the Ukraine prevent a full Russia victory.
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Kamala Harris (D) before she is inaugurated on January 20th 2025 will have the Ukraine / Russia situation all straightened out. (That and eliminating the taxes on tips.)
Have no doubt.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelenski will be dealing with someone who is at a significantly elevated level when dealing with Ms. Harris as president and will quickly comply with her leadership.
Kamala Harris speaking with her mouth: https://youtu.be/j6qzYdGwQBY?si=cpT-dUU5SACDDAs8
CRIME: DEMOCRATS DELIVER CRIME EVERY DAY
“And I guess these numbers may not mean much to you if you have not been robbed, raped or murdered by these Democrat party “Guests” to America for their own radical anti-America political power and control purposes. ”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/crime-democrats-deliver-crime-every-day
What you call a stalemate is really a war of attrition. It will end when one side or the other runs out of either men or equipment. While Russian casualties are horrendous by Western standards, the Russians for the most part don’t care, so the number of men will not likely be the decisive factor for either side. That means the war will be decided by the amount of equipment lost.
The Ukrainians have the backing of the West, so as long as the West holds firm (not a given), they are not going to run out of equipment. The Russians, however, will.
Russian military production is tiny compared to the Soviet days, and due to Western sanctions, it has dropped to almost nil. They rely on Iran for drone production and North Korea for artillery shells. They have lost tanks, artillery pieces, and armored vehicles by the thousands and have replaced them not with new builds — because they can’t — but with mothballed pieces pulled out of Soviet-era stockpiles.
Those stockpiles are huge, but they are not infinite. And when they’re gone, the Russians are out of the warmaking business. The most limiting item will likely be their tanks. They started this invasion with about 2,800 tanks. They’ve lost about 4,000 of them. They have about 10,000 Soviet-era tanks in storage, but about 40% of them are nothing but piles of rust by now. The other 6,000 or so are being refurbished and sent to the front, but when those are gone, Russia is done.
I would not have predicted three years ago that the Russians would accept such losses to try to conquer a foreign country, but they are. The “glory” of empire dies hard, it seems. I wish it hadn’t come to this, but it did, so the West needs to hold firm and help Ukraine put the evil empire where we thought we put it 30 years ago: on the ash heap of history.
Oh, one more thing. Kudos to Bob for looking at the map before writing the post. So many people are unwilling — or perhaps unable — to do that. So they rattle off a handful of “villages” that the Russians have recently captured as though they are on a thunder run to Kiev, not realizing the villages are all within five miles of each other and each one is the size of a cul-de-sac in a subdivision.
Based on satellite imagery looking at Russian tank parks – “Twenty-eight months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, stocks of T-55s are down 31 percent, T-62s are down 37 percent and T-80Bs are down a startling 79 percent. ” Forbes). It is estimated they are losing 100 tanks per month and producing – at a maximum – 50. Now thesemay not have capabilities that the Russians would like to have due to Western boycotts, but even a mediocre tank is better than no tank.
From “Covert Cabal”
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=covert+cabal+youtube&mid=A603B2291096CCF54EE0A603B2291096CCF54EE0&FORM=VIRE
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=covert%20cabal%20youtube&mid=9B770591A660E500AFA59B770591A660E500AFA5&ajaxhist=0
With all due respect, Mr. Z., I think your analysis of the Russo-Ukraine War is a bit too cursory. This is quite a dynamic conflict, not a stalemate. And counting areas “held” on a map doesn’t come close to telling the whole story. Looking strictly at territory held, WW2 in Western Europe was also a “stalemate” from the Fall of France right up until D-Day. But it hardly resembled WW1. The Allies spent multiple years building up invasion forces and pounding German-held territory from the air. The Ukrainians have been doing precisely analogous things for close to two years now.
The campaign of deep drone strikes on Russian industrial and military targets that has been underway for months is pretty much the equivalent of what the U.S. 8th Air Force and British Bomber Command were doing to the Germans in 1941 – 44 but with vastly less expensive robot aircraft and zero crew losses while at the same time achieving much better average results.
mkent’s comment is correct, of course, the Russians are running out of tanks and also of other armored vehicles and artillery pieces. In even shorter supply are such things as anti-aircraft missile batteries and radars, helicopters and aircraft. Then there’s the corporal’s guard that the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been reduced to with Sevastopol’s naval facilities all but abandoned, the “fleet,” such as it is, cowering in Novorossiysk and the Black Sea now, largely, a Ukrainian lake.
Russia’s stripping of anti-air assets from its interior and their concentration in Ukraine has simply made the place a target-rich environment for Ukrainian drones. It has also allowed Ukraine’s sudden new major incursions into Kursk and Belgorod oblasts to proceed without requiring much attention to the mostly absent Russian Air Force. The Russians lost several irreplaceable helicopters in attempts to repel these incursions early-on, and at least one in-flight loss of its ever-dwindling supply of Su-34 fighter-bombers. There is speculation it may have been the victim of one of the F-16s recently delivered to Ukraine. As one wag noted, “The Russians have achieved comprehensive air inferiority.”
You also write incorrectly of “financial assistance” to Ukraine. There has certainly been some of that, but most of the billions one hears about “going to Ukraine” are actually going to U.S. defense contractors to replace long-warehoused weaponry we are donating to Ukraine and to expand and upgrade both the U.S. defense industrial base and its products. The stuff in the warehouses was originally produced to kill Russians in Europe and now it finally is. Absent the war, we would be looking at having to expensively dispose of a lot of this stuff fairly soon anyway.
Under the impetus of needing to restock those warehouses for our own account, the U.S. is now well along the way toward a 10X increase in artillery shell production capability and the number of suppliers of small solid-fueled rocket motors for tactical missiles has tripled. It seems unlikely we will need this stuff to fight the Russians ourselves, but we may well be damned glad to have it on-line should we wind up having to fight the PRC.
Ukraine, in any case, has now amply demonstrated that there is less and less of Russia it cannot hold at risk. Russia, barely making any ground in Ukraine proper, has zero capability to do so if it has to keep actual soldiers tied down defending its own frontiers and interior. The “border guards” and “soldiers” the Ukrainians have encountered in the early going in Kursk and Belgorod are reminiscent of the Volksturm and the Hitler Youth formations Germany was fielding near the end of WW2 – oldsters and beardless boys.
Ukraine, in any case, now has effective control of far more than the tiny blue blob on your map. I think this whole offensive is very much a strategic effort to show the Russians that Ukraine can keep on changing the rules to its advantage if Russia doesn’t get out of Ukraine and go home and do both quite soon.
I also think the Europeans and Washington are parts of the target audience for this latest offensive. The Ukrainians want to put the Russians as far onto the back foot as possible, especially in advance of what is now guaranteed to be a new administration in DC. If Ukraine can actually wind this war up on its own terms by January, or even November, it would remove an issue from the desk of whomever will be sitting in the Oval Office next year.
Where is Trump on expressing his ideas of how this UKR/RU war can be ended? I know he said he would keep the UKR out of NATO. But he has to call out Harris for what I assume is her sharing the democrat parties hostility towards Russia. Does JD have anything to say on the matter?
Typo (2nd to last paragraph): stalement => stalemate.
This war will stop if the Ukraine is inducted into NATO.
For all of Russia’s bluster they have already seen NATO expand on their borders. The Ukraine would just be the last possible nation to join us.
Yes Russia will take back the territory that Ukraine has taken but the simple fact that they have had to work up to it is very telling. they have everything they can afford in tied up in the territory they are trying to hold.
On a side note, this is the first time that a key Russian GLOC (supply line) has been completely shut down (the Bridge was at least partially backed up by ferry traffic… until the last few weeks, in which Ukraine bagged the last of their rail ferries). Yes, they’ve spent the last two years running trains full of supplies just a few miles from the Ukrainian border, and never really paid for it. The loss of that one line has really messed with the flow of supplies to the Belgorod front, and Russia’s rail assets were already nearing the breaking point due to years of waste, stolen funds, neglect, and more recently, sanctions. Is this enough to break the bear? Heck, no. But it does pull a couple more blocks out of the Jenga tower. Logistically, Russia is *still* a 19th-century rail-centric power that has trouble supplying troops more than 50 miles from a railhead, and if they lose *that* ability, they will have a hard time supplying troops at all.
On the attrition front, Russia is running low on tanks, IFVs, artillery (and just as importantly, barrel liners!), fuel reserves (thanks in part to Ukraine’s strategic bombing campaign), and supply trucks. Troops are moving near the front in Chinese-built UTVs and motorcycles, supplies are often delivered (when they are at all) in pickups and vans, and supplies are loaded and unloaded almost entirely by hand. It’s likely that even Putin and his generals have no idea exactly what Russia has or doesn’t have in reserve at this point, given the endemic lying and backroom infighting that accompanies tyrannies and centralized economies (but I repeat myself). That makes it all but impossible for casual observers to figure out how much longer Russia can keep this up. The most thoughtful estimates (really, best-guesses) I’ve seen are 6-18 months, but there are so many unknown factors involved that it’s not even funny.
Michael McNeil: Fixed. Thank you.
Minor edit In penultimate paragraph: “That the war remains a stalemate”
Dick Eagleson: Your analysis comes down to one simple conclusion: In this stalemate or war of attrition or a quagmire or whatever we wish to call it, the present data suggests that in the end, Russia will be forced to come to the table to stop the bleeding.
Will the Ukraine? I suspect not without an agreement that has Russia retreat from the conquered territories. Which means the battle goes on. I suspect that the Ukraine’s focus will always be to force Russia out, without any major invasions of Russia itself, but who knows?
We can try to guess what will happen, but as far as I can tell, all we know right now is that neither side has an advantage, and that neither side is willing to back down. Thus, the stalemate (etc) goes on.
Andi: Already fixed, but thanks.
What Dick Eagleson said. To expand on that a bit…
”In even shorter supply are such things as anti-aircraft missile batteries and radars, helicopters and aircraft.”
The Russians started this invasion with 56 S-400 air defense systems to protect not just the occupied territories but also the entire Russian motherland. While they do have other shorter-range systems, the S-400 was the one everyone feared (roughly equivalent to the American Patriot). They’ve lost 10-12 of them now, each one costing Russia about half a billion dollars. Ukraine has shown the S-400 to be susceptible to SCALPs, Storm Shadows, ATACMS, and drones.
Likewise with the Ka-52 helicopter, roughly equivalent in function to the cancelled RAH-66 Comanche. Russia started the invasion with 133 of them. They lost about half of them. They can only build four per year. Then there’s the A-50U AWACS aircraft, roughly equivalent to the E-2D Hawkeye. They’re down to six of them now.
Russia has always been an infantry / artillery / armor force. They’ve never had the “force multipliers” that a Western military has. And they have a lot fewer of them now. I didn’t mention them this time (though I did in the previous update six months ago) because I don’t think Russia will stop the war if they run out of force multipliers. They will if they run out of tanks.
”…most of the billions one hears about ‘going to Ukraine’ are actually going to U.S. defense contractors…”
To tie this into the space theme of this site, some of the money is going to space companies like Maxar, Planet Labs, Black Sky, Capella, and Hawkeye 360. The Pentagon is paying the bills for commercial-grade space intelligence being sent to Ukraine. This has allowed those companies to upgrade their space assets also used by the U. S. government and helped Ukraine without disclosing classified capabilities. A win for all involved, if you ask me.
It’s just a good thing that Putin is the adult in the room here…
If Putin remains in control and has the will Russia has the mass to continue.
And for Putin to spend all of this political, military manpower and treasure and have to retreat back to where he began?
How likely is that?
supplies are often delivered (when they are at all) in pickups and vans, and supplies are loaded and unloaded almost entirely by hand
All of which is what we were told the Seventies. Read “Victor Suvarov’s” book .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_the_Soviet_Army
I am very disappointed in the shallow nature of the analysis of the war both by Mr. Zimmerman as well as by the other commenters. First Mr. Zimmerman: The war, as other commenters have pointed out, is not a stalemate at all, but is a war of attrition. This is in accordance with Russia’s publicly stated goals for the “Special Military Operation” which essentially makes the military destruction of Ukraine and its continued neutrality in foreign affairs non-negotiable from the Russian perspective. And make no doubt, the destruction of the Ukrainian military is happening.
The Ukrainian air force is now mostly non-existent, as are most of its air defense systems. And Ukrainian artillery and armored vehicle firepower is only a shadow of what it was at the beginning of the conflict, despite major influxes of weapons from NATO. All of this is due to the disciplined, dogmatic approach the Russians have followed in targeting (in order) Ukrainian air, air defense, artillery, and armored assets, even at the cost of foregoing short-term territorial gains. The Ukrainians have done a good job of maintaining their drone forces, but even they admit their drones are outnumbered by Russian drones by about a 6 to 1 ratio.
In contrast, the losses in Russia’s air force and air defense have been negligible and Russia has done a good job in replacing its losses with both internal production and in (low cost) acquisitions from other countries. Ukraine, in contrast, is relying on NATO to supply arms, but the production rate is slow and the costs are astronomically higher than Russia (the extent of U.S. MIC under-performance will surely be examined after the war).
The current Kursk offensive is a last-gasp desperate move by a Ukrainian army that is already seeing the slow collapse of its defenses in the south of the country, especially around Pokrovsk and New York/Toretsk. Ukraine manned the offensive with most of its remaining best units, but it is a suicide mission to capture a strategically unimportant sliver of Russia and claim a media victory. When it inevitably fails and Ukraine has lost most of its remaining experienced troops while Russian gains in the south continue to accelerate, Ukraine will be left with even less negotiating leverage than it had originally. Now, Ukraine’s only hope is to hold on to its current gains until Trump gets into office and the Russians will be forced to negotiate. But even this is probably unlikely to happen.
Again, Ukraine was always fated to lose this war. By fighting it, the price paid by Ukraine will end up being much greater than had they negotiated a cease fire at the outset. And NATO will have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in support while the Russian military, while scarred, will end up much stronger than it was at the war’s outset.
I love how the Russian fans think that the Ukraine is on its last legs,
If it was Russia would be able to run through that nation like a tornado and take it over in a week.
Its the very same thing they have been saying since the first week.
I think of the Ukraine military as having only gained experience and western training in the last two years.
They started the war with left over Soviet equipment. Stuff they upgraded as best as possible since the break up. But still third line compared to western military electronics.
They had a similar command structure to what the soviets left them. But not any more.
They have had two years to be trained by the western powers. (and they have been )
The Ukraine has been given hundreds of western vehicles and only used a few to this point.
Now after their pilots have been trained they have been given the planes they need.
And a first test of Russia has finally been done. An attack into Russia to see their response time and force. Two weeks and nothing? Or at least nothing worth mentioning.
The Ukrainians have actually rotated troops into and out of the occupied Russian territory and are waiting for further orders to either fall back or move in further.
Russia is stuck at this point. Risk armor units to take back the area or fire a few million artillery rounds into it like they have been doing all along the rest of the front.
If they do that then all the news out of the Ukraine is true. Russia is the heartless thugs willing to kill civilians. Even their own.
I for one am watching to see what they do. Both sides.
Some factors not mentioned in the post or comments:
1. China. It makes weapons and, crucially, machine tools to make weapons. If it wishes to help Russia–and so far it has demonstrated that it does–it can intervene industrially in a huge way.
2. Ukraine is no longer a unified country in a way people seem to forget about. Millions of Ukrainians left the country 2.5 years ago and have not returned. Some of those people are young men evading military service. It’s not clear how many will ever return, especially given that their current host country’s are, without exception, wealthier than Ukraine. The longer the war continues, the less likely they are to return.
3. Some are confused about basic economic concepts. For example, when a nation produces weapons, then sends those weapons for free to another nation, this does not benefit the producer nation’s economy. That economy’s debt level increases to produce goods that do not benefit its people.
4. We do not know what Russia’s military production capacity is, since they have not attempted to maximize it.
5. Russia has around 20 million men available for service. Around 250,000 have been killed or seriously wounded thus far–1.2% of their manpower. Ukraine has suffered losses of a similar proportion of their total manpower–though, as mentioned above, they do not have full access to their expatriate manpower. Also, 700,000 men turn 18 each year in Russia, 200,000 in Ukraine. Given these manpower pools and their continual replenishment with 18 year olds, neither side is likely to face a shortage of personnel unless the war becomes much more intense.
Just found a report that another Russian mercenary General is calling for Putin to step down.
He is claiming that Putin is the reason for them not winning the war so far.
This guy must have serious suicidal intentions.
I see the Dnipro River being a border between an East Ukraine and a West Ukraine.
As I see it ( and I’m probably going to get muck thrown at me, whatever I say… But…)
I think the end of this war will be due to politics, rarther than military power…
Option 1 ( the most likely in my opinion ), the people of Ukraine tired of the war, get tired of Zelensky, vote in a new president and negotiate and end to the war, giving up Crimea ( always traditionally Russian) and the Dombas.
Option 2, The “powers that be” behind Putin get tired of the war, and more importantly the sanctions that are hurting their wallets so badly, and Putin dies in a plane crash, dies in a hot tub, shoots himself in the head… Twice… Etc, etc.
Of course, there is option 3, Putin goes full on postal and uses a couple of tactical nukes which will force Ukraine to concede, ( which along with emboldening other countries with such weapons to consider using them ) , will certainly trigger option 2
I simply cannot see a winner in this conflict by using conventional weapons…. ( As has been discussed at length above )
Lee S:
I might add to your list this potential #4: Trump the transactionalist becomes president and in short order forces Zelenski into a negotiation with Putin and surrender territory to Putin. The asymmetrical ballsy drive by the Ukraine into Russia proper may be in anticipation of that potential impending trade off.
And if Kammy prevails then the same Biden policies will prevail until Ukraine is so depopulated that they can no longer fight and are taken over by Russia?
Russia just has the larger mass and resources, and time will deliver Putin his final result.
Keeping in mind that if Trump had prevailed in 2020 Putin more than likely would not ever have dared execute his current Ukraine scenario.
Bidens weakness has delivered chaos, instability and confusion to the world. What a legacy.
Neither country has mobilized as large a proportion of their populations as they potentially could. To illustrate, in 1940 the UK had a population of 40 million, similar to Ukraine today, Britain peaked at 6 million in the armed forces, 2.9 million in the army. Obviously not all we’re on the front lines, there’s the tooth to tail ratio, but from what I gather, Ukraine only has about 300,000 in the front lines.
Both Ukraine and Russia supposedly aren’t conscription below the age of 26 -27.
So, in terms of manpower, neither side appears near to running out of their potential.
Potential #5: Trump becomes President, restores his energy policies, and shrinks Putin’s oil revenues closer to the point that he’s going to have to choose between guns and butter.
It wasn’t just Trump’s toughness, or even his Reagan-like unpredictability, that deterred Putin (and Iran) on his watch. Low oil prices had a big hand in starving both of resources they now have on Biden’s watch to make trouble.
Biglar,
Russia does have a larger population, but has been taking loss multiples, relative to Ukraine, of even greater differential magnitude than the sizes of the two nations’ respective populations. Ukraine has certainly taken losses, but you pretty much ignore the far greater losses it has inflicted on the Russians.
The Ukrainian air force is very much existent and has started to receive F-16s. The Russian air force is also existent, but is punching well below its weight even allowing for all the glide bomb attacks. And it has taken, and continues to take, significant losses, which accounts for its relative timidity.
On the evidence, Ukraine’s air defenses average being quite a bit better than Russia’s. In addition to Soviet-era stuff it had already – and quite a bit more it has captured since the war started – Ukraine has Patriot batteries and other NATO-sourced anti-air assets and can get more. Russia is pretty much in a run-what-you-brung situation as it has no significant current capability to manufacture new anti-air systems. And the much-vaunted S-300 and S-400 systems have proven not only ineffective against NATO-supplied ordnance, but even against Ukraine’s Piper Cub-sized long-range drones, and have suffered sizable losses at the hands of all of these. Russia appears to have stripped nearly the entirety of its own interior of anti-air assets in order to pour them into Ukraine – where most are promptly destroyed. This has allowed the aforementioned Piper Cub-ish long-range drones to roam virtually at will far into the Russian interior and wreck havoc on targets as much as 2,000 klicks distant from Ukraine’s frontiers. Russia has taken far more than “negligible” losses to its air force and anti-air assets and continues to do so.
In terms of tanks and artillery, you conveniently neglect the fact that, during the first few months of the war – and still to a lesser extent since – Ukraine has captured more such equipment than it had in hand at the war’s start. Overall, the biggest supplier of arms and ammunition to Ukraine has been Russia.
And Russia can ill-afford such losses. As the Covert Cabal YouTube videos amply demonstrate, Russia has already used up sizable fractions of the military equipment it had in long-term storage pre-war. An unknown, but likely sizable, fraction of what reserves remain are beyond repair. In any case, Russia no longer has the ability to manufacture any significant quantities of new major armaments, not even replacement sleeves for its tube artillery. Thus, it has been forced to go cap-in-hand to the Norks and the Iranians. Russian weapons production has also not been helped by the spate of mysterious fires and explosions that have afflicted its arms factories even in its distant interior over the past couple of years. In contrast, both the U.S. and the NATO Europeans are stepping up production of many things, especially mundane commodities such as artillery shells and tactical missiles.
The Ukrainian invasion of Kursk is hardly “last-gasp.” It is simply a reasonable next step taken by Ukraine in the knowledge that Russia has virtually no remaining way to defend its vast interior after concentrating nearly all of of its functional military assets in Ukraine. Ukraine is doing on land what it has already been doing in the air for some time. Russia can either continue to cede more and more of its own territory by default as it attempts to keep up the “three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust” approach to nibbling away tiny incremental chunks of Ukraine at horrendous cost per hectare, or pull back some of its assets in order to pursue the Ukrainians on its newly-lost home turf. Either way, Ukraine wins.
There was, and is, no “inevitable” Russian victory in this disastrously ill-considered war. Putin imagined a 48-hour walk-over going in and got the surprise of his life. But he seems to have learned nothing much in the interim. He seems bent on continuing to play out his badly losing hand until he either runs entirely out of equipment or his own people depose him. Absent a complete loss of support by Ukraine’s outside benefactors – which is nowhere in sight – Russia will lose this war. Far from being stronger, the Russian military will effectively cease to exist if current trends continue. I hope the Russian loss is bad enough that victorious Ukraine is able to occupy and de-militarize Russia, including the pulling of its nuclear “teeth” – which I suspect will be found to be badly decayed when the time comes.
Russia does not, as a society, seem to be reformable. So it needs to be made harmless to others until it dies of terminal demographics, which it is busily doing – especially with all the assistance Putin has been unintentionally providing.
Craken,
1. The PRC will continue, as it is already doing, to try helping Russia in non-ostentatious ways around the edges, but don’t be looking to the PRC to pull Russia’s chestnuts out of the fire. If it tries to do so to any significant degree, the U.S. can simply impose a modest subset of the sanctions it has already placed on Russia on the PRC as well. The PRC is hugely more vulnerable to even modest restrictions on its trade than is Russia. The PRC will, as it always does, do what it sees as being in its own best interests, rhetorical support for Russia notwithstanding.
2. Ukraine will certainly see some of its refugees stay in their new places of residence. But Russia has also lost, and is still losing, people as well – particularly military-age males. I don’t anticipate any of these ever coming back. In the case of Ukraine, post-war rebuilding may provide enough opportunities to attract back a lot of its current expatriate refugees.
3. I think it’s beyond argument that U.S. Lend-Lease aid to the USSR during WW2 was beneficial to the U.S. in that it forestalled any possibility of a German victory in Europe and made possible the post-WW2 global trading order which made both the U.S. and much of the rest of the world far richer than would otherwise have been the case.
Present-day aid to Ukraine can also have the longer-term benefit of ending Russia as a continuing threat to European peace. The additional munitions manufacturing capacity now being built out owing to the Russo-Ukraine War will also come in very handy if the PRC, as Russia is doing now, decides to roll the military dice one last time before it too falls apart.
4. Yeah, we do know what Russia’s military production capacity is and it ain’t much. Russia would not be making the rounds of the world’s lesser tyrannies rattling the tin cup for alms if it was anywhere close to being self-sufficient in arms production.
5. Manpower is not the key determinant here, the ability to equip said manpower is. Arming 10 million Russians with pointy sticks will not get the job of conquering Ukraine done. Right now, Ukraine has a much greater ability to arm and equip its smaller number of troops than Russia does its larger such number.
Cotour,
I don’t doubt for a minute that at least part of Ukraine’s reason for counter-invading Russia was exactly to have something to trade away if it is strong-armed into settlement talks by a whatever administration takes office in DC in January. But the exercise has a lot of other benefits for Ukraine beyond that.
Russia has more land and people, but not necessarily more resources – at least not of the sort important to the conduct of a major war. And the Ukrainians are punching well above their weight in terms of cutting down available Russian resources, be those financial, industrial or raw material.
I disagree with the assertion that Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine was unprovoked. The USA and NATO have been provoking Russia for over a quarter century ever since NATO started expanding eastward. Russia is not going to tolerate the Ukraine or Georgia becoming a member of NATO. Think Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse.