First: Russia is fully mobilized politically, industrially and militarily. But this mobilization is draining resources that the Kremlin cannot renew — old stockpiles of Cold War-era weapons. In other words, Russia is strong but fragile.
Second: Ukraine is also mobilizing, but it is still dependent on foreign aid to meet its immediate financial and military needs, with the US blocking much of that aid.
Third: Ukrainian tactics are superior to Russian tactics, so Ukrainian units can defeat much larger Russian units. But tactics don’t matter when Ukrainian forces simply run out of ammunition.
The interaction of these three dynamic factors explains the seemingly contradictory things that are seen every day on the 1,000-kilometer front line. The Ukrainians beat off most of the Russian attacks, inflicting catastrophic losses on the increasingly poorly equipped Russian offensive groups.
During 26 months of intense fighting, the Russian army in Ukraine lost 15,300 tanks, combat vehicles, howitzers and other weapons, as well as hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
And yet, Russian forces in Ukraine are larger than ever. “The military is now actually 15 percent. bigger than when it invaded Ukraine,” NATO’s top US commander, General Christopher Cavoli, told the US House Armed Services Committee. “Over the past year, Russia has increased the number of its front-line troops from 360,000 to 470,000.”
This is possible only because the Kremlin from 2022 by the end of the year, more than 300,000 men – in addition, increased bonuses for volunteers. At the same time, the Russian brigades shortened the basic training of recruits so that fresh forces could reach the front more quickly.
But these unprepared recruits don’t last long on the front line. Recently, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, between 800 and 1,000 Russians are killed every day.
Russian soldiers are dying as soon as they arrive in Ukraine. In a recent study, the Estonian Ministry of Defense concluded that 100,000 a Russian death this year would permanently undermine, if not derail, the Kremlin’s mobilization efforts.
Russian military transport losses are also high. Russian industry produces 500 or 600 new tanks and perhaps a little over a thousand new combat vehicles every year.
The Russian army loses more than a thousand tanks and almost 2,000 combat vehicles every year – and the number of losses is increasing. This creates a gap that the Kremlin is filling by pulling tanks and war machines dating back to the 1970s, and in some cases as far back as the 1950s and 1950s, from long-term storage warehouses. However, the resources of these old machines are limited. They were produced during the industrial boom of the Soviet Union, so they cannot be replaced by new products.
The fact that, according to the latest forecasts, already in 2025 is threatening to the Russians. in the middle, there will be no more old tanks and combat vehicles in the warehouses. “Time is ticking for Russia,” wrote Estonian analyst Arturas Rehi. The flaw is already visible: Russian soldiers ride into battle in unarmored cargo trucks and even open-top golf carts that the Kremlin purchased from a Chinese company.
It should go without saying that golf carts won’t last long against, say, Ukraine’s anti-tank missile teams and the most skilled drone operators. It doesn’t matter if there are 300,000 Russian troops in Ukraine. or 400 thousand soldiers if they are completely unprotected on the battlefield.
The fragility of the Russian military could be more apparent if the Ukrainian military itself were not short of ammunition.
#clock #ticking #time #Russia #weapons #Business
2024-04-13 13:29:35