this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Thing is that mobilized troops aren't as capable or motivated as a professional army. Right now, Ukraine still retains a professional core that's been augmented by the people they kidnap off the street. However, there's going to be an inflection point where there isn't a sufficient ratio of professional troops to hold things together. I expect that's the point when we start seeing big offensives from Russia. Given the losses Ukraine suffered during its summer attempts at an offensive, it might not be long before that happens.
Ukraine still maintains significant numerical superiority due to much higher level of mobilization. Plus Russian mobilized troops also suffer from the same morale and training problems. They were good enough for defense, but it goes both ways too.
Russia would probably build up a strategic reserve for offensive, while continuing positional warfare, but Ukrainian army isn't going to crumble soon. They can conscript much higher percentage of their population due to not needing to care about the economy as they are supplied by the West.
Most analysts believe that Russia actually has a numerical superiority at this point. Russian forces are estimated to be at over 400k now, and most of them haven't been engaged yet. Most of the fighting right now is still done by the former LPR and DPR militias that have been absorbed into Russian army. Russia is taking the time to actually train and equip the new recruits, rotating small batches in with experienced units. It's a completely different approach from Ukraine just throwing people into combat with a few weeks of training.
Russia is also largely recruiting volunteers instead of mobilizing. The military offers salaries that are around 10x what people make in poor parts of Russia, so they've had no trouble getting people to sign up. Especially now that it's starting to become clear that Russia is winning.
And completely disagree with the Ukraine being able to conscript a large portion of the population because they don't need to worry about their economy. Western support is running out in front of our eyes. Both financial and material support is only at a fraction of what it was last year. If Ukraine is banking on this while mobilizing, that's just going to create an even bigger disaster for them.
Ukraine has around 800k troops overall, if you count Army, National Guard and various other units. 400k isn't enough to break a stalemate even despite Russian artillery superiority. Ukraine also tries to train its recruits, even if the allocated time for it is steadily shrinking. Don't forget that at its core the Ukrainian Army is still a mass mobilization army like the Red Army. The system for conscripting and training people is still there even if it was significantly distorted by NATO-sponsored reforms, and it is working pretty well.
Volunteers are enough to replace losses and slowly grow the army, but they are not enough to amass a sufficient attack force for significant offensives, so Russia has to resort to limited attacks.
If the Western support dries out, Ukraine will collapse regardless of what its leadership is doing now, everyone understands it, so they are running the war on the assumption that Ukraine would keep getting at least enough to support its current army. And I don't think Ukrainian leadership are thinking about what happens next, they are now focusing on not-collapsing as long as possible, and that is why Paraguay scenario is becoming increasingly likely.
800k is not all combat personnel. General estimates of actual soldiers tend to be around 100-150k. And 400k number is for actual combat troops in Russia. Again, it can't be a stalemate when Russia has artillery superiority, because Ukraine is losing more troops than Russia is on daily basis. The estimates for the losses are around ten to one in favor of Russia as this article from Mearsheimer explains. This is simply not a sustainable situation for Ukraine. The core of Ukrainian army is nothing like the Red army. Conscripts literally have weeks of training before being thrown into combat. There are plenty of western publications admitting this now.
You can read these three recent articles to see how well NATO-sponsored reforms are actually working
And the only western source that has any methodology tracking Russian casualties puts them at around 38k now. The volunteer recruits are very much growing the army as opposed to replacing losses. https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng
I agree that Ukrainian regime doesn't really have any plan for what to do when western support runs out though. I think most likely scenario is that Russia will take significant territory in the east and create a land bridge to Transnistria. Western Ukraine will end up being a dysfunctional rump state that the west will either have to keep pouring money into or risk a refugee crisis from.
400k is all of the Russian troops in Ukraine, as far as I know. Granted, there are also troops in Russia along the border, but I don't think there are that many. Given recent enlargement plan of Russian Armed Forces to 2.2 million people with 1.3 million military personnel out of them, I think it is a reasonable estimate.
10 to 1 losses are probably overblown, even with disastrous losses during Ukrainian offensive.
It is a stalemate from tactical and operational point of view. Neither side currently can achieve decisive breakthrough, although attrition warfare is more advantageous for Russia.
Total size of Russian military currently is around 1.9 million, which is the number that should be compared to the 800 thousand figure for Ukraine. A lot of the military is logistics support for the active troops, intelligence, and so on. They don't need to be located on the ground in Ukraine.
I don't see why you'd say that given that Russia fires around 10x more artillery and most losses come from artillery fire.
Again, the notion that this is a stalemate is simply not supported by the evidence. Even Stoltenberg is now saying that NATO should be prepared for bad news, which is as close to an admission as we're going to get that Ukrainian army is collapsing.
Also, Russian assault at Avdiivka shows that they are not yet able to achieve breakthrough.
As I've noted, Russia hasn't committed most of their forces yet, but Avdievka is already mostly captured. Russia managed to take a town of around 30k people before the war in about a month. That's far more progress than Ukraine managed to achieve in six months of their offensive already. Now consider what will happen when Russia does commit significant forces to an offensive.
Yes, but Russia still have to guard its borders with with NATO, it limits available troops.
Ukrainian offensive power is almost nonexistent at this point, but taking a month to take one town is too slow to have strategic impact, Ukraine gets enough time to build another defensive line slightly farther.
NATO has already sent all they've got to Ukraine. NATO is in no position to mount any sort of attack on Russia at this time. This is openly admitted in western media I might add https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/europes-weak-armed-forces-could-be-washed-away-by-russia-bmxbc22gc
I don't see what you base the statement that taking a month to take a heavily fortified town is slow. It's completely absurd to claim that Ukraine can just build another Avdievka in a month. These fortifications took eight years to build. And it's not like Ukraine has any meaningful industrial capacity at this point either. For one, Ukrainian energy grid is on its last legs. You can't do any manufacturing, such as concrete production, without electricity.
The number includes civilian personnel.
As does Ukrainian 800k number.
800k is military personnel, there are about 400k civilian personnel too.
do you have a source?
Saw somewhere earlier, couldn't find now.
Do they, though? The Ukranians are the ones taking the heavy losses, the ones mobilizing women, teens, and the elderly, the ones sending in soldiers with a few weeks of training if that, and they're the ones thoroughly exhausted and fighting an unwinnable and- for anyone with sense- unjustifiable war, while their country (and effectively, their lives) are being auctioned off to the west.
Russia has its issues, but the state of its troops, its economy, morale, and domestic support are all steadily improving, if anything. Ukraine is the slaughtering-house for unlucky Ukranian conscript/press-ganged troops, but it's a training ground for the Russians.
Mobilization wasn't popular and Russia has shifted to mostly professional army earlier to the detriment of reservist training. They are now slowly rectifying those issues, but Russian mobilized troops are still not offense-suitable. Ukraine is slowly grinding down, but it is more of the attrition warfare from WW1 than the maneuver warfare from WW2. Still, it is only a matter of time.