The War in the Ukraine

Somber report from Washington Post on the dire state of the Ukrainian Army. Many within the army express skepticism over Ukraine’s ability to conduct an offensive after losing so much personnel and equipment. There’s also the admission that the US has been training Ukrainian officers for the last 9 years, but we already knew that.

“After a year of war, Kupol, a lieutenant colonel, said his battalion is unrecognizable. Of about 500 soldiers, roughly 100 were killed in action and another 400 wounded, leading to complete turnover. Kupol said he was the sole military professional in the battalion, and he described the struggle of leading a unit composed entirely of inexperienced troops.

I get 100 new soldiers,” Kupol said. “They don’t give me any time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into the battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it. Do you understand why? Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some reason, he has never thrown a grenade. … We need NATO instructors in all our training centers, and our instructors need to be sent over there into the trenches. Because they failed in their task.”

“A German official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said that Berlin estimates Ukrainian casualties, including dead and wounded, are as high as 120,000. “They don’t share the information with us because they don’t trust us,” the official said.”

Source:

Wagner made a lot of progress inside Bakhmut today:

This is the Vostokmash building inside the AZOM metal plant, whole building under Wagner control.


This is Zelensky on the exact same spot back in December handing out medals.

Ukrainian FPV drone tried to hit a tank. The tank is full of ERA to be destroyed that easily so worst case scenario should be damaged. The feed was cut off a bit too early before the tank could have been hit so there's a possibility it was a fail.


M777 howitzer hidden in forest but not hidden enough from this Russian drone. Artillery from BARS Cascade worked on the target. This is somewhere in Svatovo - Kremennaya front.


Ukrainian resupply truck convoy spotted by thermal, and BM-21 Grads let them have it. This occurred at the Kremennaya front.

Tam said:

Ukrainian FPV drone tried to hit a tank. The tank is full of ERA to be destroyed that easily so worst case scenario should be damaged. The feed was cut off a bit too early before the tank could have been hit so there's a possibility it was a fail.

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I think a lot of attack from suicide drones on armored vehicules end with damages and not destruction. On both sides and even more with improvised devices. Doesn't mean they are fails. Destroying subsystems, era blocks, wounding crew, making ennemy turning back, stopping advances can be done with just damages. They are all parts of degrading capacities.

Temstar said:

Wagner made a lot of progress inside Bakhmut today:
View attachment 109137
This is the Vostokmash building inside the AZOM metal plant, whole building under Wagner control.

View attachment 109138
This is Zelensky on the exact same spot back in December handing out medals.

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the focus on combat is outside of the city now. i dont know about zelesnky and ukraine's command, but defenders of the city have clearly given up on holding it, they are just doing a fighting retreat (and quite a good job at that, at least no units inside the city getting cut off that we know of). similarly wagners are just making their steady progress in the city, but is getting really bold in the northern pincer. i do wonder what made them so bold there, if they detected weakness in ukrainian presence there, or if they got some sort of backing from neighboring russian units.

drowingfish said:

the focus on combat is outside of the city now. i dont know about zelesnky and ukraine's command, but defenders of the city have clearly given up on holding it, they are just doing a fighting retreat (and quite a good job at that, at least no units inside the city getting cut off that we know of). similarly wagners are just making their steady progress in the city, but is getting really bold in the northern pincer. i do wonder what made them so bold there, if they detected weakness in ukrainian presence there, or if they got some sort of backing from neighboring russian units.

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They are going far north from Bakhmut, way more than needed to cut the city. Maybe just preparing traps, observation posts and minefields to cut that talked UFA counter offensive. Anyway, even if they don't trap troops in Bakhmut, they can hammer them when they retreat of the city in open ground. Way better that than battling them on the streets.

HighGround said:

I'm aware. One of my primary sources of information on the Russian military used to be a Russian battalion commander who had a rank of major. He was a good friend of mine though I haven't heard from him for a couple of years, my assumption being as good as anyone's for why he's gone.

That said, there is a reason why a lot of tables and calculations are changed over time. New weapons, new methods, new wars. But more importantly, incomplete sampling (which is going to be a fact on the battlefield) and unreliable reporting. And what is even meat by "casualties"? How about the language barrier? We will never know how much manpower Russia can recover from casualties, what their actual CFR rate is, so on and so forth.

I guess what I'm saying is, as much as I like to listen, I think sometimes "professionals" get a little too confident in their assertions. Hobbyists like myself make a lot of mistakes and tend to talk a little too much, but I'm fairly certain that if I talked to Rob Lee about Wagner before his recent trip, and after, I would find a significant difference in his assessments regardless of how confident he was. A little humility and caution never hurt anyone.

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The problem with the claim that Ru casualties are 200K and Ukr casualties are 120K is that it makes no sense at all. It would only make sense if both sides had firepower parity. This evident in 110 years of military history and in particular in WW2 where the casualty data is confirmed by primary sources. Soviet and German casualty statistics from primary sources- down to the division and even battalion level are available due to the digitalization of Soviet and German archives.

It is also suspect as the aggressive exaggeration of the enemy's losses is a key propaganda tool. Washington and Ukraine have been constantly, since March 2022 trying to portray the war as winnable for their side and the Russians having extreme tactical inferiority to the Ukrainians!

But the reality is that the Russians have many multiples firepower superiority, like the United states in its wars. Ukraine constantly complains of up to 10 : 1 superiority which is probably an exaggeration to get more aid. They also claim 10-3:1 in Bakhmut and sometimes 1.5:1.

Multiples firepower superiority typically confirms higher losses on the defender no matter what. Look at Japanese vs US casualties in the Pacific ww2 for instance or American/British vs German losses in the Western front WW2. These are actually confirmed by primary sources, not made up statistics for propaganda and morale.

This is reinforced by the Russian army being an 'artillery army' with tanks, with low desire to close in with the enemy outside of Wagner PMC. Then besides the evidence of moon craters, entire cities being demolished with half of the buildings destroyed.

Cult Icon said:

The problem with the claim that Ru casualties are 200K and Ukr casualties are 120K is that it makes no sense at all. It would only make sense if both sides had firepower parity.

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The strangest part of the numbers war is that Ukraine with ''1 million men army'' at the start of the war need that much mobilization when they say they have only 120k wounded and killed... Their number of 1 million is probably wrong and 120k casualties is probably wrong too. If it's only 120k casualties(wounded and killed), Ukraine would be in Crimea big time with the troops numbers advantages.

We got report that Ukraine was not counting wounded in action in their numbers some while ago... maybe it's the cause of that low count. So 120k MIA/KIA but not 120k casualties.

For the Russian forces, multiple sources from both sides say lower than 20k KIA in Russian army. Don't forget militias and Wagner pile up on that number. Adding the wounded I could see a figure of 200 000 casualties for the Russian side but most wounded can return to the front and be wounded another time... I can see the RF still functionning after 200k wounded and killed.

Casualties is quite a strange number vs KIA, it doesn't tell much. It's a figure that you can play with a lot while KIA is definite.

Atomicfrog said:

Casualties is quite a strange number vs KIA, it doesn't tell much. It's a figure that you can play with a lot while KIA is definite.

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Both Russian and Ukraine sides use the term "irrecoverable losses", which is killed, missing, plus crippled.

So eg. if total casualties, KIA-MIA/crippled-heavy wounded/light wounded is 1000.

KIA-MIA is 100 and crippled is 100 then that's 200 irrecoverable. 800 lightly wounded.

In a long war, the lightly wounded return to service in weeks or months and eventually come back.

The crippled, dead and missing never return.

In my opinion if professional-contract force converts to mostly irrecoverable losses that's when we will see a breakdown as the corps of expertise and competence is lost.

Atomicfrog said:

I think a lot of attack from suicide drones on armored vehicules end with damages and not destruction. On both sides and even more with improvised devices. Doesn't mean they are fails. Destroying subsystems, era blocks, wounding crew, making ennemy turning back, stopping advances can be done with just damages. They are all parts of degrading capacities.

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That's why you need kill or damage verification by a second observing drone, which is why you see in the Lancet videos, a video in the FPV, followed by another video in 3PV, so there's another drone recording the kill. So even the Russians themselves are skeptical of their own kills and wants to make sure.