plawolf
Lieutenant General
Why throw in more bodies when the existing 200k Russians are already curbstomping the Ukrainians?
If we look at how the war is being fought, we can see it’s largely an artillery war where the outcome of engagements are determined at long range by who has the bigger and better guns and who can use them better.
As the Ukrainians are demonstrating very effectively, throwing masses of poorly trained conscripts with utterly inadequate armour and artillery support just produces huge piles of your own dead for minimal to no enemy losses.
What western and pro-Ukrainian pundits always do is conflate combat with occupation.
Yes, you may need a lot of bodies for occupation, but for now at least, the liberated Ukrainian provinces are actually behaving like liberated occupied territory and seems to need very minimal Russian military assistance with keeping law and order even with active attempts by Ukraine to infiltrate in sabotage groups, that keeps getting easily liquidated by the locals.
That will probably change as the Russians push ever more westward, but there is no real rush to pump in occupation troops when there is no need. Especially when the newly liberated ex-Ukrainian provinces seems to be willing and able to generate the occupation forces needed.
The other consideration is strategic. As I have mentioned before, it is absolutely in Putin’s interest to drag this way into winter when his leverage will be maximised. Why does he want to spend more in terms of military expenditure and lives to hurry this up to mess that up? With the way things are going, but the time he slow grinds into winter and threaten to turn off all the gas to Europe, let’s see how quickly the west hang the Ukrainians out to dry to look after their own interests.
