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The War in Ukraine


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Im stealing that.
 
Putin has elected to replace Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. The new minister is Andrei Belousov, who is a civilian and an economist by training.

Which brings to mind one of my favorite jokes that came out of the Soviet Union:

The annual Victory Day parade is marching its way through Moscow. Row after row of infantry pass by the reviewing stand, and they are soon followed by an increasingly impressive array of military hardware. First trucks towing guns, then tanks, helicopters and fighters, then massive missile launchers roll past. Finally, bringing up the end of the parade are a group of men in suits and carrying briefcases.

The Secretary General asks the KGB chief, "are these your people?" The KGB chief shrugs his shoulders and looks at the Minister of Defence, who is equally confused.

The Minister of Finance leans over to the Secretary General and whispers, "Comrade, those are our economists. They may not look like much, but in a few days they can devastate an entire country!"
 
Ukraine better hurry up or Kharkiv will be taken. This equipment and weaponry can't get their fast enough.
 
Ukraine better hurry up or Kharkiv will be taken. This equipment and weaponry can't get their fast enough.
Taking open country and small villages forward of the main defensive lines is one think. Taking a major urban centre and transportation hub is another. I don’t think the city is at risk of overrun.
 
Taking open country and small villages forward of the main defensive lines is one think. Taking a major urban centre and transportation hub is another. I don’t think the city is at risk of overrun.

I have seen one or two OSINT sources who believe that the moves towards Kharkiv may be a feint to suck in Ukrainian reserves prior to an attack elsewhere.

Difficult to say for sure. The publicly available information isn't exactly trustworthy.
 
Maybe more than just IT support ....
... although there is a bit of ... clarification via EST & some UKR media about the idea -- understandably, considering the magnitude of move sending NATO troops into UKR, even in support roles, would be.
 
Ukraine better hurry up or Kharkiv will be taken. This equipment and weaponry can't get their fast enough.

Taking open country and small villages forward of the main defensive lines is one think. Taking a major urban centre and transportation hub is another. I don’t think the city is at risk of overrun.

I have seen one or two OSINT sources who believe that the moves towards Kharkiv may be a feint to suck in Ukrainian reserves prior to an attack elsewhere.

Difficult to say for sure. The publicly available information isn't exactly trustworthy.

as always are these numbers believable and enough
 

as always are these numbers believable and enough

Guaranteed to be high - it's almost a truism that kill claims exceed the real losses by a large number. The question is by how much they are overstating true losses.

The OSINT aggregators who count up destroyed vehicles are probably the most reliable openly available source, but they don't necessarily agree with each other and they are of uncertain quality. Right now the ones I have been following have Russians down by about 2600 tanks and 6000 IFV/APCs, and maybe 1000 artillery systems (gun or rocket). Basically 50 motorized rifle brigades worth of equipment.

Some of the OSINT crowd have also taken to looking at the Russian storage bases to count up the equipment that is sitting out in the fields now as opposed to two or three years ago. Quite a bit of guesswork goes into this, but it is clear that very large numbers of old Soviet-era equipment has been consumed. My general observation is that this appears to confirm the loss estimates from the OSINT aggregators above. That said, the Russians still have lots of BMPs, BTRs and older tanks in storage. How many of them can be made serviceable is hard to guess.

Personnel casualties are harder to estimate, really it's not much better than educated guesswork. I know there is a Russian media source that is counting up inheritance claims and obituaries, which is certain to be lower than the real number of KIA. They had the number at 85,000 killed as of last month. Assuming a reasonable killed/wounded ratio, this would put total casualties at over 300,000.
 

as always are these numbers believable and enough
I wonder if the prison guards in Russia have cotton on to the fact that, once the majority of Russians in Prison have been finally all combed out and sent to the front as canon fodder that they, the Guards are surplus labour and they will be next in line to man the line in Kherson, Melitopol, Andrivvka and Dontesk?
 
I wonder if the prison guards in Russia have cotton on to the fact that, once the majority of Russians in Prison have been finally all combed out and sent to the front as canon fodder that they, the Guards are surplus labour and they will be next in line to man the line in Kherson, Melitopol, Andrivvka and Dontesk?
Shhh !
Don't ruin the surprise.
 
Guaranteed to be high - it's almost a truism that kill claims exceed the real losses by a large number. The question is by how much they are overstating true losses.

The OSINT aggregators who count up destroyed vehicles are probably the most reliable openly available source, but they don't necessarily agree with each other and they are of uncertain quality. Right now the ones I have been following have Russians down by about 2600 tanks and 6000 IFV/APCs, and maybe 1000 artillery systems (gun or rocket). Basically 50 motorized rifle brigades worth of equipment.

Some of the OSINT crowd have also taken to looking at the Russian storage bases to count up the equipment that is sitting out in the fields now as opposed to two or three years ago. Quite a bit of guesswork goes into this, but it is clear that very large numbers of old Soviet-era equipment has been consumed. My general observation is that this appears to confirm the loss estimates from the OSINT aggregators above. That said, the Russians still have lots of BMPs, BTRs and older tanks in storage. How many of them can be made serviceable is hard to guess.

Personnel casualties are harder to estimate, really it's not much better than educated guesswork. I know there is a Russian media source that is counting up inheritance claims and obituaries, which is certain to be lower than the real number of KIA. They had the number at 85,000 killed as of last month. Assuming a reasonable killed/wounded ratio, this would put total casualties at over 300,000.
I would think so too except there is evidence from Russian budgetary expenditures in favour of that number being accurate for KIA not KIA and WIA which it is sometimes stated that the UKraine graph is. I posted this before, who knows how accurate it is but it claims to be based on Russian budget

 
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