Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-germany-approves-export-of-leopard-1-tanks/a-64599933

"Ukraine updates: Germany approves export of Leopard 1 tanks"

Problem: These tanks are old and getting ammunition for them will be hard

However, according to the report, there are still problems in obtaining the required 105-millimeter ammunition. Although Brazil has large stocks of the ammunition, the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has so far refused to pass it on to Ukraine.

And more importantly, you can't produce that ammunition in Europe, because we have all frozen to death due to the sanctions by now.

[jaichind]

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-germany-approves-export-of-leopard-1-tanks/a-64599933

"Ukraine updates: Germany approves export of Leopard 1 tanks"

Problem: These tanks are old and getting ammunition for them will be hard

However, according to the report, there are still problems in obtaining the required 105-millimeter ammunition. Although Brazil has large stocks of the ammunition, the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has so far refused to pass it on to Ukraine.

And more importantly, you can't produce that ammunition in Europe, because we have all frozen to death due to the sanctions by now.

That would be Switzerland  which for now is not on board with sending such ammo to Ukraine

https://www.politico.eu/article/switzerland-rethinks-neutrality-considers-weapon-export-amid-ukraine-russia-war-crisis/

"Switzerland rethinks neutrality, considers weapons exports amid Ukraine crisis"

Of course new factories can be built but that would be mid 2023

The Swiss blockade prompted German arms-maker Rheinmetall to open a new ammunition factory — but building up production from scratch is a lengthy process, with media reports indicating that a new plant could go operational by mid-2023 at the earliest.

[Absolution9]

One of the biggest question for me is how many people Russia can lose until there are serious problems.
There must be some point at which russian loses get so big that there is widespread mutiny and protests. I have no idea if that happens at 300k killed or 500k.

Almost no modern conflict has ended because one side ran out of soliders to fight with. Moral almost always collapsed long before that.


There are common comparison to the 8 million men the soviets lost in WW2. Which IMO is not a very helpful comparison. Russia now has a lot less manpower and their population is much less invested in the current conflict.

True that Russia won't be able to ask for that kind of sacrifice in an offensive war vs a defensive war for survival like WWII, but I don't get this idea that Russia's population is much less combat capable today than in 1941.  I would judge it as more combat capable qualitatively and maybe even larger in absolute numeric terms. 

In 1941 SU had 175-180M people vs 150M for Russia + Donbass Republics + Crimea today.  In 1941 SU had decades of previous fertility rate at over 4.5 per woman vs 1.4-1.7 for Russia over the past 20 years - that means that 35-40% of the SU pop in 1941 was under 18 years old.  Today Russia has more people if anything in the 18-55 combat capable age range. 

In qualitative terms 65% of the 1941 SU pop was made up of illiterate peasants (down from over 80% prior to WW1) with very little experience interacting with complex machinery.  They would have been very difficult to train to use even the equipment of 1941.  Today RF is 75-80% urbanized and 99% literate. 

[jaichind]

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ukraine-summit-trip-dress-code-brussels-military-volodymyr-zelenskyy-russian-invasion-solidarity-kyiv/

"The EU’s Ukraine trip dress code: Wear a suit, not green like Zelenskyy"

It seems for the EU-Ukraine Summit the EU had a dress code where no one from the EU side is allowed to dress like Zelensky to ensure that no attention is taken away from Zelensky.

[Stranger in a strange land]

One of the biggest question for me is how many people Russia can lose until there are serious problems.
There must be some point at which russian loses get so big that there is widespread mutiny and protests. I have no idea if that happens at 300k killed or 500k.

Almost no modern conflict has ended because one side ran out of soliders to fight with. Moral almost always collapsed long before that.


There are common comparison to the 8 million men the soviets lost in WW2. Which IMO is not a very helpful comparison. Russia now has a lot less manpower and their population is much less invested in the current conflict.

True that Russia won't be able to ask for that kind of sacrifice in an offensive war vs a defensive war for survival like WWII, but I don't get this idea that Russia's population is much less combat capable today than in 1941.  I would judge it as more combat capable qualitatively and maybe even larger in absolute numeric terms.  

In 1941 SU had 175-180M people vs 150M for Russia + Donbass Republics + Crimea today.  In 1941 SU had decades of previous fertility rate at over 4.5 per woman vs 1.4-1.7 for Russia over the past 20 years - that means that 35-40% of the SU pop in 1941 was under 18 years old.  Today Russia has more people if anything in the 18-55 combat capable age range.  

And far fewer were over 55, since people back then didn't live as long. Now, the idea that having a life expectancy of 45 or 50 means that most people would die at around that age is incorrect. Most people who survived childhood would live to old age, but still fewer than now.

In qualitative terms 65% of the 1941 SU pop was made up of illiterate peasants (down from over 80% prior to WW1) with very little experience interacting with complex machinery.  They would have been very difficult to train to use even the equipment of 1941.  Today RF is 75-80% urbanized and 99% literate.  

But the problem is the flip side of this: the value of a working age citizen to a state in the 2020s is much higher than it was in the early 20th century, largely since birth rates are much lower. I replied to a similar point earlier in the thread (this was posted at an earlier stage in the war, but the underlying facts haven't changed):

This isn't talked about enough: unlike the USSR in the mid-20th century and the Russian Empire in earlier times, today's Russia has a catastrophically low birth rate (FWIW, so does Ukraine, but they're not the ones who instigated the war). Life expediencies are longer nowadays (though still shockingly short in Russia, especially for men, and work forces are much more specialized, meaning that instead of being mostly interchangeable farmers and factory workers, each soldier lost is another young man who can't later go on to become a programmer, plumber, technician, or business owner. Yet Putin is throwing away young men in the prime of life as though he's Stalin or Nicholas II. And it's quite telling that in a country of about 150 million, about 15% of whom are men 18-40, so 22.5 million or so of prime military eligibility, many of whom, lets face it, have poor employment or educational prospects, he struggles to find even a hundred thousand more willing to go and fight in Ukraine.

And also, I very, very much doubt 65% of the Soviet population was still illiterate in 1941. For all of its many, many flaws the Soviet government prioritized basic education for the population. Per wiki, the USSR's literacy rate in 1937 was 75%, with 86% of men being literate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union. And I would bet that illiteracy was concentrated in places like Tajikistan and remote parts of Sibera.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ukraine-summit-trip-dress-code-brussels-military-volodymyr-zelenskyy-russian-invasion-solidarity-kyiv/

"The EU’s Ukraine trip dress code: Wear a suit, not green like Zelenskyy"

It seems for the EU-Ukraine Summit the EU had a dress code where no one from the EU side is allowed to dress like Zelensky to ensure that no attention is taken away from Zelensky.

What's the problem here? Zelensky is the leader of a country at war, Scholz and Macron are not.

[jaichind]

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ukraine-summit-trip-dress-code-brussels-military-volodymyr-zelenskyy-russian-invasion-solidarity-kyiv/

"The EU’s Ukraine trip dress code: Wear a suit, not green like Zelenskyy"

It seems for the EU-Ukraine Summit the EU had a dress code where no one from the EU side is allowed to dress like Zelensky to ensure that no attention is taken away from Zelensky.

What's the problem here? Zelensky is the leader of a country at war, Scholz and Macron are not.

I just find it funny that the EU would
a) Focus so much on optics
b) Think the way Zelensky dresses is such a key fact of his image

[Virginiá]

New military aid package - most of this is USAI funds and thus is to be procured from industry, but I think the items on the left image are the drawdown from US stocks.

https://twitter.com/OstapYarysh/status/1621554940551258116

[Absolution9]

One of the biggest question for me is how many people Russia can lose until there are serious problems.
There must be some point at which russian loses get so big that there is widespread mutiny and protests. I have no idea if that happens at 300k killed or 500k.

Almost no modern conflict has ended because one side ran out of soliders to fight with. Moral almost always collapsed long before that.


There are common comparison to the 8 million men the soviets lost in WW2. Which IMO is not a very helpful comparison. Russia now has a lot less manpower and their population is much less invested in the current conflict.

True that Russia won't be able to ask for that kind of sacrifice in an offensive war vs a defensive war for survival like WWII, but I don't get this idea that Russia's population is much less combat capable today than in 1941.  I would judge it as more combat capable qualitatively and maybe even larger in absolute numeric terms.  

In 1941 SU had 175-180M people vs 150M for Russia + Donbass Republics + Crimea today.  In 1941 SU had decades of previous fertility rate at over 4.5 per woman vs 1.4-1.7 for Russia over the past 20 years - that means that 35-40% of the SU pop in 1941 was under 18 years old.  Today Russia has more people if anything in the 18-55 combat capable age range.  

And far fewer were over 55, since people back then didn't live as long. Now, the idea that having a life expectancy of 45 or 50 means that most people would die at around that age is incorrect. Most people who survived childhood would live to old age, but still fewer than now.

In qualitative terms 65% of the 1941 SU pop was made up of illiterate peasants (down from over 80% prior to WW1) with very little experience interacting with complex machinery.  They would have been very difficult to train to use even the equipment of 1941.  Today RF is 75-80% urbanized and 99% literate.  

But the problem is the flip side of this: the value of a working age citizen to a state in the 2020s is much higher than it was in the early 20th century, largely since birth rates are much lower. I replied to a similar point earlier in the thread (this was posted at an earlier stage in the war, but the underlying facts haven't changed):

This isn't talked about enough: unlike the USSR in the mid-20th century and the Russian Empire in earlier times, today's Russia has a catastrophically low birth rate (FWIW, so does Ukraine, but they're not the ones who instigated the war). Life expediencies are longer nowadays (though still shockingly short in Russia, especially for men, and work forces are much more specialized, meaning that instead of being mostly interchangeable farmers and factory workers, each soldier lost is another young man who can't later go on to become a programmer, plumber, technician, or business owner. Yet Putin is throwing away young men in the prime of life as though he's Stalin or Nicholas II. And it's quite telling that in a country of about 150 million, about 15% of whom are men 18-40, so 22.5 million or so of prime military eligibility, many of whom, lets face it, have poor employment or educational prospects, he struggles to find even a hundred thousand more willing to go and fight in Ukraine.

And also, I very, very much doubt 65% of the Soviet population was still illiterate in 1941. For all of its many, many flaws the Soviet government prioritized basic education for the population. Per wiki, the USSR's literacy rate in 1937 was 75%, with 86% of men being literate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union. And I would bet that illiteracy was concentrated in places like Tajikistan and remote parts of Sibera.

I should have said illiterate or semi-literate, was basing it on the rural/urban divide, I wouldn't trust the Soviet stats though, illiteracy was very high in Tsarist Russia and the CPSU had only been in full control for under 20 years by 1941, after huge dislocation in WWI and the civil war.  The youngest cohorts would have gone through schooling but most 20-50 year old rural citizens would probably have received very rudimentary instruction and then been counted as literate.  

Agree that there are more 55+ year olds now but still think Russia today has far less dependents than the SU then.  If anything, I was underestimating the proportion of minors.  Egypt right now has a 40% 18 and below share while having had over 30 years of sub 4.0 fertility rate and much higher life expectancy.  SU was consistently over 4.0 at the time coming off 6.0+ prior to WW1.  It may easily have been over 50% minors (Egypt was over 50% in 1986 according to wiki with a fertility rate of 4.4 so similar point in transition).

Completely agree on the much higher value of working age citizens due to much better skills level and general economic structure but should also say that the value of 40-55 year olds in war is also much higher today.  I see tons of video's of older looking men fighting on both sides in this conflict - some even look like they are pushing 60!  Outside the US and to a lesser extent the UK WW2 armies were still mostly unmotorized/unmechanized aside from a handful of elite units.  Men (and horses) still had to march/pull/carry all the equipment and supplies.  Now a 55 year old driver/gunner/sentry/trench filler/whatever is plenty useful compared to 80 years ago.

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1621525774284234753

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1621525774284234753

I hope they fight there to the last man, woman, and child and take as many of those Wagner apes with them!

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1621525774284234753

I hope they fight there to the last man, woman, and child and take as many of those Wagner apes with them!

Why not withdraw your guys to more secure lines?

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1621161237785739269
https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1621405546342453249

I prefer the old Soviet military districts. It feels weird to have the Volga all the way to Lake Baikal in the same military district:

[Storr]

Russia started the week with 12 of those systems. Only 10 are left.

Broke: Using equipment appropriate for the climate it's deployed to
Woke: Using arctic equipment in semi-arid Kherson Oblast

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1620893634748096512?s=20&t=PxyDdF...

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1621559306045849600?s=20&t=y-ie0QsALtBl...

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1621525774284234753

I hope they fight there to the last man, woman, and child and take as many of those Wagner apes with them!

Why not withdraw your guys to more secure lines?

“my guys”.. two words that are worth thousands.

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1621525774284234753

I hope they fight there to the last man, woman, and child and take as many of those Wagner apes with them!

Why not withdraw your guys to more secure lines?

“my guys”.. two words that are worth thousands.

"your guys" as in the General Staff. Why have your experienced fighters in a city which is already heavily exposed and past it's expiration date.

[It’s so Joever]

I like how Woody Woodsucker isn’t even hiding the fact he is pro-Russia now.

[nicholas.slaydon]

I like how Woody Woodsucker isn’t even hiding the fact he is pro-Russia now.

He never was.

[Torie]

Putin: Mince meat them before it is too late. He means his own troops before late Spring, when it will too late as the big guns move in. It's now or never. So reports the Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-putins-men-fear-minced-meat-fate-in-new-ukraine-offensive?ref=home

[CanadianDemocrat]

Not only is surrendering the territory Russia holds a bad economic hit but it will invite Putin or his successors to try again in the future. The only way to avoid an even deadlier conflict is to grind it out now and beat Russia.

I agree in principle, but again, if Ukraine keeps sticking to its strategy of "corrosion" even in the face of ever-escalating Russian mobilization efforts, then the sheer loss of life and attrition on Ukrainian resources might not lead to a favorable outcome, or might get to a point where Ukraine loses too many people (how many is too many is first a political question, but eventually it becomes a basic math problem). Ukraine doesn't have as deep of mobilization potential as Russia, whose population is over 3x larger (not including Ukrainians in occupied territory, and not able to be mobilized by UKR), nor do they have as many resources or large operational defense industrial capacity. And there will come a time where weapons deliveries start having to come from industry and not stockpiles for the simple reason that the stockpiles of willing and able donors are exhausted. That will cause crucial delays in kit Ukrainians need immediately.

All of this is to say that if Ukraine wants to win this war without massive loss of life, or maybe even at all, they need to move beyond just grinding down the Russian army. That worked before Russian mobilization, but it's a tough lift now. For example, Kherson was a victory, but not being able to actually trap most of those Russian forces was a major missed opportunity. This was how decisive victories were won on the Eastern Front in WW2. They didn't always just wear each other down, entire armies were sometimes out-maneuvered and encircled and essentially removed from the field without the insanely high cost of fighting each other to the death. Suffice to say, I get why it wasn't possible for Ukraine at the time, but still, that's the point. I would say that the larger these armies get, the more necessary this will become for the most optimal outcome.

Just my two cents.

Not to belie the points you have been making in a couple posts earlier today, but Russian estimated combat losses are now hitting around 200k, according to Western officials.

The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials.

While the officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, they say the slaughter from fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and the town of Soledar has ballooned what was already a heavy toll.

With Moscow desperate for a major battlefield victory and viewing Bakhmut as the key to seizing the entire eastern Donbas area, the Russian military has sent poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, has been hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.

Russia analysts say that the loss of life is unlikely to be a deterrent to Mr. Putin’s war aims. He has no political opposition at home and has framed the war as the kind of struggle the country faced in World War II, when more than 8 million Soviet troops died. U.S. officials have said that they believe that Mr. Putin can sustain hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine, although higher numbers could cut into his political support.

On Norwegian TV on Jan. 22, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s defense chief, said estimates were that Russia had suffered 180,000 dead and wounded, while Ukraine had 100,000 killed or wounded in action along with 30,000 civilian deaths.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/ukraine-russia-casualties.html

Most armies have a 3:1 wounded to killed ratio. The Russian army due to its disregard for human life and poor medical services, has a much higher death rate then Ukraine. Ukraine's wounded soldiers are much more likely to return to combat, then a wounded Russian soldier.

[All Along The Watchtower]

It's not just disregard for human life and poor medical services.

All wartime casualties are bad news, but at least dead men tell no tales. And dead or wounded, the Kremlin does not want the Russian people to know the true cost, or indeed, any part of the truth, of Mr. Putin's "military special operation" (the cynical euphemism says it all, doesn't it).

Obviously this is not at all like the "Great Patriotic War" in WWII (at the very least, you'd have to reverse Russia's role). It's more like WWI or the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Remind me of the fate of the regimes/systems of government in place in Russia at the time of those wars.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Putin: Mince meat them before it is too late. He means his own troops before late Spring, when it will too late as the big guns move in. It's now or never. So reports the Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-putins-men-fear-minced-meat-fate-in-new-ukraine-offensive?ref=home

So his plan is take his “winning strategy” in Bakhmut (which they haven’t even actually entered yet let alone won) of sending human wave attacks but along the Kreminna-Svatove line and hope it achieves victory before late spring/early summer when the Western tanks will be ready to take over? How the hell is he and his high command this incompetent at military strategy?

[NOVA Green]

Not only is surrendering the territory Russia holds a bad economic hit but it will invite Putin or his successors to try again in the future. The only way to avoid an even deadlier conflict is to grind it out now and beat Russia.

I agree in principle, but again, if Ukraine keeps sticking to its strategy of "corrosion" even in the face of ever-escalating Russian mobilization efforts, then the sheer loss of life and attrition on Ukrainian resources might not lead to a favorable outcome, or might get to a point where Ukraine loses too many people (how many is too many is first a political question, but eventually it becomes a basic math problem). Ukraine doesn't have as deep of mobilization potential as Russia, whose population is over 3x larger (not including Ukrainians in occupied territory, and not able to be mobilized by UKR), nor do they have as many resources or large operational defense industrial capacity. And there will come a time where weapons deliveries start having to come from industry and not stockpiles for the simple reason that the stockpiles of willing and able donors are exhausted. That will cause crucial delays in kit Ukrainians need immediately.

All of this is to say that if Ukraine wants to win this war without massive loss of life, or maybe even at all, they need to move beyond just grinding down the Russian army. That worked before Russian mobilization, but it's a tough lift now. For example, Kherson was a victory, but not being able to actually trap most of those Russian forces was a major missed opportunity. This was how decisive victories were won on the Eastern Front in WW2. They didn't always just wear each other down, entire armies were sometimes out-maneuvered and encircled and essentially removed from the field without the insanely high cost of fighting each other to the death. Suffice to say, I get why it wasn't possible for Ukraine at the time, but still, that's the point. I would say that the larger these armies get, the more necessary this will become for the most optimal outcome.

Just my two cents.

Not to belie the points you have been making in a couple posts earlier today, but Russian estimated combat losses are now hitting around 200k, according to Western officials.

The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials.

While the officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, they say the slaughter from fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and the town of Soledar has ballooned what was already a heavy toll.

With Moscow desperate for a major battlefield victory and viewing Bakhmut as the key to seizing the entire eastern Donbas area, the Russian military has sent poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, has been hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.

Russia analysts say that the loss of life is unlikely to be a deterrent to Mr. Putin’s war aims. He has no political opposition at home and has framed the war as the kind of struggle the country faced in World War II, when more than 8 million Soviet troops died. U.S. officials have said that they believe that Mr. Putin can sustain hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine, although higher numbers could cut into his political support.

On Norwegian TV on Jan. 22, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s defense chief, said estimates were that Russia had suffered 180,000 dead and wounded, while Ukraine had 100,000 killed or wounded in action along with 30,000 civilian deaths.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/ukraine-russia-casualties.html

Most armies have a 3:1 wounded to killed ratio. The Russian army due to its disregard for human life and poor medical services, has a much higher death rate then Ukraine. Ukraine's wounded soldiers are much more likely to return to combat, then a wounded Russian soldier.

Good point.

Also recall reading an article within the past day or two regarding Wagner Group casualties in particular, with estimates they might have lost something like 77% of their combat capacity in Ukraine as a result of wave attacks, many of which were conducted by Russian Prisoners released from the Gulags.

Still, there are many anecdotal reports that Russia is in fact sending wounded Russian soldiers back to the front, but even assuming such stories are true they likely won't get prominent attention within the Russian media and might take a bit to trickle down to the mothers, wives, and children of the Mobniks drafted to fight in Putin's War.

[jaichind]

"Why do leopards take so long to drive here?
- The Germans stop at every traffic light."

[Woody]

Kreminna - Russian Armed Forces have pushed Ukrainians further away from the city/it's forests back to the administrative borders of Donetsk Oblast. (Apparently some of UA's reserves here was reinforced down south to protect Vuhledar?)

https://mobile.twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1621664440788680704?cxt=HHwWgIC8ofH...
https://twitter.com/TWWTweeter/status/1621725478838050816