Cont: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine part 8

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theprestige

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Thread continued from here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=365848.

As is usual, the thread split is arbitrary and posters may quote from the previous thread(s)
Posted By: Agatha



More like Operation Trident. Except that actual missile boats don't seem very survivable in today's world. Even the vaunted US Navy is questioning the wisdom of amphibious attacks in the age of plentiful shore-based anti-ship missiles.

Anyway, I'm happy, as I donated specifically to Ukraine's naval drone fund. I've been waiting for months to see the guys in action. Hope there's more to come.
 
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Good point, and quite possibly, yes. Much more likely IMHO (which really means not much) than a St Nazaire Raid.
 
Blue Mountain said:
A hare brained idea for attacking the Kerch bridge: the boy who cried wolf scenario.
  1. Assemble a large force of rather small non-lethal drones, but large enough to show up on radar
  2. At two to three day intervals, send a few of them to the bridge
  3. The predictable Russian response will be an all-out defence, which will tie up resources against a non-lethal attack force
  4. Wait until the Russian forces get tired of responding in force to the drone attacks
  5. Send in the heavily armed drones

I'm hoping people with actual tactical and military experience will tell me how effective such a strategy might or might not be.
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Needs to be a bit more flexible but you probably aren't the only one thinking along those lines.

If the drones always come from the same direction, the Russians will likely try to move some assets to either detect or intercept the drones. That creates opportunities to come from a different direction. The flexibility is required to deal with any other variations in Russian responses to the smaller drones.

Bigger sticking points are a matter of logistics and security. Launch from the same place too many times and you might get a visit from the Russian air force there. How many drones are required to pull it off also matters.
 
I think the conventional wisdom is that if you can send something on an attack route anyway might as well send a bomb. If it get thru, great! And you can move on to other operations. If not, maybe the next one will. Or the one after that.
 
An observation watching Twitter vids & updates.

The Ukrainians have videos of dozens of vehicle kills per day. The Russians have 1 or 2 and recycle them for days.

Re: The counteroffensive
I feel that there is a major opportunity in the south. if they can get through the remaining defensive line, they can drive to Melitopol quickly. I think they are holding back a brigade of Bradleys to exploit this once they get to the main road. Russian supply chain is all busted up from Crimea and this may be happening in the next week.
 
The claimed figures of Russian troops and equipment taken out of the game is very impressive. How much more hardware and manpower can Russia have left?
 
Ian Osborne said:
The claimed figures of Russian troops and equipment taken out of the game is very impressive. How much more hardware and manpower can Russia have left?
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Manpower, well certainly over 10 million men at military age. They haven't really scratched the surface. Hardware... you don't jaunt off to North Korea begging for scraps if you aren't getting desperate. You also don't pull T-55's out of mothballs for fire support, if you aren't desperate.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Manpower, well certainly over 10 million men at military age. They haven't really scratched the surface. Hardware... you don't jaunt off to North Korea begging for scraps if you aren't getting desperate. You also don't pull T-55's out of mothballs for fire support, if you aren't desperate.
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Joke is they are demanding that Great Britian return that T 34 on display in the Imperial War Museum to Russia.....
 
lobosrul5 said:
Manpower, well certainly over 10 million men at military age. They haven't really scratched the surface. Hardware... you don't jaunt off to North Korea begging for scraps if you aren't getting desperate. You also don't pull T-55's out of mothballs for fire support, if you aren't desperate.
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Is the manpower figure before or after accounting for the number of people that must be reserved to sustain critical industry and a minimum viable amount of economic activity?

Not to mention the number of people that must be reserved for critical military tasks not related to the war in Ukraine?
 
theprestige said:
Is the manpower figure before or after accounting for the number of people that must be reserved to sustain critical industry and a minimum viable amount of economic activity?

Not to mention the number of people that must be reserved for critical military tasks not related to the war in Ukraine?
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They* figured out a way to keep their factories running, and still have a huge military in the 1940's. But, can they do that again? Probably not. But my point was, there's plenty of vatniks they can round up that probably sit around smoking meth and drinking cheap vodka and have a "job" to hand a Mosin-Nagant. The number of educated people they have that aren't in critical work positions, that might be officer candidates, and won't flee the country if drafted? Yeah that number is probably desperately low.

*well, the USSR that is
 
I saw a report earlier today about a couple of organisations that have tallied up all the Obituaries in Russian newspapers and social media. It's over 250,000.
There's now a ban on printing or posting them
 
lobosrul5 said:
They* figured out a way to keep their factories running, and still have a huge military in the 1940's. But, can they do that again? Probably not. But my point was, there's plenty of vatniks they can round up that probably sit around smoking meth and drinking cheap vodka and have a "job" to hand a Mosin-Nagant. The number of educated people they have that aren't in critical work positions, that might be officer candidates, and won't flee the country if drafted? Yeah that number is probably desperately low.

*well, the USSR that is
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I get that nations involved in a total industrial war must figure out some way to keep their factories running while they fight. Usually this means reserving some of your total labor pool for non-military service. The total number of citizens in your labor pool isn't the total number of citizens you can afford to conscript and send to the front.

THUS MY QUESTION.
 
Andy_Ross said:
I saw a report earlier today about a couple of organisations that have tallied up all the Obituaries in Russian newspapers and social media. It's over 250,000.
There's now a ban on printing or posting them
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I've seen some other work that was doing things like looking at the number of probate cases compared to previous years and extrapolating from there. However, the problem with both that method and the obituaries method, is many soldiers are just reported MIA. Or their family just stops hearing from them, and thats it. No official notification of any kind.
 
I for one would not fault a belligerent for deciding that its casualty figures are a matter of national security, for both intelligence and propaganda reasons, and embargoing their publication while hostilities are ongoing. Ukraine also tends to be pretty close-mouthed about these things, except when they're playing up specific stories for sympathy (i.e., propaganda).
 
theprestige said:
I get that nations involved in a total industrial war must figure out some way to keep their factories running while they fight. Usually this means reserving some of your total labor pool for non-military service. The total number of citizens in your labor pool isn't the total number of citizens you can afford to conscript and send to the front.

THUS MY QUESTION.
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Its an impossible one to know. How far can Russia push its civilian population at gunpoint to sit in a trench? I would've thought they'd already have had a serious rebellion by now. But, their population is more cowed and more braindead than I had estimated.

I don't think Russia needs all that many people for employment in their critical industry. You need oil and gas workers drilling, pumping, refinery. Some port infrastructure, and the railroads. A few military factories... 100k workers at the absolute most. Agriculture and food service... sure some there. But its mostly mechanized huge grain field low manpower style agriculture. Most of their consumer goods are imported. I think they could probably still operate as the worlds largest gas station with many millions of men in their military.
 
theprestige said:
I for one would not fault a belligerent for deciding that its casualty figures are a matter of national security, for both intelligence and propaganda reasons, and embargoing their publication while hostilities are ongoing. Ukraine also tends to be pretty close-mouthed about these things, except when they're playing up specific stories for sympathy (i.e., propaganda).
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Yes, heres the thing though. Ukraine has much more video and pictures to show us of destroyed Russian equipment than Russia has to show us of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. That leads me to believe that Ukraine is indeed winning the battle of attrition. Russia would be showing us the masses of western MBT's they've destroyed, if they had indeed destroyed them.
 
The 250,000 number (post #14) is interesting because it's very close to the running count from the official Ukraine Govt, sources. When they release the numbers they get a lot of "what source?" and "how did you count?" responses in Twitter - but it seems they are not inflating.

(And if that's from Obituaries, how many more wounded are there?)
 
lobosrul5 said:
Yes, heres the thing though. Ukraine has much more video and pictures to show us of destroyed Russian equipment than Russia has to show us of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. That leads me to believe that Ukraine is indeed winning the battle of attrition. Russia would be showing us the masses of western MBT's they've destroyed, if they had indeed destroyed them.
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I'm not disputing any of that. We've discussed Ukraine's progress and prospects in the war of attrition elsewhere. Here I'm wondering how much of their ten million available laborers is the amount they can actually afford to send to Ukraine without collapsing their economy and/or gutting their other military necessities.
 
lobosrul5 said:
I don't think Russia needs all that many people for employment in their critical industry. You need oil and gas workers drilling, pumping, refinery. Some port infrastructure, and the railroads. A few military factories... 100k workers at the absolute most. Agriculture and food service... sure some there. But its mostly mechanized huge grain field low manpower style agriculture. Most of their consumer goods are imported. I think they could probably still operate as the worlds largest gas station with many millions of men in their military.
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You're way too low. From Bowen, Andrew (2021). Russia's Arms Sales and Defense Industry (CRS Report No. R46937), p.9:

Russia’s defense industry remains a domestically important sector, employing several million workers and supporting foreign arms sales. (Estimates of the size of the workforce range from 2 million to 3 million. Connolly and Sendstad, Russia’s Role as an Arms Exporter, p. 3; Tor Bukkvoll, Tomas Malmlof, and Konstantin Makienko, “The Defence Industry as a Locomotive for Technological Renewal in Russia: Are the Conditions in Place?” Post-Communist Economies vol. 29, no. 2 (2017), p. 234 . . . ; Pavel Luzin, Russia’s Defense Industry: Between Political Significance and Economic Inefficiency, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2020, p. 3 . . . .) [form of citation changed from footnote to in-line for clarity]
​
Further, from The Moscow Times:

Russian Factories Face Record Labor Shortages

Russia’s industrial worker shortage reached a new high last month, the RBC news website reported Thursday, citing a survey by the Yegor Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy.

The survey found that 42% of Russian industrial enterprises faced a shortage of workers in July, surpassing April’s record-setting shortage of 35%, according to the same survey of around 1,000 enterprises. . . .

Only 2% of the surveyed enterprises said they were overstaffed, with RBC noting that the stark shortage-to-surplus of workers ratio represents the widest margin in the past 28 years.

According to an April survey by Russia's Central Bank, in the first quarter of 2023, worker shortages in Russia reached their highest level since records began in 1998.

The most acute shortage of personnel according to the Central Bank survey was observed in manufacturing, industrial, mining and transportation.​

So no, Russia can't just add "many millions of men" to their army. And even if they somehow went ahead anyway, there would be no means of training, arming, equipping, or supplying them; Russia can't even do those things adequately for the troops it has now.
 
Belarus has begun military exercises near its border with Poland and Lithuania.
Both countries have moved forces to the border regions and are expecting provocations. NATO forces in the Forward Presence Battalions are also on increased readiness.
 
pzkpfw said:
The 250,000 number (post #14) is interesting because it's very close to the running count from the official Ukraine Govt, sources. When they release the numbers they get a lot of "what source?" and "how did you count?" responses in Twitter - but it seems they are not inflating.

(And if that's from Obituaries, how many more wounded are there?)
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All militaries overclaim, even if they're sincerely trying to give an accurate accounting. It's just in the nature of warfare. I would also point out that the recently leaked Pentagon documents contained estimates of Russian casualties that were about half what the Ukrainians were claiming at the time. As for the number of wounded, I suspect that Russia's wounded-to-KIA ratio is significantly smaller than the expected 3:1, due to a combination of indifference and incompetence.
 
Some Russian demographics googled from various sources I have not vetted:

Soviet Union population in 1941: 205 million
Russian population 2023: 144.4 million.

Russia has an aging population and a declining birth rate.
Men tend to die early compare to other industrialized nations.

The Soviets used to lean on the ethnic minorities to fill out the infantry. Russia already leaned on what is left of the minorities in the last mobilization. Without the other Soviet republics, they don't have the ability to just pull some non-Russian farmer out of a field and send him off to die without anybody in the big cities noticing.
 
Doubt said:
Some Russian demographics googled from various sources I have not vetted:

Soviet Union population in 1941: 205 million
Russian population 2023: 144.4 million.

Russia has an aging population and a declining birth rate.
Men tend to die early compare to other industrialized nations.

The Soviets used to lean on the ethnic minorities to fill out the infantry. Russia already leaned on what is left of the minorities in the last mobilization. Without the other Soviet republics, they don't have the ability to just pull some non-Russian farmer out of a field and send him off to die without anybody in the big cities noticing.
Click to expand...


Another point: The Soviet economy came perilously close to complete collapse in 1942, and it likely would have collapsed without Lend-Lease. So there's no way the Russians could possibly put up anything close to a WWII level of military production; Putin would surely be tossed out a window for even suggesting such a thing.
 
Yes, in ww2, the Russians got thousands of miles of rail track, 11,000 items of rolling stock and 2000 locomotives. Half a million trucks, almost 60% of their fuel including 90% of their high octane aircraft fuel, an entire tyre factory, many thousands of miles of wire cable. Industrial goods like machine tools, bearings plus 53% of their ammunition.
That's without even mentioning the weapons deliveries which included over 10,000 aircraft and.13000 combat vehicles.
Britain sent over 3,000+ Hurricanes, 4,000 other aircraft
27 naval vessels, over 5,000 tanks, over 5,000+ anti-tank guns and over 6000 other combat vehicles.
In addition the US and Britain sent many thousands of radios, radar sets and telephone systems.
Plus importantly many millions of pairs of boots. Britain alone sent 15 million pairs.
Mundane things like wool and cotton for weaving and a vast amount of woven fabric and buttons were important.
Over $180 billion in today's value.

It all allowed Russian industry to concentrate on weapon production.
 
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Andy_Ross said:
Yes, in ww2, the Russians got thousands of miles of rail track, 11,000 items of rolling stock and 2000 locomotives. Half a million trucks, almost 60% of their fuel including 90% of their high octane aircraft fuel, an entire tyre factory, many thousands of miles of wire cable. Industrial goods like machine tools, bearings plus 53% of their ammunition.
That's without even mentioning the weapons deliveries which included over 10,000 aircraft and.13000 combat vehicles.
Britain sent over 3,000+ Hurricanes, 4,000 other aircraft
27 naval vessels, over 5,000 tanks, over 5,000+ anti-tank guns and over 6000 other combat vehicles.
In addition the US and Britain sent many thousands of radios, radar sets and telephone systems.
Plus importantly many millions of pairs of boots. Britain alone sent 15 million pairs.
Mundane things like wool and cotton for weaving and a vast amount of woven fabric and buttons were important.
Over $180 billion in today's value.

It all allowed Russian industry to concentrate on weapon production.
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I've taken to listening to the "We Have Ways of Making you Talk" podcast while out walking. They're currently focusing on 1943 and a repeated theme they come back to is how lend lease changed the equation in the East, the sheer volume of stuff involved and the incredible speed at which it arrived.

Will China and India become Russia's Lend Lease suppliers in this war in exchange for natural resources ?
 
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At one point in 1941 over 50% of the medium tanks in Russian service were lend lease and the air force relied on Hurricanes as the main fighter.
 
Drewbot said:
An observation watching Twitter vids & updates.

The Ukrainians have videos of dozens of vehicle kills per day. The Russians have 1 or 2 and recycle them for days.
Click to expand...

I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but social media videos of the war is propaganda and doesn't have much use beyond being a morale booster (which is good, morale is important!). Presumably the Ukrainians are making more of an effort to get their propaganda served up to a Western audience considering we're their benefactors in this war, while any Russian propaganda would mostly be for a Russian audience and they may not be making as much of an effort to reach the English speaking internet. I'm assuming Russian social media is awash with content that shows their soldiers bravely waging war and achieving glorious victory.

Tallying up social media videos is hardly a useful way to make an assessment of anything.
 
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Doubt said:
Some Russian demographics googled from various sources I have not vetted:

Soviet Union population in 1941: 205 million
Russian population 2023: 144.4 million.

Russia has an aging population and a declining birth rate.
Men tend to die early compare to other industrialized nations.

The Soviets used to lean on the ethnic minorities to fill out the infantry. Russia already leaned on what is left of the minorities in the last mobilization. Without the other Soviet republics, they don't have the ability to just pull some non-Russian farmer out of a field and send him off to die without anybody in the big cities noticing.
Click to expand...

Ukraine is also going through a demographic collapse that predates the war, and obviously the invasion is only accelerating that. Safe to assume that a large percentage of those that end up getting any kind of permanent residency status out of Ukraine will probably not return to a war-torn homeland, even in victory.

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/war-exacerbates-ukraines-population-decline-new-report-shows-2023-03-08_en

Curious to speculate about what potential post-war closer relations with the EU would mean. I would guess that easier immigration would mean a huge exodus of Ukrainians to European countries where wages and standards of living were higher.
 
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I saw a clip on Tik Tok from @joeycontino2 he says the Russian MOD Propaganda TV show, announced that they have counted obituaries, and the actual Russian KIA are 284,000 approx. 34,000 higher than the Ukraine estimate.

Why would they, after a year of lying about casualties, come out with a higher number? What is the plan? are they going to announce a new mobilization? or will this be the start of a draw down, leading to peace? It's a shocking number for 16 months of modern warfare.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Belarus has begun military exercises near its border with Poland and Lithuania.
Both countries have moved forces to the border regions and are expecting provocations. NATO forces in the Forward Presence Battalions are also on increased readiness.
Click to expand...

Von Clausewitz has little use for feints, but I think even he would agree that if you're going to make a feint, it should at least draw away some of the forces you are actually fighting, instead of activating fresh forces from an as-yet latent enemy.
 
Drewbot said:
I saw a clip on Tik Tok from @joeycontino2 he says the Russian MOD Propaganda TV show, announced that they have counted obituaries, and the actual Russian KIA are 284,000 approx. 34,000 higher than the Ukraine estimate.

Why would they, after a year of lying about casualties, come out with a higher number? What is the plan? are they going to announce a new mobilization? or will this be the start of a draw down, leading to peace? It's a shocking number for 16 months of modern warfare.
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It's probably just Moscow's version of the modified limited hang-out.
 
The Don said:
Will China and India become Russia's Lend Lease suppliers in this war in exchange for natural resources ?
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If they're trading, rather than giving, it's not Lend-Lease.

That aside, as I've mentioned, secondary sanctions would be a disaster for China, and I mean that quite literally. Further, as much as Xi likes having Russia distract the West from attempting to contain China, the trade disruptions caused by the war are going to hurt China's economy, on balance. For example, before the war, China was one of the largest purchasers of Ukrainian grain. And, as has been discussed, Russia's ability to supply oil and gas to anywhere outside of Europe is limited, due to lack of pipelines and suitable export terminals.

As for India, most of the above also applies to that country; additionally, there's the problem that much (though not all) of India's military equipment is NATO, rather than Soviet, standard.
 
SpitfireIX said:
If they're trading, rather than giving, it's not Lend-Lease.

That aside, as I've mentioned, secondary sanctions would be a disaster for China, and I mean that quite literally. Further, as much as Xi likes having Russia distract the West from attempting to contain China, the trade disruptions caused by the war are going to hurt China's economy, on balance. For example, before the war, China was one of the largest purchasers of Ukrainian grain. And, as has been discussed, Russia's ability to supply oil and gas to anywhere outside of Europe is limited, due to lack of pipelines and suitable export terminals.

As for India, most of the above also applies to that country; additionally, there's the problem that much (though not all) of India's military equipment is NATO, rather than Soviet, standard.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Indian_Army

I'm seeing a LOT of Soviet and Russian flags in the equipment origin column. Especially tanks.

Their Air Force operates Soviet/Russia, French, and home built planes. But they operate more Soviet/Russian than anything else.
 
The Don said:
I've taken to listening to the "We Have Ways of Making you Talk" podcast while out walking. They're currently focusing on 1943 and a repeated theme they come back to is how lend lease changed the equation in the East, the sheer volume of stuff involved and the incredible speed at which it arrived.

Will China and India become Russia's Lend Lease suppliers in this war in exchange for natural resources ?
Click to expand...

"Lend lease" only worked because it turned out that America had enough latent industrial capacity to backstop all of its allies and out-produce its primary opponent at the same time. I don't think China and India have enough spare industrial capacity combined to shore up Moscow's shortfalls in this conflict.
 
The Ukraine War Has Found the Machinery of Western Governments Wanting
 RUSI


While the provision of Western support to Ukraine has seen some notable successes, the slow pace of decision-making has made it more difficult to capitalise on Russian weaknesses.
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The failure to recognise decision points risks causing Ukraine serious problems in 2024 also. The massive consumption of ammunition from deficient NATO stockpiles was evident from June 2022. Across the board, assessments were clear that Western capitals needed to expand production of munitions and key spare parts like barrels. Here, however, the urgency felt in defence ministries has not been recognised across government. In the UK, for instance, while the Ministry of Defence has had the power to purchase materiel from the international market, sending UK money abroad and kicking the impending shortfall down the road, there has been little cross-government strategy on expanding production.
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The rest of the article is good too
 
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