Ukraine

It’s been estimated 400,000 Ukrainians have completed National service in the Eastern conflict since 2014. Add that to the regular army of 200,000, they have a lot of decent soldiers.

In 2014, the Ukrainian army was woeful, poorly equipped and just capitulated in Crimea/Donbask. Since then the West has been arming/training them. They have more Western anti tank portable weapons than Russia has tanks. Any old basic RPG will take out a truck/armoured personnel carrier.

Add in the fact that the Russians can’t leave the roads (Rapistuta mud season) and the roads are blocked with destroyed/broken down/out of fuel vehicles, the Russians around Kiev are in a world of s@@t!

If this carries on for another month you have to wonder how much of an army Russia will still have left.

Hopefully not unlike the Iran Iraq war the Ukrainians can turn around and start to invade Russia. Wishful thinking.

Can’t imagine they would bother. Russia looks like it will be an economic basket case after this

the Ukrainians can turn around and start to invade Russia

Why on earth would you wish for that?!?

Some more on Ammo and supply.

Ukrainians are reporting that they’re currently using a weeks supply in 20 hours. (so shortages could be an issue for them as well) and have reportedly blown up a Russian supply dump in Luhansk. Also remember that the Russian didn’t plan for a 4 week war of attrition, they planned for a 3 day parade into Kyiv.

The Ukrainians are very good at their messaging and PR. Different bits aimed at different audiences. They want the West to get them re-supplied ASAP. Plus they want to tell the Russians how much stuff they are getting.

Why on earth would you wish for that?!?

To topple Putin hopefully, with a popular revolution. And prevent another Putin.

No one is going to invade Russia to help remove Putin.

To topple Putin hopefully, with a popular revolution. And prevent another Putin.

I think invading Russia would harden public opinion in Putin’s favour as well as potentially unleashing the nukes. So get the Russians back inside their borders then stop. For borders I also mean out of East Ukraine and Crimea.

I think Lukashenko might be concerned about an internal uprising though.

Oh well never mind – as you were.

@thetimes has a piece on ammunition shortages that are starting to bite for the Ukrainians too. Not surprising. To give you an idea of the use rate of ammo in war being far higher than anyone expected, the Ukrainians are saying that they are using a weeks supply in 20 hour pic.twitter.com/S3gpeHo18g

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 23, 2022

2) they have access to captured Russian equipment and supplies. 3) the Ukrainian rail system seemed to be working pretty well, atc, a few days ago. Of course, this could all change.

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 23, 2022

Wow, if true.

#Russia In the center of Moscow, somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into the Kremlin wall. pic.twitter.com/QETYs2vRvT

— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) March 23, 2022

No, they popularised something that was invented long before the Vietnam war (patented in 1956).

Korean War? Internet says (yeah I know – https://www.easycargo3d.com/en/blog/history-of-shipping-containers/)…

During World War II, the United States Army began experimenting with container transport. They used that experience in 1948 when they developed the so-called “Transporter” – a standardized, all-metal, stackable container that could be loaded from a ship directly onto a truck and vice versa. Its dimensions were 8 ‘6″ in length, 6’ 3″ in width and 6’10” in height. The Transporter proved itself during the Korean War (1950-1953). Thanks to it, the army was able to significantly speed up the supply of its troops and increase the safety of transported goods

Ref Stalin ‘numbers’ quote

He did. But he was also fighting The Great Patriotic War, for Mother Russia, against the Nazi Invader.

Important point, well made.

Buy your gas in roubles
Interesting to see if this forces the hand of countries deliberating the EU response as this would be a big escape from sanctions if buyers did it.

Another interesting article from Kamil Galeev, this time on the ethnic makeup of the invading Russian army. Interesting to see Kamil’s comments on the willingness of ethnic minorities appetite for fighting.

N.B. – Some of the images within the thread are very graphic & distressing.

The minority factor in Russian army is vastly underrated when discussing the course of Ukrainian war. Firstly, ethnic minorities are not so much a minority there. Judging from the casualty lists, minorities are wildly overrepresented on the battlefields as the cannon fodder? pic.twitter.com/PgsN89ZbvY

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 23, 2022

Buy your gas in roubles
Interesting to see if this forces the hand of countries deliberating the EU response as this would be a big escape from sanctions if buyers did it.

I don’t understand the logic of that. Surely, as the value of the Rouble plummets, gas becomes cheaper for the purchasers?

Interesting Oldbloke. I was wondering how Russia would leverage the gas supply issue with EU countries. They need to wake up. You can’t apply such wide reaching sanctions on Russia while also being dependent on them for gas.

They need to wake up

I’m not sure they have much choice, Putin has them by the balls on this, do they shut down their economies and allow citizens to freeze in their homes, or do they keep buying Russian gas?

I don’t understand the logic of that.

They can set the price whatever they want in Roubles, but that will force people to buy them to make the transaction which will prop up the value.

European gas demand in the summer is around half that in the winter. It tails off significantly from the end of March. Potentially, they have 6 months to sort things out one way or another.

Natural gas demand in Europe: The impacts of COVID-19 and other influences in 2020

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/putin-adviser-chubais-quits-over-ukraine-war-and-leaves-russia

Russian climate envoy Anatoly Chubais has stepped down and left the country, citing his opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the situation, becoming the highest-level official to break with the Kremlin over the invasion.

Chubais announced his resignation in a letter to colleagues and friends Tuesday, according to people who saw it. Last week, he hinted at a darkened outlook, saying in a post on Facebook on the anniversary of the death of Yegor Gaidar that the fellow economic reformer “understood the strategic risks better than I did and I was wrong.”

Gaidar being the now pilloried figure in Russia for introducing the share scheme that eventually led to the oligarchs consolidating control of utilities. There’s something about the last 30 years for Russia that was damned whichever way things went. You can’t just lose a geopolitical game of almost 100 years and not expect some fairly intense aftershocks. Let’s hope we’re watching the actual final end of that drama playing out

I’m not sure I believe these numbers, would imply that Russian efforts on the ground are close to collapsing
Even as they are pushing on in South East and apparently making renewed efforts toward Odessa in South west

If this is right; the Russian Army in Ukraine is now on the point of institutional failure. Expect more soldiers to stop fighting. https://t.co/SWje31KtXR

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 23, 2022

If these reports are true, and ukranians actually have ability /resources to push further could we expect a lot more Russians taken prisoner?

Local authorities do confirm that Ukrainian armed forces have Russians in Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel locked in a pocket.
It remains to be seen how tight is the encirclement. Hopefully, the recent operations made Russians kiss their supplies goodbye along the Warsaw Highway.

— Illia Ponomarenko ?? (@IAPonomarenko) March 23, 2022

I can’t see Putin taking that ki d of humiliation well

If it’s possible, the best thing for Ukraine to do with prisoners is keep them warm, dry and well fed, and give them phones.

Absolutely. But they’ll struggle to keep anyone safe and well in many areas already, and in more areas soon. Never mind where they are close enough to troops to capture them.

Important and accurate map. pic.twitter.com/1Ae1QtVQ3U

— Christian Borys (@ItsBorys) March 22, 2022

They should put all the POWs in a nice warm kindergarten, or perhaps a maternity hospital. I’m sure they’ll all be perfectly safe there, right?

I didn’t mean it for humanitarian reasons, by the way – I was thinking of it as a propaganda weapon.

They should put all the POWs in a nice warm kindergarten, or perhaps a maternity hospital. I’m sure they’ll all be perfectly safe there, right?

With “POWs” painted on the road outside.

Move them to Poland let them go home from there. Having been looked after.

I didn’t mean it for humanitarian reasons, by the way – I was thinking of it as a propaganda weapon.

Agreed.

Ukraine has the moral high ground, with thevworld and wavering Russians. It can’t be seen to be undermining that position and lose that support.

Agreed. But it’s hard thing to control when you’re under attack.

Russia has said it wants to host the Euros in 2028 – despite being banned from international football over its invasion of Ukraine https://t.co/Jfl2TN90ye

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 23, 2022

Russia trolling now 😂

I find the 40k figure hard to believe, have any US or British intelligence validated that or even any figure close to it?

I find the 40k figure hard to believe, have any US or British intelligence validated that or even any figure close to it?

Not that I’m aware of. I keep seeing the 9-10k killed or wounded figure in various sources but haven’t seen any for POWs. What is a ‘normal’ ratio of POWs to casualties? Does 3x sound about right or is that way over the top?

Re the oil sales in roubles:

They can set the price whatever they want in Roubles, but that will force people to buy them to make the transaction which will prop up the value.

Precisely this.

Keep in mind that these are educated guesses. What does seem clear is that the Russians have taken horrendous losses and cannot sustain this.

NATO: Up to 40,000 Russian Troops Killed, Wounded, Taken Prisoner or Missing in Ukraine https://t.co/8OHhv3aZjZ

— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) March 23, 2022

30-40k seems to be fairly commonly quoted for total casualties ie killed AND wounded. It’s not that hard to get to if you accept killed is 7-15k and a ratio of 2 or 3 to 1 for wounded to killed.

Impossible to say of course what the real number is – fog of war, propaganda, misinformation etc but it does feel like it is a pretty disastrous number in any event.