Rokko

This was the usual annual (or biannual?) draft for mandatory military service in Russia. These don't end up in Ukraine. The same happened in 2022 and 2023, btw.

This has be to be a joke, right? No way Germany would have sold any weapons to Ukraine pre-02/22. Even the second hand sale of a handful ancient East German howitzers was through Latvia was out of the question. Best we were willing to do was sending 5000 helmets. Supplying arms to "conflict zones" was simply not a possibility in pre-war German politics.

This would be an effect of the meat-for-money exchange between Russia's poorer regions and the central government, no? The question is, where does this money come from and how is Moscow paying for it?

To me this is what his stance implies, please elaborate if you feel I am misrepresenting. A stance, which, by the way, the chancellor seems to hold in spite of a parliamentary resolution demanding the opposite (which is his right, but still). To be clear, I don't believe Scholz does not intend to not honor Germany's commitment to NATO in case of a full scale war with Russia, I just think his stance, or rather his justification for it, is dishonest. Anyways, now that he has strongly reaffirmed this stance multiple times it will probably be impossible for him to falter on this issue, so I'd expect Taurus to be off the table indefinitely. To say something good about the guy as well, at the moment he seems to be the only world leader of country with sufficient economic power who is commited (in his own, flawed way) to supporting Ukraine militarily and long term and on a regular basis. Shells, guns, drones and AD are necessities for Ukraine right now, whereas long-range strike capabilities are more of a nice-to-have. PS: Being German myself I feel I have the right to bash all I want

On the other hand, to my knowledge nobody tried to "weasel out" in 2001 on technicalities, like "oh but the US did this and that first" either. Granted, the stakes of going to war were much much lower in that case, so unity came cheap.

I think we are not talking about invoking Article 5 over some RAF specialists getting targeted in Western Ukraine in a missile strike but rather about Russia launching Kalibrs at London "decision making centers" in retaliation for UK involvement in providing target data for Storm Shadows. I don't know what people like Scholz would otherwise mean (and be fearful of) by "direct involvement" in the war.

So basically what he is saying is: 1) GER will not get involved in the war directly under any circumstances. 2) Taurus requires GER boots on the ground for target data programming 3) Therefore, sending Taurus is impossible, RU might retaliate against GER, leading to 1). But if we think this through to conclusion: - UK and FRA have put boots on the ground for target data programming. - UK and FRA are allied to GER. - If RU were to retaliate against UK/FRA, GER apparently does not intend not assist on their behalf, despite being in a military alliance, because 1) otherwise sending Taurus would not make a difference. I'm fairly sure a RU attack on either UK/FRA/GER in retaliation for them providing personnel for programming cruise missile targeting data would be grounds for invoking Article 5, maybe NATO allies should press Germany on this.

Can someone queue me in on the S-200? I wasn't aware that this was some kind of ultra-long range AD system. Why was it seemingly retired without replacement (for engaging targets at that range) and are there comparable Western systems? What I gathered so far is, that S-200s were apparently used as static emplacements (although apparently not in this case), which presumably made them vulnerable.

As a ballpark estimate this seems not totally unreasonable. But its been 19 weeks, which would mean they suffered an average of ~2500 casualties per week. Thinking back to the estimates I made a couple days back this seems a little too low, when compared to previous timeframes of comparable intensity. Particularly, at least for 10/23, their losses were probably a good 1/3 higher than that.

It looks like these forward SAM ambushes (assuming that that is what got 'em) would also be the solution against the Russian glide bomb threat. They'd need more of these systems do be able to do it more often and boldly, though. Right now, losing even a single of theses systems would probably be a greater catastrophe for Ukraine than losing a handful of jets every now and then is for Russia.

I'd like to a bunch of back-of-the-envelope calculations and present them here for "public scrutiny". Lately I have been fascinated by this data set on confirmed RU KIA. Sadly, I can't embed the individual interactive plots, so I'll just use a screenshot or two, but I'd encourage everyone to take a look for themselves. Especially the breakdowns by branch of service and by time are really interesting. So these people have been collectively gathering data on at least 43,460 killed RU soldiers from all branches (including PMCs and convicts), sampling from a variety of sources, ranging from social-media obituaries to on-site graveyard visits. I am not sure, if this data set includes L/DNR KIA figures or not, but it seems likely to me, since I found a couple of individual records of KIA high ranking officers that fought in (former) L/DNR formations. Now the total figure is obviously too low and one must also keep in mind that the degree of inaccuracy in the weekly KIA figures may also vary, but I think it is not totally unreasonable to assume a factor of roughly 7.2 for total casualties, overall (x3 for WIA/MIA, x2.4 for unreported losses). Note, the site makes a convincing argument, putting the probable WIA:KIA ratio in a range between 1.4:1 and 4:1. Using a 3:1 ratio would put the total figure at around 315,000, which matches with the CIA estimated as stated on this site (I didn't double check this figure or how recent it is). The UKR MOD currently claims just short of 400k for total personnel losses, btw. Below the figure I am referencing here it says that only for 34,388 out of the total of 43,460 KIA (~79%) the exact date of death is known. I take that to mean the remainder is not included in this figure and, assuming an even distribution of these cases, will include a factor of ~1.26 in all subsequent calculations, i.e., x3.033 for probable KIA and x9.099 for probable total casualties, based on the number of (date) confirmed KIA. If we now look, for example, at the weekly breakdown of all recorded KIA for the duration of the summer/fall 2023 offensive (roughly 01/06 through 4/10, or 18 weeks) we come up with a total of 5,591 confirmed KIA, with the intensity of the fighting seemingly steadily declining after June. So a probable total KIA count for this timeframe would be around 17,000 and 50,900 probable total casualties. On average and per week, this is 310 confirmed KIA, 940 probable KIA and 2,820 probable total casualties. These weekly averages are much lower, by a factor of ~2, than those during the two bloodiest months of the war (01/23 and 02/23) and lower by a factor of ~1.2 than weekly RU losses in 10/23 (right after cessation of the offensive, when the assault on Avdiivka began). Between 29/12/22 and 01/03/23 (9 weeks), which is somewhat arbitrary but roughly coincides with the deadliest fighting for Bakhmut and Vuhledar, the Russians suffered a total of 5,878 KIA, 17,800 probable KIA and 53,500 probable total casualties. On average and per week, this amounts to 653 confirmed KIA, 2000 probable KIA and 5,900 probable total casualties. I am not totally sure what to make of these figures, maybe others can gather meaningful insight from them, though. I really hope I didn't miscalculate anything. If I did, please correct me. To me, they seem to underline that, considering a RU replacement rate of about 20k per month or 5,000 per week (although we don't know since when and for how long this rate has held or will hold), a strategy focused on personnel attrition is probably not a viable option. Not that anyone would have made that claim. Even in their worst time, this replacement rate would have been almost sufficient to absorb their casualties (at 5,900 weekly casualties only 84.5% over a period of 9 weeks). There are some further caveats to that, I think: Before the fall 2022 mobilization and through early 2023, the RU replacement rate seems to have been much more inadequate before they managed to reach the current high levels, that allow them to absorb even absurdly high casualty rates. So there would have been a serious backlog of unreplaced losses, that would only slowly have been filled by that time. This might serve to explain the RU unwilligness to demobilize (or even just rotate) the fall 2022 mobiks and to just keep them for the duration. These figures also seem to indicate that the 2023 summer/fall offensive was probably never adequate at inflicting debilitating losses to the Russians, at least from a global perspective. How serious these losses affected RU troops locally can not really be concluded from this, although my gut feeling tells me that it probably never got all that serious for them, given that they managed to absorb roughly the same number of casualties in half the time during the winter (while on the offensive).

Well, we don't really know whether they needed to be rotated only at the time that they were. My hunch is, they were kept on the line well beyond the point of diminishing returns (of continued deployment), basically until the point of virtual destruction, which has all kinds of negative implications for later reconstituting that unit. Loss rates may be highly in favour of UKR, but from the way they seem to be deploying and relocating their brigades (and particularly, which brigades) I think we can gather that UKR seems to be unable to adequately replace these losses, regardless of how high they are. At this point, maybe even the Russians are not betting on an operational level breakthrough, anymore. I think they likely have settled for a slow grind through Donbas on a 2-4 year time schedule while grinding their social underclass into red paste (a win-win from their view, I bet) sort of deal. At least currently, it looks to me like this might work out for them, especially if UKR can't keep up with replacing their own losses. Whether this gains them anything of value in the long run is a different question, entirely, of course. And yes, obviously, we also don't know for how long RU can keep this level of recruitment going. This is most likely true, unfortunately. Which makes me scratch my head even harder that people keep arguing that keeping grinding forward all summer and fall was a good idea. It seems like this Summer offensive only brought the worst of all possible outcomes for UKR: Squandered reserves, stockpiles and winding down Western support. At the least they could be sitting on a comfy stockpile of DPICM, GMLRS and so forth and two corps (probably more like divisions) worth of somewhat uncommited troops to fight for whichever fortified Donbas town RU decides to bash agains next. I guess the only upside is that UKR is at least not totally screwed as long as China keeps up its military assistence in the form of selling them cheap plastic RC toy helicopters.

In the case of Europe I'd say UKR is cut off not due to political will (or lack thereof), but lack of means. The last aid package from Germany mentioned 2500 artillery shells. That's one day of firing and this was a couple of weeks back. And last time I checked, UKR seems to be losing around 3 artillery guns, self-propelled and otherwise, every other week. Europe can't replace those. Shell production will eventually reach useful levels (although we don't know how many of those will actually end up in UKR hands), but I am afraid they will have run out of guns at that point. From what we know, Russia is recruiting 20k (GUR estimate) to 35k (Medvedev bragging) men per month. Their losses are obviously high, but I'd guess given these numbers they are ultimately sustainable, not so for UKR it seems. And how many brigades were they able to smash against Avdiivka, one after the other? If they can keep this up, they'll whittle UKR down eventually this way, if they don't get a grip on their own issues.

To me this looks more like desparation than sound military logic. Why throw a specialist assault unit into the fray after only a couple months rest to fend off long looming disaster at the last moment (and lose the fortress in the process), why throw in the 47th (basically already spent) right after the failed counter-offensive, why is a single brigade (110th) required to hold out in Avdiivka for 1.5yrs of war and 4 months of sustained assaults? If things were okayish, the 110th would have been pulled back sometime in October, replaced by the 111th and maybe later bolstered by the 112th (or whatever), both rested and fresh from the Belorussian border. Instead, UKR is force to pull one act of desparation after another. It almost looks as if they just don't have any strategic reserves, at all. The underlying issue, at least to me, seems to be that RU has been running circles around UKR in terms of force generation for basically all of 2023 and ongoing. They may use these forces inefficently, but are able have brigade after brigade mauled while storming some fortress town, while UKR is forced to send the same couple of fire brigade units from hot spot to hot spot. The fact that UKR is basically cut off from foreign assistance and is likely going to be for the foreseeable future does not help in this matter, but their force generation issues seem to be a largely internal problem.

Can't say I've seen any videos showing grenades dropped through hatches of obviously crewed vehicles with the exception of a couple of FPV drones being flown into the rear hatches of BMP, but neither is my memory perfect, nor have I seen every drone video ever. Anyways, I wanted to use this opportunity to re-post my favorite video of this kind (sorry for the silly commentary):

I am pretty sure most if not all of these instances involve abandoned (damaged) tanks. Some of these implications still apply, though. Russian tank crews are quite probably more skittish on average due to the well known propensity of their tanks to incinerate their occupants alive and are therefore more likely to abandon their tanks even in case of non-critical damage or hits. Another big implication: Used to be that you had to expand another (or even more) expensive ATGM or tank round to deliver a kill shot, or else your enemy would come in at night and tow the tank back for repairs. Now, all you need is a cheap drone and a hand grenade to reliably and consistently cause write-offs of multi-million dollar war machines.

Sorry for the late reply, I rarely take part in the discussions in this thread due to time constraints and the fast moving nature of things, but didn't wan't to leave this thoughtful response unanswered. I agree with this somewhat, the fighting in that region over the summer were clearly much less mechanized in nature and I think the (absolute) vehicle loss figures serve as a good indicator for this, as well. And indeed, assuming proportional relationship between vehicle and personell losses is just a guess, but we don't really have any better metric, do we. Every other piece of evidence is, at best anectodal. I'd say its not so much taking absence of evidence as evidence of absence, but rather saying that there is simply not sufficient evidence backing the rather extraordinary claim that Ukraine somehow did actually really well during their offensive, destroying Russian reserves, inflicting casualties at desirable ratios and almost achieving a breakthrough into the operational rear. Even if we ignore, that there is very little historical precedent for an attacking side inflicting higher casualties than they themselves suffer during an (failed) offensive against strong fortifications*. Although I suspect you'd be able to find some counter-examples, like Sevastopol 42, Kursk 43 (maybe, not sure) and perhaps some of the PTO island battles pre-Peleliu. But for the case Ukraine's 2023 summer offensive, the nature of the fighting and, ultimately, the fact that it failed I simply to not see this as a likely or plausible possibility. Grinding through mine belts and fortified tree lines for months on end with mainly light infantry, no air support and eventually having to give up after become simply too worn down to continue simply does not speak for any of the above claims. BTW, one aspect we do have pretty good evidence off, are the unusually high losses of Russian artillery over the summer and, if I am not mistaken, the seemingly endless stream of videos showing 2S7s getting blown up by GMLRS and others started pretty much right after the offensive kicked off. But why then is there no (or rather so little) drone footage of slaughtered Russian counterattacks? I am not saying, they didn't happen at all, but rather that the Ukrainians probably overstated their significance/frequency and how destructive they were for the Russian forces involved. Also, regarding Ukraine's (social) media policies and "media blackouts" in particular, I have a hunch that they have been rather pragmatic about it right from the start. When they are spanking the Russians we get lots of videos and when the going gets tough, e.g., during the Russian (early) summer offensive 2022, the early stage Kherson (counter-)offensive and now the big 2023 (UKR) summer offensive, very little gets released. I find this explanation more reasonable than a deliberate media blackout for certain operations that sort of wanes over time. * Yes, arguments involving historical analogues are also not flawless. I think I've seen this argument a couple of times here but I'm not sure why this would supposedly be the case. If I am not mistaken the argument was, that DPR guys would somehow mutiny, if they were deployed outside off their little faux-republic? If this is indeed the argument, I find it both highly illogical and refuted by the fact that these guys have been deployed all over the place many times before. D/LNR soldiers were left as expendable rear guard/cannon fodder during the first Kharkiv counter-offensive (the one in spring, when they retook Trostyanets), they manned the front line in Zaphorizia in fall of 2022 (as per Murz IIRC) and at least some of their more regular units (and probably Mobiks as well) bore the initial brunt of the 2023 summer offensive, at least in some places. There were some complaints by D/LNR soldiers rather early in the war about being deployed outside of Donetzk/Luhansk, but when do Russians not complain? And when has it lead to them not wanting to be sent into the meatgrinder? I also (still) hope that at they will break at some point, eventually, but somehow I doubt that being sent to die outside of their particular region is going to be the catalyst for it. Besides, weren't the D/LNR armies officially integrated into the RuAF and, in fact, their "republics" into the RF? I'd assume this takes the wind out of their pathetic legalistic complaint videos and suffice for a couple of extra months of pointless meat assaults ... If I am reading you right, this is basically the core of your argument. That UKR was close to achieving a localized collapse (which may be true for all we know) and that moving reserves from Luhansk/Donetzk in a timely manner would have been to difficult to pull of, logistically and/or in C2C terms. Given the institutional culture of lying and general incompetence in the Russian command that could also well be true. But ultimately, I think one only has to presume the tiniest capacity for realistic assessment of the state of their own troops for the Russian command to anticipate any upcoming crumbling of their lines and to move an extra brigade every other week and put the lid on the whole thing. This is different from the rapid fall 2022 (Kharkiv) counter-offensive, when there simply weren't any reserves anywhere and the front had to be thread-bare in many places for them to be able to grind through Donetzk. But that was before mobilization plus a comfy cushion of 20k+ well-paid meatsacks per month to plug whatever gap needs plugging.

I agree with this. And I also don't really see more Western AFVs being sent to Ukraine as all that likely, unfortunately. They got what they got in 2022/23 and that's basically it. Maybe the US can be bullied into digging deeper into its stockpiles, but for the European stuff, the well has pretty much run dry I'm afraid, and most European countries seem to be focused on backfilling their own arsenals for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, all the fancy heavy stuff does not really seem to have been really all that effective, anyways. Definitely not in proportion to their logistical footprint and public profile. Whereas all the things that do the heavy lifting are either easily replaced (artillery shells) or even domestically produced (FPV drones, etc). Attrition through the most cost-efficient and simple means will be the game from now on would be my guess. F16s will be big deal, of course, but not as big as many make them out to be. I see them more as augmenting and replacing the current capabilities offered by the dwindling fleet of Soviet-era jets with the added benefit of easier integration with more and possibly different types of Western PGMs. I think this is a safe conclusion, the whole affair involved much less mechanized force than what is currently going on around Avdiivka and assuming that personnel losses might be proportional to vehicle losses is ultimately just a guess. And if these daily reports of waves of counter-attacks (read: unreliable own-side claims) are to be taken as indication, then why are not backed up by proportionally plentiful video evidence? I think I have seen more footage from Avdiivka in the last month than during the entirety of the summer offensive. Heck, even the 47th seems to have released more footage since they were to deployed to Avdiivka than in the 5 previous months. I don't get how we can say that they almost pulled it off, if less than month after had all but petered out the Russians had sufficient Reserves to burn 200 AVFs and several brigades near Avdiivka? Wouldn't they just have sent whatever they are losing now in completely voluntary actions as reserves towards Zaporizhia, had the UKR offensive been more threatening to them?

This is precisely the point where my own impression is the exact opposite of yours. I'd really like to what you base this on, because I am pretty sure we all here have looked at the same footage and accounts and I distinctly do *not* remember seeing images of literal fields full of Russian corpses and entire armored columns smashed to bits like we saw during the last month. All I can think of are one or two clips of Russian infantry retreating on foot from this or that bombed out tiny village while getting a couple of cluster rounds on their heads. In fact, the few concrete sources, that we have access to, also indicate pretty much the exact opposite I'd argue. Personnel losses are basically impossible to reliably estimate from only OSINT sources and for vehicle losses, which are easier to track, the figures indicate at best a 1:1 loss ratio. Below is the only source I've seen so far that explicitly tries to track the losses during the southern offensive. (The fighting around Bakhmut I find harder to judge since it has been, at least in my perception, almost entirely infantry centric.) So give or take 500 armored vehicles lost by each time between June and October (when the intensity of the fighting decreased notably I'd say). Contrast that with ~220 vehicles lost by Russia in less than a month at Avdiivka, basically half of what they lost in the Zaporizhia direction, in a much shorter timeframe and a ridiculously lopsided fashion. I don't see that as comparable, at all. https://x.com/naalsio26/status/172310590066203058 I find it incredible enough that Ukraine apparently has managed to kill/destroy Russians as efficiently as they did, all while assaulting the most heavily fortified positions one can think of, but to say that they came out ahead militarily almost borders on wishful thinking in my opinion.

But still, how does he get a number like "1589 personel"? I can only assume that he a) made it up or b) took some official TOE and multiplied it with some estimated percentage, in which case giving a single-digit precision number is at least ... kind of unprofessional I guess?

This is Mashovets I presume? Where the hell does this guy get his information from that he can cite enemy single-digit precision personel numbers? He too has become a source I've lost some trust in over time, especially after he claimed in June or July already that the Russians had to throw most of their strategic reserves into the South to hold the line or some similar nonsense. Saw this yesterday already and felt incredibly saddened. My wife was still pregnant when this tragedy occurred and now our daughter is taking her first steps, while lies dead besides his. Words can not describe how much I hate this war.

This is another thought that has bothered me lately: We saw over the course of the summer that Ukraine is able to effectively organize and synchronize actions in a given sector on a company to batallion scale, but not really larger than that. This has been first noted (and criticized) by Kofman et al, I believe. So for every day of the offensive there are at most a couple of company/batallion sized engagements. The Russians are mobilizing between 20,000 (UA/OSINT estimates) to 35,000 (Russian claims) men every month, though. Under these circumstances, can attriting the RU army through offensive action ever even be realistic possibility?

Ultimately I don't know, of course. But I do have a hunch that if the Russians had gotten to Slavyansk it would have taken them all Summer (~40km) and every month would have been another Avdiivka/Vuhledar, with loss rates more like these: ... rather than the 1:1 rate (at least for vehicles, but I am afraid we can roughly extrapolate personell losess from that) we had to witness for the Southern offensive. Needless to say that the recent developments and news have rather reinforced my belief that going on the offensive this year at all has been, sadly, a grave mistake for Ukraine. Now, and in hindsight, it strikes me as odd that we always talk about it as the Ukrainian "counter offensive", when, in fact, it was actually just a "regular" offensive, against well prepared defensives in a sector of the line that had been mostly static for well over a year at that point. I think its quite possible that an actual counter offensive, i.e., an operation in response to a culminated Russian offensive against weakened and exhausted forces would have been more successful. Basically, right now or a couple of weeks from now, at Avdiivka. But, alas, I suspect the Ukrainian army is too worn down for that from their own summer offensive, at least at this time.

Does anybody else find this infuriating? Setting aside the possibility that these are just the usual anonymous blabbermouths with their own agenda talking or that this is deliberate disinformation, but wasn't NATO (or the US or whoever) pressuring Ukraine just a couple of weeks ago to abandon their "casualty aversity" and throw everything at Tokmak to achieve a breakthrough? And now Ukraine should be thrown under the bus because they are running out of men? That being said, it does make me uneasy that Ukraine was apparently forced to send a brigade that was heavily involved in the Southern offensive (the 47th) straight into Avdiivka to plug gaps. This does not seem to indicate an abundance of fresh available reserves. And to pile on to the pessimism of these days some more, here's Tatarigami_UA criticizing General Syrski for his conduct around Bakhmut, both for holding it during the winter and for trying to retake it during the Summer.

First person POV of a DPICM strike. What surprised me was the relatively long time before the bomblets went off.