Butschi

BS of the highest order.  You have zero proof of this and just about no one who knows anything about election processes outside of Russia agrees with you.

Considering that he basically: controls the media, makes real opposition disappear (or kills them outright), has central control of internal security who are arresting anyone who even has a whiff of real dissent, and anyone running against him is basically approved by him - Russia isn't even close to a functioning democracy at this point anymore than North Korea is.  To come here claiming otherwise is disinformation of the worst sort.

I can fully understand and sympathize with their positions and sentiments.  But lies are lies, no matter who is pushing them.  We either try and hold onto objective truth or we can just become another echo chamber showing one sided war porn and offering weak analysis.  We are challenged enough to avoid our own biases without completely abandoning what this entire thread was supposed to do in the first place.  I oppose disinformation no matter the source.

I don't think your argument really addresses the point here. Russia does not have to be as effective pound for pound as Ukraine, they can use more resources sustainably. So in a static situation they can use more shells than Ukraine so even if they are more wasteful the number of casualties may end up being the same. 
That is obviously not ideal for Ukraine - if both sides are just sitting in trenches taking 500 casualties a day then the war is not going to end any time soon.

Attrition in my mind is the constant cost of war, where as casulties from offensive operations are seperate. The naming here is pretty irrelevant though because as I said, the ZSU is not suffering more absolute casulties*
This is not because the average drone pilot is 10 times better or has 10 times more drones and thus somehow offsets the total lack of shells.
Its just a result that attacking in an environment where units can be reliably spotted kilometers away before they even assembled for a large scale attack, and can be killed more easily with the cheap-o FPV PGM, is near suicidal as russian meatwaves prove day in day out.
Even if they make it past no mans land, a focused drone effort wipes most of the exposed and often EW-unprotected / unentrenched survivors out before much of any momentum can be gained. 
Its the same for both sides in this way but as Ukraine is not attacking, its not subject to this exposure as much, just the daily bombing and artillery shelling
Yes, I agree with this. Beyond 2025-2026, this war will reach non sustainability for putin and keeping a stalemate will just help get there safer. But this does not refute the idea that the disparity in casualties is caused by offensive actions, which compensate for the firepower difference.
 
*although, when it comes to relative losses I think the picture depends on the weapon system. I made the case for the Avdiivka losses, where russia ended up basically at a zero change with the captured, refurbished and produced vehicles in that timeframe, while the losses to Ukraine are permanent and lowered the capabilities of the armed forces, since there is close to no heavy gear still being supplied in quantity. 

You asked for data you got data.
If you want to go into dreamland where 1 ZSU drone has the effectiveness of 10 russian ones and cancels out the 10 to 1 artillery shell disadvantage, go ahead.
Theres 0 evidence for that though.
 

Keep in mind a large portion of FPV are used on a single MG, AGS, or even just an empty dugout. Its a systematic way how defenses are continously degraded more than can be replenished before attacks.
 
What makes you think so? There are plenty people who count FPV attacks and russia is just a sliver behind in the number of attacks, and completely dominating with artillery.
If you arent seeing the gruesome results, its because you are not frequenting russian TG channels I assume.
In attritional casulties russia is doing better, the only reason they have more dead at the end of the day is because of the constant meatwaves that get destroyed. Were it a completely static line with both sides not attacking, russia would be way ahead in causing dead & wounded and not even close to the 3:1 ratio that is needed to maintain force parity
 

I guess most people here (me included) don't read Russian and thus don't read the relevant TG groups. Since most stuff here is Pro-Ukrainian, we get a very biased view of what is really happening.
For a better opinion I would have to watch more of the Russian stuff and, even if that is a bit stupid, I don't really want to do that.

Danger young “S”.  This is not the first time this distillation has been attempted.  As I allude to in my post, the link between military schools of thought and the societies behind them is not 1) unidirectional, nor 2) in glorious isolation.  There is truth to the above argument but only partial truths.  For example, in war societies themselves shift and change (see Japanese internment camps) so the evolution of their military will also shift and change.  
In the examples you cite, these are less failures in military transposition but in a larger political ideology.  More bluntly we cannot reproduce western democracies in many of these nations.  The failure of western military school in these same nations is a symptom of a large issue.  At the same time history is full of “westernized” indigenous troops who were successfully integrated and operationalized out of line with their home cultures - Sikh Regiments anyone?
A military must be a recognizable extension of its society but that is far slipperier and squishier concept than the picture on the cereal box.

There is some truth to the idea that militaries are an extension of the people who make them, however, one cannot become too focused on political ideology as the sole source of an overall school of doctrine.  History, resources, infrastructure, culture, environment and even things as simple as education and literacy all play important roles in how a military is generated and employed.  We can see vast differences in communist military approaches, for example.  North Vietnam had a very different approach than the Soviets, as did China and other non-Soviet communist states.  Western militaries also differed, not only internally but over time.  There is a vast difference in US military doctrine as it went from conscription to an all volunteer force.  Its conscription based force actually favoured mass until the 70s as did many other western nations.
I think this risks dangerous oversimplification of the issue.  Ukraine is on a democracy spectrum, not a full fledge liberal democratic state yet.  Russia is also technically a democracy, but far more in the “locked in” autocratic/oligarch end.  Neither Ukraine or Russia are communist states (see their economic systems).  So boiling this all down to Russia = dictatorship = communism = Soviet system: Ukraine = democracy = western system, is a serious oversimplified lens through which to view the situation on just about every point of the algorithm.  
The initial Russian invasion was constructed pretty much as we expected - BTGs under Brigade formations.  The nature of the assault was multi-axis manoeuvre designed to overwhelm an opponent.  The RA did not employ a Soviet style military approach here, they were much closer to western military philosophy and doctrine - fast moving warfare based on strategies of rapid annihilation through manoeuvre.  We did not see MRDs in an echeloned system designed to attack in multiple waves or the massive fires complex that are hallmarks of the Soviet system - in fact if Russia had gone with a Soviet style attack, with the numbers behind it, they may very well have won.  No the RA tried to employ what was basically a western style opening attack but it failed, nearly completely.  Now why it failed is interesting and two camps have sprung up.  The main one is that “Russia Sux” and cannot do western doctrine, despite trying to look like us, for various reasons - a BTG is nothing more than a type of Battle Group.  The other camp is of the mind the RA failed because conditions on the modern battlefield have changed.  The first camp has been the loudest but the evidence in support of the second is growing.
The western school is far more than training and kit - it is a deeper military philosophy that generates strategy, which in turn generates campaigns…pretty much like the Soviet school but taking very different routes to get to a similar end-state.  Now as the war has progressed the RA quickly saw that their was little hope for them by holding onto the western doctrinal school, they appear have to fallen back on mass but even here in small bite sized chunks…why?  This is the Soviet style but descaled.  The immediate answer to this descaling was “Russia Sux..LOLZ” but this does not make sense.  Russia managed a 5-6 axis, high speed operation at the beginning of the war but cannot figure out a Battalion level attack two-years in?  The good news is that it appears the Soviet approach is also under constraints based on the environment as well.  High concentration is too dangerous so they too have to de-aggregate.
As to the UA the idea you appear to be proposing is the “one more XYZ and they can win” idea.  It is that if we can only make the UA more like us, enough, that victory will somehow happen.  This does not match observations either.  Ukraine started this war fighting hybrid.  Mixes of conventional and unconventional defence along the entire length of the RAs overstretched operational system.  That was not western doctrine nor Soviet, it was something we have seen in COIN but upscaled and empowered.  The core C2 component of the Soviet style system is centralized control and task-command.  We saw neither of these from Ukraine in the opening days of the war.  They were far more western in that resistance in that regard.
Last summer was a testament and watershed moment.  It is well documented that the UA had a lot of western equipment and tens of thousands of western trained troops. The UA tried Bn level mechanized breaches in the centre south that are straight out of the western manuals.  They clearly trained for them in Europe and operationalized them.  They also failed…dramatically.  So either the Ukrainians can’t do western (another narrative that sprung up) or there are weaknesses in the western technology based approach on these battlefields.  I argue the latter.  The single largest one is the over-dependence of the western system on air superiority.  Without that the entire western school starts to fail.  And in the modern UAS environment air superiority is impossible.  So it won’t matter how much western equipment and training we provide, our current doctrine looks like it will not work on this battlefield.  So what?  We need a new doctrine.
It really doesn’t, in Ukraine and both sides have pulled back from the western style approach as they have been pulled into an attrition war. The western school vs Soviet school is less about politics and more about military strategies. Both were built for Annihilation strategies but the Soviet school has a far higher tolerance for attrition warfare.  Ukraine has kept the high technology approach but western style manoeuvre is simply undoable in this environment at any scale.  Or it may take a scale so high that it looks more Soviet than anything else.
Your position sounds an awful lot like the militaries of WW1 - one more push and we are through. But now they just need more F16s.  The Russians have taken the same philosophy but are basing it on human capital and not kit.  I suspect both camps are incorrect.  The western school of rapid overwhelming manoeuvres may be dead due to nearly complete battlefield illumination and modern friction.  Dumb mass is definitely dead for essentially the same reasons.
Neither side will adopt either the Western or Soviet approach in full because both of these schools are 80 years old and designed for a different time.  The Western school cannot deal with a modern attrition based war and the Soviet one cannot deal with the technological realities.  Neither schools can address the realities of denial and friction we are seeing.  So we are going to see the evolution of something else.  And our job over here in the safe sidelines is to try and stay out of Ukraine’s way while they figure it out…and take notes.
In summary, both militaries started this war more western than Soviet.  It worked for the Ukrainians on defence but has failed them on offence.  The Russians started with a more western-style approach on offence but once it failed ran back into the loving arms of Soviet doctrine on defence.
The Russian have tried a much smaller scaled down version of Soviet style on offence and it has provided limited gains at horrendous costs.  Ukraine has tried western style offensives, also at smaller scales, which have essentially done as well as the Soviet system, but with much lower casualties.  So here we are, neither school is really working on offence but can do defence.  Hence the growing belief that we are into something larger than either school - defensive primacy.
So, solutions.  Well doubling down on either school is likely a dead end. We probably need a new school entirely.  One we have not seen yet.  This war, and the next one will be a race of adaptations.  We have yet to see where it will end.
My position is that neither the Western or Soviet schools are working in this war, even though they have been attempted.  We should not even try to make the UA more like the US Army at this point.  Nor will expunging “Soviet legacy” fix the situation for Ukraine.  I suspect we have yet to see a new school of military art and thought emerge.  It is largely built on a foundation of artificial intelligence/forward processing that can create massed precision fires.  Both sides appear to be trying to figure out this problem, my money is that Ukraine is ahead in the game but not unassailable.

It's the EU elections in June. Macron isn't a candidate but his party has candidates and they are trailing in the polls.

I think you are mixing a lot of themes here to the detriment of objective analysis.  The Soviet system was designed to create as much mass as possible and project it at an opponent.  It may appear "cruel and uncaring" but in reality it was built on the brutal lessons of the Eastern Front and how a quick violent short war was far better than a drawn out one.
We vie for the same aspiration of short wars, we simply lean on technology instead of human capital.  And frankly we have no real proof either system is truly superior.
The Soviet system is a poorer fit for modern democracies; however, before we sit too high on that horse, lets not forget democracies fought in WW1 too, and were very able to throw human capital at a problem at great loss.
The reality is that there is nothing inherently "wrong" or "evil" about the Soviet military system - talking political ideology out of the equation - so long as one asks that system to do what it was designed to do.  The exact same thing goes for the Western military system.  In this war, both sides have tried the western approach...and it did not work.  Now they are in a grinding war of attrition for which the western systems is also a very bad fit.
Nor is there proof that democracies can't do attrition either.  We have proven that we are very capable at spending a lot of lives to win.  What I oppose is this reoccurring narrative that somehow all the problems all sides are having are "Soviet legacy" and any successes are somehow western modernization; this is simply not proven by what we have seen.
Russia has fallen back onto a more Soviet-like approach to force generation and employment...and clearly it is working for them.  They are able to hold ground and even conduct tactical advances even with appalling losses.  The UA is moving much farther to the western doctrine, and frankly some of it is working for them too.  They are able to hold, strike deep and have very high precision.  
The weaknesses of either system are also on display for all to see as well.  For the Soviet system it is rigidity and logistical weight, which is untenable on the modern battlefield.  For the Western system it is the serious lack of depth and capacity.
I suspect that each side is evolving to some sort of hybrid, or at least trying to.  Either way, it does us little good to point at every problem and go "difficulty upscaling due to Soviet legacy"  which frankly does not even make sense based on what Soviet legacy really was.
As to that last part I highlighted - well yes and no.  The Mongols created smart fast mass and took over half the planet, so not entire a new idea.  The Soviet system could generate modern mech and armor forces like no one else.  Their operational art was very advanced on how to employ that mass.  In many ways they really are a defining school of modern warfare, the counter-point to the western schools.  We have no actual war to try and decide which system was better to worse to be honest.  The Gulf War was the closest but it really was a poor analogue.  This war has shadows of the Soviet system but overlapped with other schools.

Damn, I thought someone had started a punctuation and grammar thread.  FYI we hired a professional editor for the campaign briefs/write ups in CMCW.

I don't know, I seem to remember quite a few reports saying that Ukraine generally struggles with coordination above a certain level. Doesn't mean Russia is any good at this, either. Not sure what is meant here but EW assets are usually higher level assets, right?

RUS get to 3 [in fact 2- third fly away] Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters. Everything observed from RUS drone. First, one missile with a cluster warhead flew (judging by the number of charges, Tornado rather than Iskander) and after two damaged machines could not fly away - single hits with precision ammunition.
Unfortunately, in the current conditions, the Russian reconnaissance and strike complex has achieved the efficiency it was expected to have before the war. In 2022, for many reasons, it did not work out, in 2023 it worked on average, but unfortunately this year we already see the mythical <5 minutes for HVT (high-value targets). Currently, there is no margin for error for Ukrainians. Of course, this is only the result of the fact that RUS drones fly 40-80 km at home in the Ukrainian hinterland.
Event took place 11.03; in one of helicopters both pilots were killed according to other Ukrianian channels (as always,treat his considerations with grian of salt whenc omes to details, but clip seems genuine. Early geolocation- 50km behind frontlines)
 
 

Russia starts to work like a modern military. Concerning if this becomes routine. 
Ukraine does not have enough systems for consistent air denial for drones over the whole frontline and behind.
Unless something new appear (drone interceptors to counter drones), this will continue to be painful.

Talking about sustainability and the importance of Western support, it is pretty clear that while Russia also spends an increasing percentage of its GDP, Ukraine is really in a bad spot economically. 6% is a lot but manageable, 20% isn't, at least not for too long.
And I think the situation is a bit worse than the graphic suggests. It appears like Ukrainian percentage GDP is high and volatile but not constantly going up. But that's assuming the GDP is growing by over 7% this year. They are apparently using the statista numbers (or have the same source) which look to me like a simple linear extrapolation from the years 2014-2023 (excluding 2021 as an outlier). And that sounds very optimistic to me.

Talking about sustainability and the importance of Western support, it is pretty clear that while Russia also spends an increasing percentage of its GDP, Ukraine is really in a bad spot economically. 6% is a lot but manageable, 20% isn't, at least not for too long.
And I think the situation is a bit worse than the graphic suggests. It appears like Ukrainian percentage GDP is high and volatile but not constantly going up. But that's assuming the GDP is growing by over 7% this year. They are apparently using the statista numbers (or have the same source) which look to me like a simple linear extrapolation from the years 2014-2023 (excluding 2021 as an outlier). And that sounds very optimistic to me.

Talking about sustainability and the importance of Western support, it is pretty clear that while Russia also spends an increasing percentage of its GDP, Ukraine is really in a bad spot economically. 6% is a lot but manageable, 20% isn't, at least not for too long.
And I think the situation is a bit worse than the graphic suggests. It appears like Ukrainian percentage GDP is high and volatile but not constantly going up. But that's assuming the GDP is growing by over 7% this year. They are apparently using the statista numbers (or have the same source) which look to me like a simple linear extrapolation from the years 2014-2023 (excluding 2021 as an outlier). And that sounds very optimistic to me.

Yeah, Germany has been doing were well on the ground for the last year or so. Still PR and communication disaster.

https://warontherocks.com/episode/therussiacontingency/30664/ukraine-battlefield-dynamics-manpower-fortifications-and-ammunition/
My notes:
They made another trip to UKR front lines. They are doing these around every 3months. 
Ukraine's Challenges: Ukraine faces a triple threat with manpower, fortifications, and ammunition shortages. Mobilization remains stalled at political level, hindering long-term force generation. This decision also has a long lead time to effects on the battlefield Last year we saw you cannot make brigades in couple of months  Fortifications are being worked on now, but only lately. Ammunition depends on external factors like US aid and Europe commitment drones are going to help to bridge the gap to an extent. These problems are the same as last trip three months ago. Ukraine leadership changes are still an unknown. Generally seems the leadership is on the same page about the main challenges as the front line troops The war is at an intersection. Many things can go either way, US support, UKR mobilization... Depending on these the war can change radically. Even a Harkiv-style collapse for the Ukrainians is not out of the question on the "bad timelines".  Overly extended summer offensive and pointless commitment of reserves to those attacks have depleted Ukraine Especially Ukrainian infantry has been under extreme strain, battalion might be in OK condition but only have a couple of platoons of fully mission-capable infantry.  Unlikely to see any strategic level offensives from the Ukrainians in 2024  Some Russian challenges:   Russian Force Quality: While a concern in 2023, Russia has demonstrated a capacity to sustain casualties and maintain a baseline level of force quality. This has been shown in practice during the summers stubborn defense and the bloody assaults we are now seeing. UKR has reported increased discipline and executions by the RU Manpower: So far Russia has been able to compensate for it casualties with recruitment. This has been surprisingly successful. Several 100k last year and now in the tens of thousands a month. Unkown how long Russia can keep up. If they cannot a new mobilization wave is going to be required. Equipment availability: Main limiting factor for the Russians at this moment. Ukraine's Evolving Tactics: Shortage of Soviet-era AA ammunition is a major concern. and now also western ammunition  UKR is having increasing success with small mobile AA defenses (MANPADS, AAA, HMG) supported by well integrated sensors and coordination. This is against RU cruise missiles and suicide drones. Especially in parts of the front UKR is developing integration of assets, intelligence and troops to a whole new level. Big steps compared to three months ago Drone war moving more towards competition in quality and integration rather than quantity. 
Ukraine Battlefield Dynamics Manpower, Fortifications, and Ammunition.mp3

Abandoned ship on a channel being used as a Russian base is so 1960s French spy fiction.

Agreed that NATO can choose not to export, but that would badly damage their reputation and I would be surprised to see many countries following France's example. I guess the point is that NATO is not at war but Russia is, so NATO might have more potential but not use it. 
Also both sides are importing shells from 3rd countries (often under the table), and both sides use various calibres. 
In other words it is really complicated and I don't think counting production numbers alone is a very good proxy for how many shells will be fired by both sides this year. Thankfully the NATO numbers are finally going up at a faster rate than Russia's so hopefully Ukraine will be at least stable soon with regard to the artillery balance. 

Ok, I need to add something. The public interpretation of what the pope said is that he suggests that Ukraine should surrender. That is in itself a fact. So the public reaction is in response to that interpretation. That again is a reality.
So the pope better explain himself. He did not speak clearly enough.

Certainly wasn't meant in a racist fashion!
More in dispair that so many (not all) of the world's ills are caused by or could be fixed by Disconnected Old (Whichever Ethnicity) Men. Just when you think one Old Man in power is more realistic or empathetic along comes a moment like this.
Sure, clarification sorta helps, but he's still utterly unrealistic about both the nature of this war and of Putin in particular. 
And by old I mean past retirement. It's not the fact of being old, but it's the tendency to be both old And disconnected And wielding significant power.