How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

12 hours ago, billbindc said:

Some [. ..] is propaganda intended to reassure regular Russians. Some of it is propaganda intended to reassure the President of the Russian Federation. 

Nicely put. 

[Huba]

This is a very interesting data point:

 

[sross112]

36 minutes ago, billbindc said:

If I am doing my sums correctly Imperial Russia, which was at least as decrepit a state as Putin's oligarchy, went way above those ratios before the wheels came off. In that context, I would be very wary of looking at any number and drawing a conclusion or prediction even tentatively (as I know you do not). Casualties aren't going to decide this one. It's going to be elite commitment to Putin's rule or lack thereof that will rely on a complicated mix of politics, economics and forecasting. Call it the regime pessimism index. If enough Russian elites can still see some less painful possibility to overthrowing the current order down the road then they will go along. Once they can't, things will start to happen pretty quickly.

And what @The_Capt and you point out also puts relevance as to why the majority of the conscription is from the lesser populated, poorer, rural areas and not Moscow and St. Petersburg. Not even a million people in Buryatia, so even if 3 out of 5 in each family were wounded and killed and the whole province rose up, Moscow doesn't care that much. 10,000 casualties out of one of the big cities would have a lot more effect on their power base than 100,000 spread out in the rural areas. 

With the talk of them changing the draft age from 18-27 to 21-30, if you look at the demographics of Russia there are about twice as many 30 year olds than 18 year olds. So the change allows them to grab out of a larger portion of the population. Kinda stupid though as the average 30 year old is going to possess a lot more skills and be more valuable to your society and economy than the average 18 year old. So that should further compound their internal problems. Plus it is taking husbands and fathers out so you open up resistance from not just mothers but wives and children as well. 

It seems that the only gun that Russia won't run out of ammo for is the one they are using to shoot themselves in the foot with.

[Calamine Waffles]

4 hours ago, Zeleban said:

On the video BM Bulat. These tanks are equipped with a rear view camera for the driver.

T-64BM2, actually. But yes, the transmission itself is limited to 5 kph in reverse.

[Ts4EVER]

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bnd-spionage-russland-generalbundesanwalt-1.5720861

Fresh off the presses: German member of BND secret service arrested for suspected spying for Russia.

[dan/california]

57 minutes ago, Huba said:

This is a very interesting data point:

 

I suspect the counter battery radars account for a far bit of the remaining 450. But I am very hopeful there is a surprise or two in there somewhere. And the info op before the Kharkiv offensive should be kept in mind. Despite the endless stream of data that bleeds out everywhere from everything, Ukraine and it backers have demonstrated the ability to conceal and misdirect when they really want to.

[Huba]

20 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I suspect the counter battery radars account for a far bit of the remaining 450. But I am very hopeful there is a surprise or two in there somewhere. And the info op before the Kharkiv offensive should be kept in mind. Despite the endless stream of data that bleeds out everywhere from everything, Ukraine and it backers have demonstrated the ability to conceal and misdirect when they really want to.

Covert introduction of HARM to the battlefield is another example. There had to be some training involved there, whole logistics established etc, and we only get to know about it when RU found some remains in smoldering ruins of a radar site. Also something has to be going on with JDAMs, they have to train to use them somehow, I wonder how that is being done.

[womble]

16 minutes ago, Huba said:

Covert introduction of HARM to the battlefield is another example. There had to be some training involved there, whole logistics established etc, and we only get to know about it when RU found some remains in smoldering ruins of a radar site. Also something has to be going on with JDAMs, they have to train to use them somehow, I wonder how that is being done.

With HARM, there had to have been some very comprehensive technical training so that the UKR techs could integrate the systems with their Russian airframes' electronics and avionics suites, even before anyone got to train in actually delivering the ordnance. I'd imagine the same would be true of JDAM.

That the US is prepared to lay these technical secrets out in enough detail for the UKR engineers to be able to design the adaptation is telling in and of itself.

[Huba]

Regarding the physical connection for both HARM and JDAM, I'm sure they just got ready kits to be mounted according to the instruction (and all the possible help through teleconferencing  ). I doubt they did much if any design and development themselves - the adapters for hanging NATO ordnance under Soviet hardpoints were developed in Poland a way back (though never fielded) and AFAIK by some Balkan countries. I wonder how they handled the electronics though, that is not trivial at all. In any case, there had to be A LOT of training that is missing from this breakdown.

 

[Zeleban]

 

Girkin criticizes Shoigu's reforms

[NamEndedAllen]

2 hours ago, sross112 said:

And what @The_Capt and you point out also puts relevance as to why the majority of the conscription is from the lesser populated, poorer, rural areas and not Moscow and St. Petersburg. Not even a million people in Buryatia, so even if 3 out of 5 in each family were wounded and killed and the whole province rose up, Moscow doesn't care that much. 10,000 casualties out of one of the big cities would have a lot more effect on their power base than 100,000 spread out in the rural areas. 

With the talk of them changing the draft age from 18-27 to 21-30, if you look at the demographics of Russia there are about twice as many 30 year olds than 18 year olds. So the change allows them to grab out of a larger portion of the population. Kinda stupid though as the average 30 year old is going to possess a lot more skills and be more valuable to your society and economy than the average 18 year old. So that should further compound their internal problems. Plus it is taking husbands and fathers out so you open up resistance from not just mothers but wives and children as well. 

It seems that the only gun that Russia won't run out of ammo for is the one they are using to shoot themselves in the foot with.

Concerning the use of casualties in attempting to predict victory or defeat -  Cap laid out the complexity of the many confounding variables in rather a lot of detail. However, I think we can set this method aside using the analytic method of Face Validity alone. Consider just one more example. Having seen how miserably the metric of body counts worked out (not!) in the Vietnam War, I would suggest that these attempts are fool’s errands. It isn’t a sports game with a scoreboard and a set number of time periods (quarters, innings, etc) that end the game with a final score determining the winner, all neat and tidy. 

[FancyCat]

God Willing, one can make a trip to Mariupol with the Ukrainian flag rising over it in a few years.

 

[Zeleban]

 

New post Mashovets.

 

In the area northeast of Soledar, along the Bakhmut-Lysichansk road, intense battles continue. The enemy is clearly trying by this method to provide a more or less reliable supply and delivery route for his forward units, which are entrenched in the Yakovlevka area ... After all, the village, in fact, is located on the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysichansk highway, there are no other paved roads around it. Therefore, in the conditions of winter warming, it is simply impossible to bring anything significant, or even transfer equipment to this site, in another way, for example, through Vladimirovka, or Trypillya.

Accordingly, the enemy is constantly attacking in the area of Berestovoye and Belogorovka, trying to take under reliable control a section of the T1302 highway northeast of Yakovlevka in order to be able to carry their belongings to Yakovlevka by the northern route. If the enemy fails, those Wagnerites who broke through to Yakovlevka will obviously be doomed ... this breakthrough will become for them a kind of gateway to hell.

In the area of the southeastern and eastern outskirts of Bakhmut, fierce close infantry battles continue. After the enemy reached the quarters of the private sector of Bakhmut, the pace of his advancement dropped significantly, and in some areas of the Armed Forces of Ukraine they were generally able to push the enemy back with counterattacks.

As it turned out, "Wagner" and Donetsk-Luhansk "mobiks" are not very suitable for high-intensity battles in urban areas ... Especially when they have to attack ... They do it rather clumsily, again relying on "mass" and continuity, almost just like in open areas.

On the site from the village Pisky to the village of Kashtanovo (area south of Avdiivka) units of the 1st AK are trying to attack, in particular:

11th SMRR(1st and 2nd MRBn's)

separate assault battalion "Somalia"

1st brigade (2nd and 3rd MRBn's, 1st - transferred to the Svatovo direction)

185th separate motorized rifle battalion

International Brigade "Pyatnashka"

 

2nd RBn Territorial Troops

9th MRR

The 3rd separate special forces regiment, the separate reconnaissance battalion "Sparta" and the detachment "Storm" are assigned for resupply and rest after fierce battles in the area of Opytne and Vodyane.

The 1117th and 1539th separate rifle battalions of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps are deployed in the second echelon.

The offensive operations of the enemy in this direction are supported by artillery fire from units of 238 ABR. It should be noted that all the units represented, although formally "considered" battalions, are really significantly understaffed. As a result of losses and numerical failures of l / s to carry out a combat mission, these units correspond more closely to units of the company level.

The enemy units available in this sector are only enough for defense, and in order to conduct offensive operations, the enemy command is forced to form so-called consolidated groups from the most combat-ready remnants of these "battalions". Thus, subunits are forced to constantly move part of their personnel to neighboring flanks in order to strengthen offensive operations, as a result of which their own combat potential is constantly decreasing.

 

Obviously, if this trend continues, the moment of exhausting the offensive capabilities of these units is clearly not far off. AK does not have significant reserve capabilities of its own for this. In fact, there is simply no trained personnel capable of conducting high-intensity combat operations for a long time in the corps.

In turn, the Russian command also has certain limitations in this regard, because it cannot stretch its forces and means indefinitely and in this respect also block the areas of responsibility of the "allied corps."

Therefore, in the near future, of course, a certain strengthening of the advancing enemy tactical groups along the Donetsk direction is quite possible, but it is unlikely to be of any cardinal nature.

[Zeleban]

In the Melitopol direction, the enemy continues to strengthen his group of troops. During the last 2 days, there was a movement through Melitopol towards Tokmak and Vasilyevka of a tank company (8 units of tanks) of a 122-mm howitzer battery on the D-30 and a Grad battery (6 units of 122-mm MLRS BM-21 "Grad" ). In the area of Vasilievka itself, 2 motorized rifle companies on BMP-1,2 were noted moving in a northeast direction.

In the area of Energodar - Bolshaya and Malaya Belozerka - Tokmak - Vasilievka - Dneprorudnoye, the enemy is strengthening the filtration regime. After several fairly successful remote defeats of enemy targets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Melitopol and Berdyansk directions with appropriate means in the tactical and operational-tactical rear of the enemy force group (control points, ammunition storage sites and weapons and military equipment), the command of the enemy troops came to the conclusion that there was a place to be " guidance and adjustment of the means of destruction of the enemy (i.e., the Armed Forces of Ukraine) by the Ukrainian terrorist-nationalist bandit underground.

According to this "bright opinion", the enemy decided in the areas of all more or less large settlements (Tokmak, Melitopol, Berdyansk, Energodar, Dneprorudnoye, Vasilyevka, Chernigovka, Primorskoye) to carry out "filtration and barrage measures in an enhanced mode", as well as to use additional measures to camouflage and conceal important objects and locations of their units and subunits.

As of December 21, 2022, the territory of Belarus:

On December 22, a temporary restriction on entry, temporary stay and movement in the border zone within the Loevsky, Braginsky and Khoiniki districts of the Gomel region is introduced.

In this regard, it should be noted that from open sources it became known about the arrival in this area of the mercenaries of PMC "Liga", which is part of the PMC "Wagner". It is obvious that this Prigozhin "special forces" ended up here quite by accident.

They are divided into two groups of 80-90 people and arrived in the area of the village of Krupiyki (Loevsky district, Gomel region) to perform tasks within the framework of "Russian-Belarusian cooperation in the defense sphere" (but why exactly in the border area of Ukraine). They have lightly armored vehicles and tilting trucks at their disposal. These groups are also reinforced by engineering units.

Therefore, the likelihood of provocations and the organization of "aggressive acts by Ukraine" in the border zone has clearly increased dramatically.

 

December 20 at 06:20 in the Vitebsk region at the railway station "Zaslonovo" was noticed the departure of a train of military equipment from Russia. The equipment was previously located at the Lepelsky training ground. The echelon consisted of 51 cars, including 46 platform cars with equipment: 31 T-72B3 and T-80 tanks, 13 Urals, 1 BTR-80 and 1 tracked engineering vehicle. Also, 3 freight wagons (with equipment and ammunition) and 2 passenger wagons were also attached, in which about 100 personnel were transported. At 05:30 on December 21, this echelon arrived at the Polonka railway station. It is likely that the equipment will be moved to the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground, where the military from Russia is stationed.

It is obvious that the Russian command is gradually completing its units from the so-called regional joint Russian-Belarusian group of forces with regular military equipment and is gradually pulling it into the areas of concentration and deployment of units and subunits of the 1st Guards TA on the territory of Belarus.

 

[Fenris]

Part 3

 

[Zeleban]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/video/russia-ukraine-bucha-massacre-takeaways.html

Another brilliant investigation into the shootings in Bucha from NY Times reporters. The amount of footage from surveillance cameras and drones is impressive. And the idiocy of the Russian paratroopers is not at all surprising. Not only did they use the mobile phones of the civilians they killed, but they didn’t even bother to fully disable the security cameras at their own base, which filmed not only video, but also conversations between these idiots documenting their crimes.

 

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, billbindc said:

If I am doing my sums correctly Imperial Russia, which was at least as decrepit a state as Putin's oligarchy, went way above those ratios before the wheels came off. In that context, I would be very wary of looking at any number and drawing a conclusion or prediction even tentatively (as I know you do not). Casualties aren't going to decide this one. It's going to be elite commitment to Putin's rule or lack thereof that will rely on a complicated mix of politics, economics and forecasting. Call it the regime pessimism index. If enough Russian elites can still see some less painful possibility to overthrowing the current order down the road then they will go along. Once they can't, things will start to happen pretty quickly.

Imperial Russia had a population of about 125M (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire_Census) and took about 5.5M casualties, 500k MIA, about 3M PoWs - so about 9M impacted to varying degrees. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_russian_empire. Which is about 1 in 13, so less than Germany but well into intimate community space. Of course Imperial Russia was a brutally authoritarian society which is a whole thing to unpack.

War losses are one pressure on a society, not the pressure.  Economic, cultural, religion, ethnic/identity and political to name a few.  How fragile or brittle a society is very important as well.  Societal resilience is a really deep subject but authoritarian states tend to be more brittle, which means they resist and look formidable, right up to the point they shatter.

The point here is that as big as 350k losses in this war sound, they likely are not going to create revolution on its own.  It will need contributing factors - tensions and frictions, before one can expect to see a breaking point.  The Soviet did not break because of Afghanistan, it was a contributing factor that led to a breaking point on top of a lot of other factors.

If this war goes to 1M plus, and rapidly, we could see attrition pressure build to a breaking point.  As you note elites are a subset of society and the calculus for them is different. However, they too are looking at public sentiment as a barometer on making a move and the losses in this war are not outside their figuring. Economic pressures are more likely to effect them.

We do know that if enough Russians are killed strategic collapse will happen.  But smart rapid attrition leading to operational collapse is probably a better overall strategy.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

If this war goes to 1M plus, and rapidly, we could see attrition pressure build to a breaking point.  As you note elites are a subset of society and the calculus for them is different. However, they too are looking at public sentiment as a barometer on making a move and the losses in this war are not outside their figuring. Economic pressures are more likely to effect them.

Yup.  And we've seen quite a few of the elites murdered with the obvious intention of making sure the rest know to keep quiet.  Which indicates that things were already not so happy before the war started and may have been a contributing factor or its start.

It is pretty obvious that the elites would want to act before things collapse because their chances of holding onto wealth and influence diminishes, or at least is far more uncertain.  The fact that they haven't acted already indicates that the last decade of repression and the recent murder spree has taken the elites out of the equation.  At least to the extent that they aren't likely to act until regime collapse is immanent.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

We do know that if enough Russians are killed strategic collapse will happen.  But smart rapid attrition leading to operational collapse is probably a better overall strategy.

I've said from the start that the most likely scenario for regime collapse is a collapse at the front.  That sort of cataclysmic shock to the system is almost certainly enough to end the regime.  Collapse can happen without the massive casualty count from your equation, and in fact almost happened a couple of times (as we recently discussed).  Soooo... we could see a Imperial Germany 1918 scenario more than a Russian 1917 type regime collapse.

Steve

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup.  And we've seen quite a few of the elites murdered with the obvious intention of making sure the rest know to keep quiet.  Which indicates that things were already not so happy before the war started and may have been a contributing factor or its start.

It is pretty obvious that the elites would want to act before things collapse because their chances of holding onto wealth and influence diminishes, or at least is far more uncertain.  The fact that they haven't acted already indicates that the last decade of repression and the recent murder spree has taken the elites out of the equation.  At least to the extent that they aren't likely to act until regime collapse is immanent.

I've said from the start that the most likely scenario for regime collapse is a collapse at the front.  That sort of cataclysmic shock to the system is almost certainly enough to end the regime.  Collapse can happen without the massive casualty count from your equation, and in fact almost happened a couple of times (as we recently discussed).  Soooo... we could see a Imperial Germany 1918 scenario more than a Russian 1917 type regime collapse.

Steve

I've been thinking quite a bit about what it *would* look like and I'm pretty convinced that what we will see won't look that dramatic. Russia is a very demobilized, atomized society. There aren't large, effective social organizations, the state has stamped out pretty much every activist grouping in the country and Russia culture at this point is entirely dominated by the the-nail-that-sticks-up-gets-hammerer-down mentality. In addition, the locus of power is *very* singular. In 1917, the Tsars had enormous emotional capital still present in the population. Nicholas had to really screw up before things blew up and even then, as the subsequent civil war indicates, many Russians were willing to fight for the idea of the Tsardom. The shoulders of that ideological state were quite broad. What does Putin's state have? Dribs and drabs of post-Soviet, post-Stalin, post-Tsar cultural tics and then whatever you'd call siloviki consumerism. It's not that much in the end. 

Prediction: when this state falls it's going to look more like the hostile takeover of a rapacious corporation than the revolutionary overthrow of a country. 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Imperial Russia had a population of about 125M (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire_Census) and took about 5.5M casualties, 500k MIA, about 3M PoWs - so about 9M impacted to varying degrees. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_russian_empire. Which is about 1 in 13, so less than Germany but well into intimate community space. Of course Imperial Russia was a brutally authoritarian society which is a whole thing to unpack.

War losses are one pressure on a society, not the pressure.  Economic, cultural, religion, ethnic/identity and political to name a few.  How fragile or brittle a society is very important as well.  Societal resilience is a really deep subject but authoritarian states tend to be more brittle, which means they resist and look formidable, right up to the point they shatter.

The point here is that as big as 350k losses in this war sound, they likely are not going to create revolution on its own.  It will need contributing factors - tensions and frictions, before one can expect to see a breaking point.  The Soviet did not break because of Afghanistan, it was a contributing factor that led to a breaking point on top of a lot of other factors.

If this war goes to 1M plus, and rapidly, we could see attrition pressure build to a breaking point.  As you note elites are a subset of society and the calculus for them is different. However, they too are looking at public sentiment as a barometer on making a move and the losses in this war are not outside their figuring. Economic pressures are more likely to effect them.

We do know that if enough Russians are killed strategic collapse will happen.  But smart rapid attrition leading to operational collapse is probably a better overall strategy.

 

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup.  And we've seen quite a few of the elites murdered with the obvious intention of making sure the rest know to keep quiet.  Which indicates that things were already not so happy before the war started and may have been a contributing factor or its start.

It is pretty obvious that the elites would want to act before things collapse because their chances of holding onto wealth and influence diminishes, or at least is far more uncertain.  The fact that they haven't acted already indicates that the last decade of repression and the recent murder spree has taken the elites out of the equation.  At least to the extent that they aren't likely to act until regime collapse is immanent.

I've said from the start that the most likely scenario for regime collapse is a collapse at the front.  That sort of cataclysmic shock to the system is almost certainly enough to end the regime.  Collapse can happen without the massive casualty count from your equation, and in fact almost happened a couple of times (as we recently discussed).  Soooo... we could see a Imperial Germany 1918 scenario more than a Russian 1917 type regime collapse.

Steve

The world is engaged in an unpleasant experiment to test the cohesion of the current Russian government. The hoped for answer is that it cohesion is relatively low, and and least some faction in it has the sense to cut its losses in Ukraine and be content with stealing their own country blind while making apologetic noises about the whole Ukraine misadventure internationally. There is no guarantee  that is how this ends, though. 

If the Russian state apparatus is stronger but more brittle it could persits in ukraine until we are talking millions of casualties. But if it breaks then there isn't going to be much left to hold the pieces, and that unpleasant pile of nuclear weapons The_Capt is eloquent about, together. 

The easy ways out were Putin simply withdrawing to status quo antebellum after two weeks, or suffering an unfortunate case of that odd Russian window falling virus after four. Neither of these easy options were taken. There is nothing for it now but to break the Russian army so badly it it has no choice but to leave. Hopefully this can be done with the kind of military elegance Macarthur showed at Inchon, but quite possibly an absolutely brutal level of attrition will have to do.

[Beleg85]

50 minutes ago, billbindc said:

I've been thinking quite a bit about what it *would* look like and I'm pretty convinced that what we will see won't look that dramatic. Russia is a very demobilized, atomized society. There aren't large, effective social organizations, the state has stamped out pretty much every activist grouping in the country and Russia culture at this point is entirely dominated by the the-nail-that-sticks-up-gets-hammerer-down mentality. In addition, the locus of power is *very* singular. In 1917, the Tsars had enormous emotional capital still present in the population. Nicholas had to really screw up before things blew up and even then, as the subsequent civil war indicates, many Russians were willing to fight for the idea of the Tsardom. The shoulders of that ideological state were quite broad. What does Putin's state have? Dribs and drabs of post-Soviet, post-Stalin, post-Tsar cultural tics and then whatever you'd call siloviki consumerism. It's not that much in the end. 

Prediction: when this state falls it's going to look more like the hostile takeover of a rapacious corporation than the revolutionary overthrow of a country. 

Yup, well put and very much the case if Russian system of power will indeed go broke. However I wouldn't be optimistic it will be in foreseeable future, given heavy influence of propaganda and economical resiliance of Russia in this war which already defied many early predictions. Probably a mix of war weariness, widespread awarness of a stalemate and bleak prospects for war are best we could count here on.

Also note atomisation in current conditions also heavily favours Putin's style of warfare, unless he decide to go full total. This legendary Russian passivity is really vast resource if somebody knows how to play it properly. Male population probably can still endure additional 1-3 big waves of "Holy Mary, please not me and be it my neigbhour" mobilization loteria the scale we saw already without serious repercussions for Putin himself. The question of equipment and training for them of course stays open.

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Beleg85

[akd]

Fighting to retake areas on outskirts NE of Bakhmut from last month:

 

[FancyCat]

Drone picks up damaged drone to ferry back to base.

 

[GAZ NZ]

 

Interesting, Russian tanks now being modified 

Surprised they have any left to modify 

[LongLeftFlank]

12 hours ago, The_Capt said:

That ain’t the magic number.  I suspect the number is about 1.1 - 1.5 million dead and or wounded, but there are a lot of caveats to that estimate.

Humans can hold about 125 intimate relationships in their heads, max.  These are family, friends, acquaintances/neighbours, guys we hang out in forums with.  “Intimate” means we actually get a glimmer of empathy for them because we see them as people - of course empathy is a slippery beast and different for everyone, especially guys on a forum.

So if that is “first order” then those intimate relationships, relationships are second order - so 125 times 125 = 15,625 (“technically”, because I know some guys here are going to be that picky, it is 125x124 because our connection should not be counted twice). People who are connected to the max amount of people we can give a crap about. (Assuming no overlaps but let’s try and keep it simple).  So this is “there is a guy I know from work whose cousin…” type of thing - two degrees of separation.

In order to have an second order effect on 144 million people Russia need only have about 10,000 casualties in this war and they crossed that threshold months ago. This is the point where “I know someone who knows someone” effect kicks in.

However, we humans are also pretty damned insular.  Just because the guy at the grocery store had a second cousin who got his leg blown off at Kharkiv does not mean I am going to march in the streets and overthrow the government.  For that no one can really calculate the tipping or saturation point easily.  One could argue it is 1 in 125 - which for Russia is about 1.1 million.  This would mean that the average Russian is likely to know someone directly who has been killed or wounded in this war - “the guy in the grocery store went to Kherson and got his legs blown off”.

I am not sure that would even do it to be honest but as that number of dead and wounded grow the pressure on the average Russian’s little security bubble get higher and higher.  In order to ensure every single Russia household has at least one direct impact we are talking 58.6 million - https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/number-of-households-in-russia-2096160/

That number will very likely set off the micro-social bomb unless Russia is truly “all in”.  The number for Ukraine is about 17 million - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_households

Historical example - in WW1 Germany took 7.4 million casualties (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_germany)  with a population base as of 1910 of about 65 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_in_Germany). That is 1 in 8 Germans.  No data on German households, given that family sizes were larger but that is approaching the 1 per household line. Add to this food shortages and a bunch of other pressures it really is not that hard to see why Germany buckled, in fact it is pretty impressive they lasted as long as they did.

But of course none of this takes into account context.  Is a nation in an existential war?  Who are they fighting?  How unified is their culture?  [aside: Russian mobilization concentrations in certain regions is a very bad idea as it creates schisms as some regions will feel the effects much more than others - this little exercise assumes uniform distribution of casualties, which we all know is not the case, but making it worse is a very bad idea]

So the real question: when does Russia start to feel the pain enough to do something about it?  Almost impossible to answer in detail.  How invested are Russian in this war?  Seconds cousins of grocery guy?  Grocery guy?  My second cousin?  Brother, son or father?  Me? Just about every society will tolerate the Grocery Guy’s second cousin to a point. Unless the war is really upside down or the society is really anti-war - we had rumbling and push back here in Canada on Afghanistan and we were likely just below the grocery guys cousin in that war.

Rate of loss is also a factor.  Over time the grocery guy’s cousin is going to die anyway.  So rates of loss = shock.  How fast those second order hit happen is important.  Over 20 years is a slow pressure, in 10 months the effect can be amplified.

And then we have the internet effect.  We are able to make connections over greater distances. I am not sure if this is changed fundamentally how many connections we can make but online communities clearly have an effect as we have seen here. Before it had to be people in my neighbourhood that mattered, now it is a much wider net.  The converse of this is a desensitization effect.  

We can also have a phenomenon I call spontaneous relevant convergence this is when something hits a note that resonant deeply within human collective psyche.  It creates convergence on a focal point from a large collective of people who would normally be completely disconnected.  For example, the was a dramatic difference in opinion and support wrt the 2015 European refugee crisis after that photo of the four year old boy washing up on the beach happened.  No one could predict that, nor are the mechanisms really well understood - some sort of empathetic transpositional response?   

So here we are at let’s say 350k Russian casualties of some shape or sort.  That is about 1 in 400ish, well outside uniform intimate community impacts.  Some neighbourhoods are going to be severely impacted while other only see it on the evening news.  Plenty of room for denial and whatabout-isms.  Until that number gets to 1 in 125 - about 1.1 million, large swaths of Russia will only see this war at a distance.  A thunderstorm “over there”, I can raise an eyebrow, have an opinion and pretty much get on with my life.  Unless something happens that resonates, I can ignore the whole thing because the grocery guys cousins really doesn’t mean much to me. I do not have a significant sense of collective empathy or social responsibility. I just want to get through the freakin week.

But once the storm get closer, faster…well then I start to think about my roof and my car. And we have not even touched the economic effects of this war, which are easily in that intimate area to some extent.  Finally, this is also likely why Putin is not mobilizing 5 million men, that is well into intimate communities across the entire nation, and he knows it.

Interesting thoughts, but I suspect your threshold is a good bit too high given modern communications (which makes comparisons to Czarist or Stalinist times of limited value imho).  I'll accept that 350k is not the tipping point though.

...What about the community consisting of Russian armed forces careerists and siloviki? Threshold for pain is higher, sure, but what, maybe 25 million in uniformed services families (parents included)?

Consider the case of the Russian Afghan war, which was wound down in part (though not entirely, and after some 8 years) owing to an upwelling of protests by bereaved families (50k = 15 KIA + 35 WIA). So clearly, some kind of tipping point was reached albeit not insurrectionary.

Note that nobody here is claiming body count ends the war all on its own. Nor will sanctions nor anything else, even a large battlefield defeat, on its own.

EDIT: Looks like you covered these points above. That said, still an important topic.

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by LongLeftFlank