Ukraine v Russia II

There is a strong Führerbunker vibe to all this.

Basically Putin will be told what he wants to hear, because that's how the regime works.

"I can haz panzer offensive?"

Russia is likely rushing to launch a decisive offensive in the Donbas in an "unrealistic timeframe and likely without sufficient combat power," according to the latest assessment by the US-based think tank @TheStudyofWar https://t.co/VBpCMNNXAw

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) February 8, 2023

 

Well sort of. We've been through all this before so I didn't rehash the detail. I agree that their situation is dumb and bad. Running war deficits without proper access to capital markets or a large part of their foreign cash reserves is not great. Hence why they have to sell down. But also, they did find a way to recapitalise banks by putting interest rates through the roof - so they can muddle on for quite some time. But the economic damage will be huge year on year.

Yes - which gets to the main point that @American Brummie made. This is mostly about killing their imports.

All the financial stuff is punishment and an incentive for them to stop - but not fatal IMO. The import stuff hurts really bad.

According to WOTR he basically still has his maximalist goals, and minimum goal of taking Donbas, so sittng in a defensive posture doesn't really work for him, though it is strategically smarter.

This is probably why defensive general got replaced with offensive general.

 

Something I found interesting in Michael Weiss's interviews is I think it is still underestimated the extent to which Putin's inner circle or war council is not reality based. We've learned the same with the Trumpian GOP. There is no secret backstage place behind the lies and corruption where they are having reality based conversations.

Especially getting ahead under Putin means telling him what he wants to hear and lying about the reality.

IMO the offensive is because it is what Putin wants, so people told him he could have it, rather than some deep strategic plan

 

Of course they can. As long as they are willing to accept the same outcome that the Peronists get in Argentina.

 

One of the subtleties to it is because everyone lies about everything, getting the correct information is often difficult.

A classic issue with the late era wehrmacht was deception about replacements and reinforcements. So you are given an objective and promised reinforcements to achieve it. But of course those units are also promised to others so you never end up getting them. Or when it comes, it is half what was promised.

So even if Putin wanted to know the real figure of how many serviceable tanks he has for his offensive, it may not be possible to get an accurate answer because the system from top to bottom lies about such things.

 

And/or a large erosion in living standards

Increasingly output will be diverted to war - particularly manpower

 

It's simply the case that they can't run out of money, and they can, for now, raise money internally - this is essentially how the recapitalised the banks, by forcing money towards deposits.

I don't think, in the medium term, this is a big issue for them - though obviously structurally terrible for their economy.

 

At least the Peronists did it with better intentions. Not to fund not a war, but presumably (corruption aside) to build a social safety net for the working class.

It still resulted in a worthless currency and a large erosion in living standards.

 

Exactly.

China has similar issues. Every government official has reasons and incentives to lie. That is why any information about China - and its economy in particular - has to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

This is literally how state data on production figures worked when i was in Vietnam back in the day.

People assume there must be 'real' numbers somewhere.

 

yes the ruble is down

The biggest hit to the economy seems to be the contraction - i.e. recessionary pressures rather than inflationary

Of course they offset that by massive stimulus (typical in a war)

Again while all of this is dumb and bad, i haven't seen anyone suggest it's any critical threat to Putin

 

It's been suggested Ukraine is trying to form multiple new armoured brigades - this is better than feeding the new stuff piecemeal into the furnace. In this regard, the light bradleys, marders etc are likely much more significant than the leopards.

It will be faster and more effective to base an offensive on these platforms, supported by existing tanks.

But Ukraine knows it is getting 100s of new tanks to replace loses in due course.

 

Meanwhile things aren't going well for the Russian panzer divisions. As we saw this week, losing 20 armoured vehicles in a single day is wildly beyond their replacement rates - so an offensive could well play into Ukraine's hands

Russia may have lost up to half of its operational tank fleet in Ukraine, monitoring group says

Russia has potentially lost up to half of all its operational tank fleet since the start of the Ukraine war, according to information collected by a monitoring group, as its military struggles to meet the goals of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Oryx, an open source intelligence website, has been collecting visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022.

The group said this week it has verified 1,000 distinct Russian tank losses in the war. It said a further 544 Russian tanks had been captured by Ukrainian forces, 79 damaged and 65 abandoned.

That toll does not include losses Oryx has not been able to visually confirm, said Jakub Janovsky, a military analyst who contributes to the Oryx blog. He estimated the actual toll could be nearer 2,000 tanks.

“Russia started the war with around 3,000 operational tanks … so there is a good chance that Russia has lost one half of (its) usable tanks” Janovsky said.​

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/09/...-destroyed-ukraine-war-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

 

Yes - it's a lot - especially when you factor in all the other armoured platforms, SPGs, AFvs IFVs etc - According to Oryx its well over 5000 vehicles before you get to trucks etc

Are they making 400 new pieces of armour a month?

Obviously not!