I guess not even Putin knows the answer. However the downplaying of it is dangerous IMO, everyone in the west seem to be very relaxed about it, too relaxed. It's a huge amount of people (even if we consider the 300k to be a real number which is unlikely), and even if they won't have the best training or equipment, it could turn the tide in Russia's favour because it's quite clear at this point that Putin couldn't care less about the casualties or the economy, he will just send more and more. It's vital Ukraine gets all the military support it needs.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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I'd imagine that this kind of math/logic problems are evident to the main population right now
Especially when the oficial discourse is that they initially sent ~200k men, almost 7 months later they have suffered only ~6k casualties, but somehow they now need ~300k more (which of course will magically become ~1,2m).
They don't have equipment for that. They are already using T62 tanks that belong in the history books. HIMARS has made their artillery look like fools and their air force is still incapable of air supremacy (while the Ukrainian air force is yet to receive NATO aircraft; that might change given the US 100 mil program of training Ukrainian pilots for F16). More men with AKs are not going to help anything except the priests in Russia that are doing funerals.
Best case scenario for Putin, he uses them to populate Russian controlled areas in Ukraine, thereby further Russifying them and making it harder for Ukrainians to reclaim them. Pulling that off won't be easy since the locals won't have any of it and the Ukrainians military won't stop pushing forward. What is more likely is that a very large chunk of the new batch of Russians defect, flee, or else are so incompetent, that they wind up more so a liability than benefit to Putin.
So Russia is sending its people to the slaughter?
Exactly, a huge mass of ill equipped and poorly trained soldiers will make little difference in a modern war. If they can't find proper heavy equipment it will only be a bloody disaster, but nothung to really fear.
The only danger there is is a potential nuclear escalation or the Russian Air Force going it with full force regardless of their losses which they would habe and so far cause them to not dare operating deep inside Ukraine.
Their plan is to deploy them in the occupied areas or rear guard duty. Can't see them effectively doing any of it, you'll have a repeat of Kharkiv/Izium fiasco once the first line of defence is broken. That being said they appear to be digging in for real this time.
Well said
Nothing new under the sun.
Some action in Odesa today. How long before Mad Vlad takes out the iconic Opera House.
IMO the situation of the Russian air force is proving to be completely dire. On paper they have x number of fighters, but in practice, the reality is most likely very bad. An air force is mega expensive to keep ready and, given the level of corruption in the Russian military, I'm fairly sure they have but a very small fraction of modern air craft combat ready; might have even lost most of that already. The Russian air force is a paper force imo.
Meanwhile in Russia.
Just worried for one thing: In the beginning of the war, the Chechen "warriors" were presented of being there in the thick of it all, many videos too, songs and scary looking. Not seen much since. Are they safe? Are they ok?
Yes and no. Yes I agree it probably is far from having the numbers operational they should have. But nonetheless we didn't see any sorties deep into Ukrainian territory and especially we didn't see the strategic bombers (Tu-95, Tu-160) in action in this war. And we know for sure that they are operational as we have seen those active on patrols or in Syria. They definitely fear that they could lose these extremely valuable assets to Ukrainian air defense, but they could definitely decide to take that risk.
Lucky Ukrainians these elite super soldiers, are still playing army soldiers instead of fighting. On tiktok, in between a model promising onlyfans to do more, there are this guys promising to be able to fight.
I agree but for what reason? They have bombers yes; but they can not give them air supremacy to operate. Bombers are only good if you can protect them otherwise the targets they hit are less valuable then the aircraft themselves. Russia does not have air supremacy over Ukraine while the latter has 0 NATO aircraft. It is an insane situation that can only be explained in 2 ways: the Russian air force is extremely badly managed and it's mostly incapable of operations (my most likely scenario); the second possibility is that NATO is flying F35 and F22 stealth fighters that are killing the Russian air force (very unlikely).
Training will be productive.
Sheer numbers to overwhelm Ukraine I guess. Always remember that the Nazis did what they did in the Holocaust because just shooting and burying that number of bodies was a near impossible task. Is Russia going to try and overwhelm Ukraine with sheer numbers?
For what reason does Putin send all these new recruits to the front? It's a similar waste. But I agree it wouldn't make much sense to use those bombers umder the current circumstances.
A bit unfair though. This guy was fighting like a better soldier then Leonidas for a long time with little food and water. He was probably in a similar state while fighting in the last days. No doubt the Russians added to his bad state though.
I imagine not many Russian recruits will have this level of discipline and fighting ethos.
I agree with you 100%. Just want to add that a difference is that it takes years to train a fighter or bomber pilot while an infantry recruit, it takes a week or 2 by russian standards. There is also the cost of the air craft and the cost that would take to make a new one. Pilots are the most expensive soldiers as far as I know.
I guess financially for Russia the loss of a single Tu-160 would be comparable to thousands of dead infantery soldiers.
At around 0:50 does he say that they will receive 2 weeks of training before staffing the units?
Sounds like the captions may be off ? Should probably be three days (of administrative in-processing) here, followed by two weeks of training prior to deployment into the theatre of battle.
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Yeah. Better to send hundreds or more young men with a gun then risk a multi million euro trained pilot with a super expensive machine. They know either will result in nothing, but it's the less expensive deal to kill lots of citizens then expensive equipment. This is Russia.
Ukraine is going to need a lot more ammo, of all kinds. I hope the US and others can step up deliveries.
Thats what i thought. Only providing them with 2 weeks of training indicates that the Russian manpower shortage must be very critical.
Yeah. It sounds like he says “do podgotovki”, which would be (2 weeks) “until training”, but in reality he says “dop podgotovki” with an almost-silent “p”. “Dop” would be short for “dopolnitelnoy”, which means “additional”.
Potentially scary numbers on paper, but it’ll be catastrophic losses for Russia whether it turns the tide or not. I think the next few months will show that sheer numbers can’t overcome strong organisation, determination, and modern weaponry.