A war like this typically has “teeth” (fighting forces) & a tail (logistics). A reasonable spilt would be about 30:70.
The “teeth” are being whacked hard every day. They have only basic comms, poor command / control (no real NCO / SNCO cadre), very limited options to use own initiative (micro-control from on high), equipment that fails for multiple reasons (running out of fuel, ammunition, tyres that split, etc, etc). There are also numerous “baby teeth” - conscripts - who have little clue about battlefield tactics, etc. A very large number of “wisdom teeth” (Generals) have met their demise; for normal Russian military tactics, this is unheard of - they always stay well back to oversee / control the battle. Morale must be rock bottom too - continual ambushes / deaths from people they were sent “to help.” Seeing mass burials of their comrades at the roadside won’t be helping here……
The “tail” has had massive failings - bad weather options (restricted to road travel = easy to ambush), & clearly the original plan was for a 3-4 day “walkover” war, so major resupply not factored in. War stocks of weapons / ammo almost always are used up by a very high over-percentage, far more than planned for, often at least by 50%.
Ukraine forces have had the benefit of very structured / in-depth trg by UK & other NATO forces. This has probably been one of the most significant factors in this war equation.
Having an incredible President is an unquantifiable factor, but personally I would rate it as a very strong one!
They also have a huge benefit of advanced intel from numerous sources, as well as the well one inject of advanced weaponry.
While the western news has focused on the humanitarian side of the war. The reporting of the actual military fighting has been neglected. This is probably because nobody thought that the Ukrainians stood a chance.
The Russians have totally failed on all fronts to take any of the objectives plus their airborne assaults failed in the beginning of the war. There does not seem to be a plan B apart from bombing Ukraine back to the Stone Age. There are now reports coming out that the Ukrainians seem to be making small gains and are pushing the Russians back. This is backed up by the fact the Zelensky seems to be playing harder ball in the negotiations.
So far during the Russians have had the initiative, they chose the time and place for the invasions. Now, with the Russian forces being bogged down and static the Initiative now lies with the Ukrainians. If they can keep the Russians out of the cities and generate a force to attack the Russian rear areas then they have a very good chance
Can the Russians now win the war? Probably not
Can the Ukrainians push the Russians out of the whole country? Probably not.
But, for the Ukrainians to win they just don’t have to lose. The longer the war goes on the worse the situation will get for the Russians and the better it will get for the Ukrainians.
As long as the West is willing to supply arms to the Ukrainians, they will fight.
I actually think it’s been quite deliberate, it’s pretty clear that the Russian Command and Control hadn’t got a grip of what’s going on, so the less they get told the better.
Ukraine are now basically playing out a modern day lines of Torres Vedras’s, the Russians can’t go forward militarily, they can’t go backwards politically and their supply situation is sketchy at best, they will now effectively sit still and consume supplies until either a political settlement of they decide to withdraw.
I can see Putin lowering his demands to just Mariupol and officially ceding Crimea, he can then paint that as a victory on RTE.
Short video clip + still photo of the Moskva; very difficult to assess damage BUT, as the pictures were taken quite some time after the missile hit(s), the amount of fire / smoke suggests very serious loss of capabilities. Significant list for a ship too.
If you look closely at the still picture, the small vents (central on port side of ship) are all blackened, which suggests fire / smoke damage across a very large section of the ship.
Slight correction - there has only be one probable death (linked by Russian social media); I would suggest that a missile attack (made worse by probably having to abandon ship in the dark), would have caused a large number of casualties / injuries.
This is not confirmed news (major casualties & hundreds missing?) but as more & more next of kin start asking questions, the true figures will come out more in the open.
Well, I don’t believe the Russian stats at all; look back at the first couple of weeks of this war, when a sub-500 figure of Russian casualties was being paraded by Russian state sources. Yeah right Pinocchio!
For the Moskva, hard to see in full detail, but the forward port anti-ship cruise missile structure seems to have vanished - either from direct Neptune strike(s) or subsequent fuel explosions from the Moskva’s anti-ship missiles. Say goodbye to most of the ship’s command & control in that immediate area, with high risk of damage to any munition magazine (s) in the nearby areas.
Even if they were in full combat lock-down, I suspect that the amount of damage (with large number of initial casualties) would have made it impossible to save the ship. There is no way on earth that casualties are in single figures - I would bet that a significant number were lost during the abandonment>
The Ukrainian casualty claims overall could be over-stated, but the numbers listed by USA intelligence sources aren’t that far behind them. Even if you do a broad brush average of say 4 personnel per “killed” vehicle (tanks, APV, anti-air, MRLS, specialist types, artillery, etc, etc), then at some 5000 total vehicle units, then the Ukrainian figures just for those categories alone = 20,000 casualties. That matches their claims.
No bulkheads in a Slava Class cruiser, so whatever explosion and subsequent fire happened would have ripped straight through it. Left it very open to, shall we say “progressive flooding”. I would anticipate high casualty figures up front, let alone during abandonment.
That might explain some of the BBC Russia reports of mothers attending local hospital(s) in Sevastopol & searching for their sons amongst numerous sailors - all with severe burn wounds.
