Quote (dro94 @ 21 Mar 2022 21:46)
This is about the same figure as respected intelligence agencies once you flex the estimated deaths from the last announcement which was 7,000, but DAMN that's a lot of dead soldiers within a month:
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1505980177402183685There's less info about dead Ukrainian soldiers, as our intelligence agencies don't want to dampen the morale of Ukrainians, but their figures will be a bit less or the same
Visually confirmed losses of equipment:
Russa - 1663, main categories consisting of: 263 tanks, 174 armoured vehicles, 248 infantry vehicles, 77 armoured personnel carriers, 15 aircraft, 34 helicopters
Ukraine - 500: 71 tanks, 58 armoured vehicles, 54 infantry vehicles, 26 armoured personnel carriers, 11 aircraft, 1 helicopter
Big losses on both sides and in a 3:1 ratio, but note Russia has equipment in a ratio of 10:1 to Ukraine. It will still take the Russian military many years to recover from these losses though
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.htmlIt should be noted though that - at least for the time being - Russia can more easily replace lost equipment than Ukraine. But yeah, the voices who fearmonger about "Russia is gonna march right on toward Poland and Germany after they take Ukraine" are deluded and would be wrong even if we ignore the NATO and/or nukes part of the equation.
Quote (Santara @ 21 Mar 2022 22:10)
Putin has no interest in having this drag out, that's what the Ukrainians want. Putin wants a quick victory. A long, drawn out slog will eventually render the Russian ability to wage war. Ukraine seems to be saying "how long until you get tired of punching me in the face?"
This. In particular, the Western sanctions will cripple the Russian economy the longer they are in effect. Russia depends on a fuckton of Western high-tech products that they cannot produce themselves and which will be very hard to substitute through other channels (e.g. from China). For example equipment for their oil and gas extraction.
This is a bit like becoming unemployed and ending up without an income: if you have a well-maintained house and a wardrobe full of new shoes and clothes, then you can cope for quite some time, but you won't be able to replace breaking shoes, a malfunctioning washing machine, a dying fridge or the leaking pipes. The longer the poverty goes on, the worse the situation becomes. Similar story with the Russian economy: for some time, they will be able to keep their businesses and their extractive industry running based on their stock and the factories, pipelines and so on which already exist. But the longer this drags on, the more stuff will become inoperative because they can't get the pieces to repair or replace the ones that break.
Likewise, the Russian central bank won't be able to keep the rouble afloat indefinitely, it will quickly burn through the foreign currency reserves that it still controls (the bulk of its reserves lies on frozen bank accounts in the West).
And last but not least, the longer this goes on, the more serious and final Western efforts to replace Russian gas and oil will become, which will undercut the future funding of Putin's economic model. The pipelines to alternative buyers either don't exist yet (Iran, India) or don't come close to the capacities of those toward Europe (China).
tldr: they dun fucked up
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 21 2022 04:23pm