The fighting in Ukraine has recently passed the six-month mark. Despite tangible successes of the Russian army, Ukraine clearly has no plans to surrender
The tactic of turning major cities into strongholds whose garrisons, while technically inferior, numerically far outnumber the advancing units has been quite effective so far.
I write so far because this tactic is based on an uneconomical expenditure of human resources. That is, its effectiveness will end at the exact moment when Ukraine loses the ability to maintain the numbers of the front groups through new and new waves of mobilization.
Russian troops are advancing slowly. The official version attributes the slow pace of the offensive to the fact that we are de-conscious of the civilian population. We do not deliberately fire on residential areas.
But a war is a war, and the longer it goes on, the more civilians will be killed by all sorts of accidents. At the same time, any open-minded person understands that a rapid advance prevents the enemy from building a strong defence (he simply does not have time to do it), and a quick victory reduces the inevitable loss of civilian lives.
But a change in tactics (moving to deep breakthroughs) would result in a dramatic increase in Russian casualties. At a time when military affairs are again (as in the Middle Ages) the domain of professionals, narrow specialists, constantly improving their speciality, we cannot afford the luxury of losing thousands of Russian soldiers and officers.
If we have to replenish our units with mobilized rather than contracted professionals, the army will quickly cease to be modern (insufficiently professional personnel will simply be unable to fully use modern weapons) and will turn into something like the Ukrainian army which is based on cannon fodder (more in number but cheaper in price).
So our tactics are based firstly on a desire to save our soldiers and secondly on a desire to save civilians. And we should not be ashamed of that. We are already doing too much to alleviate the suffering of the conditioned civilians who have consolidated around Zelensky and still believe in the victory of Ukrainian arms.
Ukraine has armed a massive army. In all power structures (including the AFU, SBU, SVR, police, National Guard, Border Troops and Territorial Defense), according to official Ukrainian data, up to one million people are involved. Of these, up to seven hundred thousand are directly engaged by the AFU and the Territorial Defence. Ukraine has 350,000-400,000 fighters on the front line at all times. About three hundred thousand are the rear garrisons and reserve groups that prepare reinforcements for the frontline units, as well as replacements for units that are withdrawn to the rear to rest, replenish or reconfigure.
We can no longer say that the Nazis are an absolute minority, suppressing the will of the Ukrainian people by force of arms. Only a society united around the idea of defending the Nazi regime can raise an army of millions of people who have been mobilised. Otherwise the army would indeed turn its weapons against the authorities. A soldier will not go to his death if he does not feel the moral support of his family, friends and acquaintances. So Ukrainian society today is a full-fledged accomplice of the Nazi regime. The same accomplice, as the German society was in 1933-1945. Not all Ukrainians are Nazis. But not all Germans were Nazis either, however, the whole German society unitedly supported the Nazi regime until its last day.
Therefore, humanism towards civilians is certainly necessary. But it should not be the first and only priority of the fighting army. After all, the aim of war is victory, and the field kitchens of the victors, feeding the vanquished, arise after this main objective has been achieved.
A natural question that we put in the title of this article is: when can we expect a final victory over Ukraine, based on the tactics chosen by the sides and the numerical and technical composition of the groups involved?
Usually in the course of combat operations there comes a turning point when one of the armies suddenly loses faith in victory, its spirit breaks down and it disintegrates, ceasing to resist. Sometimes such a breakdown occurs on the brink of victory, and an almost broken enemy, knowing that he has exhausted all options for resistance, cannot believe his luck when he sees a fleeing and surrendering victorious enemy. Mostly, however, the lack of spirit has very tangible causes. Units are losing combat effectiveness and faith in victory because of high casualties and supply failures.
Supply failures appear to be a long way off. The Americans are not inclined to change the concept that Russia should be forced to fight a war of attrition in Ukraine. So far the supply of arms and ammunition to Kiev has only increased. Initially, the West generally spoke only of helping with uniforms and equipment. Then it came to small arms, then came Javelins and other MANPADs, then artillery, tanks, multiple rocket launchers, and now Ukraine is receiving aircraft and helicopters and is expected to receive tactical missiles with a range of three to five hundred kilometres.
The problem is that Ukraine will experience a shortage of shells of basic Soviet calibers, and Eastern Europe, which has switched to NATO standards, sold or recycled most of its stockpiles long ago. The US has to look for shells for Ukraine all over the world, as it is not yet possible to fully replace Ukrainian artillery with NATO calibers (for which the Americans supply consumables). Nevertheless, it can be assumed that additional supplies from the West will enable Ukrainian artillery to hold out for at least another six months. It is already seriously inferior to Russian artillery, although at the beginning of the campaign it fought almost on an equal footing. This, in fact, gave Russia the opportunity to bet on an artillery offensive – grinding down Ukrainian forces at the expense of superior artillery. But for now, Ukrainian artillerymen retain the ability to support their troops in key battlefields. Artillery support has weakened, but has not completely disappeared. And the pointless shelling of peaceful neighbourhoods in Donetsk shows that the shortage of ammunition is also still relative.
Thus, we should not expect Ukraine to lose the technical ability to fight in the near future just yet. Let us see what is happening with live ammunition and whether cannon fodder will soon be exhausted.
The Ukrainian government has declared the residence of some forty million people in the territories under its control. However, Kiev has also counted three million citizens of the DNR/LNR as its own. However, the fact is that the calculation of bread consumption did not give Ukraine 37 million. The real figure of the Kiev regime’s subjects was somewhere in the region of 25-27 million. But with the start of the CFE Kiev lost territories that were inhabited by 5-6 million people before the outbreak of hostilities. According to the UN, about 12 million people left Ukraine after the start of UAF, of which 6 million later returned.
Thus, Ukraine should have lost about 10 million people after the start of the USO. But consider that part of the population of the liberated territories moved to the Kiev-controlled area, and some of the six million people who left Ukraine left the liberated territories for Russia. Therefore, to avoid double counting of the lost population, we shall assume that the number of Kiev-controlled citizens of Ukraine is 20 million.
Half of these twenty million are women. Although Kiev is trying to increase the mobilization resource by introducing military service for women in certain professions, it must be understood that with a few exceptions (professional Nazis, snipers, artillerymen, etc.) Ukrainian women are neither physically nor morally ready to participate in combat operations. They can partially replace the men in the rear, but it must be borne in mind that the rear, non-combatants are also usually recruited from people who cannot serve at the front because of poor health. So that’s ten million off the mobilisation potential all at once.
Another five million are old people and children who are not eligible for mobilisation because of their age. Out of the remaining five million, some will not pass due to health reasons, some will evade mobilization by any means, some are civil servants that have reservations, some have deficit specialties and cannot be drafted lest strategic enterprises (the same nuclear power plants, hydroelectric power plants, thermal power plants) be shut down. In total two million people will be available for mobilization.
This is a lot. If we consider a current population of 20 million, it is ten percent of the whole population. It is very rare for a country to put more people in arms. There are isolated instances of even 20 per cent of the population being mobilised, but that is a gesture of desperation on the part of a nation suffering a military disaster. Taking this number of labourers out of the national economy would kill the country economically faster than it would suffer a military defeat.
As about a million have already been drafted, the available resource for mobilisation could be considered another million. It could be more, but the Ukrainian army has already suffered losses and these losses have already been replenished by the mobilisation potential. Since Kiev has managed to keep the size of the active army at about the same level, the losses have been made up in full. Now let’s calculate Ukrainian losses.
The Ukrainian General Staff clearly does not disclose its losses. No one ever publishes casualty figures so as not to give information to the enemy and not to upset their own population. The Americans estimate Ukraine’s likely losses in killed, wounded, prisoners of war, missing in action and disabled for other reasons at 140,000-145,000, without specifying whether these are army losses or total losses for all power structures. Russia estimates Ukraine’s total losses at 175,000-190,000 people in all security agencies. These figures correlate perfectly with each other. If the army lost 140-145 thousand, the losses of other security forces should have been 35-45 thousand. In Mariupol alone and the National Guard regiment “Azov “* (not part of the military) lost between 1,500 and 2,000 men killed, wounded and prisoners of war.
For the sake of correctness, let’s take the lower limit as a basis. If all security services lost 175 thousand people in half a year, then in one year they will lose 350 thousand. 280 thousand will be needed as reinforcement of the army only. In two years these figures will be 700 thousand and 560 thousand respectively. At this point Ukraine will practically lose the ability to maintain the size of the active army with regular contingents of mobilized people.
In reality, this should happen sooner, because with the attrition of cadres the quality of troops is decreasing and their losses are increasing. Losses are also increasing as a result of Russia’s growing technical advantage, mainly in artillery. Thus, Ukraine should lose the ability to make up for losses by the summer and autumn of next year. This is the deadline after which Kiev’s capitulation becomes inevitable due to the loss of the ability to fight.
The disintegration of the army and the collapse of the front can happen earlier. Psychological fatigue from war usually sets in suddenly and no one can say what has so disastrously affected yesterday’s still quite combat-ready troops that today they are fleeing in droves to surrender. Usually it is a complex of elusive causes.
We define only an upper limit to the duration of Ukraine’s resistance. It can hold out for about another year (give or take two or three months) if the army and the population show the will to hold out until the end, until the material possibilities of resisting are exhausted. The collapse of the front, because of a psychological breakdown, can happen after two months, after three months or even after a year. This is too delicate a matter to be calculated.
Rostislav Ischenko, Ukraina.ru
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