Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse for Russia --
This is out today from The Insider — Russian journalists of some repute. theins.ru/...
I am going to keep my comments real short in this — what they are saying is truly breathtaking. What they are saying is this is much worse for Russia than just this war. Leaves them near defenseless and Ukraine knows this full well — part of their calculus for sure.
Highlights —
For Russia, six months of war have led not only to colossal irreplaceable losses in manpower, but also to a huge waste of weapons and military equipment: guided missiles are already very scarce, shells for artillery and armored vehicles will be exhausted by the end of the year, and the state of military aviation precludes a full-scale air campaign. Because of the sanctions, Russia cannot continue full industrial production of weapons and replenish its arms stockpiles, which are rapidly running out….The problem is that Soviet artillery shells could not be stored for long and as early as summer 2002, during the second Chechen campaign, the Russian army faced a shortage of 122 mm and 152 mm shells...
About those artillery barrels (I mentioned this before you know) -
And even if we assume that Russian soldiers do not neglect maintenance procedures for barrels and other gun mechanisms, and that Russia has an unknown, but not an infinite, number of them in reserve (especially on guns from storage depots), by the end of 2022 wear and tear of artillery will lead to a drastic reduction in its effectiveness. In addition, the Russian military itself cautiously pointed out problems with the survivability of artillery pieces as early as 2020, as well as insufficient efficiency of the field maintenance and repair system for artillery pieces. (I don’t think they can hit the broad side of a barn now — so to speak)
They are screwed in armored vehicles too -
And even if the relatively fresh, even if not new, armored vehicles are brought in from the military units and storage depots, the lion's share of them will have to be sent for repairs by the end of 2022, provided they are not destroyed, if the high intensity of combat operations continues. And here it is worth repeating: the service life of a tank gun is also finite.
And their air force isn’t going to be of much help -
Each machine, even at the beginning of the aggression, when the Ukrainian air defense was less organized than now, was making 1 or 2 combat sorties per day lasting 1-1.5 hours in total. At the same time today, taking into account losses and breakdowns, Russia is still able to keep about 400 combat aircraft of different types and about 360 helicopters (not all of them are attack helicopters) near the borders of Ukraine. Nevertheless, Russia has not been able to conduct a full-scale air campaign since the start of the war, and now its capacity for such a campaign has only shrunk.
They would still have MLRS I guess — but for how long?
The writer is Pavel Luzin — I find him objective and he backs up his work. Russia is going to run out of shells and their barrels are screwed in a few months here. Their air force is scared to venture into the AA battery areas, pretty clearly. As in — practically won’t be able to continue the fight.
There are a lot of reasons I think Russia is losing this war — but if this article is anywhere near true Russia is completely and totally screwed — as in, they could lose more than just this war. I strongly doubt Putin could even stay in power. This has really serious political consequences beyond this war. Think about Vlad’s little mischief in the world — right? Would Russia stay in league with China or “make-up” with the west? Could an even harder line SOB replace Vlad? (though they won’t get much of an army — more a toothless pariah state with a lot of pissed of oligarchs)
Very interesting article considering where it is coming from — they know their culture. I am sure those journalists are really pissed with Putin so consider that, but it does not change the math here either. The Russian artillery based war dogma is completely ruined if this is right, you know?
Some of you guys want to add tags or something — help yourself cause I truly don’t care. To me everything goes back to the fact we had a traitor president. Everything.
The title I used is the title of the article by the way. I don’t think he is overstating it if this is true. And it sure looks like it to me. SO well thought out, so well written, so to the point.
