UPDATE: Tuesday, Feb 21, 2023 · 11:45:10 PM +00:00 · Witgren
Update: Some comments have been along the lines of “Yeah, but Russia can still field tens of millions of soldiers if it wants to.”
Ok. Well, for one, what’s that do to the economy? Seriously. Who’s making and doing stuff back home? And don’t just say “the women” or “the old guys” because that’s not an answer. You don’t draft a guy with, say, and engineering degree in a specialized field, stick him in a tank in Ukraine, and expect someone else to just step into that role the next day like nothing happened. You don’t draft a cabinetmaker with fifteen years of training and experience and put his wife into his job the next day and expect good results. You don’t draft a computer programmer and give his job to his grandpa. Who’s doing the work if Russia starts drafting men by the millions?
Second: See my section on equipment and logistics. Russia is struggling to equip and feed 300,000 conscripts NOW. How the royal effing hell would they equip and feed millions? Equip them with what? Clubs and spears? There are conscripts out there right now holding rifles manufactured before their daddies were born (seriously). US intelligence says that some of the artillery rounds being used were manufactured in the 1980’s (and the older an artillery shell gets, the less likely it is to work properly, as opposed to being a dud, or just blowing up in the gun breech).
So tell me, those of you who think Russia can simply wave a magic wand and field a horde of countless millions, how do you feed them, clothe them, arm them, and transport them, given what we know about the state of Russian equipment and logistics? This isn’t a game of Risk where you just move pieces on a game board and things happen.
There has been some discussion of late about whether Russia can sustain its war in Ukraine. And some folks in diary comments have had questions about whether Ukraine can hold out, give the size of Russia and it’s supposed limitless supply of manpower.
As of right now, Russia is on track, according to Ukrainian sources, to have lost 150,000 men killed by the end of this month. Even if you assume Ukrainian numbers are exaggerated for some reason and trim that number by 1/3, that’s still 100,000 killed.
To provide some comparison and context, during the course of a decade in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union lost 15,000 killed. During the course of more than two decades in Vietnam, the US lost 58,000 killed. And during the US’s time in Afghanistan (nearly 20 years), we lost 2,402 killed. The US lost 4,431 killed in Iraq over more than 7 years. And to go further back, the US lost 33,651 killed over 3 years in Korea.
And going back even further, in WW2 the US suffered about 407,000 soldiers killed over 4 years. In other words, even if we’re charitable about the numbers, Russia is losing men in Ukraine at a pace similar to what the US experienced in WW2 while fighting multiple Axis powers across the globe.
One other thing to consider with all these numbers: they only reflect those killed. It does not take into account those wounded, missing, or captured. So Russian casualties are much higher than just the number of killed. And while some wounded who are more lightly wounded will be back on the front lines in relatively short order, others will never be able to return again, to badly wounded to ever serve again.
Now that we’ve put these losses into historical context comparing them to other conflicts, let’s take a look at some other context.
The Population
The first thing to consider is that the Russia of today is not the USSR of WW2.
The population of the USSR before the German invasion was about 195 million.
The population of Russia prior to its invasion of Ukraine was about 145 million.
So right off the bat, the Russian population is about ¾ what is was when Stalin was feeding men into the meatgrinder at places like Stalingrad.
In comparison, pre-invasion Ukraine had a population of about 44 million. Yes, that’s about 1/3 the population of Russia, but it also means that they are not so vastly outnumbered as one might think.
Further, the population of Russia has been not only declining but aging. Gone are the days when Stalin could count on millions of robust Russian farm families with half a dozen young sons to give to the Motherland. The median age now of Russia is 40.7 years. By comparison, in 1950 the median age was 24.34. That means fewer younger, fitter men to draw upon for Putin’s rounds of conscription. We’ve all seen the photos of some of the conscripts that Russia has scraped together. Some of them look like they should be bouncing their second grandchild on their knee instead of grabbing an AK and heading for the front line.
Also, about a million men mostly of conscription age, have fled the country since the invasion began.
That’s a decent dent in the manpower Russia can potentially draw upon.
The gap in potentially available forces also appears in a demographic that Ukraine avails itself of, but Russia barely notices: women.
Before the invasion, the Russian military was only 4% women (and very few of them officers), and women are not allowed to serve in many roles, particularly frontline roles. In contrast, Ukraine’s military pre-invasion was over 15% women, and women have been encouraged to enlist in Ukraine’s defense, though they are not subject to conscription. And Ukrainian women are serving in frontline combat roles.
While the Ukrainian military is still vastly male, Ukrainian women are stepping up and serving as well and increases the size of the Ukrainian military beyond what it would be in a male-only service.
So yes, in raw numbers, Russia has a distinct advantage over Ukraine, but perhaps not as large as some people think.
Further, Putin has been reluctant to enact conscription. Yes, Russia finally took the plunge and officially conscripted about 300,000 men last fall. Since then, although there’s been some evidence of “shadow conscripting” going on, and of course the recruiting of prisoners by Wagner with promises of shortened sentences (and lies like “they’ll be used on the reserve lines and inactive fronts and won’t be up front in the active fighting,” ha ha), there’s been no talk of new conscription actions in Russia. All the men in Russia won’t be of use to Putin if he doesn’t actually decide to put them in uniform. Nor can Putin send his entire military into Ukraine. Russia still has borders to defend, and Putin can’t risk an uprising in some of the Russian states among the populations dissatisfied with Russian rule.
Before moving on, let’s take a moment to consider quality of troops. Russia has bled a huge number of it’s best troops in this war. The elite VDV and Naval Infantry units have been bled white and are being refilled with poorly trained conscripts, who will have neither the skills nor the high morale those units enjoyed when the invasion began. Russia has lost a lot of trained soldiers during this war, and with it lost those years of training and experience. And Russia’s losses include a lot of officers. As of December, Ukraine claims that more than 1,400 Russian officers have been killed, including at least 12 generals, 44 colonels, 98 lieutenant colonels and 193 majors. And with the losses of experienced lower ranks, it’s going to be hard to fill empty officer slots with people that know what they’re doing.
What are they being replaced with? Conscripts, many of whom are getting at best a few days training (if that) before being sent to Ukraine. Some have been held back in Russia for more complete training, but even once that’s done they’ll be trained in the same Russian doctrine that has led to Russia’s “3-day war” lasting a year now. And they won’t be nearly as well equipped as the soldiers who invaded Russia a year ago. Which brings us to the next point.
The Equipment & Logistics
At the beginning of the war, Russia was thought by most to be a juggernaut that was going to largely steamroll over Ukraine. A lot of estimates thought most of the fighting would be over in a week, with Kyiv under Russian control and Zelenskyy’s government either collapsing or going into exile.
Since that time, in addition to the large number of human casualties Russia has sustained, it has also suffered huge losses in equipment. For example, Oryx has visually confirmed losses of 1,733 tanks in Ukraine, 1,020 of those destroyed (the rest captured by Ukraine, many of which are now being used against Russia). And that’s just visually confirmed and doesn’t count those that might have been lost behind Russian lines to Ukrainian artillery or drones, for example, but for which there is no photographic confirmation available. Or those that might have been badly damaged but managed to make it back behind Russian lines but are essentially beyond repair. Ukraine puts the number of Russian tanks lost so far at more than 3,300. The real number is presumably somewhere between Oryx’s confirmed numbers and Ukraine’s claims.
“But wait!” you exclaim, “ isn’t Russia supposed to have like 10,000 or more tanks?” Well, supposedly, yeah. Key words there being supposed to. As the world discovered soon after Russia’s initial invasion stalled, grift and apathy have combined to eat away at much of the Russian military’s equipment, and that includes their tank force. “By the book,” Russia ought to still have something on the order of 7 or 8,000 tanks to draw upon, which sounds like a pretty daunting number (the US military has, in total between active usage and those in storage, about 7,000 tanks).
But between things like the high-end optics and chips being sold off by grifters, and generally poor upkeep and maintenance, US sources estimates that most of that number are pretty worthless — either completely inoperable, or in need of extensive maintenance and upgrades before they’ll be worth anything on a battlefield. If Russia had lots of shiny well-kept T-80’s and T-90’s out there to throw into Ukraine, we wouldn’t be seeing T-62’s (the last of which rolled off the assembly line in 1975, nearly 50 years ago) showing up in Ukraine. So Russia may well have only at best a few thousand tanks left to draw upon, some of which are relatively ancient, and although a few thousand tanks still sounds like a lot, again remember that Russia (probably) won’t risk stripping down it’s border units completely or draw too heavily from areas where there might be some unrest.
And then there’s the personal equipment. Stuff like those missing million and a half winter uniforms. Stories of soldiers having to buy their own boots, camp stoves, even their own helmets or body armor. Rations that expired in 2015. Medical kits that amount to little more than a few pieces of gauze and a piece of rubber tubing for use as a tourniquet.
And then there’s just the raw logistics. As Kos and Mark have pointed out repeatedly in their Ukraine updates, Russians suck at logistics and have difficulty dealing with anything more than a couple dozen kilometers from a rail line. And that seems to have as much cause for the repeated assaults on Bakhmut in recent months as anything — not because it’s strategically important (it’s not), but because it happens to be close to rail supply line for Russia and so the logistics are comparatively easier. As Kos put it in a recent diary, it’s like the old joke of the guy looking for his lost keys under the street lamp even though he lost them in the park because the light is better under the lamp.
Having crappy logistics just makes everything that much harder for Russia to keep those troops and their ammunition-hungry artillery supplied.
And now let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment…
The Ukrainians
In comparison to the above, while the quality of Russia’s troops and equipment is continually degrading, Ukraine is on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Once the initial invasion was halted, Ukraine was able to hold it’s lines (and even push Russia back) while simultaneously training large numbers of conscripts and reservists. And many more have been or are being trained in places like Poland, the UK and the US in NATO combined arms and in how to use the new equipment constantly being fed to Ukraine.
Since about the time Ukraine halted Russia’s advances into the country, other countries have been sending equipment to Ukraine. At first, a lot of this equipment was older Soviet and Russian equipment and vehicles like BMP’s — stuff the Ukrainians were already familiar with how to operate and maintain. As time has gone on, however, more and more western and more modern equipment has been sent to Ukraine, such as the vaunted HIMARS, and now before much more time passes, tanks like the Leopard and Challenger will be arriving.
So while Russian equipment and vehicles are getting worse, Ukrainian equipment is getting better. Look at when the HIMARS systems arrived, for example. The Russians had huge stockpiles of ammunition relatively close to their front lines — out of normal artillery range, but once HIMARS was on the scene with it’s longer reach, we were treated to the sight of many big Russian ammo dumps going BOOM. And the same with command & control posts. Which forced the Russians to split up their ammo dumps into smaller sizes and move them much farther from the front (and remember, Russia doesn’t do well with logistics, so those longer hauls just makes things more complicated for them). And moving command posts further to the rear makes it just that much harder for higher officers to control what’s going on at the front.
As for the new tanks, they are generally seen as being more than a match for Russia’s T-80’s and T-90’s (for example, the Challenger II’s being sent to Ukraine are generally though to be able to withstand 2 or 3 direct hits from a T-80 and still be likely to be able to carry on), with the added benefit of being designed for greater crew survivability in the event of a direct hit (I think many of us have seen, or at least heard, about the “jack-in-the-box” effect of blowing the tank turret many meters into the air when a Russian-made tank is hit, because the ammunition is stored in the turret and without blow-out panels to provide an exit route for the resulting blast. Soviet/Russian tanks were designed with more of a “quantity over quality” mindset, where crew survivability was not much of a consideration). The plus side to that is of course that if your tank crew survives, you have fewer deaths on your side. But from a more cynical point of view, it also means that you have an experienced tank crew that is able to return to fight another day, provided you have another tank for them to use, and you don’t lose that training and experience. Every time a Russian T-80 lights up and does the jack-in-the-box thing, you can be sure that no one is coming out of that tank alive, and Russia has to train a new tank crew.
The Insurgency
Another think not talked about much (perhaps much less than it should be, really) is Ukrainian operations behind Russian lines, whether it be Special Ops or local resistance. Ukrainian collaborators have been assassinated, as have various Russian operatchiks sent to Ukraine to do Putin’s bidding in setting up puppet administrations in occupied areas. And I don’t doubt that some o the “Russian Things Going Boom” behind the lines were due not to HIMARS or Ukrainian drones, but human operators on the ground.
Which means that Russia has to bleed off some forces that might otherwise have been used on the front lines to do things like guard supply depots and supply convoys and generally keep an eye on the Ukrainian population in occupied areas. Yes, the Russians deal VERY harshly with Ukrainian civilians, indulging in a plethora of war crimes, torture, and general horrible-ness. But then again, so did the Nazis in occupied France and Poland, and resistance movements there persisted throughout the war in spite of the dangers. Every time a puppet city mayor goes BOOM or every time a Russian supply truck goes up in flames, the Russians have to expend that much more effort and commit that many more soldiers to the task of controlling the occupied territories.
Summary
Well, to wrap up, what does all the above mean for Russia’s ability to continue the war (and keep in mind, I didn’t even touch on the Russian economy, which is a whole other additional ball of wax).
Well, to be blunt, Russia can’t sustain this war forever. Even now, they can barely sustain offensives at Bakhmut, and that’s one point along the entire front. How long CAN it last? That’s an excellent question, but it’s hard to see how this war can continue past the current year, at least in it’s current form. Once Ukraine starts getting the new tanks and more troops trained in combined arms operations, I expect counteroffensives will be in the offing by summertime (some have been predicting spring, but frankly Ukraine won’t even have many of the tanks being promised that quickly, plus I’d think they’d want a little time to get them integrated into their forces and working together before throwing them at the Russian lines).
It’s hard to make predictions about the future. But when we can clearly see the arc of Ukraine’s forces ascending, with better training and better equipment, while Russia’s arc is descending, with poorer quality of troops and poorer equipment, it’s hard to see a way for Russia to sustain this war beyond this year (at best)... and perhaps not even beyond this summer.
A side note on tanks
A few observations, as long as I’m writing, on tanks being sent to Ukraine…
While writing this, I came upon some information about those Challenger II’s. As far as I could find, there has been only one instances one was destroyed in combat, two other instances where they were damaged sufficiently to injure crew members, and one instance where one was disabled but with no injured crew. The one that was destroyed was an unfortunate friendly-fire incident from another Challenger II in Iraq that killed two tank crew members (and took two shots). In two instances where crew members were injured, in one the front underbelly armor was penetrated by an RPG round, and in another the underbelly armor was penetrated by an IED (the underbelly armor has since been upgraded). In the instance of a Challenger II being disabled, it was hit by 14 RPG rounds and a MILAN anti-tank missile. In trying to back out of the situation, the tank backed into a ditch and threw a track and was unable to move further. The tank was recovered shortly after, crew uninjured, and the tank was operational again within six hours.
So as you can see, a pretty hardy tank. Yes, the UK so far has committed to only sending 14 of these to Ukraine, but if used in the right way in the right place… let’s just say they could be the perfect tool for the tip of the spear for a breakthrough if properly supported.
As long as I’m talking tanks, let’s take a second to look at the Leopard. In general, the Leopard is relatively fast and also quite maneuverable for a main battle tank. And it has some pretty hefty front armor combined with reactive armor, and has proved pretty resistant in general to both anti-tank weapons and IED’s, although Turkey has lost several in Syria to those types of attacks as well. Crucially, the Leopard II is used by a lot of countries and so there is a pipeline of spare parts and expertise that Ukraine can draw upon that won’t be as readily available with the Challenger tanks or, eventually the US Abrams.
As for the Abrams, personally, I think it’ll be too long for them to finally get there and get repair crews up to speed for them to make any real difference in the war. At best, they might make an appearance late in the year. Maybe. Suffice it to say that yes, they are a very tough and effective tank, but with that comes a lot of logistical headaches. And yes, the preferred fuel for an M1 Abrams is jet fuel. But yes, it can use other fuels, as some have pointed out — but the problem there is that using alternative fuels decreases the performance of the engine and increases the amount of maintenance needed to keep it running, so if you’re going to run an Abrams on diesel, be prepared to lose some power and for it to spend more time with the mechanics, which might well negate some of the advantages the tank might otherwise provide.