Russia has lost a staggering 87 percent of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress tol...
Russia has lost a staggering 87 percent of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress told CNN.
Still, despite heavy losses of men and equipment, Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to push forward as the war approaches its two-year anniversary early next year and US officials are warning that Ukraine remains deeply vulnerable. A highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive stagnated through the fall, and US officials believe that Kyiv is unlikely to make any major gains over the coming months.
The assessment, sent to Capitol Hill on Monday, comes as some Republicans have balked at the US providing additional funding for Ukraine and the Biden administration has launched a full-court press to try to get supplemental funding through Congress.
To be honest, I didn't think Russia would make it to two years. I expected riots, revolution, putin getting killed, etc. It's pretty insane how indifferent the majority of the Russian population is. That makes it even more scary.
They did protest. And everyone was arrested. Then they protested the arrests. And everyone was arrested. Then people just silently stood in groups holding blank signs. And everyone was arrested.
So only another military coup could free Russia from Putin's firm grasp.
But that's why he kept his own military led by weak leadership. And the only paramilitary group he allowed to gain strength ended up attempting a coup against him.
They don't know the war is going badly. They don't know what Western society knows about the war. They're fed state approved propaganda and nothing more. They're also plastered constantly which kills motivation for political upheaval.
While the army may be extremely disorsgnized, unfortunately, putin has made internal security extremely solid. Add to that the fact that a great amount of people in russia are politicaly passive or pro Z, I don't think a revolution is coming from the people anytime soon.
One thing I would add is that the Russian people do want change but any attempt at changing the leadership is met with poisoning and/or long prison sentences. I would highly recommend reading about Alexei Navalny or watching the fascinating documentary
If we could harness the energy of Regan spinning in his grave, we'd have a limitless supply of energy.
Imagine telling any conservative, during the Cold War era, that we could completely fuck Russia's military power and readiness, for years to come, by sending weapons to a relatively small country. They would be rushing to arm anyone and everyone they could, unintended consequences be damned. And yet, here we are with the GOP blocking exactly that sort of activity. And even better, there is a very real possibility that we aren't arming future terrorists this time around. Maybe that's the GOP's problem, Russia losing in Ukraine won't create an excuse in 20 years to kill more brown people.
Ya, it's pretty bad when you can look at Nixon as a "stand up guy" compared to Trump. He at least had the decency to recognize that he had been caught in his bullshit, resign and go away.
In the world of politics you never give something for free. The Republicans are asking for more stringent border security and more border funding. If democrats were truly committed to supporting Ukraine then they would have made those concessions all ready. The problem is democrats love exploiting brown people for their cheap sweat shop labor.
Border security wouldn't stop migrant workers. The whole "invasion of the border" thing is never talking about those people, as was proven by farmers lamenting their absence in Florida.
Or the Dems know that letting the GOP get their shitty ideas through just because Dems want something isn't a good idea and are going to try to do it without the traitors' party's help
If democrats were truly committed to supporting Ukraine then they would have made those concessions all ready.
They have been, some substantial compromises actually. The Republicans still wanting more, in a non-compromising sort of way.
Personally I'm hoping the FBI actually does checks on everyone in Congress, to make sure they're not being compromised to vote in certain ways that certain countries wants.
George W. Bush set the precedent that The US does not negotiate with terrorists. Even when those terrorists are in Congress. They should stop setting precedents they don't really mean.
Oh yes, more money to fix the perpetual, nebulously defined "border problem".
Sometimes compromise is not the solution. This is one of those times. I'm tired of Republican fearmongers getting rich off my tax dollars by funneling it into the border security slush fund.
Or is it that the Democrats understand the rhetorical danger of equating an actual war in Europe involving a major nuclear power, with the ego driven pet project of a fascist demagogue?
Russia had a total standing military of approximately 900,000 active-duty troops
Of the 360,000 troops that entered Ukraine, including contract and conscript personnel, Russia has lost 315,000 on the battlefield, according to the assessment.
So roughly 87.5% of the initial troops was lost, like the article said so that checks out.
900,000 - 315,000 still means 585,000 troops remaining, and that's outside the conscription efforts.
Russia has announced plans to increase the size of the armed forces to 1.5 million.
Still a considerable force, as long as the supply chain is able to back it up.
Brutal numbers. Let’s not forget that Russia can’t just move all its troops west, they still need to protect other borders and regions.
I really hope the US passes a proper aid, and even more so that EU gets themselves together and continues support. Infuriating to see that while Ukrainians are fighting for their lives (and unintentionally also for the safety of Europe), the politicians are haggling over fucking pocket change.
The only way Russia can win if the west stops Ukraine’s support, and they grind them up over the next years. This would be a catastrophic strategic failure, and would mean the end of global US/NATO influence, motivating the start of many more annexations (definitely Taiwan as a start).
Yes, for all the people saying "it's not that many", this is a huge number. No military campaign can withstand 80% losses. That's like the losses Napoleon took invading Russia. Or Hitler, invading Russia...
Guys, I'm thinking this invading thing is hard in this part of the world.
The thing is, Ukraine has no real possibility of interrupting the supply chain, since it doesn't have the weapons to do so, or is not allowed to use on Russian soil in case of western weapons. All it can do is himarsing the last few dozens of kilometers around the front.
And Russia can produce or dig up WW2-level shit from storage for a very long time.
Russian use of those is contested, but it is an efficient way to deal with a problem like that. There was some media buzz about those things about a year ago or so.
So, if i must believe this, those 13% left in Ukraine are very capable, very effective troops, able to move over that gigantic front in minutes, seconds even to fill the gaps. They must have some kind of teleportation device. It must be possible, since startrek's Chekov is Russian after all. He knows how it works.
Or maybe these figures are just pulled out of someone's ass. Like everything else in this war.
Russia has recruited many more troops since then. The proper way to interpret this information is that the majority of troops currently deployed in Ukraine were conscripted after the start of the war.
If 45,000 are left in Ukraine and Ukraine is approximately 400 miles wide, that's still 112 Russian troops per linear mile to push west.
Obviously they aren't spaced in one line across the country like that, but it gives some perspective on how many are left and how much space they could fill.
You know, sometimes I feel bad about gambling some money away on the stock market and feel a bit like a failure. But then I come across posts like these and I remember that at least I do not fuck up on a colossal scale like this.
Frankly I don't care. The US wastes trillions of dollars on military spending. We have the most advanced military in the world by a mile but all too often it ends up using it to defend someone else's financial interests or to pad the pockets of people that make their money through a war economy.
Russia can get fucked. Every cent spent on the defense of Ukraine is a fully realized fuck you to our enemy. Ukraine did what we could never do. They essentially removed Russia from the equation. Yeah they have many poorly maintained nukes but they know we will fuck their ass if they touch them. They will not be posing a real threat to anyone for generations.
We aren't spending this money on the American people and we never were going to do that anyway. Our choices are we fund people actually fighting for their life or we allow that money to get sucked into the military industrial complex for no real return. They're already getting theirs out of this, the only question that remains is do you back Republicans that have made up a nothing burger about this money because they've arbitrarily decided this is the 96th hill they'll die on, or do you you want to see the money you pay in taxes actually get put to a meaningful purpose.
Saying that it doesn't go to the American people isn't strictly true. It's not like it's cash shipped across the Atlantic. The money spent on weapons to Ukraine is injected into local American economies where weapons are produced, as wages that let people consume products which goes to the wages of people who sell those products wages in turn.
That money still goes to the military industrial complex. It’s used to buy US equipment and ordnance for Ukraine. And the government ain’t buying it at cost. People in the US military industrial complex are getting richer of this war.
Due to putin's lack of qualms about sacrificing civilian men, these numbers may not be militarily very relevant if the professional army and cannon fodder are not segregated.
Of the total population it may be small but the deaths are not a random sampling of the population. They are almost exclusively young men. If we define fighting age as 18-45 Russia has roughly 25 million men. 315k casualties is 1.26% of that population. That alone is a massive amount to lose in such a short period of time. Even before this Russia was in a demographic crisis.
And that 18-45 range is probably too generous. Soldiers are usually young, particularly front line infantry. In the US military like 45% of service members are under 25 and 65% are under 30. When you factor in the number of Russians who fled the country to avoid mobilization (~1 million) 10% of the men between 18 and 30 in 2021 being currently in the military, dead, or fled is a realistic estimate. That's crazy. Those are numbers we haven't seen since WWI. And the conflict isn't over, more will die.
Those 120 people have family and friends. A workplace or a school. So if 120 people die, nearly everyone in a city of 60000 would have known one of the dead.
It's not hard to do body counts. Satellites don't have to do much for getting counts of troops. And counting the dead isn't hard either at this point with constant drones and videos recording 24/7. I'm sure you aren't arguing the numbers just being surprised, and it's more shocking that russians haven't overthrown putin at this point.
Many of them are spread out garrisoning such a big country and its military facilities. Even if all of them would be engaged, there still would be 50% active military forces, while the other 50% would be the support and officer assets. So we're looking at a maximum of 5-600.000 soldiers actually fighting on the frontlines
Russia has lost a staggering 87 percent of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress told CNN.
Still, despite heavy losses of men and equipment, Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to push forward as the war approaches its two-year anniversary early next year and US officials are warning that Ukraine remains deeply vulnerable.
A highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive stagnated through the fall, and US officials believe that Kyiv is unlikely to make any major gains over the coming months.
Russia has been able to keep its war effort going despite the heavy losses by relaxing recruitment standards and dipping into Soviet-era stockpiles of older equipment.
“Since launching its offensive in October, we assess that the Russian military has suffered more than 13,000 casualties along the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka axis and over 220 combat vehicle losses-the equivalent of 6 maneuver battalions in equipment alone,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN.
Russia has also leaned heavily on convicts marshaled to the fight by the Wagner Group and has increased the age limit for certain categories of citizens to remain in the reserve of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You do realize that the U.S. hasn’t spent an excess dollar on the Ukraine war, right? The budget was $700-some-odd billion whether that goes to shipping or storage costs.
You see, any normal country would have realized the war became way too costly and capitulated. But Russia is not a normal country.
Saying "Russia is losing" a year ago was not propaganda. It was just a lack of understanding how little Putin cares about the life of his soldiers. We now know he'll just keep sending more no matter what. He literally can't lose this war and continue to be president.
Russia wouldn't even have had to capitulate, a white peace and some empty diplomatic gestures from Ukraine (like signing a piece of paper in which they promise to "denazify"), would have been enough to get a peace that Russia can sell at home. The classic power play of "we're going home because we accomplished all objectives, we're definitely not running away with our tail between our legs". But Putin would rather see hundreds of thousands of Russians die, just so he can pretend one more year to never be wrong about anything.
The worlds largest, most well funded, most highly advanced military in the world cant defeat a military more than half its size that uses old outdated weapons? The US doesnt want to win this war, it wants to prolong it.