Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Kidrellik t1_ixmyat9 wrote

Reply to comment by Orlando1701 in Ukraine works to restore power after bruising Russian attack by LieutJimDangle

General Mark Milley said that both sides probably lost around a 100k soldiers in causalities but it's probably higher on the Ukrainian side now since they're on the offensive against dug in Russian troops with the artillery advantage. Now this wouldn't be a problem if the both had a similar population but they don't, Ukraine has about 39 million people compared to Russias 143 million. That means that a single Ukrainian soldier is a lot more valuable then a Russian one so it's really more like Ukraine is losing 3.5 soldiers for every Russian soldier they take out.

Now Russia went in with like 220k soldiers and Ukraine had a generally mobilization process which gave then a 3 or 4 to 1 man power advantage by mid war, that why they were able to pull off that massive offencive in Kharkov but Russia has mobilized 300k troops and there are rumors that they'll mobilize another 400 to 600k soldiers, taking away that manpower advantage Ukraine had. They also bought millions of shells for pennies on the dollar and artillery is one of the few things thar kept them alive and somewhat balanced off the Ukrainian man power advantage so with in a year, they'll have both the manpower and artillery advantage.

In the long term, Ukraine needs to inflict 3 or 4 to 1 causalities against the Russians to maintain the war effort, it certainly doesn't look good for Ukraine if the causalities are somewhat equal and that's just the hard truth of the matter.

−2

Orlando1701 t1_ixmzknk wrote

Russia does have a larger population but… it’s a massively unpopular war at home which has created manpower shortages and Russia still has a home guard as to where Ukraine is fighting a war of survival and can throw 100% of its manpower into the war. So, your statement is factually accurate but leaves out a lot of the actual battlefield situation.

And if inflicting casualties is all they needed to win the war you’d be correct however, you are again taking a absurdly simplified view of the war. You don’t have to kill people if you can starve them out or destroy their motivation and we know that Russia has had craptastic logistics to the point that feeding its troops has been a problem and we have seen significant numbers of Russia troops just giving up. Also there’s the equipment issue, Russia effectively can’t replace lost equipment while Ukraine right now has an open pipeline from NATO to replace its equipment. So yeah, if this was a Napoleonic era war where manpower was the only real consideration but it’s 2022 and there’s far more going on.

8

Kidrellik t1_ixn2mr8 wrote

It doesn't matter if a war is popular or not, they annexed 4 regions of Ukraine into Russia so they could sell the idea that they're defending Russia and anyone who doesn't want to fight is abandoning their country. That will make the mobilization pill a lot easier to swallow. Russia also doesn't have separatist groups to deal with and they have Central Asian immigrants to deal with all the tedious work so they could pretty much strip all the man power they need.

You're also stuck in the beginning of the war when Russian logistics were truly awful since they only brought enough supplies for 3 days, thinking they could YOLO run to Kyiv with out securing their flanks. They now have the logistical capabilities to get 40 to 50k soldiers across a river well being shelled relatively safely. We also haven't seen a significant number of Russian troops just giving up, weve just seen Ukrainian videos showing the ones that have. The battle of Mariupol alone led to 4000 Ukrainain pows, thats far more than how many Russians are in Ukrainian captivity.

That is also just not true, both Russia and Ukraine are Soviet armies and Russia still has tens of millions of AKs in storage. NATO maybe giving them guns which are 20% better but that doesn't matter since like you said, it's not the Napleonic Era where an extra shot per minute really matters.

At the end of the day, it's about who could bleed more and that's Russia.

−4