On Thu, 24 Mar 2022 17:35:37 -0700, a425couple wrote:

> from
> https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three
>
> Is Russia losing?
> Russia’s offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are,
> according to one expert, “seeing a country militarily implode.”
>
> By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Mar 18, 2022, 4:10pm EDT
> Share this story
>
> A picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs at a target practice
> range in Lviv in western Ukraine on March 17. Russia’s invasion of
> Ukraine entered its fourth week on Thursday, with Russian forces largely
> bogged down outside major cities and shelling them from a distance,
> raining havoc on civilians. Bernat Armangue/AP
>
> It has been a little over three weeks since Russia initially invaded
> Ukraine. And by most accounts, the Russian war effort has been a disaster.
>
> The initial Russian invasion plan, a lightning march aimed at conquering
> Kyiv, collapsed within days. Since then, the Russians have adjusted to a
> more gradual advance backed by heavy artillery fire, an approach that
> has allowed them to make some noticeable territorial gains.
>
> But these advances appear to have been halted, at least temporarily. On
> Thursday, the UK Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that Russia’s
> offensive “has largely stalled on all fronts,” a judgment echoed by open
> source analysts tracking developments on the ground. The Wall Street
> Journal reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have even managed to
> mount a counteroffensive around Kyiv.
>
> Russian casualties have been horrifically high. It’s hard to get
> accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative
> estimates of Russian war dead — from the US Defense Department — finds
> that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three
> weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US
> service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan.
>
> “We’re seeing a country militarily implode,” says Robert Farley, a
> professor at the University of Kentucky who studies air power.
>
> This is not how the war was supposed to go. On virtually any
> quantifiable metric of military strength, from defense spending to the
> size of the respective air forces, Russia’s forces vastly outnumber and
> outgun Ukraine’s. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark
> Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of
> a Russian invasion.
>
> But Russia’s military has proven more incompetent, and Ukraine’s more
> capable, than nearly anyone anticipated.
>
> A Ukrainian soldier examines a destroyed Russian armored personnel
> carrier in Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 12. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via
> Getty Images
>
> “Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the
> Ukrainians: Nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all
> that high an estimation of their military capacity,” says Olga Oliker,
> the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International
> Crisis Group.
>
> There are many reasons things have turned out this way. Generally
> speaking, it appears that pre-war analyses overrated Russia’s hardware
> advantage and underrated less tangible factors — including logistical
> capacity and the morale of the front-line combat troops on both sides.
>
> Morale in particular “is a very significant factor in Russian combat
> effectiveness, and one that’s being ignored by many military observers,”
> argues Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA think tank.
>
> All that said, it is still far too early to conclude that Ukraine is
> going to win the war. Ukrainians have suffered significant losses, too;
> Russia’s numerical and technological advantages remain and could yet
> prove decisive, allowing the Russians to besiege Ukraine’s major cities
> and starve them into submission.
>
> But right now, based on the publicly available evidence we have, the
> momentum is clearly going the other way. An unqualified Russian victory,
> which once seemed almost inevitable, is looking increasingly less likely.
>
> Russia’s gains have been real — but are stalling out
> On paper, Russia’s military vastly outstrips Ukraine’s. Russia spends
> over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian
> military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and
> roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft.
>
> Given this disparity, Russia was bound to be able to make some inroads
> into Ukrainian territory. And as you can see on the following map from
> the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia had seized control of
> notable chunks of Ukrainian territory by March 9 — especially in the
> south, where it controls the cities of Melitopol and Kherson:
>
>
> Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 9, 2022.
> Institute for the Study of War
>
> But these advances were not necessarily the sole result of Russian
> battlefield supremacy. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical
> decision to trade “space for time”: to withdraw strategically rather
> than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, fighting the Russians on
> the territory and at the time of their choosing.
>
> As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became
> clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with
> Russians on open terrain, where Russia’s numerical advantages would
> prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of
> smaller-scale clashes.
>
> Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller
> cities; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their
> superior knowledge of the city’s geography to hide and conduct ambushes.
> They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open
> roads, which make for easy targets. They have repeatedly raided poorly
> protected supply lines with an eye toward denying Russians necessary
> materials like fuel.
>
> A recent Washington Post account of a battle near the Kyiv suburb of
> Brovary, based on Ukrainian military videos and interviews with
> witnesses, paints a clear picture of how this has played out:
>
> A column of tanks moved down a main highway toward the town of Brovary.
> As they passed a cluster of houses, the Ukrainian forces saw an
> opportunity. They pummeled the convoy with artillery shells and antitank
> missiles, destroying or disabling several tanks and armored personnel
> carriers. Russian soldiers fled their vehicles and ran into the woods,
> according to videos posted on social media by Ukraine’s military. One
> tank slowly rolled to a halt, engulfed in flames.
>
> The Ukrainian defensive strategy has not fully thrown Russia’s advance
> back, but it has slowed it to a near halt. ISW’s updated March 17 map
> shows that Russian forces have barely moved forward from their positions
> about a week earlier — a reflection of Ukrainian success:
>
> Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 17, 2022.
> Institute for the Study of War
>
> Again, the Russian advancement mostly came in the south, where they
> continue to besiege the port city of Mariupol. Their current aim appears
> to be to do the same to Kyiv in the north, cutting it off from food and
> water and bombarding it with artillery.
>
> In theory, this is something their vastly superior military forces
> should be able to accomplish. In practice, the Ukrainians have
> successfully stopped Russia from encircling their capital and may even
> be able to push Russian forces back.
>
> And Russian casualties are taking their toll on the invasion. A recent
> US intelligence assessment found that Russia had lost over 10 percent of
> its initial invasion force due to a combination of factors like
> battlefield deaths, injuries, capture, illness, and desertion. According
> to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University
> of St. Andrews, this is a very ominous sign for the future of its campaign.
>
> “Once they get below 75% their overall effectiveness should plummet,” he
> writes. “If the Russians don’t send fresh well-trained troops (and this
> will not be mercenaries or people impressed off the streets in Crimea)
> very soon, their whole strategy seems pointless.”
>
> What is wrong with the Russian military?
> To understand why the war has gone in such a surprising direction, we
> can first look at some of the Russian side’s problems. They started with
> Putin himself.
>
> The initial invasion plan was reportedly put together in secret by a
> handful of his top military and intelligence advisers; it reflected the
> Russian strongman’s seemingly sincere belief that Ukraine was a fake
> country and they could achieve regime change with limited resistance.
>
> “He actually really thought this would be a ‘special military
> operation’: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldn’t be a real
> war,” Kofman says.
>
> A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard at a military checkpoint in the
> center of Kyiv on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
>
> You can see this assumption at work in the structure of the early
> offensive. Instead of a methodical advance characterized by “combined
> arms” — the use of multiple forms of military power, like infantry and
> artillery, in mutually supportive fashion — Russian tanks and elite
> paratroopers were sent pell-mell toward Kyiv with little support. This
> kind of rapid advance might have worked if it had faced token
> resistance, but it opened up Russian forces to devastating Ukrainian
> counterattacks.
>
> Once Putin’s strategy failed in the first few days of fighting, Russian
> generals had to develop a new one on the fly. What they came up with —
> massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege
> Ukraine’s major cities — was more effective (and more brutal). But the
> initial Russian failures gave Ukraine crucial time to entrench and
> receive external supplies from NATO forces, stiffening their defenses.
>
> Even after this strategic shift, Russian forces have continued to suffer
> from a series of problems that have kneecapped their ability to execute
> the plan.
>
> “If the point is just to wreak havoc, then they’re doing fine. But if
> the point is to wreak havoc and thus advance further — be able to hold
> more territory — they’re not doing fine,” Oliker tells me.
>
> One of the biggest and most noticeable issues has been rickety
> logistics. The most famous images of this have been Russian armored
> vehicles parked on Ukrainian roads, seemingly out of gas and unable to
> advance any further. But on a whole range of issues, from secure
> communications to adequate tires, the Russian forces have proven to be
> underequipped and poorly supplied.
>
> Part of the reason is a lack of adequate preparation. Per Kofman, the
> Russian military simply “wasn’t organized for this kind of war” —
> meaning, the conquest of Europe’s second-largest country by area.
>
> Destroyed Russian armored vehicles clog a street in the city of Bucha,
> west of Kyiv, on March 4. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
> Another big problem, experts say, is corruption in the Russian
> procurement system. Corruption in Russia is less a bug in its political
> system than a feature; one way that the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of
> its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity.
> Military procurement is no exception to this pattern of widespread
> corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital
> supplies.
>
> “Ineffective control over fuel consumption in the Russian military
> actually long preceded the war in Ukraine and had historically created
> opportunities for embezzlement — that is why fuel is often called the
> Russian military’s ‘second currency,’” Polina Beliakova writes in
> Politico. “The quality of food and housing in the Russian military is
> reportedly worse than in its prisons, with unreasonably small meals and
> some carrying harmful Escherichia coli bacteria.”
>
> Logistical problems also seem to be a factor in one of the war’s biggest
> and most important surprises: the shocking absence of Russia’s air force.
>
> So far, Russia has struggled to establish air superiority despite
> massive numerical superiority. According to pre-invasion data from the
> International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia’s aerospace forces
> include 1,172 fixed-wing aircraft; Ukraine has 124. Yet Ukraine’s planes
> are still flying and its air defenses mostly remain in place; as a
> result, the Ukrainian military has been able to use air power against
> the Russian attackers, including deploying Turkish-made TB2 drones
> against slow Russian armored columns to devastating effect.
>
> According to Farley, the issues with Russia’s air force run even deeper
> than lack of maintenance and fuel: Russian pilots lack adequate
> experience with this kind of campaign and do not train very effectively,
> while the leadership seems afraid to risk jets over Ukrainian skies.
>
> “There’s a big hangover from the 1990s and the early 2000s, when
> [Russia] literally didn’t have the money to pay for the gas to make the
> aircraft fly — so your pilots ended up not having many hours in the
> sky,” he explains. “Unlike the United States, which wages a massive air
> campaign every decade, the Russians really haven’t done stuff that
> require a lot of fixed-wing against any kind of prepared defense.”
>
> Ukraine’s stiff resistance and the importance of morale
> Perhaps the biggest single difference between the Ukrainian and Russian
> militaries, according to the experts I spoke with, has been morale:
> soldiers’ belief in their cause and willingness to fight for it.
>
> A civilian shouts anti-Russian slogans at a site where bombing damaged
> residential buildings in Kyiv on March 18. Rodrigo Abd/AP
> “It’s the one thing that could be completely decisive” in Ukraine’s
> favor, says Farley. “Armies do just decide to stop fighting.”
>
> Morale is, by its nature, a tricky thing to assess. But according to
> Dartmouth political scientist Jason Lyall, whose recent book Divided
> Armies examines the role of morale on battlefield performance, you can
> see its effects in dispatches from the Ukrainian front.
>
> “Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal
> hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript
> soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army
> was not prepared to fight this war,” he explains via email. “High rates
> of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and
> large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the
> forest) are all products of low morale.”
>
> Putin kept the Russian invasion plan a secret from everyone but his
> inner circle; before the invasion, Russian diplomats and propaganda
> outlets were mocking the West for suggesting it might happen. The result
> is a Russian force that has little sense of what they’re fighting for or
> why, waging war against a country with which they have religious,
> ethnic, historical, and potentially even familial ties. That’s a recipe
> for low morale.
>
> By contrast, the Ukrainians are defending their homes and their families
> from an unprovoked invasion. They have a charismatic leader, Volodymyr
> Zelenskyy, who has made a personal stand in Kyiv. Stories of heroism and
> defiance — like Ukrainian soldiers responding to a surrender request by
> saying “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” — have bolstered the
> defenders’ resolve.
>
> The Ukrainian morale advantage is making a difference on the battlefield.
>
> “High morale empowers units to take risks, adopt unpredictable tactics,
> and to endure hardships even when outnumbered,” Lyall tells me. “High
> Ukrainian morale, fueled by Zelenskyy’s remarkable leadership and
> personal courage, has improved Ukrainian cohesion and the ability of its
> forces to impose significant casualties on Russian forces.”
>
> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with the prime ministers
> (not seen) of Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia in Kyiv on March 16.
> Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
>
> Lyall cautions that morale can shift with battlefield developments: A
> major Russian breakthrough in one area could cheer up their troops while
> dispiriting Ukrainians. And low-morale armies can win wars, though they
> typically do so in brutally ugly fashion — including mass slaughter of
> civilians, which appears to be a significant part of Putin’s current
> strategy.
>
> But right now, morale appears to be one of the most important factors in
> explaining the difference between the two militaries’ performances. It
> could end up playing a major role in determining the entire course of
> the war.
>
> What does victory for either side look like now?
> War is unpredictable. Any number of things, ranging from Russian
> reinforcements to greater deployment of its air force to the fall of
> besieged Mariupol, could give the Russian offensive new life.
>
> But even if Russia begins to perform better on the battlefield, its
> initial objective — “a Ukraine that becomes entirely subservient to
> Russia,” as Oliker puts it — is looking increasingly out of reach. The
> inability to swiftly topple Kyiv, together with the strong resistance
> and rising nationalist sentiment among Ukrainians, makes it hard to
> imagine Russia successfully installing its own government in Kyiv.
>
> “No matter how much military firepower they pour into it, they are not
> going to be able to achieve regime change or some of their maximalist
> aims,” Kofman declares.
>
> This does not mean the Russian campaign will prove to be a total
> failure. Depending on how the rest of the military campaign goes, it is
> possible to imagine them extracting significant political concessions
> from Zelenskyy in ongoing peace negotiations.
>
>
> A woman looks at her apartment, which was destroyed by shelling in Kyiv
> on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
>
> If more major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa are put under the
> sort of horrible siege Mariupol is currently experiencing — starved and
> under constant artillery bombardment — the Russians will have a lot more
> negotiating leverage. They could use this to extract favorable terms,
> like Ukrainian recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a
> neutrality pledge not to join NATO or the European Union.
>
> But if current military trends hold, it’s the Ukrainians who have the
> cards — and you can imagine a deal that looks similar on paper actually
> favoring them significantly. According to Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press and
> the Financial Times, the country’s negotiating team in peace talks with
> Russia envisions a very specific version of “neutrality”: one that
> precludes formal NATO membership but nonetheless commits Western powers
> to providing weapons and air defense if Ukraine is attacked. This would
> put Ukraine in a far closer security relationship to the West than it
> was before the war, when NATO membership was already functionally out of
> reach — a victory for Kyiv and defeat for Moscow.
>
> It is hard to say how these talks will go, or if and when they will be
> successful. But the fact that a negotiated end to the war is looking
> more likely than total Russian victory reflects the success of Ukraine’s
> defense to date.
>
> “Ukraine’s battle is really for time, an extent to which they can
> [degrade] Russian forces over time in order to steadily lead Russia to
> revise down their war aims. And we’ve already seen a change in Russian
> war aims over the course of the conflict,” Kofman says. “If the
> requirements of military success are the destruction of the Ukrainian
> capital and several other cities, the likelihood of achieving actual
> political aims is nil.”

I liked thesee two videos on this subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9pVEP0AzZ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igq2fqa7RY4