Don's Weekly, 26 February 2024: Part 1

Hello everybody!

For the start of this week’s review, few words from Don in regards of the 10th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Crimea and then Donbas, and the 2nd anniversary of the Russian all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Two Years

It has been two years since the Russians initiated their ‘three-days special operation’ against Ukraine, shortly before 05.00hrs of the morning of 24 February 2022 (and almost exactly 10 years since they invaded Crimea and then Donbas, in 2014). The performances of both countries, their leaderships and their economies, and the capabilities and behaviour of their armies have dramatically changed ever since, but the trends are solidifying and there are a lot of factors that favour Ukraine. Thus, it is a suitable moment in time to look at the big picture.

The biggest concern for Ukraine is manpower. In addition to the millions of citizens lost due to the Russian occupation of the Donbas since 2014, since that fateful day in February 2022, the country has least six million additional people – mostly women and children – that fled to EU nations.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) have suffered extensive losses, too: as of yesterday, President Zelensky officially announced the death of 31,000 ZSU troops. The highest loss rate the ZSU has suffered occurred in spring and summer of 2022, when Russians were burning through their stock of ammunition, firing up to 60,000 shells a day; when Ukraine was defending while a large number of ZSU’s units were either poorly trained, or poorly equipped, or both, and frequently led by commanders that ranged from capable, via inept, to inexperienced. The few regular brigades, staffed by professional soldiers – mostly veterans of previous eight years of fighting against the Russian invasion – were deployed as fire-brigades, and tried their best to counter the greatest threats, while bleeding the invaders and buying time for the rest of the ZSU to organise itself.

Ever since, and with exception of Bakhmut, and the early days of the counteroffensive of summer 2023, the focus in Ukraine has been preservation of manpower. The withdrawal from Avdiivka, and few villages further west of the last few days, are two examples of this practice.  

A T-80 and two MT-LBs of the Russian army knocked out in the Synkivka area, eastern Kharkiv, earlier this month.

While actual losses on both sides can only be estimated, it is certain that Russia has about 3.5 times larger population than Ukraine, and that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) are suffering far higher rate of losses than the ZSU. In some battles, this attrition rate was as high as 15, or even 20 Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian killed, but the average rate is somewhere between 3 and 5 Russians for every Ukrainian. By now, at least according to official Ukrainian statements (again: Zelensky, on 24 February 2024), the VSRF has lost at least 150,000 troops killed in Ukraine. Other assessments are much higher, with some counting as many as three times that number.

Unsurprisingly, Vladimir Putin was not only forced to publicly break his promise and launch an emergency draft following the ZSU counteroffensive in eastern Kharkiv of August-September 2022, but has further intensified the mobilisation of the Russian manpower through the last year, too. He is mobilising even more troops at the time this is written. Mind: time and increasing casualties will only add to the resulting pressure.

A chart of what of current Russian ‘volunteer detachments’ belong to what of official instances or private military companies.

The destruction of the Russian military equipment is far higher than the production rates at which its defence sector can roll out replacements. Over the last two years, the VSRF lost an average of 1,300 main battle tanks a year, while the defence sector produced mere 200 and refurbished 500 old vehicles, all drawn from the open-air storage. Depending on the condition of remaining tanks – the number of which is estimated at between 9,000 and 12,000 – Russia is certain to run out of ability to continue overhauling old equipment to replace losses in between two and four years. When it comes to artillery shells, the Russian industry is currently making enough to sustain the present rate of expenditure, and might increase this by 20%, but that is also as good as it is likely to get: the VSRF will have to continue importing ammunition of lesser – often even dubious – quality from North Korea to continue.

A pair of abandoned Russian T-72 main battle tanks, shortly before both were knocked out by FPV-drones of the 71st Jäger Brigade, ZSU, earlier this month.

On average, the Russian Air-Space Force (VKS) acquired 40 aircraft per year from 2008 to 2022, but the last year the Russian aircraft industry produced only 27 new airframes (while the VKS lost at least 29) – and even this only with help of drawing parts from reserve stocks, through import substitution with avionics of lesser quality from domestic production, and evasion of sanctions. The rate at which the Russians can manufacture new combat aircraft is expected to reduce this-, and even more so the next year – which is even more important considering the VKS has lost another 8-9 fighter-bombers in the first 10 weeks of this year alone. Three additional aircraft it had to write off were two irreplaceable A-50 airborne early warning aircraft and one Il-22M airborne command post.

Parachute of one of Russian crewmen that ejected from Su-34s shot down in December 2023.

The mass of the electronic components nowadays installed into Russian aircraft, tanks, warships, and guided missiles is of Western origin and acquired via third-party countries. Should the West find a way to restrict the flow of such components, the Russian high-technologies industries is certain to experience a severe blow. Some of this is already felt by the VKS and the VSRF: their air defence systems are knocked out at a faster rate than new ones are manufactured.

Latest version of the motherboard used to guide Russian-made MPK/UMPK (or ‘KAB’) glide bombs. The mass of components is of Western origin.

It is hard to say if any other country but Russia might be capable of both sustaining and tolerating comparable rates of human and material losses. For example: it is certain that the US public would never tolerate even tenfold lower human casualties, regardless if having a population two times the size of the Russian.

In the era of the so-called ‘Glasnost’, back in the late 1980s, and after nine years and more than 15,000 deaths, public pressure in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) contributed significantly to the Kremlin’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. However, what really ‘put the nail in the coffin’ of the USSR was actually the nuclear catastrophe of Chernobyl, in 1986, which caused such a massive damage, that the USSR was left without means to recover.

In this war, Glasnost is non-existent, and there is zero tolerance for any kind of public dissent: Russia has a government organised better than any crime ring, with a man at the top determined to establish/re-establish some kind of an empire of his dreams. Even then, he is cleverly avoiding dissent where it matters in Russia – in Moscow and in Sankt Petersburg – through recruiting the poor and underprivileged minorities from distant provinces, or attracting people with poor education through salaries that are three times as high as average wages in the country. So far, there was also no factor similar to the Chernobyl catastrophe, fully exposing a host of massive strategic mistakes and all the other failures at the top, or collapsing the economy.

On the contrary, while hit very hard by sanctions of 2014, and then again in 2022, the Russian economy has meanwhile adjusted. Because in our days economies are so tightly intertwined, it proved nearly impossible to isolate it completely from the rest of the World. The centrepiece of that economy is something everybody needs: oil and gas. Unsurprisingly, even now, Russian oil and gas are flowing through Ukraine: while Russia pays transit fees to Ukraine, and Europe has reduced – but not eliminated – its energy purchases from Moscow, and thanks to massive oil exports via India to the European Union, the Russian economy has actually grown over the last two years. Part of this is related not only to exports, but to wartime production, even if at the price of some spending on healthcare and infrastructure: even military hospitals in the Russian Federation are meanwhile chronically short on medicine and other consumables. Although the Ruble has recovered from its plunge of early 2022, the Russian foreign currency reserves are slowly disappearing. Overall, the economy is functioning but remains under immense pressure – and this might even dramatically worsen, should Ukraine find a way to sustain its campaign of striking strategic targets in the Russian Federation with help of drones: Russia is known to have decreased its exports of fuels by nearly 20% in the last two months, and is likely to feel forced to disperse its military production, as well as its air defences to protect the defence sector and strategically important installations. Combined effects are near-certain to reduce Kremlin’s capability to generate enough earnings to keep production rates at the level necessary to remain capable of waging the war.

Still: there are limits to what Russia – or, better expressed: the population under almost total control of Vladimir Putin and his henchmen – might be ready to tolerate. The capability of the VSRF to continue mobilising ever more troops is limited, and with the time, and increasing casualties, these limits will add to the pressure. There is also going to be a moment in time when the methods used to keep the Russian economy functioning will no longer work, too.

The picture on the other side of the tribune is not much better. While the Ukrainian production of drones, tanks, artillery pieces, and ammunition is constantly increasing, that of its European allies is lagging well behind the plan. It is only now, two years into the war, that at least some of European leaders came to their senses in this regards. The results are yet to be seen. The US aid might come back online, at some point, but  the country is (still) a democracy bound by the rule of law and held hostage by a minority seeking domestic authoritarian power. Two years ago, the Biden administration could have sent the best weapons immediately and without restrictions: nowadays it is paralysed not only by the Congress, but its own concerns about the future of the Russian Federation, and the requirement not to jeopardise national defence objectives elsewhere around the globe. Like the Europeans, it also failed to increase the production of war material at the necessary rates on time. However, contrary to what some say, the Biden administration cannot simply declare millions of artillery shells calibre 155mm for surplus to requirements and donate them to ‘somebody’ abroad: such games almost broke the back of the Reagan administration when it tried to sell weapons to Iran, and use resulting profits to fund the Contras in Nicaragua – without an authorisation from the Congress.

Except for facing a critical shortage of artillery ammunition, Ukraine is also facing a pending shortage of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), the stocks of which are likely to be depleted in about a month – because nobody in the West, and especially not the Pentagon, took care to safeguard their timely- and continuous resupply when delivering numerous Western-made SAM-systems, the last two years. 

This in turn is letting the Russians attack and take advantage of what is likely to become a unique period in this war: the time the ZSU is unable to hit back with all its potential firepower. That said, Ukraine will survive: as unfortunate as the loss of Mariinka and Avdiivka is, the ZSU avoided suffering similar heavy losses like during the closing stage of the Bakhmut campaign, and the resulting exchange of territory for massive Russian casualties and time did not change the strategic situation. The problem is only that the more terrain Ukraine loses now, the more it has to recover, later on – even if this might happen only several years from now.

Wrack of a BUTT-UMG MRAP of the ZSU, as seen while being recovered by Russian army.

Where Ukraine is clearly successful is the task of denying the Black Sea to the Russian Black Sea Fleet – and this although Ukraine is left without a navy to speak about. This does not mean that surface ships no longer have any value: only that the Russians have no means to counter threats meanwhile deployable by Ukraine.

Ukraine continues to resist successfully in the air, too: indeed, much more so than during the first year of the war. While the Ukrainian Air Force and Air Defence force (PSU) is outnumbered and outgunned, it is operating more combat aircraft than at the start of the Russian all-out invasion: although old and obsolete, its aircraft still have serious combat value.

On the ground, even if denied sufficient artillery support, the ZSU is, thanks to its shorter OODA loop, focusing on destroying the VSRF’s capability to continue fighting. While this might not be obvious right away, it will pay off in the long run, because Russia cannot continue sustaining its current rate of casualties, and when it cannot do that, it cannot retain territory.

Before it is so far, the next few months will be as bad as it gets for Ukrainians. they are going to lose one or another village. However, they are going to survive and they are adjusting to playing the long game now, and with intention of not achieving some half-hearted freeze of the conflict, but ending this war with a victory.

(…to be continued…)