(Sep 24, 2022 01:24 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: These reports make it seem everything’s peaches and cream for Ukrainian Army and citizens.
That's very true. Here in the US/Canada/Europe all we get is the Ukrainian side and opinions of pro-Ukrainian commentators. So our view is likely to be very biased.
For example, after the initial phase of the war in which the Russians blundered into far more intense resistance than they expected, the Ukrainians and Russians have probably suffered roughly similar casualties. The Russians did suffer the recent debacle east of Kharkiv, where they lost huge amounts of equipment, but they do seem to have successfully evacuated most of their troops.
Given that the Russian military before the war was much larger than the Ukrainian, all the talk about manpower shortages in the Russian forces probably is twice as true for the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian government tries to suppress the news, but reports are leaking out about how many of Ukraine's professional soldiers from before the war are already dead. They are being replaced by volunteers and conscripts who have received little training and don't really know what to do in battle. Both sides are conscripting out-of-shape middle-aged men. So I'm inclined to think that many of the training and manpower issues that we read about so often on the Russian side also exist on the Ukrainian side.
It's like two boxers who have battered each other silly and continue to stagger around punch-drunk.
And given that Ukraine has had full national mobilization since day 1 of the war, and Russia has just put in a partial mobilization, and given Russia's much greater size, I still think that this war has entered kind of a World War I style war-of-attrition phase that Russia is probably in a better position to win.
Assuming that Russia stays the course. The thing is, Russia has ambitions to once again be a super-power. (Ukraine's goal is simply to survive.) This war was supposed to be Russia's coming-out party. But it's proven far more costly to them than they expected. So is Russia so determined to totally defeat Ukraine that they are willing to sacrifice all of the Russian military to do it? Do they really want to run their military strength down to zero? That would effectively end their super-power ambitions and turn Russia's huge land area into a power vacuum. Distant ethnic "republics" might start declaring their independence and neighboring countries might be tempted to seize parts of a weakened Russia. The whole country might implode and fall apart.
Or will Moscow be willing to accept some lesser "victory", stop offensive operations and cut their losses? I suspect that might be what they have in mind with these phony referendums in the parts of Ukraine that they currently occupy regarding their annexation to Russia.