I have been skeptical about the number of victims in Ukraine all week. Other analysts are beginning to come to the same conclusion.
You can find more of my arguments in my recent articles, but in short, the number of victims has changed everywhere depending on who is speaking. Several weeks ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 50-100 Ukrainians died a week, then a week later someone else said it was 100-200, and then this week it was 200-300. Now this:
Meanwhile, NASA FIRMS fire images on the ground show stronger artillery fire in Russian-controlled territory, Russia’s achievements are falling prey to crawling, and Ukraine is obtaining the area around Kharkov and Kherson.
For example, Russia took Popasna more than four weeks ago. Time is running out, isn’t it? At a time when they are being pushed out 14 in different directions (see my latest update) most Russian forces have been able to expand in any direction for 15 kilometers (10 miles). They drive about half a kilometer a day on average. 500 meters. Given that Ukraine still owns about 5,000 square miles in the Donbass, someone else can calculate how long it may take to conquer it all. No one should worry, it doesn’t happen.
If Russia really had a 10: 1 advantage in artillery (British intelligence said 20-1 yesterday!), things would look very different no matter how much shells the intruders waste on civilian infrastructure. Undoubtedly, Ukraine has suffered heavy losses. But I read this tweet and my brain sees it as “Please send more information!” In the context of Oryx, the list of visually confirmed Russian losses is currently 781 Russian tanks, 1402 armored infantry machines and 204 artillery systems (which are being destroyed behind enemy lines, making it difficult to document until the area is cleared).
Ukraine has clearly decided that the excuse of poverty is the best way to start European support. And it probably worked, given the visit of the leaders of France, Germany and Italy this week. But Ukraine looks better if its strengths play out – its resilience, its refusal to bend or give up its territory, the courage of its soldiers and the strength of its civilian population. They are the backbone of European (and Central Asian) Russian aggression. And if we want some real politics, they are fighting for a war that NATO was meant to fight, but without the need to do anything.
Twitter, meanwhile, apparently had a “pat on the back” day:
Ben Hodges is a former commander of all US forces in Europe. And so does Mark Hertling.
I am deeply touched by the people who are crying about the pace and quantity of the equipment being sent. These logistics challenges are not insurmountable, but they are serious and take time to resolve. Looks like I’m not the only one.
Consider the American Brigade Combat Team (BCT), which is the main deployable combat unit in the United States (until 2013, it was a much larger division). Unlike the Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG), which has 10 tanks, 40 infantry fighting vehicles. (IFV) and about 600-800 troops, the BCT is much higher. The exact composition of the BCT depends on the type of unit involved (armed, light infantry, mechanized infantry, etc.), but the armed BCT has about 4400 troops, 87 tanks, 152 IFVs, 18 artillery cannons and 45 M113 armed troops for various support roles.
Now that’s the thing – this BCT relocation costs $ 66,735 per mile. For a mile!
It is fuel, parts, food, and so on. These are the logistics costs. People looked at the latest U.S. aid package and its billion-dollar price tag, and they had all sorts of comments about it. little it seemed to work. Some Harpoon anti-ship missiles (already in operation) and 18 M777 artillery guns. However, one of the points in this aid package was “and parts”. Ukrainian brigades will not be as expensive as American brigades for one big reason: they do not have to move jet fuel to their tanks as American brigades need (the main reason why Ukraine will not receive American tanks). But it is still incredibly expensive and logistically difficult to move an army.
In fact, this is a possible reason why Ukraine is aging M113s armored personnel carriers, which cost $ 58 a mile instead of the more modern Bradley M2 infantry fighting vehicles, $ 162 a mile. And don’t think it’s just about tripling your operating costs, it’s about money. Much of this cost is fuel, and each additional gallon of fuel needed to move a vehicle requires many more tankers to transport that fuel to the front lines. And if Russia has done something right in this war, it is Ukraine’s fuel depots.
Just as HIMARS and the MLRS are useless if Ukraine and its allies cannot carry enough missile pots forward, armored vehicles are useless if Ukraine cannot get fuel. In fact, a large part of the Ukrainian army is former Russian vehicles that simply ran out of gas in the first weeks of the war.
On the diplomatic front, Russia is holding an international “economic forum” in St. Petersburg to pretend that everything is going as usual (literally). The problem is that there were not many nations, only the Taliban and Kazakhstan spoke. The latter created a special awkwardly the moment two dictators Vladimir Putin and Kazakh strongman Kasim Jomart Tokayev, sitting together on the stage, shot at each other.
Alas, a way to tell a boy next door from the former Soviet republic that Russia is not happy with the current arrangements. Putin has made it clear that Ukraine is only the beginning, not the end. But don’t worry, no one is afraid of Russia anymore, and Tokayev later received blows:
Kazakhstan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a NATO-type alliance between Russia and several of its former Central Asian republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Turkmenistan and Mongolia). are ‘observers’). Not only have these countries ignored Putin’s demands for military assistance, only Belarus voted with Russia when it criticized the Russian invasion in early March.
Now, half of these countries are firing at each other, so it is not a completely harmonious “alliance”, and Russia is playing favorites, such as supporting Armenia against Turkish-backed Azerbaijan, both of which are involved in a bloody border dispute. Now a CIS country is actively arming Ukraine.
The list of countries that are still friendly with Russia continues to shrink.