Kiev Is Burning

[Stuart Galbraith]

9 minutes ago, ex2cav said:

OK, I'm a little confused. What is with the various reports of historical battle casualty figures? Is someone arguing immediate western military (troops, bombs, air forces) intervention on the side of Ukraine?

 

I'm just illustrating in frontal assaults, the defence has, back to the middle ages, generally taken less casualties than the attacker. It was only through envelopment, such as canae, and the subsequent  development of operational manoeuvre that this became untrue. But as Russias not using operational manoeuvre, I think we can disregard they are taking less casualties than Ukraine. Indeed, I simply can't understand  why anyone thinks they could.

Here is another one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Monte_Cassino

5th Army 8th Army	10th Army
Strength
240,000 men 1,900 tanks 4,000 planes[2]	140,000 men
Casualties and losses
55,000 casualties[3]	~20,000 casualties

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 hours ago, glenn239 said:

 

The Luzon campaign (1944-1945) saw 420,000 IJA dead and missing vs 72,000 US killed and wounded, a ratio of 5.8 defenders per attacker.

What do you notice about Luzon Glenn?

https://www.google.com/search?q=luzon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-m

[R011]

1 hour ago, ex2cav said:

OK, I'm a little confused. What is with the various reports of historical battle casualty figures? Is someone arguing immediate western military (troops, bombs, air forces) intervention on the side of Ukraine?

 

It's about which side is currently taking more casualties. The Ukrainians on the defensive or the Russians attacking.  As a general rule, the attacker tends to suffer greater casualties.  (Note qualifiers).

[Roman Alymov]

Rare video of small arms firefight in the ruins of Krynki, dated probably early Spring this year

https://t.me/anna_news/69175

[mkenny]

2 hours ago, ex2cav said:

OK, I'm a little confused. What is with the various reports of historical battle casualty figures? Is someone arguing immediate western military (troops, bombs, air forces) intervention on the side of Ukraine?

 

It is very simple really. Russia is in the driving seat and Ukraine is falling back. There are no Ukrainian successes so a Russian fault, any fault, must be found to give Ukraine 'a win'  The party line now is to say  Russian casualties are  so great (a claim totally without any evidence) that they are in fact losing every time they win!

 

[Roman Alymov]

Burned out Bergepanzer 2 wreck, Kharkov region 

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/132160

[mandeb48]

Does anyone seriously believe that there is some law of war whereby the defending side has fewer casualties than the attacker? You can put a million battles of examples but you can also put a million examples of battles with opposite results. There is no fucking evidence of how many casualties each side has.

The only thing there is is a cheap attempt to make reality adapt to the desire of some.

[Roman Alymov]

From Rus TG ( https://t.me/UAVDEV/6731 )

"Three days ago, we discussed such a scenario with the administrator Yura.
Well, OK, you passed the ATACNS, they will create problems for us.
But our channel alone has about 2,500 Arabic-speaking subscribers. And there are certainly several representatives of radical movements among them. And so +- for all channels and sites on military topics.
To be honest, we also read Iranian and Pakistani resources. Yandex Translator isgreat help.
And so, suddenly some group of developers, who are all such outcasts and isolated from the "civilized" market, takes and puts out a project of the FPV, with guidance, with a simple and understandable assembly, with files to order parts A, B, C, D right from China and only it remains to assemble according to picture and upload software.
Who will get worse from this?..
It's hardly for us, it's easier to find a MMA fool with a machine gun here. And we have foreign military bases in homeopathic quantities.
Or maybe it will get worse for them, who can now have Abrams nailed at any point of the globe for the sake of a joke?.. Or drone fly into the canteen of the Navy seals at the base in Sudan?
And there will be those who want to...
Think about it.
A wonderful new world of toy weapons..."

[R011]

1 hour ago, mandeb48 said:

Does anyone seriously believe that there is some law of war whereby the defending side has fewer casualties than the attacker? You can put a million battles of examples but you can also put a million examples of battles with opposite results.

 All else being more or less equal, it is a law of war - or close to one.

I think you'll find a lot more examples of attackers having greater casualties than the defenders.  It seems more likely than not that Russia is, at the moment, suffering somewhat more casualties than Ukrainians.  It's probably not a decisively greater amount, though.  We've had some hints of Russian casualty numbers that seem reasonable, but you're right that we've nothing very solid from either side.

[MiGG0]

5 hours ago, R011 said:

 All else being more or less equal, it is a law of war - or close to one.

I think you'll find a lot more examples of attackers having greater casualties than the defenders.  It seems more likely than not that Russia is, at the moment, suffering somewhat more casualties than Ukrainians.  It's probably not a decisively greater amount, though.  We've had some hints of Russian casualty numbers that seem reasonable, but you're right that we've nothing very solid from either side.

That ”law” is based on premice that defender has more protected fighting positions. It totally change if attacker has means to destroy all of those. In current conflict RUS can FAB any strongpoint which becomes death trap for defenders. To minimize that defender would need to change positions constantly, but to be honest I have not seen UKR done that much.

[seahawk]

6 hours ago, mandeb48 said:

Does anyone seriously believe that there is some law of war whereby the defending side has fewer casualties than the attacker? You can put a million battles of examples but you can also put a million examples of battles with opposite results. There is no fucking evidence of how many casualties each side has.

The only thing there is is a cheap attempt to make reality adapt to the desire of some.

In the end firepower decides the losses and Russia dominates in firepower.

[ink]

I think the reason we keep coming back to the losses question like moths to a flame is because we're looking for a way to turn the (little) information we have into a way to predict the outcome. However, even if we had that information, it wouldn't help us. Losses are just one factor. Vietnamese forces resisting the US occupation and the South Vietnamese government suffered much greater losses than their opponents, and yet they were eventually "victorious"*.

In other words, (1) Ukraine could be suffering much greater losses (as Glenn suggests) yet still the Russians could lose and be forced to withdraw from all captured territory

Likewise, (2) the Russians could be suffering much greater losses and still the Ukrainian military could collapse and the Russians could run away with it (whatever that would mean in terms of their war aims).

Both (1) and (2) are possible. Even having 100% precise casualty figures for both sides (and we're very far from that) would not enable anyone to call it one way or the other between (1) and (2).

 

* In quotation marks because the cost was so great.

[R011]

22 minutes ago, MiGG0 said:

That ”law” is based on premice that defender has more protected fighting positions. It totally change if attacker has means to destroy all of those. In current conflict RUS can FAB any strongpoint which becomes death trap for defenders. To minimize that defender would need to change positions constantly, but to be honest I have not seen UKR done that much.

 

If the Russians were obliterating Ukrainian strong points as easily as you suggest, they'd be in Warsaw by now.  The current near stalemate means Russia doesn't have either the brute force or the ability to finesse an easy victory.  Do note that I'm not claiming Russian casualties are vastly greater than Ukrainian, only that they are probably, not definitely, a bit more at the moment.

[MiGG0]

2 minutes ago, R011 said:

 

If the Russians were obliterating Ukrainian strong points as easily as you suggest, they'd be in Warsaw by now.  The current near stalemate means Russia doesn't have either the brute force or the ability to finesse an easy victory.  Do note that I'm not claiming Russian casualties are vastly greater than Ukrainian, only that they are probably, not definitely, a bit more at the moment.

I didnt say anything about difficulty of it. Defender can keep strongpoints by just reinforcing them, but that exactly cost them soldiers. Thats why it is sillä to say anything about casualties that ”defender has adventage”. It is not that always, and current war RUS do have good means to destroy those strongpoints and cause lot of casualties to defenders.

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 hours ago, mandeb48 said:

Does anyone seriously believe that there is some law of war whereby the defending side has fewer casualties than the attacker? You can put a million battles of examples but you can also put a million examples of battles with opposite results. There is no fucking evidence of how many casualties each side has.

The only thing there is is a cheap attempt to make reality adapt to the desire of some.

There are laws of war. Sun Tzu tried to quantify them so Generals would understand them. Kriegspiel attempted to quantify them in a game. The Soviets prescribed force ratios, because they clearly believed that was a law of war, and that utilizing it was an Art. Lancester equations was a means to quantify rates of losses of forces in combat. Im lousy at maths but even I understand the following conclusions from the mathmatic equations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_laws

 

The probability that the defender wins, P(Dwins), is related to the defender's advantage parameter via the logistic function, P(Dwins) = 1 / (1 + exp(-z)), with z = -0.1794 + 5.8694 * logmu.^[23] This logistic function is almost exactly skew-symmetric about logmu = 0, rising from P(Dwins) = 0.1 at logmu = -0.4, through P(DWins) = 0.5 at logmu = 0, to P(Dwins) = 0.9 at logmu = +0.4. Because the probability of victory depends on the Helmbold advantage parameter rather than the force ratio, it is clear that force ratio is an inferior and untrustworthy predictor of victory in battle.

• While the defender's advantage varies widely from one battle to the next, on average it has been practically constant since 1600CE.^[24]
• Most of the other battle parameters (specifically the initial force strengths, initial force ratios, casualty numbers, casualty exchange ratios, battle durations, and distances advanced by the attacker) have changed so slowly since 1600CE that only the most acute observers would be likely to notice any change over their nominal 50-year military career.^[25]

 

And in a real sense, this has already been validated. Its the reasons why the Ukrainians stayed off the ropes in 2022, and Russia couldnt achieve victory. Still cannot achieve victory for that matter.

^{There are two means by which you can overcome the defenders advantage and inflict superior casualties. Firepower, though Russia have burned out most of their guns and are now falling back to 130mm's pulled out of war stocks. You can of course mass them, but that creates problem of logistic supply and hence rate of fire, and obviously makes it easier for stand off weapons like Brimstone or Stormshadow to find the launch location and engage them. Indeed, that they are pulling so many guns out of war stocks is perhaps evidence this has already happened.}

^{And manoeuvre, which the Russians by Ukrainian claims and Russian soldiers admission, are simply not doing. They cannot bypass defensive positions and plunge deeply into the rear to disrupt supply  and communications. They tried that in 2022, and failed. You cannot do tactical manoeuvre that can achieve major effects with sub battalion battlegroups.}

^{Of course, there is still manoeuvre via Drone. I shouldnt overlook that. I see no evidence though that its creating massive casualties, when participants on both sides admit most of the time drones miss.}

^{If these are not happening, and the debate about firepower endures, then they cannot be taking less casualties than the Ukrainians. It doesnt follow the Ukrainians are in a good place because they have been fighting for 2 years and their losses are cumulative also, but this defies pretty much every tenet ive read about how war works that the Russians are taking less casualties today on the offensive, fighting the way they do. You cannot keep conducting frontal assaults and expect to fight the war cheaply. This is basic stuff gentlemen. We learned this as long ago as WW1.}

^{The only people here making cheap attempts about anything, are the blind acceptance of Russian claims about anything, when you have all had 2 and a half years to realise Russians lie, even when it makes sense to tell the truth. So why believe them? Why not actually look at the history of war, engage the brain, and realise their claims simply cannot make sense?}

 

Edited August 3 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

13 minutes ago, R011 said:

 

If the Russians were obliterating Ukrainian strong points as easily as you suggest, they'd be in Warsaw by now.  The current near stalemate means Russia doesn't have either the brute force or the ability to finesse an easy victory.  Do note that I'm not claiming Russian casualties are vastly greater than Ukrainian, only that they are probably, not definitely, a bit more at the moment.

Recent Ukrainian figures during the Russian offensive have claimed as many as 1100 a day. Which obviously doesnt mean all killed, but even if thats just a third of those hit (which is the usual ratio in other wars) then its heavy.

This is from April.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-68819853

Russia's military death toll in Ukraine has now passed the 50,000 mark, the BBC can confirm.

In the second 12 months on the front line - as Moscow pushed its so-called meat grinder strategy - we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year.

BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022.

New graves in cemeteries helped provide the names of many soldiers.

Our teams also combed through open-source information from official reports, newspapers and social media.

More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat - according to our findings - a reflection of how territorial gains have come at a huge human cost.

Russia has responded to the BBC's report saying only the defence ministry in Moscow can give this kind of information.

The term meat grinder has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery.

The overall death toll - of more than 50,000 - is eight times higher than the only official public acknowledgement of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September 2022.

The actual number of Russian deaths is likely to be much higher.

Our analysis does not include the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk - in eastern Ukraine. If they were added, the death toll on the Russian side would be even higher.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was the "exclusive prerogative of the Ministry of Defence" to provide information on casualties, because of laws covering state secrets and disseminating information during the "special military operation", the phrase Russia uses for its war in Ukraine.

Ukraine, meanwhile, rarely comments on the scale of its battlefield fatalities. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed - but estimates, based on US intelligence, suggest greater losses.

Meat grinder tactics

The BBC and Mediazona's latest list of dead soldiers shows the stark human cost of Russia's changing front-line tactics.

The graph below shows how the Russian military suffered a sharp spike in the number of deaths in January 2023, as it began a large-scale offensive in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

 

 

The smartest thing Russia could do, is build a new death strip, hide behind it, and wait for the Ukrainians to try and penetrate it. That would maximise Ukrainian casualties, minmize Russian ones. But they wont do that, because Putin is seemingly obessed with taking as much territory as possible before the US election. This is a mindset that is not likely to end well.

If these figure are correct, then Ukrain has been losing something like 3/5ths what Russia is losing. Which which the firepower Russia has, and the failed counteroffensive, is to my mind, actually doing pretty well.

This is from February.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68397525

Volodymyr Zelensky says 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed during Russia's full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian president said he would not give the number of wounded as that would help Russian military planning.

Typically, Ukrainian officials do not make casualty figures public, and other estimates are much higher.

It comes after the defence minister said half of all Western aid for Ukraine has been delayed, costing lives and territory.

Mr Zelensky said on Sunday that he was providing an updated death toll in response to the inflated figures that Russia has quoted.

"31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us."

Speaking about the wider losses in the war, Mr Zelensky said tens of thousands of civilians had died in the areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia but the true number was unknown.

"I don't know how many of them died, how many were killed, how many were murdered, tortured, how many were deported."

It is rare for Ukraine to provide a military death toll, and other estimates suggest a much higher number.

[Roman Alymov]

32 minutes ago, ink said:

I think the reason we keep coming back to the losses question like moths to a flame is because we're looking for a way to turn the (little) information we have into a way to predict the outcome.

As for me, the logic here is a bit different: 

1) Modern Western ideology is constructed around "We have won the Cold War" myth 

2) One of the pilars of the legend about this alleged victory is "Soviets were unable to bare A-stan war losses" (other popular pillars are "Soviets were unable to sustain arms race" and "Soviet economy was by definition uneffective")

3) Quite logically, the Western scenario of regime change in Russia was "Let's do the same we once did with USSR with such success" - so creating "Another A-stan war" with losses that would break Russia was part of it.

4) So being overfocused on Russian losses (as well as on Russian economic troubles etc.) is quite logical result of failure to understand events of 1980th. 

     Note pro-Russians are not even remotely as concentrated on counting/estimating pro-Ukr losses (because they know that it is not just "war to last Ukrainian" but when out of pro-Ukrainians - other Untermench would be thrown into meatgrinder by West).

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 We won the Cold War by not fighting the Third World War. So no, this has nothing to do with the cold war, other than the equipment developed to fight the Third World war, which it mainly still is. That you keep brining up the cold war is revealing of your mindset, but very little else.

2  IIRC the number of losses of the USSR in Afghanistan was something like 14000 troops. Officially. Because its long been suspected that the numbers were cooked, and that a lot of people never made it onto the loss list. Particularly those whom died of illness and on non combat duties. (illness in camp through to poor saniation was semingly on the 1850's scale).Im not entirely sure Afghanistan was unendurable for the USSR, if you were cooking the books, you could have kept going for another 10 years. But what it did do was destroy faith in the Soviet leadership, and in particular the Army which was eulogized after WW2. Now they were getting all the money, and they couldnt win a war against bums in Afghanistan? Right there is the mindset Gorbachev exploited to try and cut arms expenditure, and THAT is probably what brought the USSR down, because you entire economy depended upon such expenditure.

3 Nonsense. We never fought the USSR, and the USSR never fought anyone in a stand up war since the Second World war. This therefore is completely new.

4 I just listed the Ukrainian claimed losses. If you have better figures based on recovered bodies, lets hear them.

Then why bring it up? And indeed, if destroying the Ukrainian Army isnt the means of gauging success in the war, then what is? Moving Putins Drinks cabinet 6 kilometres closer to Kyiv? The number of dead Ukrainian civilians? I seen no other grand strategy here other than a broad offensive strategy till Ukraine capitulates. I hope you have enough warm bodies to see that one through, though I doubt it.

[ink]

27 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

4) So being overfocused on Russian losses (as well as on Russian economic troubles etc.) is quite logical result of failure to understand events of 1980th. 

If by this you mean that the West (or more properly the US) is happy to use this war to "take down" Russia, then you're probably right. If that is their aim, then they couldn't have planned it better, frankly.

However, you're forgetting a very important part of this: Russia didn't have to invade. The war didn't need to happen. Russian troops don't have to be in Ukraine.

Russia could have allowed Ukraine to go it's Western way - even with the conflict in the Donbas raging. And what would the end outcome be? The worst case scenario I can see is that Ukraine is a sort of second Poland or third West Germany but Russian speaking and anti-Russian. That would be bad for the regime in Moscow, surely, as liberal (and other) Russians might travel to Kiev and be swayed by the success of Westernism they see there. But would it be bad overall for ordinary Russians? You tell me.

27 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

     Note pro-Russians are not even remotely as concentrated on counting/estimating pro-Ukr losses (because they know that it is not just "war to last Ukrainian" but when out of pro-Ukrainians - other Untermench would be thrown into meatgrinder by West).

I find the general level of debate by "pro-Russians" (which I only have access to through your posts on this forum) to be rather unimpressive. It seems everyone has their own vision of what the war means (at home and in a strategic sense) and there is very little in the way of systemic or joined-up thinking about any of it... As is usually the case when there is little information available and when this small amount of information is being parsed by people who have no international relations training.

Edited August 3 by ink

[sunday]

17 minutes ago, ink said:

I find the general level of debate by "pro-Russians" (which I only have access to through your posts on this forum) to be rather unimpressive.

Par for the course of this conflict, on both sides.

[ink]

11 minutes ago, sunday said:

Par for the course of this conflict, on both sides.

Oh yeah, definitely, and sorry if it sounded like I was singling out one "side".

[seahawk]

1 hour ago, ink said:

If by this you mean that the West (or more properly the US) is happy to use this war to "take down" Russia, then you're probably right. If that is their aim, then they couldn't have planned it better, frankly.

However, you're forgetting a very important part of this: Russia didn't have to invade. The war didn't need to happen. Russian troops don't have to be in Ukraine.

 

Russia did not invade as the Ukraine is a part of Russia.

[Roman Alymov]

2 hours ago, ink said:

If by this you mean that the West (or more properly the US) is happy to use this war to "take down" Russia, then you're probably right. If that is their aim, then they couldn't have planned it better, frankly.

  Not just "use" but "create this war". Luckily, in their combination of arrogance and incompetence they have missed obvious fact that current regime in Russia was strongly pro-Western, so acting against this regime was in fact actions against West's own interests.

2 hours ago, ink said:

However, you're forgetting a very important part of this: Russia didn't have to invade. The war didn't need to happen. Russian troops don't have to be in Ukraine.

No, there was no such option. Russian public opinion could forgive a lot to its Gov - but not weakness. Alternative to Russian troops in Ukraine was catastrophic collapse of internal political situation inside Russia. Russian elite have jumped all possible loops to avoid taking any decisive steps - but the longer they were posponding it, the worse military situation was becoming (while economic one was improving - but mostly to revitalizing effect of Western sanctions, not Rus Gov actions). Let me (traditionally) direct you to KTsPN report 

 

 

[ink]

14 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

  Not just "use" but "create this war". Luckily, in their combination of arrogance and incompetence they have missed obvious fact that current regime in Russia was strongly pro-Western, so acting against this regime was in fact actions against West's own interests.

 

I have some sympathy for this view but this doesn't change any of the facts. "I was provoked" is a pretty lame defence, isn't it?

14 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

No, there was no such option. Russian public opinion could forgive a lot to its Gov - but not weakness. Alternative to Russian troops in Ukraine was catastrophic collapse of internal political situation inside Russia.

You have to wonder, then, surely, what value does a political system have if it's only means of survival is too attack another country?

(some of you Westerners could also ask yourselves that, btw).

14 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Let me (traditionally) direct you to KTsPN report 

 

Thanks.

[Roman Alymov]

5 minutes ago, ink said:

 

I have some sympathy for this view but this doesn't change any of the facts. "I was provoked" is a pretty lame defence, isn't it?

Have i said the word "provoked"? Russian elite has found itself in situation when it was the only way for them, but this situation was avoidable (if only proper measures taken well in advance, years and decades, first and foremost abandoning pro-Western policy and swithcing to Russia-oriented one - still, it was obviously not possible for the personalities who are Russian elite, originated from 1990th).  As distant analogy, was it possible for Serbia to avoid Kosovo war and keep county together? Probably it was, but not with the leadership who were in charge.

13 minutes ago, ink said:

You have to wonder, then, surely, what value does a political system have if it's only means of survival is too attack another country?

Leaving aside "another country" part (you know my opinion on it) - probably you have noticed i am not the great fan of Russian political system (note it doesn't mean i consider Western one(s) better - may be even worse).