Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the origin of a piece of equipment can't be established, it is not included in the list. The Soviet flag is used when the equipment in question was produced prior to 1991. This list is constantly updated as additional footage becomes available.

“The Russian economy… is exploding”

Pun intended?

The only thing growing in the Russian economy is Government spending on defense and domestic security - which are not productive investments (guns vs. butter).

Oil is not growing, natural gas has imploded dramatically, non-defense manufacturing is not growing, mining is not, agriculture is not. Nothing in the real Russian economy is growing, outside of Government spending on security and defense (which have both roughly doubled year over year).

It is by far the largest surge in Government spending since post Soviet reporting began in 1996. Despite some targeted tax increases (passing the hat among Putin’s oligarch cronies), this historic surge in Government spending (without which, GDP would be down 8-10%) has largely been funded by using up financial and gold reserves, and just expanding the money supply (massively printing more rubles, which is undermining the currency).

At the current burn rate, the remaining reserves would be exhausted around Christmas, and ruble printing will have to accelerate further. Hello Argentina. Goodbye ruble value.

Sanctions on Russia are not hurting the USA. The USA got a big chunk of Russia’s former natural gas market share in Europe, on long term contracts, which more than offset net declines elsewhere. Direct US imports from Russia were not significant, outside of some commodities. The main drag on the USA was the write down of corporate assets when they withdrew from Russia, which was mostly a one time expense, last year. Russia’s total GDP was less than that of California or Texas, even before Putin imploded their economy. We do more trade with Italy, which also has a larger GDP than Russia.

“Graham was an Air Force lawyer”

Most of his military career was in the reserves - a good bit of it while also serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, responsible for the annual defense budget. He was pretty active during that time, to suit up and deploy into the combat zones several weeks per year, where he got well briefed. I ran into him on the Embassy grounds in Baghdad, and he spent a good 15 minutes chatting me up, asking about what I saw and thought about how things were going. Although he was there as a JAG participating in the prosecution of Ba’ath Party war criminals, he attended the daily Battlefield Update Brief with General Petraeus.

“So what’s the goal?”

In anything as huge as this, a lot of moving parts have to managed.

The first big thing, is to halt the march of conquest, so that it is not rewarded and encouraged (restore deterrence).

Even though it was not a legally binding ratified treaty, the USA had committed to assist defending the Ukraine, when they agreed to give up their nuclear weapons, after the fall of the Soviet Union. So we need to maintain our credibility, if we want to deter future aggression.

I think it likely however, that many nations, including the USA, assess that Putin’s intent is so hostile, that his military capability must be removed (or reduced to a manageable level). So I think that NATO planners seek an end state to this war, where Russia won’t have the military and/or financial capabilty to continue their aggression.

Putin has gone off the hook, and must be dealt with. He brazenly violated the UN charter to invade, and violated every single principle of the Geneva and Hague Conventions in the atrocious manner in which he conducted this war.

Putin seeks to reshape the global order, away from the rules-based order developed in the last centuries, back to the jungle rules of antiquity, where, as Thuycides put it, the strong do what they can, and the weak endure what they must.

No one wants to have to live in Putin’s orc world, with industrial scale torture, repression and aggression being the new normal.

So regardless of how things settle on the map, I think the goal is to make Russia lose its taste for aggression, and/or remove their capabilty to pursue it.

As thoroughly captured by greedy, violent gangsters as the Russian Government is, it will likely come down to physically destroying their capabilty to wage war. Hence, the tank countdown.

Let’s examine history from Russia’s view point. In the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. Just as strategically important has been the country’s historical lack of its own warm-water port with direct access to the oceans.

Russia as a concept dates back to the ninth century and a loose federation of East Slavic tribes known as Kievan Rus, which was based in Kiev and other towns along the Dnieper River, in what is now Ukraine. This early Russia was indefensible with no mountains, no deserts, and few rivers to slow down invaders. In the 18th century, Russia, under Peter the Great—who founded the Russian Empire in 1721—and then Empress Catherine the Great, expanded the empire westward, occupying Ukraine and reaching the Carpathian Mountains. It took over most of what we now know as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—from which it could defend against attacks from the Baltic Sea.

Two of Russia’s chief preoccupations—its vulnerability on land and its lack of access to warm-water ports—came together in Ukraine in 2014. As long as a pro-Russian government held sway in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, Russia could be confident that its buffer zone would remain intact and guard the European Plain. Even a neutral Ukraine, which would promise not to join the European Union or NATO and would uphold the lease Russia had on the warm-water port at Sevastopol in Crimea, would be acceptable. But when protests in Ukraine brought down the pro-Russia government of Viktor Yanukovych and a new, more pro-Western government came to power, Putin had a choice. He could have respected the territorial integrity of Ukraine, or he could have done what Russian leaders have done for centuries with the bad geographic cards they were dealt.

The British strategist, Liddell Hart, stressed the need to understand rival views of grand strategy and military developments, or "the other side of the hill.” A range of Russian and Belorussian military and civil experts presented a very different view of global security and the forces behind it at the Russian Ministry of Defense’s third Moscow Conference on International Security on May 23, 2014.

The first session of the Conference presented an overview of the security situation, focusing on what Russian experts called the “Color Revolution.” Russian analysts have used this term since the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2012, in discussing the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine in 2004, and the "Tulip Revolution" that took place in Kyrgyzstan in 2005.

Russian military officers now tied the term “Color Revolution” to the crisis in Ukraine and to what they saw as a new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. It was seen as posing a potential threat to Russian in the near abroad, to China and Asia states not aligned with the US, and as a means of destabilizing states in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia.

So the USA played on Russian historic fears and poked the bear with a color revolution and offer for Ukraine to join NATO. How did we think Putin would respond? So now we are effectively in a proxy war with a nuclear power. We should be worried what happens to a cornered bear that runs out of tanks. Personally I don’t want to find out.

I think the goal is to make Russia lose its taste for aggression, and/or remove their capabilty to pursue it.

Unfortunately history shows that Russia has not been the aggressive party.... In the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. The Poles came across the European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1707, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans—twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. So every 100 years the West tries again, now 100 years after WWI here comes the West again in Putin’s mind.......

“history shows that Russia has not been the aggressive party.”

Russia did not become the largest country on Earth by accident, it did so through sustained aggression. They averaged about 50 square miles of conquest per day, for about 200 years. Imperial conquest is a cultural attitude inherited from the Mongols and Vikings, that still is held by the KGB siloviki who run the place.

They have no right to conquer and oppress others, even if they want to, or feel it would benefit them with a warm water port, offshore natural gas fields, or a nice banana plantation. Ask the Poles, or Finns, or Georgians, or Kazakhs, or Romanians - or Ukrainians.

If you are looking through history for aggressive parties, Russia is the poster boy - by far the biggest one still standing.

“The British strategist, Liddell Hart, stressed the need to understand rival views of grand strategy and military developments.”

“Putin’s philosopher” Alexander Dugin clearly laid out the vision for Russian strategy - an expanded empire covering all of Eurasia, from the Atlantic to Pacific, and including Alaska. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, just last year was publicly referring to the Baltic Nations and Poland in the same terms as Ukraine - as historically Russian territory that would return to its rightful owner. They are not an aberration. The phrase “Russia has no borders” has long been in use in their Military Academies and political circles - something you don’t see in just about any other country.

--- You write, "Unprovoked really. As I said earlier as well.. why enter a topic just to vomit on the page."

Since you've lost track of my part in this I shall repeat for you, because you wrote to me with the comment.

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--- "Heh! You forgot psychotic."
What an amusing and unprovoked comment. My response was to one individual who was not you.
But from a comment you made to another some days back, "Is it really worth getting yourself upset about words posted on a internet forum?"
Why was it important for you, a Freeper, to insult another Freeper to a third Freeper. Upset? ... about words posted on a internet forum?

Perhaps you will detail -- with citation and verbatim quote -- the "vomit" which seems to be more than just words on an internet forum.""

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