Putin CANCELS Victory Day military parades across Russia over fears deadly Ukraine drones could slip through defences

Sun UK ^ | 4/26/2024 | Iona Cleave

[marcusmaximus]

VLADIMIR Putin has been forced to cancel Russia's triumphant annual Victory Day parades over fears of Ukrainian kamikaze drone attacks.

The trembling tyrant, 71, has axed most of the May 9 celebrations - the most sacred day in the Russian calendar - because he couldn't guarantee the safety of his citizens.

The patriotic military parades are held throughout Russia as a means of celebrating the country defeating Nazi Germany in World War 2.

These events are usually used by Putin to showcase the might of the Russian military machine. and garner national pride - led by a giant parade in Moscow's Red Square.

This part will go ahead under intense security - overseen by Putin - but many regional parades have been scrapped along with associated major fireworks displays.

Belgorod, Bryansk, Pskov, Ryazan, Kursk and Saratov regions all cancelled their events, despite not all being close to Ukraine.

Victory Day has also been scrapped in the occupied regions of Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia and Sevastopol in Crimea over "security reasons".

Before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the flag-waving day used to involve tanks, nuclear missiles and huge guns rumbling through the capital as warplanes soared overhead.

Across Russia hundreds of marches of the ‘Immortal Regiment’ - when people carry photos of their war veteran relatives - have been scrapped too, for security reasons.

[BroJoeK]

PIF: "Saturday, March 23, 2024, in the morning report to the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev, irretrievable military operational losses of personnel of the Russian Armed Forces, 434,233 people."

Hmmmmmm....

Somewhere I think I saw that number, but it was reported as Russia's claims for the number of Ukrainian battlefield losses!

I thought at the time: it's odd that Russians would claim the same number of Ukrainian losses as Ukrainians say for Russian losses!

I'd assume the word "irretrievable" refers to all deaths, seriously wounded and missing or captured.

[BroJoeK]

PLMerite: "I don’t think I’ve ever seen a right-justified image on FR."

😊

Well... I've only been posting on Free Republic for 20 years now, and I'm a very, very slow learner, so it's taken me that long to figure out how to do it.

And check out a post like my #74 above -- that can get tricky as heck getting the images to line up nice and neatly regardless of how wide is the display.

If you are interested, I'll tell you the trick to it... 😉

[BroJoeK]

PIF: "The Russian manpower number of 69 million needs to reflect that some number of millions are needed for police & internal security, industrial workers for military items & factory production, office workers & staff, etc.
Currently Russia is suffering a lack of manpower to keep its economy going.
Therefore, the paper figure of a 3:1 advantage maybe misleading."

I totally understand, and don't even know where their number of 69 million comes from -- compared to a total population of circa 145 million, how does 69 million compute?
And compared to Ukraine's number of 22 million -- out of what, are they still figuring circa 40 million as Ukraine's population?

So I don't think those numbers are particularly useful, except to illustrate Russia's potential advantage in manpower resources.
For actual numbers, each side has a whole long list of issues they have to work through in order to produce soldiers' boots on the ground -- at the front lines, with weapons, ammunition and other necessities.

PIF: "UKR, on the other hand, can rely on foreign assistance for much of the civilian production."

According to the usual sources, Russia's GDP is around 10 times larger than Ukraine's, so in theory, Russia should have no big problems outproducing the heck out of little Ukraine.

On the other hand, if you allow a vehicle engine analogy, a smaller engine can put out the same torque as larger engine, for a given speed, if you rev-up and gear-down the smaller one.
That's what Ukraine is doing.
Somewhere I saw an estimate that Ukraine is devoting something like 30% of its GDP to its military -- a number approaching the US in WWII -- while Russia is still devoting less than 10% of GDP to its military.

Of course, Russia's <10% is still much more than Ukraine's ~30%, but now we add in, mainly, NATO assistance to Ukraine and things start to balance out, somewhat.

For comparisons, notice US defense spending as a percentage of our GDP, with peaks during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Reagan's Cold War buildup, and Bush's War on Terror.
Today's number is still less than 3.5% on this scale:

[PIF]

its a press release from Moscow. From March. The number is higher now, I would assume.

Note: the 434k not only includes the dead, but those too badly wounded or otherwise unable to return to the Front.

Moscow claims what it wants, and has a big incentive to keep Russian loss numbers on par with their UKR claimed losses.