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.

https://sonar21.com/what-do-you-make-of-russias-strategy-in-ukraine/

Let me start with Captain Obvious–Russia is grudgingly giving up territory in Kharkov, Donetsk and Kherson, but is avoiding set piece battles. What do I mean? Consider what happened at Liman, for example. Five hundred Russian allied troops help off over 6000 Ukrainians for more than a week and then conducted a tactical retreat. It is true that Ukraine has deployed more forces to these areas than the Russians. But Russia, through its superior fire power with artillery and combat air, slows these attacks and inflicts heavy casualties on the Ukrainians in terms of men and equipment. At the same time, Russia is suffering minimal casualties. This certainly is a break with the sad tradition Soviet troops established in World War II. Millions of Soviet soldiers were killed and wounded in the battles of Kursk and Bagration, for example. Conserving force was not a priority then, but it is now.

The United States and NATO are having a field day with these events, touting these successes as “proof” that Russian troops are poorly led, poorly supplied and lacking motivation. But that is having little effect in rallying public support in the United States and Europe. That lackluster support among the general populace will fade even more in the coming months as inflation, unemployment and recession escalate in those nations. Ukraine capturing a city that most Americans cannot spell is not a recipe for whipping up public support among Americans for sending more billions of dollars to Kiev while prices at home soar and the economy grinds to a halt.

Ukraine’s so-called victories are illusory. Yes, they are occupying territory once held by Russia but they are doing so without the benefit of air support and minimal artillery fires. Ukraine is relying on attacking lightly manned Russian positions with a larger force. This comes at a great cost however, in the loss of men and material that Ukraine cannot easily nor quickly replace. Every country in a war suffers casualties. This means a country at war must have a system in place to call up reserves, train them, equip them and deploy them. Ukraine is outnumbered dramatically by Russia on this count. If (or when) the “Special Military Operation” is finally acknowledged as a war by Russia’s leaders, Putin and his generals have far greater human resources at their command. The current Russian special mobilization is calling back to duty experienced soldiers.

Ukraine does not have a secure training facility where it can assemble and train new recruits because Russia has demonstrated repeatedly over the last 7 months the ability and willingness to attack and destroy those centers. That means Ukraine must rely on one or more NATO countries to host a training base. Even with a secure training base someplace in Europe, new Ukrainian recruits will need a minimum of three months of instruction before they are minimally prepared to go to the front to replace lost personnel. I do not believe that Europe has the capability or the will to host 200,000 new Ukrainian recruits. In short, Ukraine has no real chance of replacing the troops already lost in the front lines.

The training requirements for the Russian reservists called back to duty is far less daunting. The Russian soldiers already know how to wear a uniform, march in formation, maneuver as a unit, clean and operate their weapons, and communicate within a chain of command.

The biggest disadvantage for Ukraine is its lack of an economic base to fund the war and to produce the weapons, vehicles, food and medical supplies required to sustain an army in the field. Ukraine is now entirely dependent on the United States and NATO. Those lines of communication must remain open and flowing. Otherwise, their soldiers will be left defenseless in the field.

Russia, by contrast, has a robust economy that is producing all that its army and air force requires to operate. Its factories are operating 24-7 and it is quite competent, despite western propaganda stating otherwise, to move needed troops, tanks, munitions and vehicles to the front.

The west is betting all on the belief that Russia–its leaders, its government bureaucracy and its economy–is a paper tiger that will crumble if only enough pressure is applied. That is a dangerous and risky wager. While Russia is not a utopia, it has invested its capital over the last 20 years in building up its infrastructure, developing modern, cost effective weapons systems and educating its population to a standard that surpasses anything offered by the United States or Europe. Most importantly, it has vast natural resources and minerals and the industrial capability to extract them and manufacture what it needs to fight.

The United States, by contrast, has burned up billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in fruitless military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan while American infrastructure deteriorates, its industrial capacity is hollowed out, it is dependent on foreign imports of critical materials to produce key weapon systems and its educational system is in shambles. More time is devoted in U.S. schools, it appears, to learning proper pronouns rather than learning math, biology, chemistry, physics and foreign languages. The recently announced failure of the U.S. Army to meet its recruitment goals (25% below the target) is not an aberration. It is a symptom of societal failure in the west.

So what is Russia waiting for? On paper, it has the full capability to crush Ukraine. I am certain that the events of the last seven months have convinced the Russian leaders and civilians that they face an existential crisis from the west. I believe that Putin’s decision to return the four Ukrainian oblasts to the Russian Federation was not made in desperation. Putin, so far, has shown no sign of panic or alarm. I have seen no evidence to suggest that he is out of touch with reality. Instead, he has worked methodically to shore up relations with China, India and the Gulf States. He realizes he can no longer rely on any hope of a working relationship with the United States and Europe. it appears that the referenda process, which culminated on Tuesday with the acceptance of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporhyzhia as new members of the Russian Federation, now paves the way for Russia to invoke the defense protocols of the CSTO. That means additional troops from allied countries like Belarusia can join the fight if needed.

It very much reminds me of a game of chess. Russia is now sacrificing pawns in the form of strategically useless territory, while Ukraine is rushing forward to seize symbolic territory without having the necessary reserves in terms of trained soldiers and equipment to sustain the attack and defeat Russia. Russia, meanwhile, is moving its Knights, Rooks and Bishops into position for checkmate. The question remains–what is Putin’s gambit?

Ukraine: military situation update with maps, Oct 4, 2022
(’Orc’ is associated with the various hoards of 13th century Mongol invaders, as well as LOTR evil villains)

War in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2QApi8G2TKc8NZmeDWSUg/videos

Artillery (key to success in this war), Fuller explanation of Orc military structure, Other Bonus articles - see previous postings in “Attack on Europe” (FR title search).

(Numbered printed material below - Some of the items below may be out of date, and not updated yet)

••denotes transcribed dialogue.

-—> Current to date and past MAPS: <——
https://militaryland.net/

———————————————————————————————————————
Extras:
-—> Ukraine Situation Report: U.S. Sends More HIMARS To Support Offensives <——
Steady supplies of weapons and ammunition will help Ukraine keep pushing ahead with its already significant advances in the south and east.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-u-s-sends-more-himars-to-support-offensives

Excerpts:
After these four HIMARS are delivered to the Ukrainian armed forces, they will have 20 of these systems in total ...
There continues to be no indication that the U.S. government is moving any closer to green-lighting a transfer of ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles ...
Previous reports have indicated that Ukraine may now be offering the U.S. government the ability to directly veto strikes and other operational maneuvers if that’s what it takes to secure weapons like ATACMS.

———————————————————————————————————————
Summary:
Ukrainian troops continued their move south to Mylove.
Russian situation on the Kherson bridgehead is becoming catastrophic.

Key areas:
- Oskil river area:
Ukrainian troops are slowly moving eastwards.

- North Donbass area: no changes.
- Central Donbass (Donetsk West): no changes.
- Zaporizhya: no changes.
- Kherson bridgehead:
Russian command decided to evacuate northern and north-western sector of the Kherson bridgehead.
Ukrainian troops are slowly following retreating Russian troops.
There is unconfirmed report that Russian troops are withdrawing from Snigurivka which implies that Russian command decided to evacuate entire Kherson bridgehead.

———————————————————————————————————————
••Food Security Situation & Agriculture:
There was report in Ukraine saying that the pace of planting winter crops is three times slower than it used to be in the same period as last year - granted there is more rain in Ukraine, generally, but still three times less. This is a very dangerous situation. For the next year we may face not just expensive food, but outright hunger.

This means the develop world; its not just developing world, which more or less permanently in some level of hunger. This may spill over to the developed world, and the reason for that is there is no incentive for Ukrainian farmers to plant in general because this whole area in the west of Ukraine is locked and they cannot export anywhere because logistics eats up like 40-50% of the revenue.

This might be still saved in the spring depending how things are going to be developing at that time but things look pretty bleak in Ukraine and something similar is going on I can guarantee in Russia as well, especially with all of the mobilization now the war touched the entire the society in Russia, things are going in a similar direction as they were going in Ukraine, since the end of February 2020 too.

Other interesting news: Bulgaria or some Bulgarian ordinance manufacturers are supplying they may still be making Soviet artillery shells and other Soviet ammunitions. They are selling that ammunition to Ukraine.

Russian Special Forces or KGB did a diversion at one of the plants, and there was a big explosion at one of the production facilities in Bulgaria. I think the company is called Arsenal, and the plant is on the Black Sea coast.

This is actually not the first such activity of Russian Special Services. Prior to that, several even before the war one of the Bulgarian entrepreneurs who was selling ammunition to Ukraine was poisoned. There was attempt to kill him by Russian Special Services, but they just didn’t get didn’t quite succeed so he got poisoned, but apparently he got saved by the doctors.

There is another event related to this that which happened prior to that: a Russian Special Services arranged to blow up an ammunition storage facility in Czech Republic I think it was 2021. They are actively working in Europe, especially Eastern Europe . There are no borders from the big perspective to this war.

Military Situation:
Russian front line is collapsing and it is collapsing in two places: North Luhansk’ and Kherson Bridgehead. There is more bad news from a Russian perspective are coming up probably on the 5th.

There will be more of a collapse happening on the Kherson Bridgehead; really phenomenal, I would say, catastrophic it is turning into a totally disorderly retreat. What this really means from a big picture perspective: Russian side is still not sending those reservists in large numbers to the front line.

They are probably still not gonna send them for another month or so. At the same time, the training is is terrible for the majority, not all of them: an anecdotal rough estimate is about 20% getting decent training but 70-80% are getting horrific training or no training at all. Whether its going to change and remains to be seen, but the quality of the of the preparedness of those soldiers going to be pretty mediocre. There will be at least 20% that’s going to be decently prepared, and probably they might be better motivated.

Its going to be basket case with more on average tilted to lower motivation, lower preparedness overall. This is forcing Russian command or Russian leadership to do something to stem this collapse. The simple, or maybe not a simple, solution is to evacuate the Kherson Bridgehead to the eastern side of Dnipro and wait for this Reserve units to be prepared;

And do something similar by retreating behind Seversky Donets River - naturally cover yourself up, even though Seversky Donets River is not a significant obstacle. Dnipro is a significant obstacle; its going to be nearly impossible to to establish bridgeheads here, unless Ukrainian troops manage to to capture the dam in Kakhovka, somehow by Special Forces operation, but we don’t doesn’t feel that Ukrainian forces are at that level of skill.

This whole Russian approach based is on hope, its not rock solid, because what will happen is Ukrainian command will switch to the Zaporizhya frontline. This is where the Russian troops were fearing their advance, and so far they were fooled, because they pulled all of their best most battle capable units to this area around Volgerdar; the 4 Naval Infantry.

But North Luhansk’ still could have been saved and so because Ukrainian command most likely will start a large offensive on the Zaporizhya front line and might be aimed towards Mariupol to cut it off and to split Russian troops into two halves. One goes towards towards Crimea so rash so this is does not provide Russian troops really rock solid situation to wait out for let’s say another month or even maybe more.

Russian command there has several options left; one option is to attack the bridges - all of the bridges across Dnipro River and blow them up; attack actively power generating plants; that will create like total chaos in Ukrainian rear and definitely effect the ability to continue operations, probably not completely, but still significantly delay everything.

That’s one option the problem for the Russian side with this option is they probably don’t have enough rockets to do that, because you really need really large number of rockets. To do it successfully, probably close to a thousand which they don’t have. That scenario is somewhat lower probabilities; they may still selectively hit a couple of places just to create scare and worn off, but at the same time, they just don’t have enough ammunition to do that.

The other option that’s left is to use tactical nuclear weapons, which they have and enough. They can do something, maybe not exactly that because they cannot send them to Kiev, but they can create enough scare to force political problems in Ukraine, in the hope that it will force peace negotiations.

I got an email from one of the viewers who was asking: what are the chances of nuclear attacks by Russia, and my response was they’re growing by the day: the more successes Ukraine has on the battlefield, the higher the chance by the by the Russian command of using tactical nuclear weapons. Most likely it will be used in Ukraine; using it outside of Ukraine is probability much, much lower. There is no way to quantify it, but its definitely much lower.

Of the countries I probably would single out where it would be used, are the Baltic states and Poland; they’re like most likely targets. There was even discussion by one of the Russian ideologues of this war and the whole view of rebuilding the Russian Empire. He said they’re gonna drop a nuclear bomb on Poznan in Poland. He and then the US will not do anything, because they’re toothless.

The response was that literally; I’m sharing with you the words of the person used, the thinking on the Russian side is the following: we’ll trade U.S Boston for Poznan. In conclusion the person, was I don’t think so. At the same time the probability of the attacks on Poland and Baltic states is much lower than Ukraine, because that really involves more strategic nuclear weapons as opposed to tactical ones. That really means there will be a nuclear war with the West, Russia definitely understands that.

If anything there might be more probably in Ukraine than elsewhere, but its its extremely hard to predict and, honestly, this is I would say to that extent, its unpredictable what might happen there.

Russian troops are retreating in order not to be caught in a pocket which is one thing that I would say about Russian command, at least they are intelligent about not allowing pockets to happen.

Ukrainian command in the past in 2014-2020 was not intelligent enough about that; they allowed at least two pockets to happen, and one was is really disastrous. The smaller the other one was Ukrainian troops broke out of it. But it was an initiative by the commanders on the ground. The top was totally, totally incapable.

One thing I just want to explain at the high level of what’s happening and why this whole collapse is happening because there are a lot of people trying to explain miracles or there is blame game going on in Russia where the Russian commanders are being blamed for all of this. To be fair, this is not the commanders fault; its really a situation when you have you don’t have enough infantry, and you eventually get to the critical mass, then it collapses under its own weight.

A long analogy between now and the Germany-Soviet conflict (Skipped).

North Luhnansk’:
Yesterday the Russian troops were actively retreating to an intermediate line which was supposed to be the road from Kremina to Kupyansk that goes near Svatove.

Its clear the front line is not gonna go there now. Ukrainian troops managed to cut the road in at least two place. Russian troops got on the eastern side of the river so the only part where the Russian have a small bridgehead on the western part of the river is Kremina because Kremina is like a split by the river into two halves. They have this bridgehead on the eastern side. Ukrainian troops on the western side have cut off the road. There are some Ukrainian reconnaissance groups that are fighting and establishing bridgehead, and this means that the whole front line will collapse pretty quick.

Kherson Bridgehead:
Russian command decided to withdraw Russian troops from all of the northwestern section of the bridgehead. There is no clear front line yet.

The whole point is to reduce the front line to create contiguous front line that’s not like where the Russian strongholds are not completely isolated it could be bypassed.

There is also a very interesting information and this is unconfirmed, that Russian troops are evacuating evacuated Snigurivka which means that this whole area probably is going to get evacuated. This really means is that this whole bridgehead is gonna get split into two halves: one half around Kherson to defend it and the other half around this dam atNova Kakhovka,

This is a total collapse, because, once they split, its easy to defeat two halves than the one. That will create more problems for the Russian command with maneuvering with the troops. That will be just finishing them off.

The Antonioski Bridge was attacked again, and there are reports that the bridge is destroyed enough that is literally not passible, no matter what. Before there were a lot of holes, but now there is a portion of the bridge is completely destroyed so you cannot cross it.

This is so it looks like its turning into a disorderly retreat with Russian troops. Command was trying to do an orderly withdraw and probably, and even potentially evacuate this whole bridgehead. This could be because the move from Snigurivka is really a sign that this is going to be complete evacuation of this whole bridgehead. Because, otherwise if this is lost, it creates an opportunity to split this bridgehead into two halves. At that point it becomes undefendable.

There are also reports from the Russian 205th Brigade that they are literally fleeing. This is turning from orderly retreat into just literally fleeing and attempting to get as soon as possible to, not even those bridges, but some pontoons ferries to get out. This may turn out to be a very quick collapse - I’m not saying its guaranteed, but it does look that way.

There are reports that on the 5th, there will be even more pronounced collapse of the Russian frontline. This morning the Russian command tried to stem the tide near the channel, but this can turn into complete disaster where actually Ukrainian command and troops will be able to create a pocket and and capture a lot of prisoners of war on the Russian side, simply because there won’t be enough capacity to put them on the eastern side of the Dnipro River; right now it looks the most dangerous for the Russian side with extremely bad consequences in the very near term.

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