Was under the impression that Russia was a very big nation with a very big army...this story doesn’t seem to reconcile with that impression...hmmm.
Russia has been dying since the days of the Soviet Union. Every generation, it loses 20% of the population, because they aren’t replacing themselves.
Putin didn’t learn from the US, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
RE: Was under the impression that Russia was a very big nation with a very big army...
1. It is. Except Russia is not sending her best soldiers to Ukraine, most of them are recently trained conscripts.
2. Don’t expect instant victory in a war of attrition. Russia still has dangerous weapons up her sleeve she has not used - For example, CHEMICAL WEAPONS.
3. It might take much longer than expected, but unless there is mutiny and a coup in the Kremlin, the fall of Ukraine will only be a matter of time.
NOTE REGARDING #3: This remark should not be taken as my siding with Russia, it’s just a recognition of what is perceive to be real. I would be ecstatic if Putin were to give up and withdraw and am cheering Ukraine’s brave fighters on.
Prove me wrong.
The article is still an improvement in the department of reality. Two weeks ago their number of Russian dead was 12,000.
Russia is a big nation with substantial army.
But Russia is poor, does not have the money for sophisticated equipment. It just relies on the nukes to scare the sh*t out of Biden’s pants.
Russian ground forces always relied on quantity, not quality! Most of Russian army was and still is a bunch of semiliterate, poorly trained draftees who have no idea where they are and what are they supposed to do. They are required to parade around and intimidate just by the sheer of numbers.
The spec forces, who were supposed to take over Ukraine in just few days obviously failed. Now this mass of poorly trained draftees, who were never supposed to fight, are supposed to win this war. Kind of hard!
I am going to make a guess and say the Chinese military in a real battle will not fare much better than the Russians did here. They have a lot of military gadgets because they are a manufacturing nation after all, and they have a lot of ‘disposable units’ aka foot soldiers aka canon fodder , but battle tested they are not. Take away their nukes and China is likely as much a paper dragon as Russia is a paper bear.
In WWI, the Russian army was known as the “Steamroller “. But they had a demoralizing loss at Tannenberg and went downhill very quickly. Russian generals all want to be Zhukov, but these days mass formations of troops just waste men. The Ukrainian people are doing it right. Small hit and run operations with mobile units; no big set piece battles. Given a bit more time, Russia will be bled white.
Putin using terror tactics to dishearten the Ukrainian people is a sign of desperation.
If Russia got tired of this nonsense, they could level the city with very little trouble in loss of life. Or they could do the same to another, but minor city, to force capitulation. All without nukes.
Back in the day the Soviets were organized into Armies of 100,000 each. In that day, 4 of those Mechanized Armies were 4km from where I was stationed in Germany.
Now, the active Russian Ground Forces number IN TOTAL 290,000. There are about 20,000 Marines attached to the Russian Navy.
With 200,000 RGF tied up in thr Ukraine, Pootie has called in the remaining units in the Far East and his Pacific fleet.