[Mariner]

I read in the mid 80’s the old Soviet Union had 300 million 152mm artillery shells in storage.

300 million.

[JonPreston]

I read that China has at least than many it’s willing to give to Russia. Given this slog, those numbers are a game changer.

[canuck_conservative]

so then why can’t Russia capture Bahkmut?

if Russia is so “dominant”?

[dhs12345]

Seems like the solution is to destroy the machine that shoots the shells, problem solved.

Destroy the artillery piece and you have no way to shoot those 300 million shells.

[grumpygresh]

Russia doesn’t have the population base and comparatively speaking, Russia is a much smaller country in terms of population than many other countries. For example, Bangladesh has more people at 142 million.
They might not run out of shells, but they could run out of recruits very soon. Then, holding the country is another matter even with a puppet government, an occupied Ukraine would be a hotbed for revolt.
The trouble is that we really don’t know what the truth is insofar as who is really winning. It’s been over a year and Russia hasn’t appeared to have achieved its goals which would probably be annexation of eastern Ukraine, a dictated peace treaty and installation of a puppet government.

I don’t think it’s really been worth it for Russia. They now face in a long term pariah status with losses in trade with the West. Whether they can make up these economic losses with China and non aligned nations is uncertain.