SITREP 8/1/23: The Hegemon Begins To Unravel

Momentous things are setting into motion geopolitically all over the globe, most notably in Africa. A coup took down the president of Niger, a country of critical importance to France and the NATO bloc. The Atlanticists are extremely worried now:…

France is the #1 country in the world for total percentage of nuclear use for energy generation, and #2 in total number of nuclear power plants. I’ve seen figures that Niger supplies upwards of 40% of France’s Uranium, though some have it in the 15-25% range, as well as 25% to the EU itself.…

Naturally, Ukraine blames Russia:…. What Podolyak is referencing is that Mali, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria immediately issued statements coming to the defense of Niger, stating that any attempts from other countries to intervene against Niger’s ‘transition government’ would be a declaration of war….

China produces upwards of 80 percent of the world’s gallium, and 60 percent of its germanium, with experts predicting that it could take “generations” for the US to replace lost Chinese capacity.”

This represents a one-two punch from both sides as Russia and China are whipsawing the West asymmetrically. I’ve already written at length about how the West likes to portray themselves as independent with Russia as the one reliant on their ‘electronics’, yet it’s the West themselves who are hugely reliant on the natural resources that Russia/China produce, as well as those found in Africa.

For instance, a small sampling:… We’ve also explored long ago how Russia has already taken control of most of Ukraine’s vast rare earth resources as well, the majority of which lie in and around the Donbass region.

The way things are developing could lead to absolutely dire circumstances for the West, particularly Europe, ending with its eventual collapse or dissolution. One other shrewd writer has outlined exactly this scenario in a new article I encourage you to read:…

Now, I wanted to move onto a new discussion of Ukraine’s ongoing catastrophic losses, in light of some recent new revelations to that account. This will then segue into a few battlefield updates.

Firstly, let’s acknowledge the fact that days ago, after spending a couple weeks doing preparatory work, which included various attempts to strike Russia’s rear and degrade logistics, Ukraine began the official Phase 2 of their offensive. It was even announced by MSM.

Ukraine has launched the main thrust of its counteroffensive, throwing in thousands of troops held in reserve, many of them Western-trained and equipped, two Pentagon officials said on Wednesday, hours after Russian officials reported major Ukrainian attacks in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukraine has now thrown its 10th Corps into battle, after having previously depleted the 9th Corps in the first phase of the offensive. The first days of the battle are described by some as the single largest armor losses for the AFU since the start of the conflict. They came brazenly into prepared positions, hoping to prove some modicum of success to their Western handlers, but were brutally rebuffed as before.

⚡️⚡️⚡️There were rumors in the Ukrainian lobby that the loss of the Armed Forces of Ukraine after the first 50 days of the summer offensive campaign was over 11,000 soldiers and officers. More than 25,000 people were injured.

In his view, this is still the most positive figure. Many call numbers much worse⚡️⚡️⚡️

👉 An example of this is that, the enemy has lost 81 out of the 185 BMP Bradleys' which were supplied to them; or 66 out of 145 of the Leopards that were supplied to them. The list could go on and on.

They took a little new territory in Rabotino but as of this writing it was already taken back. Staromayorsk near Velyka Novoselka is the only place Russian forces had to retreat. The artillery war simply destroyed the entire small village, leaving no place to hide, so they were forced to withdraw. However, the good news is, the soldiers themselves say they had little to no losses in doing so. Just listen to the report from this Kaskad Ballation fighter, which includes the revelation that Ukraine was using a chlorine-like chemical weapon in the area as well:

… So, to summarize. In pure counter-battery battles between Russian frontline 2A65s, 2A36s, etc., against American M777s, they did not lose a single such battle. However, it validated some of the concerns to a degree by describing how the AFU withdrew and began to use guided Excalibur rounds, which have an inbuilt ‘base bleed’ option that expels some propellant out the rear, allowing them to fly much farther, about 40km+.

But the problem is, these shells are $75,000+ or so, and there’s not a lot of them. Secondly, they require precise GPS coordinates and therefore very good ISR of the target, which isn’t always possible. Russia has its own base bleed shells and rocket assisted RAP with over 40km range for the 2A36 howitzers. Russian 2S7M Malkas have a range of nearly 40km unassisted, and nearly 50km with assisted projectiles. And by the way, the Malka is a massive 203mm projectile, exponentially stronger than NATO artillery.

So, no—Ukraine doesn’t have any real artillery advantage. The only advantage is in the ISR capabilities of finding targets, as they have all of NATO’s and the West’s considerable satellite powers at their disposal.

That’s not to say there aren’t problems, yes there’s a shortage of counter-battery systems, but Ukraine certainly doesn’t have an advantage there, as they have their own even worse shortages of every variety.

Now, a little on Ukrainian losses. There have been a few interesting ‘oblique’ reports coming from different sectors of society, which have given us some new insight, like the following:

….. Here are two new Ukrainian reports from their own internal channels. The first describes a new AFU assault unit that was destroyed in Klescheyevka, south of Bakhmut/Artyomovs…… And here is another, from the 35th Brigade of the AFU, desperately pleading for help after they were slaughtered in Staromayorsk:… Wallstreet Journal reports that there are upwards of 50,000 servicemen with limbs blown off:…. Here is even a tweet from a pro-Ukrainian account showing the timestamp just to make certain this is in fact an old quote rather than an article from last year which has been stealth updated with a new quote, or something like that…..

Here we have the Ukrainian ministry of defense admitting in June 2022 that they lost not only 50% of all initial equipment in only 4 months of fighting at that point, but staggeringly, they had lost 400 tanks. Also, as an aside, at that point, Oryx had only listed 116 tank losses for the AFU. This clearly shows the laughable bias in Oryx’s accounting as the official AFU count of their own losses was 4x higher than his.

This is important because Ukraine is said by some sources to have started out with 1,200-1,500 total operable tanks, with another batch mothballed. But some experts believe the operable starting number was much closer to 800. That means we can extrapolate that if Ukraine had already lost 400 tanks by June, in only 4 months of fighting, by the end of 2022 they should have lost somewhere around another 600, which would put them at ~1000 for the year. So if the 800-1200 figure for their starting number of tanks is accurate, they would have completely depleted those by early this year, which in fact confirms the folklorish claim that they had lost their entire starting army.

But let’s crunch the numbers deeper to see what they may have left now, and how much longer they can hold out.

The Sputnik article from above quotes a ‘London-based thinktank’ with the figure that Ukraine started with 720 T-64s and 750 T-72s, with about ~1000+ extra of both mothballed and in storage, of uncertain quality. These can possibly be written off for the reason that Russia likely disabled most repair/refurb facilities and also may have entirely destroyed these storage sites. Sure, Ukraine hides their active stuff well, but you can’t really hide mothballed tanks which can’t really be moved around. Russia would have known the storage sites and destroyed them.

Thus, the low starting figure as I said can be ~800 according to some, with a high of just under 1500.

Next, we know from the ground commander’s own words, they lost 400 of these tanks by June 2022. That’s a rate of 100 per month. If we extrapolate that straight, we can say 1000 total by end of 2022, or to be generous to them, we can estimate lower due to the fact that the end of 2022 had lower intensity due to Russia going on the defensive and becoming inactive while they called up their mobilization.

Furthermore, Ukraine captured a certain amount of Russian tanks, which hypothetically could be around ~200.

figures. The loss figures on top are—I believe—a little out of date, but only by a couple weeks or so. For instance, it shows 6 total Leopards destroyed, which is 25% of the total. However, this seems to be the number from the first phase of the ‘counter-offensive’, as some reports indicate in the new phase which started days ago, they now lost an additional batch of Leopards and a giant new batch of Bradleys. Total Leopard losses may now be something like 15-20 from what I recall.

… In early 2023, we had the Pentagon leaks, and one of the pages actually showed the exact number of remaining Ukrainian MBTs (main battle tanks), which according to them was 802. Given that the leaks were, I believe, from February and March, this could have given another 2-3 months of attrition at the same rate of, let’s say, 100 per month. Which means it would have conceivably went from the 900-1100 figure at end of 2022 to the 802 number in the leaks.

Now, we move toward the present. Since then, Ukraine has taken a delivery of a new batch of the latest tanks, this is the Leopards, Challengers, etc. The total for these was only somewhere in the 150-200, as I understand it, as there were only 30+ Leopard 2s, 14 Challengers, some M55s, etc. There are a lot more earmarked, like the Abrams and upcoming Leopard 1A5s, but they haven’t begun arriving yet.

Using the number above we get around ~1000 total by early this year. However, if we continue applying the roughly 100 lost per month throughout the rest of this year to present, we get at least 5 months worth of losses, or a hypothetical ~500 tanks. Minus that from the above ~1000, and basically they could have had around 500 tanks as of last month or so.

But the issue is, since the start of the ‘counter-offensive’, they took massively and disproportionately more tank losses. Shoigu gave a report yesterday:…

…. According to the MOD, Ukraine lost 31 tanks just in the last few days. Putin had reported ~160 tank losses around June 16th, two weeks after the start of the offensive, and ~250 tanks in late June. Oryx’s own AFU losses since the start of the offensive is at ~40, but since I had just proved earlier that he undercounts Ukrainian losses by at minimum a factor of 4, we can assume that Russian MOD’s numbers approach accuracy. The Russian MOD’s total loss count for the entire offensive from June 4th to date is 415 tanks.

Ukrainian formations suffered heavy losses during the counteroffensive: 415 tanks were disabled by the Russian Armed Forces, 2/3 of the equipment lost in the battles was western.

Perhaps the number could be exaggerated, but it’s plausible because we know even in moderate intensity combat, Ukraine was averaging at least 100 tanks lost per month. The offensive is now about 2 months old and was of a highly elevated intensity. That means it’s not out of the realm of possibility that their losses were double the rate at 150-200 per month, which would put us at 400 after 2 months.

Finally, given that we had come to the ~500 number earlier, subtracting the new ~400 losses would mean that the AFU would be at an absolutely dire state of only 100 remaining tanks. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps it’s a bit higher at 200-300 left, this is much less than it sounds given that it represents as little as two weeks’ worth of losses in current high intensity combat levels.

If my numbers are even remotely close then that is disastrous. It would mean the AFU is on the verge of collapse. The reason is, I obviously focused on tank losses alone, but they generally correspond to a similar loss ratio to other systems like APCs, artillery, etc.

If the numbers are close, it is likely why the West is now desperately trying to ram through the German Leopard 1s as fast as possible. They were delayed before, but now the first batch is said to be arriving this month of August, with videos showing a few of them already on the road via HETs from Denmark to Poland….

…. But the truth is, signs of collapse are now everywhere. Take this letter from an American militar instructor:

From a letter from an American military instructor after his trip to Ukraine: "...Even the best Ukrainian brigades that a year ago fought successfully and were determined to defeat Russians, today, differ little from ordinary infantry brigades, which almost do not have heavy weapons and are equipped with all sorts of rabble, which Ukrainian military registration and enlistment offices literally grab on the street, like during the centenary war in Europe. carried Ukrainians for these months. personal composition, and some have already changed their combat strength twice. and combat command and control, which themselves do not enter into battles and only control combat actions from well-protected command posts. bicycle because the command of the brigades has lost its sense of responsibility for its soldiers and considers them solely as expendable material for the execution of toy or other task. And it only reinforces the loss. The general mood in the Ukrainian headquarters is despondency and anger. And the faces of those people who planned to storm Seva stopol, have the seal of hopelessness. In frank conversations, many Ukrainian senior officers now more and more often admit that they do not see any prospects for a successful completion wars. The only hope that, oddly enough, but many of them, is hope for a direct intervention in this war. But, again, many people here add that this hope is like faith in Santa Claus."

Yesterday, we saw unbelievable footage of Colombian mercenaries mutinying against the AFU after being attacked and pepper sprayed by Ukrainian officers:

Further analysis:

“ Wherein the U.S. Department of Defense spills the beans...
They unwittingly confirm that the Ukraine military is on the verge of collapse...

In which the following was stated by an unnamed U.S. Department of Defense official:

Ukraine now has 150,000 troops committed to the operation across three axes of attack, including multiple Western-trained brigades...

Ah, now this is what I’ve been wanting to see - an estimate of how many Ukrainian troops remain available on the battlefield.

I disregard all those hiding in cities like Kharkiv and Odessa, hiding around Kiev, or patrolling the Belarus border. They aren’t relevant, and people who talk about Ukraine having “half a million” or more Ukrainian soldiers remaining, or having “3 million” available manpower - like a couple million civilians with a week or two of training are of any significance in this conflict - don’t know what they’re talking about.

And guess what? This figure comes close to my estimate from my July 17 Substack estimate of Ukrainian casualties. In that article I concluded that the (very conservative) range of Ukrainian casualties was between 432,000 and 867,000. Based on various estimates I’ve seen of Ukraine’s total mobilization efforts over the last 18 months, I then estimated what the probable number of remaining Ukrainian forces was as follows:

If we assume the lowest figure of 432,000 is correct, and that Ukraine had a maximum of 700,000 forces throughout the war, then we can estimate the remaining Ukrainian forces to be no more than 268,000.

If we assume the lowest figure and that Ukraine had a total mobilization of one million men, then we can estimate the Ukrainian forces to be no more than 568,000.

If we assume the highest figure is correct and that Ukraine had a total mobilization of one million men, then we can estimate the remaining Ukrainian forces to be no more than 143,000.

I also said that I did not believe that Ukraine had actually mobilized one million men during their mobilizations. My reasoning was as follows.

At what point of Ukrainian personnel losses will Ukraine no longer be able to conduct effective military operations at the battalion or higher level? It seems clear that Ukraine is already at that point, despite potentially having a remaining force of over 200,000 troops.

This fact also mitigates against the probability of Ukraine having anywhere close to 500,000 troops or ever having had one million men under arms. If they had that many men still available, their 2023 offensive probably would not have failed so dramatically.

If you had an actual 500,000 or one million men under arms, that would have been seen on the battlefield, even with a large logistics tail. I suspect that many of the civilians conscripted into the Ukrainian military were in fact devoted almost entirely to that logistics tail. They were assigned to loading transport trucks with equipment, fuel and the like while those with some actual training or previous military experience were assigned to the front lines.

Clearly the latter did not reflect a massive number of men available with either combat training, let alone combat experience, and most probably not even with adequate supplies of firearms, ammunition, man portable weapons and body armor, despite large shipments of these items from the West.

As Brian Berletic pointed out repeatedly on his Youtube channel, a few million rounds of ammunition sounds like a lot, but with a single battlefield casualty requiring literally hundreds of thousands of rounds to be expended, it’s not.

So if Ukraine actually had a real force of 100 or brigades, that would have been seen on the field and it would have had some effect on the Russian lines, either during the summer offensive or before.

No such effect has been seen.

So we can assume either that 1) Ukraine never had one million men with actual combat deployment capability, and/or 2) the maximum number of troops remaining are between 143,000 to 268,000 - not counting an unknown number of western “sheep-dipped” forces which probably number less than 10-20,000 and are thus mostly irrelevant.

And now we we are told that Ukraine has 153,000 to be used in their so-called “offensive”. So clearly my lower number was incorrect, no surprise there.

We are also told this nonsense:

But Kyiv is still keeping a number of forces in reserve, as soldiers continue probing heavily mined Russian defenses for weak spots.

As I’ve said before, the notion that Ukraine is keeping its best-trained troops “in reserve” means that they are using their less capable forces to try to breach the Russian defenses. Does this make any sense? How do you breach a defensive line with less capable forces so that your more capable forces can then take advantage of any breach? Yes, you can hold a force in reserve which is larger than your breaching force. But use ill-trained conscripts to breach a formidable Russian defense line so that your better-trained, i.e., NATO-trained (with apologies to Andrei Martyanov for referring to NATO-trained as “better-trained”) troops can exploit any breach?

If Ukraine is keeping a combat-capable force in reserve, that force is unlikely to be several times the size of the main offensive force although it could be. At most, any Ukrainian reserve force is unlikely to be much larger than the offensive force, so the combination of the two is unlikely to be larger than the 268,000 troops I estimated as the total remaining Ukrainian forces in my article. So my 268,000 estimate is likely close to correct - again, not counting forces hiding in cities, in Kiev or patrolling the Belarus border.

Remember that Ukraine is currently losing forces at the rate of 30-60,000 per month. At that rate, the 153,000 “offensive” force will be dead in 3 months tops and combat ineffective in half that, if not sooner. Even assuming the entire remaining Ukrainian combat-capable force is 250-300,000, that merely extends the top estimate to six months with combat effectiveness cutting that in half to 3 months. Even if the total combat-capable force is my maximum of 568,000 - and that is extremely unlikely even if Ukraine had a million conscripts - that only extends the time to nine months and half that is 4.5 months.

So my estimate of Ukraine’s army collapsing within 3-6 months is pretty much confirmed by the DoD’s statement.

I reiterate that this war can not continue for more than 3-6 months and that Ukraine’s army could collapse literally at any moment. The fact that it appears incapable of launching effective attacks of any significant size in this “offensive” - which is the definition of “combat effectiveness” - appears to bear that out.“

https://richardstevenhack.substack.com/p/wherein-the-us-department-of-defense

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