How many losses did the Ukrainian army have in its war against Russia.
We, so far, did not have any answer to that. The Ukrainian military has given no realistic account of its own losses while its claims of Russian losses are obviously exaggerated.
The Russia military is likewise giving no numbers for its own losses. But its daily reports give estimates of Ukrainian ones. These are currently around 650 per day plus/minus 200 depending on the intensity of the fighting.
Some western observers, foremost retired Colonel Macgregor, say that Ukraine's unrecoverable losses have exceeded 400,000 men. But he does not name his sources.
Now a new chapter in the war between the Ukrainian president Zelenski and the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian army, General Zaluzny, may have given us an answer. Yesterday this news item found its way to the Strana news site (machine translation):
The commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, does not have a war plan for 2024, and therefore must resign.
This was stated by Deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security and Defense, MP from Servant of the People Mariana Bezuglaya on her Facebook page, referring to a "non-public discussion" with the military.
"Yes, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine could not provide a plan for 2024. Neither big nor small, neither asymmetrical nor symmetrical. The military simply said that they need to take at least 20 thousand citizens a month, " she writes.
Zaluzny has no plans for 2024 because there is nothing he can do about the upcoming defeat of the Ukrainian army.
Every time he urges to stop defending positions that can not be held, like Bakhmut and Avdeevka, the political leadership tells him use all reserves and to keep holding. Every time he urges to build strong defense lines and to retreat to them he gets overruled. There is thereby nothing, except one number, that he can plan for.
That number is the one of the irretrievable losses of the Ukrainian army is experiencing. Zaluzny needs 20,000 new men per month to replace the losses and to keep his army going.
Assuming that the number is an average estimate we can calculate that 20 months of war have cost the Ukraine some 660 losses per day for a total of some 400,000. Irretrievable losses are not only dead (KIA), missed in action (MIA), or soldiers who preferred to become prisoners of war of the Russian army (POWs). They also include the severally wounded people who will be unable to come back onto the battle field.
These numbers seem high but we continue to see more and more reports that point to extremely high losses:
Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski – 0:35 UTC · Nov 27, 2023
Adviser of Zelenskyy: There is now "terrible shortage" of artillery shells & "huge shortage" of mines and military personnel on frontline. He heard "scary numbers" that average age in some brigades is 54 & that 3 people remain in some companies out of 110 at start of the war. https://youtu.be/MqRNWdqzF7E?si=6EnJEa25zcK-6p-4&t=196
Storming Russian ditches when one's rare troops have an average(!) age of 54 is impossible.
There have been other report which, similar to the one above, speak of the heavy depletion of Ukrainian units:
Kotsyurba and Lysenko’s company began the summer with 120 men. It’s now down to around 20, including replacements. The rest are dead, wounded or have been transferred away from assault duties. The new faces are mostly over 40 years old, some in poor health.
That is no longer an army but a Volkssturm like forces which enlists grandpas and kids to do the fighting.
In response to the threat of firing Zaluzny some activists immediately threatened a coup (machine translation):
A well-known activist close to Western structures, the founder of the StateWatch organization, Alexander Lemenov, threatened Vladimir Zelensky with a military coup.
He wrote about this on Facebook.
"What can we say about this style of communication? I don't have enough words to describe… they'll play out. We will lose more territory. But not all, far from all. And in Kiev, the government will really change, but not to the Russian one, but to the military one.
Zelenski was thus forced to intervene. He had to disavow the comments by the parliamentarian (machine translation):
The President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky disowned the statements of Maryana Bezuglaya , who made accusations against the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, and condemned her statements.
The corresponding video message was published by the presidential representative in the Verkhovna Rada, Fyodor Venislavsky.
"Mariana Bezuglaya's appointment to the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security and Defense may threaten the national security of Ukraine," Venislavsky said.
Meanwhile, Bezuglaya continues to bend her line.
She posted on Facebook a cartoon of a military man who swears that he doesn't know if there is an "offensive plan". She accompanied the picture with the following caption: "When the mines were "discovered" or "go, there are only a couple of p#dors"(c). The military sent them from the brigades now."
Probably, in this way, she wanted to express the idea that the Ukrainian command failed to correctly assess the enemy's forces and the difficulties that the APU will face during the offensive.
Unless the Pentagon and the Biden administration intervene Zelenski will fire Zaluzny within the next few weeks.
British 'experts' continue to push the Ukrainian army into conscripting younger men (machine translation):
The Armed Forces of Ukraine need younger soldiers, because the current average age of the military is too high.
This is stated by Western military experts on the pages of the Financial Times newspaper.
According to experts, this is due to the fact that "the conflict has turned into small infantry battles on foot in trench systems," which require better physical fitness. At the same time, the average age of Ukrainian men fighting at the front and undergoing training in the West is 30-40 years.
Senior Research Fellow, Royal Joint Forces Institute Jack Watlin believes that the Armed Forces of Ukraine this year mobilized "disproportionately many older men," but now they need young people with greater endurance.
At the same time Director of the Polish analytical center Rochan Consulting Konrad Muzyka says that Ukraine cannot wage a war of attrition with the Russian Federation, since the Russian Federation has more equipment and soldiers. Kiev needs more prepared and trained troops.
Earlier the former British Defense Minister Ben Wallace had told Ukraine to draft younger soldiers.
But all these 'experts' ignore the severe problems with Ukraine's population 'pyramid':
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The 20 to 30 year old men they want to draft are simply not there to be recruited in any decisive numbers.
There are also other issues that currently hamper the Ukrainian military. For more than two weeks Polish truckers, who previously had the dominant role in the European freight business, are blocking the country's borders with Ukraine. Thousands of trucks are stuck on each side with waiting times that are now exceeding two weeks.
That is because the EU gave the non-member Ukraine the privilege of doing business in Europe without having to adhere to its rules. The Ukrainians, with less costs, thus took over the Polish business.
The blockade of the border affects military as well as humanitarian goods. Soon the Ukrainian military will be starving of everything it needs for the war.
It's not only the truckers in Poland who are very nervous about a potential Ukrainian membership in the EU:
Polish farmers on Thursday blocked the Medyka border checkpoint with Ukraine, demanding subsidies on wheat and state-backed loans amid an influx of Ukrainian grain, Polish media reported.
Protesters said they would block trucks from reaching the checkpoint between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day until Sunday, the IAR news agency reported.
The farmers want the government to subsidise the prices of wheat, extend state-backed loans due to the influx of grain from Ukraine, and keep the farm tax rates unchanged, according to news outlets.
On November 6, Polish truck drivers launched a blockade of the Hrebenne, Dorohusk and Korczowa checkpoints, demanding that the European Union reinstate permits for Ukrainian transport companies entering the bloc.
On Thursday, Polish transport companies announced that the protest at the Dorohusk checkpoint would be extended until February 1, Ukraine's Ukrinform news agency reported.
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The Polish protests coincide with concerns in Ukraine that the European Union may not agree next month to launch formal accession talks for it to join the 27-member bloc, a key objective for Kyiv, according to the Reuters news agency.It reported that prolonged protests and the resulting disruption to trade could affect Ukraine's fragile, wartime economy.
The price of motor vehicle gas (LPG), which is widely used to fuel cars, has surged 30 percent due to the protests, according to an industry analyst cited by Reuters.
Should Ukraine enter the European Union Poland will lose most of the agricultural and other development subsidies it is currently receiving from the EU. Those subsidies would then flow into the even less developed, low pay Ukraine. It is thus unlikely that Poland will agree to its membership.
Over the last days Ukraine, on top of the losses and political troubles, saw a record storm in the Black Sea accompanied by a serious drop in temperature. Thousands of households in south Ukraine and Crimea are without electricity. Snow is hindering all movements.