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Ukraine 2023
Yesterday Zelenski held his end-of-year end speech:
Zelensky says Russia made no military gains in 2023, expresses faith in U.S. – Washington Post
Although Putin has claimed that Russian forces are now improving their positions virtually everywhere along the line of contact, Zelensky insisted that the invaders had made no military advances in 2023. “With regard to the battlefield, Russia hasn’t achieved any of its goals this year,” he said.
… to which Olga Bazove replies:
Zelensky: Russia has not achieved any results for 2023
Russia:
January 7: Podgorodnoye
January 10: Soledar
January 11: Opytnoe
January 16: Sol' station
January 19: Kleshcheevka
January 21: Krasnopolye
February 1: Sacco and Vanzetti
February 2: Nikolaevka
February 12: Krasnopolye
February 17: Paraskovievka
February 24: Berkhovka
February 25: Yagodnoye
March 8: eastern part of Bakhmut
March 9: Dubovo-Vasilievka
March 15: Zaliznyanskoye
April 2: Russian flag in the center of Bakhmut
May 20: Bakhmut
May-November: gains more territory than Ukraine during the counteroffensive while being on defense.
December 12: Marinka
December 2023: Avdeevka loading.
Admittedly, the difference on the map isn't that great:
Jan 1 2023
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Dec 20 2023
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However the task given to the Russian troops was not to take land, but to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.
In that aspect the numbers, given by the Russian Minister for Defense Sergei Shoigu, are indeed impressive:
On June 4, the Ukrainian armed forces launched a large-scale counter-offensive, prepared by their foreign curators. Without breaking through our troops’ tactical defence zone, the enemy was stopped and suffered colossal losses: 159,000 military personnel killed and wounded, 121 aircraft, 23 helicopters, 766 tanks, including 37 Leopards, and 2,348 armoured vehicles of various classes, including 50 Bradleys. Apparently, this is why we still do not see the American Abrams, delivered several months ago, on the battlefield.
Since the beginning of the special operation, the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have exceeded 383,000 military personnel killed and wounded, as well as 14,000 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armoured personnel carriers, 553 aircraft and 259 helicopters, 7,500 guns, field artillery and multiple launch rocket systems.
Ukraine has had nine mobilisation waves, with the tenth wave currently underway where even individuals only partially fit for service are being called up.
Mercenaries that had been recruited since the beginning of the special military operation have, for the most part, been taken out. Over 5,800 fighters have been neutralised, including 1,427 from Poland, 466 from the United States, and 344 from Great Britain. Within Ukraine, 103 military criminals displaying particular cruelty have been eliminated.
Such battlefield numbers are of course never correct. But give or take some 10 to 15% they are still large. They are also somewhat confirmed by the new mobilization request from the Ukrainian military:
Ukraine considers proposal by army to mobilise another 500,000 for war
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday the military had proposed mobilising 450,000-500,000 more Ukrainians into the armed forces in what would mark a dramatic step up of Kyiv's war with Russia.
The Ukrainian leader told his end-of-year news conference it was a "highly sensitive" issue that the military and government would discuss before deciding whether to send the proposal to parliament.
Zelenskiy said he wanted to hear more arguments in favour of mobilising the additional people before backing such a move.
"This is a very serious number," he said.
Ukraine is left with some 20 million inhabitants. More than two-third of those are pensioners and women. Zelenski has rejected attempts to mobilize women as the social consequences and protests would be too large. But he has not enough men and money left to mobilize another half-million men (machine translation):
Zelensky said that the command offers to draft up to half a million people into the army, but he did not approve this figure for two reasons.
The first is the lack of proposals for the rotation and demobilization of those who have been in the trenches for a long time. The second – mobilization in the format proposed by the military will cost the budget an additional 500 billion hryvnias and there is no understanding yet where to get them.
The only sensible alternative for Ukraine is to give up, and to negotiate with Russia. Zelenski though is still unwilling to do that.
But it may well be that others decided to make the decision for him:
Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg – 14:03 UTC · Dec 20, 2023
An hour and a half ago, a Russian "Special Flight Squadron" plane landed in Washington DC. They are used by Kremlin officials. It set out from St. Petersburg. You do the math.
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The plane actually flew from Moscow via St. Petersburg to Washington DC. I wonder who was on board …
However the signs that the war, and the views on it, have changed are unmistakable:
"It's over":
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Posted by: Lev Davidovich | Dec 21 2023 14:55 utc | 176
Oh dear, another poster who whether by design or accident, fails to read a post correctly.
‘The adoption of Wehrmacht tactics by western forces must explain the success of the USA in Korea, Cuba and Vietnam.’
They didn’t adopt ‘Wehrmacht tactics’, they incorporated some elements of them into a pre-existing set of manuals, as any successful army has done since time immemorial. Hence the adoption of the concept of the strategic corporal, a soldier whose timely actions create impacts whose sum is far greater than the individual actions I.e. German ad-hoc groups stopping the British paras from quickly securing Arnhem Bridge and shortening the war by months. They also took the concept of the gun team, with belt fed GPMG, as being a central pillar of a sections tactical deployment, but not to the exclusion of the rifle team, as the Germans had done. Junior NCO’s were the heart of this system that regularly beat Soviet/Chinese trained armies, AT THE TACTICAL LEVEL, repeatedly, causing kill ratios that often equalled or exceeded those inflicted on the Soviets in WW2. Korea and Vietnam, as I alluded to in my original post, were strategic/operational failures that could not be rescued by tactical supremacy.
This is why the US Army started taking the Russian Operational Art seriously, rejecting the German apologists who had influenced early Cold War thinking. This is also why the doctrine of forward defence (a political nonsense to appease the Germans) changed to Airland Battle, when they realised that the former was totally inadequate in conventionally deterring the Soviets. The Russians in turn, studied the change and changed their approach, resurrecting operational manoeuvre groups OMG’s as a stop-gap solution, but that’s another story.
‘There is no more ideologically driven poster in this bar than your rabid anti-communism’
It’s not a rejection based on ideology but experience. I lived behind the Iron Curtain, experiencing Communism not at as political theory, as I suspect it’s staunchest advocates here have, but as a day-to-day reality, big difference.
‘You lose badly in a reasoned debate with Bevin.
I very much doubt your a fair arbiter, but I don’t tend to debate ideologues like Bevin,, it’s a waste of time and effort, tending just to correct the record and give my personal perspective. My ‘expertise’ is mainly military, the political intrudes into how that impacts this field, but I am interested in socio-military affairs, especially the impact on warfares outcomes being not simply a mechanistic number crunching, but as a result of the mental battles being fought.
‘And based on the type of car you both drive it looks like he has a bigger todger than you as well.’
First I’m accused of working for Goldman Sachs, now my car, and by association my manhood is smaller than another poster’s. To my knowledge we haven’t discussed cars, and given he’s a lefty I doubt he’d be seen either driving, preferring the socially and environmentally responsible miseries of cycling or taking public transport, or, if forced to so, drive a hybrid or EV. Neither of which I would entertain for moral reasons of my own.
As for cars and todgers, I’ll let Jeremy Clarkson comment, ‘we all know Ferrari is the Italian for I have a small penis’.
Posted by: Milites | Dec 21 2023 19:12 utc | 187
Posted by: Roger | Dec 21 2023 19:27 utc | 191
As I said, I don’t debate with ideologues whose experiences are largely based on reading historiographies that match their initial belief, self-confirmation cycles might suit a psychological need but they only lead to eventual disappointment.
‘The Soviet military rapidly learnt and won through a mixture of the quality and scale of equipment (e.g. the T34)’, Spoken by someone who has never sat in one! Russian troops, operating Lend Lease M4’s had to lock the hatches shut, when they were absent from the vehicle, otherwise troops would cut off the genuine leather seat covers to resole their boots, those tankers also loved the ride, fast turret traverse and highly effective 76mm cannon and often spearheaded assaults in the latter part of the war. Soviet design parameters only focused on ease of manufacture and functionality, quality never came into the equation, actually being seen as an unnecessary diversion, as again someone with real knowledge of the systems would know. Pick up a fully loaded PPSH and an MP 40 and get back to me about quality, or look through the average Soviet optic, or aircraft canopy compared to a Zeiss or a German machine.
Like most leftists you think stating something magically makes it a reality. I never realised Napoleon had retreated from Moscow only to drive to the Volga, destroying entire Army groups, because that’s what the German Army did, only failing in its objectives due to strategic incompetence and operational vacillation. Even after losing an entire Army Corps it still carved its way through prepared defences, inflicting anything up to 5-8: kill ratios, leading to having to create the Prokhorovka Myth, that was still blindly regurgitated by Western historians until the last decade. Again, tactical superiority was paired with operational blindness and strategic incompetence, the greatest failing of an Army is being unfit to fight the war it is required to fight.
‘top-down command and the use mass and firepower to overcome an enemy” against the fluid, flexible and genius Germans, pure Aryan supremacist BS.’
Not at all, typical emotional rejections to counter simple realities, like the fact that the Germans had more radios in their vehicles and infantry formations, that German soldiers spent nearly a year in training before full combat deployments and had an emphasis on NCO competency, whereas the Russians focused on the strategic disciplines, which allowed mass and firepower to work in their favour, especially when wielded by experts in the operational art, especially when borrowing from German schwerepunkt tactics, alloyed with the art of maskirovka. These lead operational units took staggering losses to Western observers, even up to ‘45, but Russia’s strength has always been manpower and she used it effectively. After all, it was the hammer and sickle flag flying over her enemies capital, not vice versa, which is the real seal of victory, not OGefr’s Hassel’s squad destroying three Is-2’s and decimating their accompanying infantry, in that shattered capital.
‘Rommel had repeatedly destroyed large British forces only to be denied the forces required for a full victory, and he fought a superb retreat back from El Alamein.’
But you previously told me the notion of the fluid, flexible Germans (pre-requisites for a fighting retreat) was Aryan BS, or were the Soviet Army of ‘42 superior to the British in tactical engagements? You’re either delusional or inconsistent, your choice.
The rest of your post just reinforces the impression you have a token surface knowledge, gleaned from approved sources, but no real depth of understanding about the events you talk of. Hat tip,, the US supplied one half of the explosives Russia needed and one third the trucks, which I believe are quite important factors to an army that’s based on its artillery arm!
As for today, even the Russians complain about top down command structures not being able to quickly exploit opportunities, or the quality of middle ranking commanders being inconsistent, something the SMO is helping identify. Watching some of the footage of Russian combat operations, you realise how far they have travelled, and how far they have to go.
As for goat herders and guns, perhaps talk to some people who were in the ‘sandboxes’ and have a chat about ROE’s to see how fatuous that last jibe was. Again, professional soldiers let down by strategic and political incompetence, not the other way around.
Posted by: Milites | Dec 21 2023 22:04 utc | 200
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