It is day 100 of the Ukraine War.
Russia's initial efforts to seize Kyiv and secure regime change in all of Ukraine failed, disgracing its grossly incompetent military force in the process.
But Russia has gained control of about 13% more of Ukraine's territory in Eastern Ukraine than it had immediately before it attacked on February 24, 2022, mostly in areas with large ethnic Russian populations.
This has come at a high cost, however, with Russia estimated to have lost 20% to 33% of its initial invasion force of about 150,000 military personnel (including many generals and senior officers), with serious losses of armored vehicles, some naval vessels in the Russian Black Sea fleet, depletion of Russia's supplies of its most sophisticated guided weapons, and some Russian military aircraft. Russia does not have air superiority over the parts of Ukraine that it does not control and Ukraine still has a functional air force and significant anti-aircraft resources.
Ukraine has also suffered serious losses of military personnel and military equipment as well as very significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian equipment and buildings.
The war has also resulted in swift and severe economic and diplomatic sanctions, both legally mandated and privately determined, and to withdrawals of foreign business investments and cancelations of foreign business deals, to a largely unprecedented level, against Russia and Belorussia.
Natural gas exports from Russia to Western Europe have been seriously disrupted and ceased in some areas. Petroleum exports from Russia have also been rebuffed by much of the world.
The West has united in providing Ukraine with immense military aid, but not troops, out of fears that doing so would trigger a nuclear war with Russia. The West has also grown united in presenting a common front against Russia, just as Russia, weakened by its military losses in Ukraine is weaker than ever in terms of its available conventional military resources.
Ukrainian Territory Lost To Russia
Russia currently occupies about 20% of Ukraine's territory, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says in a video address to Luxembourg's parliament."We have to defend ourselves against almost the entire Russian army. All combat-ready Russian military formations are involved in this aggression," he said, adding that the front lines of battle stretched across more than 1,000 km.
From here.
Image from the Washington Post depicting the situation immediately prior to the Ukraine War. According to a 2001 census, more than 50 percent of the population in Crimea and Donetsk identified Russian as their native language.
Ukraine has an area of 232,032 square miles (603,650 sq. km), of which 7.1% was occupied by Russia immediately prior to the current Ukraine war (according to the World Almanac and Book of Facts 2022), which it mostly seized control of in 2014.
The area of the Crimean Peninsula is 10,425 square miles (4.5% of the total area of Ukraine), so this was about 2.6% of Ukraine (6,033 square miles) outside the Crimean Peninsula was occupied pre-war.
If Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukraine's territory, this is about 46,406 square miles, including about 35,981 square miles outside the Crimean Peninsula. This is down from the peak area that it controlled in the current war, but is still significant.
In the past 100 days, Russia has gained control of about an additional 29,948 square miles, essentially all in Eastern Ukraine to the east of the Dnieper River.
Nationalist And Political Dimensions
Russia has gained control mostly in or adjacent to places with a significant Russian language speaking population.
Russian control of these areas also tips the balance within "rump" Ukraine towards the West, by stripping out a large share of the population of Ukraine that is politically pro-Russian leaning, although Russia's military actions alone has also hardened people in Ukraine who were softly Russian leaning or ambivalent against Russia.
Before the 2014 invasion, Ukraine was almost perfectly split 50-50 between Western leaning voters, mostly in the West, and Russian leaning voters, mostly in the East and Crimea. The 2014 invasion, by removing the most strongly pro-Russian voters in Ukraine from the electorate, tipped the balance decisively in favor of Western learning political forces in the country.
Other Conflicts Related To The Soviet Union's Demise
Ukraine isn't the only country which was formerly a Soviet Republic with Russian allied separatist controlled territory as the map below (from the same source as the one above) indicates.
According to the Washington Post story:
These “frozen conflicts” have been around since after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. They exist in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Moldova and Georgia and are widely seen as part of the Kremlin’s larger strategy to extend influence and evade sanctions.For example, a 2018 Washington Post investigation found that in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine, officials transfer money to the Russian-supported breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia, where the funds are then wired to Russia. Russia then uses the money to pay for goods that are shipped directly to eastern Ukraine.In Transnistria, pro-Russian separatists broke away from Moldova in 1991, saying they identified more with Ukraine and Russia than with the newly formed Moldova republic that was more linked to Romania.Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, became a disputed region after the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of both countries. In September 2020, thousands of troops were killed and entire villages were displaced in a bloody conflict that lasted six weeks. The eventual peace deal was brokered by Putin, showing how Russia has become a key power broker in a conflict that dates to the Soviet era. Russian peacekeepers now patrol the enclave.Abkhazia and South Ossetia have effectively broken away from Georgia with Russian help, both declaring independence in the early 1990s and remaining strategically linked to the Kremlin.
But the size of the other separatist areas, the military scale of the operations, and the brazenness of the unilateral Russian military attack in Ukraine was far greater in its case.
Does it make strategic sense to capture a 3 million city without destroying it? Could there have been other possible goals e.g. test if the government might sue for peace in the event it lacks population support or as a diversion to freeze opponent forces while attacking elsewhere? That the Russian convoy ran out of fuel, supplies would be extraordinary and needs an extraordinary explanation. That a stationary column sat for weeks without being destroyed by an opponent with air capability is also extraordinary. Is stupidity extraordinary enough?
ReplyDelete"That the Russian convoy ran out of fuel, supplies would be extraordinary and needs an extraordinary explanation. That a stationary column sat for weeks without being destroyed by an opponent with air capability is also extraordinary. Is stupidity extraordinary enough?"
ReplyDeleteIn the case of Russia, stupidity is ample explanation. Russia has long favored creating an appearance of strength despite its hollow military, as have countries like North Korea guided by its sensibilities.
"Does it make strategic sense to capture a 3 million city without destroying it?"
Yes. What is the point of destroying a city? Usually, you want to capture it as the spoils of victory.
"Could there have been other possible goals e.g. test if the government might sue for peace in the event it lacks population support or as a diversion to freeze opponent forces while attacking elsewhere?"
There could be, but stupidity is still an excellent explanation.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2022.2078044
ReplyDeleteA Brutal Examination: Russian Military Capability in Light of the Ukraine War
Do we have reliable non partisan information on Russian military competence or are we mainly left by comparing results like satellite maps of positions and recent military conflict timelines? I think clearly the latter given what can be expected from war propaganda.
ReplyDeleteRussian territory gains triple in 3 months against a peer opponent (tactical, not strategic). Iraq, Afghanistan, Balkan wars provide some similarities but are not between peers. Evidence of mass destruction on scale of Fallujah, Grozny (Dresden for hyperbole?
Pejoratives and name calling are not a good signs for strong argument position.
@Morris39
ReplyDeleteThere is ample evidence for lack of Russian military competence from non-Ukrainian experts relying on journalists, video, satellite photos , and other results on the ground. And there is quite a bit of third-party confirmation of equipment losses and retreats from previously Russian held positions. There is always a fog of war, but it is more transparent this time than almost any war preceding it.
Some of it is just plain obvious to anyone. Troops stalling in a straight line convoy running out of food and gas and getting lost are purely a matter of incompetence at some level.
Some of it takes experts to comprehend, like Russian troops cowering in armored vehicles rather than rushing out to engage Ukrainians taking them on, or Russian troops crossing a river at the same point over and over again and getting decimated by Ukrainian artillery fire, or proceeding into a small town where they are boxed in too carelessly. Russia's failure to gain air superiority despite having a much larger air force than Ukraine.
We have long known that Russian aircraft pilots don't get many training hours. We have long known that a significant share of Russian troops (about 20%) are minimally trained conscripts.
Also, in fairness, I am using the word "competence" loosely to also include equipment that isn't up to snuff, like Russian troops using outdated guns and tanks, "jack in the box" design flaws with Russian tanks, an apparent exhaustion of Russian supplies of guided missiles and bombs inferred from their non-use and tactics, etc. that contributes to its hollow military.
"Russia estimated to have lost 20% to 33% of its initial invasion force of about 150,000 military personnel"
ReplyDelete33% would be 50,000 dead out of 150,000. I think you need to find a new source of estimates - those ones sound about ten times too big.
@Mitchell
ReplyDeleteThese would include wounds not mortal. Deaths are about a third of that number.
The 33% figure is from the U.K. Ministry of Defense. The 20% figure of from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Should the war turn out quite badly for Ukraine/NATO do you foresee this as a possibility viewed from the present situation? If indeed that turns out I would like to see your analysis. Would you consider doing that?
ReplyDeleteThe war could easily turn out quite badly for Ukraine. Indeed, there is little doubt that any resolution will leave Ukraine worse off than it was before the invasion.
ReplyDeleteThe toll of Ukrainian dead and wounded is great. Those who haven't been physically injured have still be traumatized. Vast numbers of Ukrainians are refugees. The damage to Ukrainian cities and the Ukrainian economy is huge (while property damage and civilian casualties in Russia have been minimal). Ukraine has lost a lot of territory in the East and is unlikely to reclaim all of it, although in exchange Ukraine is more politically united, has a greater sense of national identity, and has far more friends in the international community.
In a worst case scenario for Ukraine, Russia could end up occupying a huge swath of Ukrainian territory without large Russian speaking populations producing a long and ugly insurgency. I don't think that total regime change in Ukraine is realistically a possible outcome of this conflict at this point.
NATO is another story. Short of a nuclear war, it is hard to see how NATO comes out worse than the position it was in pre-invasion, given what has already happened so far.
NATO is more united. NATO is very likely to gain Sweden and Finland as members. Russia's supply of high end conventional warfare arms and group troops has been significantly depleted in ways that can't be promptly replaced. The weaknesses and strength of Russian military systems and tactics have been demonstrated in the real world providing NATO with new insights into what works and what doesn't in resisting Russian aggression. Russia's economy has been crippled and quite a bit of that like brain drain, loss of credibility in honoring contracts, and long term foreign disinvestment can't be quickly restored. NATO countries have been forced to find some way to have energy independence from Russia now, and as a result Russia won't have that leverage over them in the future. NATO countries have dumped a lot of their medium old military systems into Ukraine in order to clear the decks for them to replenish their military forces with state of the art systems.
Loss of Russian petroleum is just a price bump for gasoline and diesel and heating oil in Europe, just as it is in the U.S. A minor inconvenience that won't last terribly long.
Loss of Russian natural gas supplies is the biggest downside to Europe and that could cause real hardship in the short to medium term as it is very hard to replace. But Europe really has no choice at this point but to end its natural gas dependence upon Russia, whether it wants to or not, despite the great pain involved in doing so. How that gets worked out is hard to predict.
@ Andrew
ReplyDeleteMaybe question wasn't clear. To repeat, are you open to analysing the situation after the dust settles and compare it to your prediction, particularly if your predictions do not (quite) materialize? I am interested but of course that seldom happens.
I am always open to reviewing my predictions against what happened, although sometimes issues that were once hot fall off my radar screen, so I sometimes need to be reminded at the time the dust settles.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I have an outstanding prediction that China will suffer a major recession in a particular time frame that is nearing its end, and I will review that prediction then.
"The bottom 50 percent of wars have an average of about 2,900 battle deaths, while the top 50 percent have an average of 653,000, and it is effectively a coin-flip which half any given war will end up in. In Ukraine, after three months and with no end in sight, Western analysts estimate at least 20,000 fatalities, putting this war well into the top half of conflicts. . . . In the deadlier half of wars, 10 percent have over a million battle deaths — what is stopping the Ukraine conflict from reaching that number? . . . The…war could become one of the largest wars — measured in terms of fatalities — in history."
ReplyDeletehttps://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/06/how-bad-is-the-ukraine-war-going-to-be.html