Attrition In Ukraine

In the Ukraine War, Russia has so far lost about 2/3 of its major army military systems like tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery batteries, in two and a half years of fighting. 

Some of its losses are being replaced with vehicles left in boneyards, but Russia is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel even there, putting tanks from the 1960s and 1970s back in service, sometimes as stationary pillboxes or filled with explosives and converted into crudely controlled unmanned ground vehicles full of explosives and used as rolling bombs. A thousand of its early T-72 tanks are too far gone and have too complex autoloading systems to restore at all.

Russia has perhaps 1,750 tanks in operation with perhaps 2,000 more fifty to sixty year old tanks that are salvageable to some extent from its bone yards. It has lost about 3,000 tanks, including the lion's share of its most advanced ones. It has lost about 10,000 artillery pieces leaving a bit more than 4,000 left. It can build only about 100 new tanks a year. It is already having to ration artillery shells, despite its depleted supply of artillery pieces, because it can't make new ones fast enough. Russia's supply of guided missiles is dwindling and can't easily be replaced. It is getting new armed drones from Iran but can't procure them as fast as it is using them.

At the rate that Russia is taking losses, by the third anniversary of the conflict it will have lost 3/4 of it army's major military systems. A year after that it will have lost 90%. Russia doesn't have enough major military equipment to keep fighting for another two full years from now.

Russia's naval and air force losses have been less severe, but it has lost about half of its Black Sea fleet, including its flagship, its headquarters in Crimea, and two submarines. At the current rate, its Black Sea fleet could be 75% depleted by the third anniversary of the war, Russia could be down to a dozen ships and armed boats or less out of an original eighty or so, by the fourth anniversary of the war. This isn't a huge blow to the overall Russian navy, although surely the Ukraine war must at least be causing Russian resources to be diverted from maintaining and expanding the Russian navy to the war (notwithstanding claims by Russian leaders that it is expanding its navy). The fact that Russia has suffered these Black Sea fleet losses from an opponent without a navy of its own and with only a limited air force also underscores how vulnerable the rest of Russia's navy is in a near peer war where its opponents have modern anti-ship missiles and modern air and sea drones.

Russia has lost more than 300 aircraft and is losing about 50 more every six months. This isn't negligible, but it also isn't crippling. But Russia's air force has been largely impotent in this conflict due to its inability to gain air superiority in the face of Ukrainian air defenses. This example also provides a roadmap for other countries wondering how to thwart Russia's immense on paper air force. And, the pace at which Ukraine is damaging Russian air assets is rising.

After some quick territorial gains relative to the 2014 status quo, it lost much of that, and there is been little progress territorially for either side since then. There is no reason to think that Russia will make any meaningful territorial gains in these time periods, indeed, Ukraine recently occupied some of its own territory.

Russia has already sustained more casualties (only about 5-6% fatal) so far, probably 500,000 to 600,000, than the entire size of its active duty military less its navy and air force, of about 400,000 ground troops, when the war began two and a half years ago. At the current rate, it will sustain perhaps 120,000 more casualties between now and the third anniversary of the conflict. By the fourth anniversary of the conflict it is on track to have suffered more than 800,000 casualties with perhaps 50,000 lives lost. Russia's losses can and have been backfilled with green conscripts and with reserve soldiers who were former conscripts or retired and have a lower level of readiness. It may have only something on the order of 50,000 group troops who haven't suffered casualties and were part of the active duty Russian army when the Ukraine war started.

These losses involving such a large percentage of the soldiers deployed to the war have a corrosive effect on morale and unit cohesion. It has, or soon will, have too few experienced soldiers at a high level of readiness to hold the new conscripts and reservists pressed into action together and functioning effectively.

Indeed, assuming that Russia suffers losses at current rates is optimistic. It has fewer major military systems and the ones it has less are inferior older models or in ill-repair. Its troops are getting steadily less skilled. Its logistics systems are being degraded. The Western supplies that Ukraine is getting are becoming more advanced, like longer range MLRS artillery missiles and F-16s.

So, while the current situation in the Ukraine war is frustrating, the current territorial stalemate and war of attrition ultimately works in Ukraine's favor because it has more access to new resources from the West than Russia does from its allies. Russia, realistically, only has the ability to continue for fight for six to eighteen months. And, of course, every month that Russia suffers more losses reduces the conventional warfare threat that it presents to NATO.

Also, as Russia's ground forces grow more depleted, the time becomes ripe for would be insurgents in ethnic minority reasons to rise up again into civil wars in their regions, knowing that Russia has only very limited military resources available to put them down. There mere threat that this could happen discourages Russia from trying to fight down to its last man and last tank in Ukraine.