From "The Analyst":
RUSSIA WAR: MILITARILY UNSUSTAINABLE? YES OR NO?
The word unsustainable comes up more often than I would to admit when it comes to Russian military practice.
Their casualties are often described that way, their use of artillery the same, the endless attacks launched by armoured vehicles, again, always unsustainably.
So how is Russia still in the war? If it’s all so unsustainable how come are they sustaining the front? 2.5 years on and the war is still raging. It’s a fair question and there are answers.
You can go back to the start of the war and you will regularly see the Russians using 50-60 vehicles, a mix of tanks and IFV/APC types of varying age and qualities.
Where are they now? It’s rare if Russia uses as many as 20. They did so the other week - twice and it grabbed headlines because nobody had seen such a high vehicle use since October last year. Most of those used were destroyed.
You have to remember that the Russians had staggering numbers of vehicles from the Cold War era in storage. Tens of thousands of them. And they have, over the course of the war, been used up and for the most part are around 95% depleted. That vast Soviet legacy has been lost, incinerated in battles with Ukraine. What is left is either unusable or parts donors for operational vehicles.
The days when they were firing 60,000 rounds of 152mm per day - and they were, have long gone. Nowadays it’s down to a max of around 10,000, if that. The reason isn’t lack of shells - they have more than overcome that problem. What they have lost is the guns and the SPG’s that fire them. Thousands of pieces have been lost. And there’s no replacements.
When you look at daily losses of Russian military equipment- something like 40% is civilian motorcycles, vans, ATV’s and golf buggies, quad bikes etc. The tanks and IFV’s and APC’s have largely vanished. This is what unsustainable looks like in the field. Because what they had is gone, losses were unsustainable and they’ve had to make do with what they can find.
They have moved their single prototype S-500 from Moscow to Kerch because 15 SAM systems were lost in a few weeks. They have nothing else. They recently moved the last of their S-300’s from the far east out in the Kuril Islands, to Crimea and are now moving them again before they get destroyed.
When Finland declared for NATO Russia built up its forces on the Finnish border. They have now gone to the front in Ukraine. Kaliningrad exclave is effectively undefended.
All of this shows decisive levels of unsustainable behaviour.
Russian expenses are financially unsustainable, industrially unsustainable - Russian doesn’t have the capability or even capacity to build new military vehicles at a pace where it can even maintain its losses. Even in manpower shortages have shown their unsustainable nature.
Last year Bakhmut took up the lives of some 75,000 jailed prisoners - almost every one of them killed in combat. There are no replacements. That is unsustainable.
It’s clear that Russia has a manpower recruitment issue and uses increasingly complex surveillance and legal methods to ensure Russian men can’t get away or hide from conscription.
They repeatedly allow poorly trained men to go into combat and fail. Despite this they wonder why their troops are such poor quality and why they’re afraid to join up and be sent to the front. It’s becoming increasingly unsustainable, but is not likely to become a crisis. The police state will always find men.
To say that Russia’s war is sustainable is simply wrong. Sooner or later the second and third and even fourth tier replacements for lost equipment will become just as impossible - and more to the point incapable - of waging war.
Such vast reserves as Russia had has squandered on this war. There’s no going back. It’s going to get worse for them. It’s already way worse than they ever imagined.
This war is unsustainable for many more reasons, but it takes time to make it visible and to have an effect you can identify. The fact we can now identify and see it with our own eyes, proves it.
CONTINUES…
Russia is waging an unsustainable war. It cannot go on for ever and the longer it lasts the worse it will get for them.
The question was, is the war sustainable for Russia’s military? Yes or no? The answer is unquestionably, NO.
Slava Ukraini !
firefighters”
