Kill ratios

I wish I was as smart as these military people or Philips O' Brien

Rob Lee @RALee85

Key section from this good piece. The ratio of losses worsened for Ukraine once it lost control of Bakhmut’s flanks. The conditions are less favorable for defending Bakhmut than Vuhledar/elsewhere and Kyiv needs as many forces as possible for its strategically critical offensive.

Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof

Wagner’s disposable penal battalions pose a unique danger to Ukraine: no other force, not even the Russian army, can advance with a wave after wave of near-suicidal assaults. My @WSJ report from the Bakhmut frontline 📸 ⁦@ManuBrabo⁩ https://t.co/kGiN3b1Ohz

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@RALee85 @Biz_Ukraine_Mag @HistorianBlood well ain’t that a doozy. Nobody figured this out before. @BuddNicholas @WriteBenSkipper Nobody could have known.

FFS.

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

What if both sides have suffered devastating? This war has been on magic Winter War kill:ratio mythology since day one whole @HistorianBlood raged against this analogy.Spoiler Finland lost badly especially in terms of 2 lost generations.Send NATO in. @BuddNicholas @konrad_muzyka https://t.co/WewmnJjGfI

ISW @TheStudyofWar

#Russian forces have been fighting to take #Bakhmut, a city with a pre-war population of roughly 70,000 people, since roughly May 2022 and have suffered devastating casualties in the process. (1/7) https://t.co/CXkQy8ut5c https://t.co/W3KFjGln73

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

The question is how many Ukrainian civilians and soldiers die before Putin is stopped? Which is the question we raised in our podcast coming out Tuesday. Spencer’s statement is exactly what you would expect from a kill-ratio US COIN ‘specialist’. @HistorianBlood @BenRigbyJourno

John Spencer @SpencerGuard

Putin has lost his illegal war in Ukraine. He doesn’t have the means to break the will of the Ukrainian people to continue fighting. He doesn’t have the means to break the will of the west supporting Ukraine. The only question is how many Russian soldiers die before he stops?

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@BuddNicholas @SashoTodorov1 @HistorianBlood @RUSI_org More casualties doesn’t change the ratio - weapon type, medic availability and evacuation methods significantly change. Perhaps on the Rus side things get bad say at Bakhmut

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@ChPalme @SashoTodorov1 what’s your Junior officer to private kill ratio in WW2?

Nick Budd @BuddNicholas

@DustinDuCane @FinestYew @militaryhistori I could speak of many more stories told directly from friends and relatives of Ukrainian combatants, but I can assure you. The word ‘easy’ or casualty ratio numbers are never mentioned. ‘It’s hard’ is the common denominator. I mention how analysts speak of such ratios. 3)

Alex Almeida @AlexAlmeida2020

@SashoTodorov1 @BuddNicholas @DustinDuCane @FinestYew @militaryhistori Not sure how much we should read into it but this bit from Milley also seems to suggest a relatively even loss ratio

nytimes.comRussia and Ukraine each have suffered over 100,000 casualties, the top U.S. general says.Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the coming winter months an opportune time for the two sides to hold peace talks, though that prospect appears dim.

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@TheVoicesOfWar @eugene_finkel Ukraine is losing its best soldiers because war but everybody quality had a turn in service thx to the Donbass war after 2014. The smart fit healthy Russians are avoiding service like the plague while ‘elite’ VDV are dead and/or rubbish.

AND MY MOST PERTINENT TWEET ON SUBJECT

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@HistorianBlood hate these comparisons and so do mostly I, but as a flawed analogy -> Kursk risk. New tech, last of trained plus reserves, slap into defenses and vast reserves. @BuddNicholas @warmatters @konrad_muzyka

Shashank Joshi @shashj

Exactly the warning I’ve heard from several officials.⁦@Jack_Watling⁩: “The risk – not a prediction – is that if Ukraine commits its reserves to a spring offensive and takes heavy casualties it could become vulnerable later in the year.” https://t.co/m8gA2ujVuc

Yeah, instead of an offensive we have a last stand annihilating Ukrainian reserves. Maybe there will be an offensive to follow. Hopefully not Kursk like.

Plus Nick Budd on similar subject:

Nick Budd @BuddNicholas

The short term challenge Ukraine faced was that if it committed to offensive operations early in the year it might exhaust its reserves and lose a critical number of armoured vehicles, leaving it vulnerable to Russia later in the year. 4)

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@BuddNicholas Kursk!

Who knew?

Dustin Du Cane @DustinDuCane

@BuddNicholas Yes. It’s still 300k (?). Ukraine doesn’t have endless reserves and even at 3:1 Russia can win. @SashoTodorov1 has threads on this and should write a post for Fallout.

Who could have called it?

This from an email from January 23 to my co-authors:

Thought for the week, did Clausewitzian fixation on destruction of enemy troops, mass, lose the Eastern Front when a drive on Moscow and the heart of the empire would have been deadly for Stalin and led at worst to a peace with a new regime.

And is Ukraine at the Kursk stage where it will have superior equipment and soldiers but tries a bold maneuver which will destroy its reserves while Russia gets stronger. 

But instead of an attack which at least could have given a victory, we have Ukraine draining it reserves in a defense of a worthless strategically city. Stalingrad or Kursk?

Discussed here and in other podcasts:

The Adjutants Lounge Audio

And of course two weeks ago:

Putin's Anaconda Plan: One Year On

The supplies have forced Ukraine from a sound strategic response to the war and into stop-gap battlefield management. Holding the front at all costs, retaining lost ground at all costs, are honourable operational decisions but are limiting Ukraine’s strategic options. Ideas of giving up ground for a better strategic position are heckled as cowardly or defeatist, which takes us back to why positive propaganda has become a curse to Ukraine’s warfighting. Ukraine has acquired the defender’s dilemma, even after fighting serious defensive battles, the lines have barely changed. But Ukrainian exhaustion is beginning to show, and the Russians have not retreated but on the contrary are getting stronger.

I think we deserve a coffee, chaps.

Its frankly depressing and demotivating to see nonsense hack writers like Philips “Not an original thought” O’ Brien or MAGA genocidal (I have the receipts) Trent Telenko be viewed as oracles.

Update 15 March 2023

Ralph Janik @RalphJanik

What if Russia “wins” this war?

kyivindependent.comBattle of Bakhmut: Ukrainian soldiers worry Russians begin to ‘taste victory’Editor’s note: The Kyiv Independent is not revealing the soldiers’ surnames or the exact location of their deployment due to security concerns amid the ongoing war. Some military personnel spoke without the authorization of their commanders or a press officer.

Update 12 March 2023

Rob Lee @RALee85

1: Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces 2: The attrition ratio became worse once Russia seized the northern flank in mid/late-Feb 3: The attrition ratio in Bakhmut is worse than elsewhere 4: The % of Russian casualties from elite units is higher elsewhere

Status-6 @Archer83Able

Rob was in Bakhmut personally, so I think that he has some awareness of how things look on the ground there. Some of the replies are ridiculous.

Rob Lee @RALee85

1: Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces 2: The attrition ratio became worse once Russia seized the northern flank in mid/late-Feb 3: The attrition ratio in Bakhmut is worse than elsewhere 4: The % of Russian casualties from elite units is higher elsewhere https://t.co/slQUgaZ3Wd

Update 5 March 2024

Kursk mentioned.

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