What is the war actually developing towards now? Looking for realistic analysis

4 comments

1. What I mean with ”they won the war” I mean that the russians think they won the war and been saying it 24/7 so hard to gauge battlefield situation from either side.

2. Now, I am not a serious analyst, but I believe to have a solidly informed military opinion even if it may be a few weeks out of date at this point:

   To start from the beginning,
   After the initial land loss to Russia which was to be expected, Russian expeditionary forces quickly ran out of fuel, famously often literally so. The Ukrainian armed forces meanwhile mounted a long planned defense, while beginning to rapidly mobilize the country.
   As Russia slowly fed increasingly more troops and equipement into Ukraine, the Ukrainians equally increased their own capabilitys and readiness . Notably, over the months of the conflict the Ukrainians kept growing in efficiency as they refined their methods, while Russia, uncaring of resource retention because of it’s huge stockpiles, increasingly send less and less effective resources.

   Together with international support on all fronts, the Ukrainian position reached a point of such a rapid growth in strength compared to the Russian efforts that not only large, but huge breakthroughs were made, which were followed up by many more equally impressive achievements, which sadly decreased in scope over time as Russian logistics slowly began to generate the mass necessary to make up the difference in effectiveness.

   Through drastic Russian efforts such as large changes in leadership and inhumane efforts such as the Destruction of the Kahkovka Damn (*please do correct my spelling*), the trend of this powerbalance then continued slowly, and aided by the beginning of seasons which made combat operations increasingly difficult for many months, the conflict began to mostly come to a stalemate. This is in the vaguest sense still the case today, with no truly major gains being made by either side at the moment. Individual villages and at times pieces of the front line are in danger, but efforts of both sides most often end up equallising.

   In recent Months specifically the Ukrainian military leadership seems to be going on a course of mostly if not fully defending against the aggressor. The Ukrainian efforts all along the frontline are mostly about protecting and securing already held terrain and population centers, or giving up minor gains at the best possible rate that can be realistically achieved, with a large focus of creating as much attrition among the enemy as possible. Low risk strategies like drones, long distance precision artillery and forms of sabotage find constant use here. The target is not to destroy the enemy, but to weaken them continually so that the Russians will be (relatively) easily defeated by whatever the next large offensive is planned to be. Likely, this offensive is still notably in the future. This defensive strategy has held on for long enough to also allow the Russians plenty of time to harden their own defenses, making attack plans against them harder as time pases, and so delaying these plans that are already on ice for the time being even more.

   As such minor attacks by both sides are of course still numerous, even if potentially not esspecially meaningful in the grand scale, losses do mount on both sides. By comparing various estimates over a long period of time I believe the current rate of loss to be something like 2 Russians KIA for every Ukrainian taken out of frontline service. There are of course large exceptions like the Russian (read: Wagner) attacks on Bakhmut for example, where the Russian losses in manpower are vastly worse, even if arguably their loss of effectiveness is small comparative to the numbers. Do also note that these numbers count *only* members of the Russian armed forces as Russian losses, but do not include the losses of the various minor factions that have been coerced onto russias side, such as the forces made up from the occupied parts of Ukraine who are forced to fight on the Russian side.

   I personally believe that the Ukrainian military is currently waiting to be able to effectively field modern Fighter Aircraft. The freedom allowed by the sorties they could fly as well as the capabilitys they offer, let alone through the creation of strategic pockets of Air superiority (after current, thurough preparation through planned destruction of select enemy capabilitys), would be an enormous boon.
   The Ukrainian strategy has continually been to bring as much pain against the enemy as is possible while still providing its own warriors the highest possible grade of protection. If I’m not entirely mistaken several press statements have already said that they would be waiting to complete their set of modern capabilitys, increasing their chances and decreasing risks as much as possible in order to most effectively follow this plan before further grand breakthroughs should be expected I.e. would be planned and executed.

3. Former Psy ops soldier here for an Sf ODA team. When the beginning of the war happen our leadership was poring resources in intel and other areas ,we would work 24 hour shift contractors overtime everyday. I sat down with a high GS service official back in 2023 and he said our generals were dupped into thinking that Ukraine was using money for the war when in reality for every dollar we sent over 60 cents went into corruption and so that was the real divide for future aid. I was also told that Ukraine was never going to win the war because the people who wanted to fight are dead and injured and the people who didn’t want to fight are gone out of the country . The problem is not equipment its personnel. We missed our opportunity to end this war when we had peace talks in turkey . Now it’s a losing war . We know it and Europe knows it .

4. what this means is, that its a stalemate or a very very very slow advance for russia and they need the positive propaganda in order to get more meat for the meatgrinder