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Russia ‘losing 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/world
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[–] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The Russian commitment to meatwave tactics in the face of such disastrous results against superior tech, strategy, and tactics is a sight to behold.

They’re blowing the whistles and charging into machine gun fire circa WW1.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago*

    The YouTube channel Perun has an excellent video on the actual tactics ans nature of the front lines at the moment.

    The TLDR, is its part WW1 in term of it being a defence and artillery dominated battlefield, but neither side has the manpower to concentrate defenders into solid lines, so you get a large grey zone of trenches and basements with small teams infiltrating hundreds of meters beyond eachother.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Didn't Russia stop using "meatwave tactics" long time ago? Now i keep hearing that they send only few people to show that they conquer more terrain than they acually do. Which one is it? Is it the same story as russia being so weak that is about to collapse any moment, but at the same time strong enough to threaten europe? Schrödinger Russia

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago

    Both can be true in this case, they have the population to sustain it, however the economy is on borrowed time, just like any war. Ukraine is attacking the economy. So the war weariness is increasing. The population has a constant supply of new births however unless you maintain the economy it won't grow on its own, unless you capture more land or production facilities.

    It's how the us effectively lost the Vietnam war, it was a political loss, the war weariness caught up on them. Yes they won ever battle, yes they still had the manufacturing output, however they had to pull out. The same thing is happening right now in the us-iran war, and probably why troops haven't engaged in a land invasion yet.

    I do get what you are thinking, it sounds like fascist propaganda that the enemy is weak and strong at the same time, but I think it falls apart a bit once propaganda becomes an actual war, and economies are involved

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    • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Does this mean the war will end soon? Or is this exaggerated, like the stories we've heard every month since the start of the conflict?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    Paradoxically, if Russia were running out of troops to continue the war, I would expect the war to escalate

    Putin cannot allow this war to end with a defeat. He is liable to be killed once the people turn on him

    To avoid that outcome, the obvious choice would be conscription when troop numbers get low. Conscription is incredibly unpopular, as we saw in 2022; therefore, Putin would need additional justification for conscription. The justification would come in the form of an additional external threat -- NATO

    NATO, obviously, has no intention of attacking Russia unless attacked themselves. Putin would need to attack NATO and provoke a response

    It appears the US has intelligence suggesting Putin planned to do just that, which spurred John Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow. A trip that closely mirrors then CIA director William Burns' 2021 trip to discourage Russia from invading Ukraine

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    • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    North Korea has entered the chat

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    and sourcing it from russian aligned countries elsewhere. Indians, south america, africans. while avoiding St petersburg and moscow at all cost.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago*

    And the Africans don't even want to be there. They're tricked into going to Russia with promises of a completely different job then once there forced into signing a contract written in Russian which is a military deployment.

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    • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    “recruit”

    Press gang to the front or hire out from mercenaries.

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    11 comments in c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz view that post
    [–] 40 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    And Ukraine needs 30k/month aka the same recruitment rate. All those poor men flung into a needless war. May Ukraine survive and come out victorious!

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Do they? Defenders traditionally only need 1/3rd the manpower of the attacker.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    That's a good average for historical wars. We don't have much data on defenders with flying grenade robots against a foe that relies on meat waves. Hopefully we never do again.

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    • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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