It's really interesting to see the videos, and reports state that the most effective troops in the war so far on Putin's side have been chechens and dagestanis, other caucasian minorities. That 20 years ago, they were the Ukrainians. We like to lump them into one big category "Russians." Imagine 20 years from now, Russia invades Latvia, and the frontline soldier is the baby in the womb of a Ukrainian mother hiding in a bomb shelter right now.
What Putin has been doing is sending columns of caucasian forces to probe down highways. Russia has 9k T72s and 4.5k T80s. These are ancient low value clunkers, 50 year old metal cages. Old BTRs, old BMPs, Kamaz trucks, Tigrs. Put caucasian soldiers in them, drive them until the gas runs out, and fend for themselves. He can do that all day.
The way I see Putin's invasion is like a couple I knew. They struggled with money, but they always wanted kids. Then, a financial emergency took place, they had to use up everything they had saved. Months later, they were pregnant. And I asked them "I thought you had been saving up?" And they said, basically, "we realized that we're never going to have the money, this is always something we have wanted, so we might as well now."
After the 2014 crimea invasion and the ensuing sanctions, the Russia economy contracted drastically in only a few years. This forced them to repeatedly cut their military spending budget. And the sad thing is, they had to discontinue most of their modernization programmes both ground forces, naval especially, also air, etc. The economy was barely recovering when the 2020 pandemic hit and shook the economy again. Putin is almost 70. At the rate that the Russian economy was growing even before the pandemic, it would be decades before they reached economic superpower status again, and the tax revenue increased so that they could modernize their military and perform operations with state of the art technology, which they have even developed but they don't have in bulk quantities. Putin figured this was something he always wanted, he's not going to be able to do it effectively in his lifetime, so this is him just going for it.
The west has this narrative of "Ukraine the underdog." Maybe someone who is more of a military head than me can explain to me the rational. It's often cited that Russia has over 1 million active soldiers, but only 150k of them were at the border. Russia only committed a third of its amassed forces, about 50,000 soldiers, in the first 3 days of the invasion. Ukraine's active military has over 200k soldiers, not counting reserves, so they outnumbered the Russians at least 4 to 1, realistically much more. By the 4th day that increased to 80k, by yesterday it was 100k, probably more by today. Nevertheless, even the 150k is honestly not enough. More troops may be on the way, but common sense would indicate that invading a country of 40 million, you'd want at least double that. Also, on the technological front in ground forces warfare, the battle is pretty even. As I mentioned above, Russia hasn't been able to fund its weapons modernization programme, so it's clunkers vs. clunkers. An upgraded T-64 piece of garbage against a T-72 piece of garbage. It's pretty even. Ukraine also has T-72s, T-80s, old BMPs, old BTRs, against Russia's old versions of the same. But again, Ukraine has more operators, since Russian's invasion force is small. So on the ground, Ukraine should be expected to prevail, all other things equal.
Where Russia should have the advantage is naval and air. And that can tip the ground forces war back in their favor. But Russia has been extremely reserved up until the past 2 or 3 days with its use of artillery. The US reports I believe something to the effect of only 430 missiles have been launched. We know Russia has significantly more than that. They haven't targeted any critical infrastructure, gas, water, electrical. This is problematic because weapons reinforcements are arriving from the west as we speak. In a long drawn-out dogfight, Ukraine has a few advantages, namely if they can continually be resupplied, they can basically outlast the Russians simply because no invading Russian force will have greater numbers than the Ukrainian army, and all of its reservists, and all of its conscripts, etc. Secondly, as time wears on, the sanctions from the west will hurt more and more, which will pose a threat to Putin at home. I surmised yesterday my speculation on what his motives are. He is mistakenly of the belief that he can, with an attempt at surgical limited warfare, essentially win over the support of the Ukrainian people. As I said before, he is a very busy man who tries to be a robber and worry about the ethics of being a robber at the same time.
I understand there's an attempt at encirclement. It makes sense in theory, block off all the paths in and out of the city, prevent munitions shipments, eventually they will run out of bullets. Groups of russian, in many case caucasian, units have been racing around cities in order to try to envelop them. One the one hand the results are inconsistent, because these groups are meant to be disposable, poorly trained units with clunker technology, they tend to be easily captured or killed. And they are literally treated as disposable. Russia captured an anti-aircraft battalion outside of Kharkiv on day 3 in what was a big breakthrough at the time, allowing them briefly to send units into the city, but because it was a time sensitive window, they only sent with only a few soldiers in Tigr-Ms. Conventional wisdom might suggest save your troops for the future, most of these troops were killed or captured, their vans were captured. It seemed like a pointless gesture other than to say "hey look, we breached your defense briefly."
But at best this method is slow, as ammunition runs out slower than fuel or water, or food in the event of a power outage (no storage). Until a city is fully encircled, it can continue to be supplied and resupplied. Only Mariupol is fully encircled. And even after that, with continuous and uninterrupted access to gas, electricity, and water, they can continue to weather the storm for weeks or even months, at which point the scale of the war tips in the favor of Ukraine.
I think Putin has obsessed himself with this image of the savior of Ukraine. I think Putin will soon have to decide if he is going to save Ukraine, or go to war with Ukraine. He cannot do both, and if he tries to do both, he will do neither.
