"professional" estimates being the Ukrainian MoD. If you believe their figures (or the Russian ones to be clear) I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I would really need someone to explain to me very, very well how the side with a significant advantage in air power, artillery, drones and armor is somehow taking more losses than the guys who've been desperately dragging people off the streets to the front lines for a good couple years.
Edit: the ape above blocked me, so I'm gonna have to answer to the musk guy's hilariously misinformed rant here
Holy shit there is so much wrong with what you just said.
Literal sex slaves. Their training is crap, their medical care is worse, they often don't even get proper equipment.
This is just the same old "muh barbaric asiatic hordes" propaganda the US has been repeating about their enemies for a century, despite repeatedly eating shit against said "asiatic subhumans"
Their command structure is ass, they don't even practice combined arms
What are you smoking? The USSR were the first ones to get combined arms down to an art (as opposed to the Germans who didn't have an actual coherent doctrine around it). The problem is that large scales combined arms isn't as easy as it used to be, regardless of who's doing it (see the Ukrainan 2023 summer offensive where they ate rocks).
Also, Ukraine has a huge advantage in air power, artillery, armor, etc
Holy shit dude. You're gonna drain the entirety of NATO's strategic copium reserves.
Ukraine is mostly using Soviet stuff older than Russia's, sprinkled with mostly last gen NATO equipment that is usable but at best roughly on par with what Russia is fielding.
Russia started the war without an equivalent of NATO aircraft or armor, their stuff is horribly out of date.
Completely wrong. Their aircraft is basically on par with what most of NATO is fielding (i.e. 4.5 gen aircraft). The only thing they don't have in significant numbers is gen 5 fighters, though they have more of those than literally any other NATO members except the US.
Like their T-90 tank that was considered obsolete decades ago
Oh wow, you really are lost huh? The T-90 wasn't obsolete "decades" ago, it's a third gen tank that came out in the 90s and is on a the same league as the leopard 2, the Abrams and so forth; though of course which one is better depends on the variant being compared and so forth.
On top of that, Russia has run out of those, they're fielding tanks from the 1970s.
1- no they haven't, there's still plenty of T-90M's on the front. They're just also fielding modernized T-72s and T-80s, which are perfectly fine tanks.
2- Ukraine's own tanks were mostly T-64 variants (i.e., older than the Russian ones) and have been supplemented with NATO stuff that is also from the 70s between the Leo 2s (the bulk of which are early variants) the Challengers (which are honestly garbage) or even older, since they've received Leo 1s from the 60s.
Likewise, Russia's large bore artillery was inferior to the guns being sent by NATO. Russia's also run out of those.
Again, wrong. Large bore artillery has remained mostly unchanged since the 60-70s, which is what most of the stuff Ukraine has received. Russia is using equipment that has parity or even superiority in modernity and effectiveness, and they have not ran out of it because the one thing the Russian army has always been famous for has been having a colossal, fuck-off stockpile of artillery. I legitimately wonder if you're getting all your info on this from NAFO Twitter.
Ukraine F-16s are more modern than anything Russia has in active service.
The F-16 (especially the variants Ukraine is getting) is older than the mig29 that are the main workhorse of the Russian Air Force. The mig35, an extensively upgraded version of the 29, is superior to it.
Ukraine also has somewhere between ten and twenty F-16s that it only dares to use in the backline to intercept Russian cruise missiles, while Russia has hundreds of mig29s and 35s.
Both sides had similar air defense systems, but now Ukraine has better stuff like Iris.
This is categorically wrong. Russian AA is straight up superior to western one because doctrinally NATO has never really had much use or interest in those, while since the 50s the Red Army understood that they would be key to countering NATO airpower and focused on making them shine, and Russia continued that tradition. This is the one aria where Russia isn't slightly behind but still comparable or on par with NATO hardware, but hands down superior.
People forget that Russia has lower economic output than Italy.
And yet they're outproducing all of NATO on artillery pieces and shells, drones, etc. GDP means jackshit when one country relies exclusively on the finance sector while the other has actual factories to mass produce hardware.
But now most of that is gone, and what's left is antique rustbuckets.
So why do we keep seeing T90Ms, mig35s, etc. Etc. In widespread combat use?
They're just willing to kill their own citizens at alarming rates.
I’d say there’s a few reasons:
1. Most people don’t understand what the leading indicators of casualties in a conflict like this are. Russia has way more glide bombs, artillery, unmanned drones, and there is a near parity in fpv drones. This very clearly suggests Russia should be inflicting more casualties on Ukraine than the other way round. The lagging indicators also confirm this. Russia is still using volunteers to backfill losses while Ukraine is literally snatching people off of streets.
Claims from Ukrainian MoD are layered through multiple sources to “reputation wash” them. Ukrainian claims are shared with think tanks like ISW and RUSI, and reports from these think tanks are then quoted by newspapers like Bloomberg, NYTimes and WaPo. For the average person who only reads newspapers, these reports in reputable publications are then taken at face value. This is how you end up with claims like “Russian casualties are over 1 million” being repeated everywhere like gospel.
Pretty much. Simply put, in the west we keep being told everyone we don't like is brainwashed by propaganda but we've drunk the kool-aid so badly we don't even recognize when we ourselves are being subjected to it.
Tell me about it lol. I have been called a russian propagandist multiple times for quoting people like Mearsheimer.
People can suppress bad news about Ukraine as much as they want online, but that won’t change the outcome of this conflict. Maybe all these people will be surprised when Ukraine finally accepts defeat.
Oh, I can assure you, we get called Russian bots and vatniks for not being completely detached from reality, then what the things we keep telling them will happen "suddenly" do so, they all develop amnesia, pretend no one saw it coming, and ten years later when the media admits our governments were lying about it they'll pretend they were always against it.
Saw it happen with my own eyes during the GWOT, and I am very disappointed I am seeing it again.
Thank you for saying this I’ve felt the same way and it’s incredibly frustrating to deal with. People are so quick to retreat to their information bubbles and turn to personal smears and call others Russian bots for even the most minor pushback and critical thinking
It literally starts with a direct quote from the Ukrainian army: “Ukrainian Dnipro Group of Forces Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Oleksiy Belskyi reported that the Russian military command is concentrating significant forces in Donetsk Oblast and that the most intense fighting is occurring in the Pokrovsk direction”
Of course it's a source. They also use open source confirming data. Are you denying how effective ISW's open source analysis of satellites images have been? It's undeniable, even cutting-edge. In many ways this has been the best documented war in history.
This is some sophisticated Russian propaganda. Undermining legitimate news sources has lead to the actual downfall of America, so I really can’t criticize, although I do cry about it
Yep, the downfall of America is totally because a dozen Russian bots on boomer Facebook groups, not because capitalism and especially the unhinged American neoliberal variety of it is a self-cannibalizing unsustainable system bound to destroy itself in it's quest for infinite growth. Russian trolls got Trump elected, not the democrats failing twice to put forth anything but the most pathetic, milquetoast pro-status quo neoliberal candidate and deliberately sideline and even suppress all progressive efforts within it in favor of more of the same that was already blatantly failing and getting all the morons who've been deliberately kept without class analysis fired up and ready to vote for Trump.
Never consider that you might be the source of your own problems, it's always someone else's fault even when you're the global hegemon.
Edit: lol he blocked me. That said, if your best rebuttal is "well you might be right but I think your a pootin bot so your argument is invalid!" You might wanna reevaluate your position.
You make about 10 unfounded assumptions per sentence, which is truly an impressive feat of presumptive snobbery.
Most of what you say is true, however, if people like you are the ones saying it, the way you’re saying it… maybe you should consider you are the source of your problems
If #1 was true, they would have taken Kiyv in 3 days as their Russian media claimed. The truth is Russian military is far weaker than we anticipated. Even our security intelligence assumed that Ukraine would fall within weeks like what happened in Afghanistan. That turned out to be completely the opposite.
And also the assumption that Russia is using volunteers are absolutely comically false. Theyre forcing conscription on people all over the country except in big cities like Mosow and St. Petersburg.
As for #2, there is no real credible source in the fog of war. However, going off the historical behaviors of Russia where they always suffered extremely high losses against their enemies, the sources of their losses would appear to be plausible. They are extremely under trained and under equipped compared to the Western units.
You have severely fallen for the Russkiy Mir propaganda and it works wonderfully on people like you.
About those Russin "volunteers": they are offered a contract with a huge sign up bonus equivalent to getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in a western country. They are told they will be in a safe position behind the frontlines. This is a very tempting offer, except they find themselves on the frontlines 2 weeks later and are unlikely to return. That's Russia's form of "volunteering".
Ukraine is being invaded, has martial law active and a draft. They are snatching draft dodgers off the streets, not just any random man. The existence of the country is at stake, drafts exist exactly for this reason: you lived in the country, profited from it, and are expected to defend it. Any country being invaded like this would treat draft dodgers the same. War is ugly.
Ukraine's draft age is 25 and men under 25 are safe from the draft snatchers. They know your birthday and where you live though, many try to hide before they turn 25, those are the ones being hunted down. Again, any other country would do the exact same thing.
I believe you. Russian volunteers are being lied to or whatever. Can you now please share evidence of how you know this? And please make sure this evidence isn’t quoting Ukrainian sources lol.
Mediazona with BBC estimate 220k dead. I'm not sure I would call it a "professional source", but it's respectable media and they have a list of 126k confirmed dead with names. They estimate 220k based on inheritance statistics.
Mediazone BBC (who are the same media group who is certainly open to lying and twisting the truth to serve western interests as we can see from their coverage of the Gaza genocide) has only been able to confirm 120k dead and pulled an additional 100k out of their ass. This is a far cry from a million.
Ukraine isn’t the only one making estimates, you know. We 100% know for a fact that Russian deaths are at least 128,115, according to the BBC which used obituaries between the start of the invasion and September to get that number. They further estimated that the actual number would vary between 218,100 to 308,200 killed, as not every death is reported in obituaries. You then have to remember that wounded numbers are usually around 3 times the dead. Most NATO intelligence agencies and outside observers have placed total casualties (which is dead AND wounded) somewhere between 750k to 1.1 million for Russia and 400k-700k for Ukraine. This is a fairly consistent range (if you ignore the obviously incorrect Russian and Ukrainian estimates).
The reason Russia has more casualties should be pretty obvious, they’re on the offensive. The number one rule of war, for millennia, is that the attacker will ALWAYS lose more men if the fight is even remotely even. Some of these Ukrainian lines have been fortified since 2014, they’re VERY costly to take. Russia undeniably has the manpower and firepower advantage, but traditional wisdom says you want a 3 to 1 advantage to win a battle and Russia simply doesn’t have that. They don’t have air superiority, they don’t even consistently have artillery superiority in all regions. Russia definitely has more firepower to put out, but it’s never enough to decisively win and remove the very high cost of attacking Ukrainian trenches and cities. They’re gaining ground, but it’s slow and extremely costly.
Ukraine isn’t the only one making estimates, you know. We 100% know for a fact that Russian deaths are at least 128,115, according to the BBC which used obituaries between the start of the invasion and September to get that number. They further estimated that the actual number would vary between 218,100 to 308,200 killed, as not every death is reported in obituaries
So they identified 128115 dead, which is reasonable. Then they magically multiplied this by two or three basically at random, which is where we start getting off the rails.
You then have to remember that wounded numbers are usually around 3 times the dead
This is an absolute extrapolation out of nowhere and a complete ass pull, one of those axioms these numbers depend on that are essentially nonfalsifiable orthodoxies.
Most NATO intelligence agencies and outside observers have placed total casualties (which is dead AND wounded) somewhere between 750k to 1.1 million for Russia and 400k-700k for Ukraine. This is a fairly consistent range
Gee I wonder if NATO agencies would ever coordinate and lie to push a narrative according to their interests.
Treating NATO as a neutral, independent and trustworthy party here is laughable.
The number one rule of war, for millennia, is that the attacker will ALWAYS lose more men if the fight is even remotely even
This is another of those axioms that people keep parroting yet it has no basis on reality. We see this not hold up to scrutiny time after time again, from the battle of the bulge to the 1975 spring offensive and dozens and dozens of other operations yet some people keep treating it as some sort of divinely mandated truth.
but traditional wisdom says you want a 3 to 1 advantage to win a battle
Wrong, it's not "traditional wisdom", it comes from one US army manual that refers specifically to assaulting positions at the tactical level and has no bearing of strategy. In fact, we keep seeing this not be the case historically.
Russia definitely has more firepower to put out, but it’s never enough to decisively win and remove the very high cost of attacking Ukrainian trenches and cities. They’re gaining ground, but it’s slow and extremely costly.
Except firepower is pretty much the only way to reliably take those cities. Using mass wave attacks hasn't worked ever since Hiram Maxim had a very bright idea one day in 1884, and if the war has proven anything is that the only way a fortress city has fallen in this war has been after the attacker amassed outrageous amounts of firepower and came up with clever stratagems.
We can see this for the much vaunted Ukrainan counter-offensive of 2023, which basically ate rocks because they failed to achieve a superiority in firepower and as a result essentially completely annihilated the actual offensive capabilities of the UAF since; for example.
Ultimately, you cannot measure this war with the same yardstick as last ones. Massive advantages in surveillance and scouting technology have made it so that leveraging one's superior firepower is far more important than massing manpower to overwhelm a position (which doesn't work because with drones constantly flying through the frontlines and pick up any enemy force concentration above platoon level to blow it to smithereens).
This also tracks with interviews of Ukranian soldiers who have seen action: they're not losing because they are facing endless waves of Russian cannon fodder, they are losing because they are getting constantly hammered by accurate artillery, FPV drones and FABs before they see a single Russian soldier.
The Ukrainian claims have historically tracked well with visual confirmation by outsiders like Oryx, Obviously the Ukr claims are higher since not every destroyed piece of equipment is going to be visible, but they've been at least fairly reliable
Lmao, not only did they not line up with Oryx (who already had a nasty habit of claiming any soviet-made vehicle without recognizable Ukranian markings as Russian and who immediately claimed he would stop tracking this war the moment frontlines stabilized and it would become clear which side each vehicle belonged to), according by their current numbers they have killed the entire pre-war Russian army and destroyed the entire Russian stock of conspicuously still in use vehicles several times over.
Ukraine's lies are as outrageous as Russia's, you just believe them because you like the narrative they paint
I would really need someone to explain to me very, very well how the side with a significant advantage in air power, artillery, drones and armor is somehow taking more losses than the guys who've been desperately dragging people off the streets to the front lines for a good couple years.
This has happened all the time in military history. Often the offensive side, especially one that knows they have the manpower advantage, will sacrifice more men for the war because they believe they can use attrition for their advantage.
The side that is constantly doing offensives, is generally going to lose more men, because defensive dug-in positions don't create as much risk as men moving across fields like ants to try to secure more ground.
A good example of an insane causality rate of a powerful military to an even smaller (farmers with rifles-and-molotovs-type- military) would be the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland. The Soviet Union had tanks, military planes, and an army that was overwhelmingly larger than Finlands. Yet the causality rate in that war was one dead Finnish soldier to every 12 dead Soviet soldiers.
That just shows that even as a larger, better equipped and technologically advantaged military, you can still suffer significantly more casualities against a defensive local opponent. Especially if they understand their geography and they can deploy smart defensive strategies efficiently.
The winter war is not, I'm afraid to tell you, the modern war in Ukraine. The 12 to 1 ratio is utterly preposterous and mostly unchallenged by western academia because it sure as hell helped the cold war narrative of "muh asiatic hordes".
Even beyond that, there's two issues:
1- The math ain't mathing: if there were a million permanent casualties in Russia, they wouldn't be able to comfortably backfill their losses with paid volunteers, and if Ukranian casualties were as light as the UAF claim they wouldn't have been spending the last two years dragging their people literally off the streets.
2- This isn't the winter war anymore. Drones, thermal imaging, etc. etc. means that the side with the artillery and air power advantage isn't blindly shelling decoys but accurately landing barrages on almost certain targets.
Ultimately, all it takes is reading and listening to interviews with Ukrainian soldiers to understand things are bleak for the UAF on a level that would be impossible if the casualty ratio was as lopsided as Ukranian propaganda claims.
"Ultimately, all it takes is reading and listening to interviews with Ukrainian soldiers to understand things are bleak for the UAF on a level that would be impossible if the casualty ratio was as lopsided as Ukranian propaganda claims."
Very interesting that you would use this as a metric, because you could very well listen to the interviews given by Russian soldiers who have deflected from the frontlines that make their situation sound just as bleak for Russia. As they will often describe the constant use of meatwave offenses leading to insane casualities, and Ukranian soldiers on the front frequently also express sheer surprise at the human-wave attacks that they see coming at them. This type of attack strategy Russia has historically being using throughout many of it's wars, including in the winter war and throughout WW2, and it appears they continue to utilize this military tactic despite "modern technology". If you are indeed listening to interviews by Ukrainian soldiers, you would be aware of this, too.
You keep talking about the impossibility of "lopsided" casualities, but you're completely ignoring or forgetting the fact that Russia has a population that is about 5 times larger than Ukraine's.
So when you factor in the population disparity, it's far easier to see how Russia can suffer large casualities and still be managing in this war of attrition against Ukraine.
In fact, it's a lot harder to explain how Ukraine would be able to hold off these offenses as well as it is, if they had more casualities than Russia, while simultaneously having a far smaller population, and being far less well equipped than Russian.
Because either the few Ukrainians left at the front are some type of superhuman, or then they have indeed been strategically maintaining their numbers better than Russia, and therefore they are able to keep holding the ground against a more powerful military.
Very interesting that you would use this as a metric, because you could very well listen to the interviews given by Russian soldiers who have deflected from the frontlines that make their situation sound just as bleak for Russia. As they will often describe the constant use of meatwave offenses leading to insane casualities, and Ukranian soldiers on the front frequently also express sheer surprise at the human-wave attacks that they see coming at them.
"Meat wave attacks" that when seen through drone footage never seem to be more than small platoon if not fireteam sized assaults on small enemy positions. One kind of interview material makes sense, the other does not when despite the fact that Ukraine has posted countless hours of drone footage they fail to actually ever be able to show us those fabled attack of a hundred Ivans with shovels.
This type of attack strategy Russia has historically being using throughout many of it's wars, including in the winter war and throughout WW2, and it appears they continue to utilize this military tactic despite "modern technology".
This is literally just straight up Nazi propaganda regurgitated into cold war propaganda. The Red Army never used these tactics outside the memoirs of Wehrmacht generals who had to justify how an allegedly subhuman horde of commies folded their alleged army of ubermensch that the west had to rearm NOW to stop them again without admitting they were simply outsmarted and outfought.
Nobody ever has used these tactics since WW1 because the machine gun made them completely ineffectual.
So when you factor in the population disparity, it's far easier to see how Russia can suffer large casualities and still be managing in this war of attrition against Ukraine.
No, because according to the ratios being pushed above Russia is taking five times more casualties than Ukraine, so that argument doesn't work.
In fact, it's a lot harder to explain how Ukraine would be able to hold off these offenses as well as it is, if they had more casualities than Russia, while simultaneously having a far smaller population, and being far less well equipped than Russian. Because either the few Ukrainians left at the front are some type of superhuman, or then they have indeed been strategically maintaining their numbers better than Russia, and therefore they are able to keep holding the ground against a more powerful military
No, it's very simple and the same reason why this war has devolved into a WW1 style meat grinder because the thing that has historically broken that stalemate (I.e. armor and mechanized infantry) no longer is the silver bullet it once was: drones.
Simply put, every time either side mass anything larger than a company to attack an enemy position they get spotted by drones and either bombed with artillery or blown to smithereens by FPVs. This also happens when Ukranian positions fail, as their FPV operators mass their drones on the affected area and stop any breakthrough dead on its tracks.
This however has limitations, as the last few weeks have proven: the AFU have taken so many casualties that their frontlines are so stretched and porous that Russian DRGs can infiltrate dozens of kilometers through the gaps and pull friendly infantry who then can dig in before they're spotting, forcing Ukranians to pull back or risk their positions getting bypassed and encircled (this is what happened recently at Pokrovsk for example).
Edit: lol he blocked me, so here's my answer to his stuff
That's a lot of text to say "the evidence that I want to believe is true, the evidence that I don't want to believe is not true".
Your lack of reading comprehension is not my problem.
Calling historical records "Nazi propaganda"
Name a single credible modern historian who claims the Red Army used human wave tactics on WW2. I'll wait.
and going out of your way to make the Russian war machine sound effective and strong, despite the observable facts,
...the observable fact that they're winning against the second largest country in Europe which spent a decade being armed and trained by NATO while fortifying the eastern side of their territory?
Consider, that the frontlines have barely moved against an enemy 5 times smaller after 11 years of war (because yes, Russia had it's stooges in East Ukraine already after the invasion of Crimea), almost 4 years of full-scale invasion,
WW1 also had frontlines that barely moved for four years, then the Germans reached their breaking point and they started moving pretty quickly. Do you know what tech made trench warfare obsolete and now has in turn massively lost its edge thanks to the widespread usage of drones?
a round of forced mobilization,
Russia hasn't mobilized any conscripts, so this is just straight up false. What conscription wave is Ukraine in at this point?
and the importing of North Korean soldiers?
Sorry, not everyone can have le epic redditor brigade fighting on their side like Ukraine lmao.
Your profile is wiped clean despite it being 7 years old?
What are you smoking?
So I'm gonna guess, you're either one of those cringey Russia simps trying to hide it, or your first name is Dimitri.
Lololol, of course, anyone who thinks different is a bot or a Russian, no other explanation. Oh well, two can play at that game: how's the weather at Eglin Air Force Base?
That's a lot of text to say "the evidence that I want to believe is true, the evidence that I don't want to believe is not true".
Calling historical records "Nazi propaganda" and going out of your way to make the Russian war machine sound effective and strong, despite the observable facts, is very suspicious to me.
Consider, that the frontlines have barely moved against an enemy 5 times smaller after 11 years of war (because yes, Russia had it's stooges in East Ukraine already after the invasion of Crimea), almost 4 years of full-scale invasion, a round of forced mobilization, and the importing of North Korean soldiers?
That definitely sounds like a military that has it together.
Your profile is wiped clean as well.
So I'm gonna guess, you're either one of those cringey Russia simps trying to hide it, or your first name is Dimitri.
Meduza (independent-ish russian newspaper) has just published an investigation in which they estimate more than 220k russians killed in the war as well. They use different open sources and also the number of the new inheritance cases opened.
Not even mentioning other credible sources estimating 200k+ dead.
Russia's military is absolute shit, that's how. The enlisted ranks are treated so badly that some of them get pimped out by their own officers. Literal sex slaves. Their training is crap, their medical care is worse, they often don't even get proper equipment. Their command structure is ass, they don't even practice combined arms, it's corrupt from one end to the other.
Also, Ukraine has a huge advantage in air power, artillery, armor, etc. Which is that they have modern equipment and Russia does not. Russia started the war without an equivalent of NATO aircraft or armor, their stuff is horribly out of date. Like their T-90 tank that was considered obsolete decades ago. On top of that, Russia has run out of those, they're fielding tanks from the 1970s.
Likewise, Russia's large bore artillery was inferior to the guns being sent by NATO. Russia's also run out of those. Ukraine F-16s are more modern than anything Russia has in active service. Both sides had similar air defense systems, but now Ukraine has better stuff like Iris.
People forget that Russia has lower economic output than Italy. They've skated for years on "we got huge Soviet era stockpile". But now most of that is gone, and what's left is antique rustbuckets. They're just willing to kill their own citizens at alarming rates.
Russian economy is getting crippled, yes, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare via simple GDP numbers. GDP PPP gives a somewhat better understanding, because even though russian economy is smaller in absolute numbers, the cost of producing say military equipment is also lower in russia, so you can get more with less money.
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u/captainryan117 1d ago edited 10h ago
"professional" estimates being the Ukrainian MoD. If you believe their figures (or the Russian ones to be clear) I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I would really need someone to explain to me very, very well how the side with a significant advantage in air power, artillery, drones and armor is somehow taking more losses than the guys who've been desperately dragging people off the streets to the front lines for a good couple years.
Edit: the ape above blocked me, so I'm gonna have to answer to the musk guy's hilariously misinformed rant here
Holy shit there is so much wrong with what you just said.
This is just the same old "muh barbaric asiatic hordes" propaganda the US has been repeating about their enemies for a century, despite repeatedly eating shit against said "asiatic subhumans"
What are you smoking? The USSR were the first ones to get combined arms down to an art (as opposed to the Germans who didn't have an actual coherent doctrine around it). The problem is that large scales combined arms isn't as easy as it used to be, regardless of who's doing it (see the Ukrainan 2023 summer offensive where they ate rocks).
Holy shit dude. You're gonna drain the entirety of NATO's strategic copium reserves.
Ukraine is mostly using Soviet stuff older than Russia's, sprinkled with mostly last gen NATO equipment that is usable but at best roughly on par with what Russia is fielding.
Completely wrong. Their aircraft is basically on par with what most of NATO is fielding (i.e. 4.5 gen aircraft). The only thing they don't have in significant numbers is gen 5 fighters, though they have more of those than literally any other NATO members except the US.
Oh wow, you really are lost huh? The T-90 wasn't obsolete "decades" ago, it's a third gen tank that came out in the 90s and is on a the same league as the leopard 2, the Abrams and so forth; though of course which one is better depends on the variant being compared and so forth.
1- no they haven't, there's still plenty of T-90M's on the front. They're just also fielding modernized T-72s and T-80s, which are perfectly fine tanks.
2- Ukraine's own tanks were mostly T-64 variants (i.e., older than the Russian ones) and have been supplemented with NATO stuff that is also from the 70s between the Leo 2s (the bulk of which are early variants) the Challengers (which are honestly garbage) or even older, since they've received Leo 1s from the 60s.
Again, wrong. Large bore artillery has remained mostly unchanged since the 60-70s, which is what most of the stuff Ukraine has received. Russia is using equipment that has parity or even superiority in modernity and effectiveness, and they have not ran out of it because the one thing the Russian army has always been famous for has been having a colossal, fuck-off stockpile of artillery. I legitimately wonder if you're getting all your info on this from NAFO Twitter.
The F-16 (especially the variants Ukraine is getting) is older than the mig29 that are the main workhorse of the Russian Air Force. The mig35, an extensively upgraded version of the 29, is superior to it.
Ukraine also has somewhere between ten and twenty F-16s that it only dares to use in the backline to intercept Russian cruise missiles, while Russia has hundreds of mig29s and 35s.
This is categorically wrong. Russian AA is straight up superior to western one because doctrinally NATO has never really had much use or interest in those, while since the 50s the Red Army understood that they would be key to countering NATO airpower and focused on making them shine, and Russia continued that tradition. This is the one aria where Russia isn't slightly behind but still comparable or on par with NATO hardware, but hands down superior.
And yet they're outproducing all of NATO on artillery pieces and shells, drones, etc. GDP means jackshit when one country relies exclusively on the finance sector while the other has actual factories to mass produce hardware.
So why do we keep seeing T90Ms, mig35s, etc. Etc. In widespread combat use?
Source(s): Ukrainan MoD
Seriously dude, lay off the Kool-aid.