ISCHENKO Rostislav
When Ukraine capitulates
29.08.2022 - 0:30
The fighting in Ukraine recently exceeded six months. Despite the tangible successes of the Russian army, Ukraine clearly has no plans to give up.
The tactic of turning large cities into strong points, whose garrisons, while technically inferior, numerically significantly exceed the advancing units, is still quite effective.
I am writing "for now", since this tactic is based on the uneconomical expenditure of human resources. That is, its effectiveness will end exactly at the moment when Ukraine will lose the ability to maintain the number of front-line groups due to new and new waves of mobilization.
Russian troops are advancing slowly. The official version explains the low pace of the offensive by the fact that we are protecting the civilian population.
We really don't shoot at residential areas intentionally.
But war is war, and the longer it goes on, the more civilians will die from various kinds of accidents. At the same time, it is clear to any open-minded person that rapid progress prevents the enemy from creating a solid defense (he simply does not have time to do it), and a quick victory reduces the inevitable civilian casualties.
But a change in tactics (the transition to deep breakthroughs) would lead to a sharp increase in losses among Russian servicemen.
At a time when military affairs are once again (as in the Middle Ages) becoming the property of professionals, narrow specialists who are constantly improving in their specialty, we cannot afford the luxury of losing thousands of Russian soldiers and officers.
If it is necessary to replenish the units not with contract professionals, but with mobilized ones, the army will quickly cease to be modern (insufficiently professional personnel simply will not be able to fully use modern weapons) and will turn into a kind of Ukrainian, based on cannon fodder (more in number, at a cheaper price).
So, first of all, our tactics are based on the desire to save our soldiers, and secondly, the civilian population.
And this should not be shy. We are already doing too much to reduce the suffering of the conditionally peaceful population, which has consolidated around Zelensky and still believes in the victory of Ukrainian weapons.
Ukraine has armed a massive army. According to official Ukrainian data, up to a million people are involved in all law enforcement agencies (including the AFU, SBU, SVR, police, National Guard, Border Guard and Territorial Defense). Of these, up to seven hundred thousand are directly fighting the AFU and Territorial Defense.
Ukraine constantly has 350-400 thousand fighters on the front line. Approximately three hundred thousand are rear garrisons and reserve groups, preparing replenishment for front-line units, as well as intended to replace formations that have finally lost their combat capability, withdrawn to the rear for rest and replenishment or re-formation.
We can no longer say that the Nazis are an absolute minority, suppressing the will of the Ukrainian people by force of arms.
Only a society united around the idea of protecting the Nazi regime can field a million-strong army from among the mobilized. Otherwise, the army would really have turned its weapons against the authorities. A soldier will not go to death if he does not feel the moral support of his family, friends, acquaintances.
So the Ukrainian society today is a full-fledged accomplice of the Nazi regime. The same accomplice that German society was in 1933-1945. Not all Ukrainians are Nazis. But not all Germans were Nazis, but the entire German society united in support of the Nazi regime until its last day.
Therefore, humanism in relation to civilians is certainly necessary. But he should not be the first and only priority of the fighting army.
In the end, the goal of war is victory, and the field kitchens of the victors, feeding the vanquished, arise after achieving this main goal.
The question that we put in the title of the article will be natural: when can we expect a final victory over Ukraine, based on the tactics chosen by the parties, the numerical and technical composition of the groups involved?
As a rule, during the fighting there comes a turning point when one of the armies suddenly loses faith in victory, its spirit breaks and it falls apart, ceasing resistance. Sometimes such a breakdown occurs on the threshold of victory, and an almost broken opponent, who knows that he has exhausted all possibilities for resistance, cannot believe his luck, seeing a victorious enemy running and surrendering.
However, for the most part, the decline in spirit has quite material reasons. Units lose combat capability and lose faith in victory due to high losses and supply failures.
Supply failures are still, apparently, far away. Americans are not inclined to change the concept that Russia should be forced to fight in Ukraine to exhaustion.
Until now, the supply of weapons and ammunition to Kiev has only increased. Initially, the West as a whole talked only about helping with uniforms and equipment. Then we talked about small arms, then Javelins and other ATGMs and MANPADS appeared, then artillery, tanks, multiple launch rocket systems went on, now planes and helicopters are being delivered to Ukraine, deliveries of tactical missiles with a range of three hundred to five hundred kilometers are expected.
The problem is that Ukraine will experience a shortage of shells of the main Soviet calibers, and Eastern Europe, which switched to NATO standards, has long sold or disposed of most of its stocks. The United States has to look for shells for Ukraine all over the world, since it is not yet possible to completely replace the Ukrainian artillery with NATO calibers (to which the Americans supply consumables).
Nevertheless, it can be assumed that additional supplies from the West will enable the Ukrainian artillery to hold out for at least another six months.
It is already seriously inferior to the Russian one, although at the beginning of the campaign it fought almost on equal terms, which, in fact, made it possible for Russia to bet on an artillery offensive — grinding Ukrainian troops due to superiority in artillery. But for now, Ukrainian gunners retain the ability to support their troops in key areas of combat operations. The artillery support has weakened, but it has not completely disappeared. And the senseless shooting at peaceful neighborhoods of Donetsk indicates that the shortage of ammunition is still relative.
Thus, it should not be expected that Ukraine will lose the technical ability to fight in the near future.
Let's see what happens to the manpower and whether the cannon fodder will soon be exhausted.
The Ukrainian government declared the residence of about forty million people in the territories under its control. However, at the same time, Kiev also recorded three million citizens of the LDPR. The fact, however, is that the calculation of bread consumption did not give Ukraine even 37 million. The real number of subjects of the Kiev regime was somewhere in the region of 25-27 million. But with the beginning of the SVO, Kiev lost territories inhabited by 5-6 million people before the outbreak of hostilities.
According to the UN, about 12 million people left Ukraine after the start of the SVO, of which six million later returned.
Thus, after the start of the SVO, Ukraine had to lose about 10 million people. But take into account that part of the population of the liberated territories moved to the Kiev-controlled zone, and some of the six million people who left Ukraine left the liberated territories for Russia. Therefore, in order to avoid double counting of the lost population, we will assume that the number of citizens of Ukraine controlled by Kiev is 20 million people.
Half of these twenty million are women. Although Kiev is trying to increase the mobilization resource by introducing military duty for women of certain professions, it must be understood that with rare exceptions (professional Nazis, snipers, gunners, etc.), a Ukrainian woman is neither physically nor mentally ready to participate in hostilities.
They can partially replace men in the rear institutions, but it must be borne in mind that the rear, non-combatant, are usually also recruited from people who cannot serve at the front because of poor health. So we take away ten million from the mobilization potential at once.
Another five million are old people and children who do not fall under the mobilization by age. Of the remaining five million, some will not pass for health reasons, some will evade mobilization by any means, some are civil servants who have reservations, some have scarce specialties and cannot be called upon so that strategic enterprises (the same nuclear power plants, hydroelectric power plants, thermal power plants) do not stop.
In total, two million people will be available for mobilization.
That's a lot. If we proceed from the current population of 20 million, then this is ten percent of the total population. Very rarely does a country put more people under the gun. There are individual examples when 20 percent of the population was mobilized, but this is already a gesture of despair of a state suffering a military catastrophe, since the withdrawal of so many workers from the national economy kills the country economically faster than it will suffer a military defeat.
Since about a million have already been called up, we can assume that the resource available for mobilization is another million people. There could have been more, but the Ukrainian army was already suffering losses, and these losses were already being replenished at the expense of mobilization potential. Since Kiev still manages to keep the number of the active army at about the same level, the losses were completely replenished. Now let's count the Ukrainian losses.
The Ukrainian General Staff, of course, does not disclose its losses. No one ever publishes casualty figures in order not to give information to the enemy and not to upset their own population.
The Americans estimate the probable losses of Ukraine killed, wounded, prisoners, missing and disabled for other reasons at 140-145 thousand people, without specifying whether they mean army or general losses — for all power structures.
Russia estimates the total losses of Ukraine at 175-190 thousand people. for all power structures. These figures correlate perfectly with each other. If the army lost 140-145 thousand, then the losses of the rest of the security forces should have been 35-45 thousand. Only in Mariupol and only the Azov National Guard regiment* (which was not part of the Armed Forces) lost from one and a half to two thousand people killed, wounded and captured.
For correctness, let's take the lower limit as a basis. If all the security forces lost 175 thousand people in six months, then they will lose 350 thousand in a year. 280 thousand will be needed as a replenishment only for the army. In two years, these figures will amount to 700 thousand and 560 thousand, respectively. At this point, Ukraine will practically lose the ability to maintain the size of the active army at the expense of the next contingents mobilized.
In fact, this should happen earlier, because with the retirement of personnel, the quality of troops decreases and their losses increase. Losses are also growing as a result of Russia's increasing technical advantage, mainly in artillery.
Thus, Ukraine should lose the opportunity to make up for losses by the summer-autumn of next year. This is the deadline after which Kiev's surrender becomes inevitable due to the loss of the opportunity to fight.
The collapse of the army and the collapse of the front may happen earlier. Psychological fatigue from war usually comes suddenly, and no one can say what had such a detrimental effect on yesterday's still quite combat-ready troops that today they are fleeing en masse to surrender. Usually this is a whole complex of subtle reasons.
We define only the upper limit of the duration of Ukraine's resistance. It can hold out for about another year (plus or minus two or three months) if the army and the population show the will to hold on until the end - until the material possibilities to resist are exhausted.
The collapse of the front due to psychological breakdown can happen in two months, and in three, and maybe in a year. This is too thin a matter to be calculated.
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