Eaton Rapids Joe took a look at Russian casualties in Ukraine.
It's a good idea, and a welcome break from too much all-heat and no-light screaming from the shallow end of the IQ pool.
His conclusion: compared to WWII casualties, they're not doing too bad in Ukraine.
Let's take a closer look. All work will be shown.
First, let's set some guidelines.
In WWII, the Soviet Army had about 11.5M men.
Their war lasted 1470 days, from the German invasion on 22 June 1941 to VE day when Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945. (The 15 seconds to take their half of Poland, and the week or two between them finally declaring war on Japan, and Japan surrendering, entailed no serious military engagements.)
In that time, they suffered 6.3M KIAs and Died Of Wounds casualties. I'm not looking at other casualty numbers, because KIA/DoW is all we're looking at for Ukraine.
That puts all Russian military losses in WWII at an average of about 4,285/day, 24/7/365.
(Joe comes up with a higher number, but it isn't going to matter much in the grand scheme, as we'll show presently.)
First of all, consider a wee historical tidbit: the Soviet Army suffered those losses fighting 150 divisions of the Wermacht, including 15 armored divisions. (For comparison, right now, the entire US land forces, Army and Marines combined total, is 13 active divisions total (10+3), and 9 reserve divisions (8+1), including a total of one armored division.)
Secondly, the Russian Army now is only about 500K men, and the size of the force that invaded Ukraine is generally acknowledged to be about half that size, i.e. 250K troops, all in.
The Soviet Army of WWII was therefore 46 times bigger than the Russian invasion force (well, until they started making contact with Ukrainian forces) that entered Ukraine.
So for a comparison that's apples to apples, instead of apples to pineapples, that 4285/day casualty rate, divided by a force 1/46th the size, drops to 93/day, for any 250K troops.
But of the 250K troops who invaded, the casualty number after 14 days of conflict is 6000 men.
As Joe correctly noted, barely a bad day for WWII. For that matter, barely a bad afternoon at Antietam or Gettysburg in the US Civil War, and hardly more than one stupid attack across No Man's Land any day at Ypres in WWI. But this wasn't our Civil War, or WWI, or WWII.
And the Army in question isn't the behemoth juggernaut 46 times bigger than the present one, nor engaged in combat with the most ferocious army in world history through 1942.
It's a campaign with literally half the current Russian Army, and experiencing a casualty rate not the 93/day (per 250K troops) from WWII, but rather a death rate of 428/day, which is only 4.6 times worse than Russia experienced at the height of WWII, against most of the German Army.
Inflicted on them by a ragamuffin militia that wouldn't even qualify for the U.S. Notional Guard, except they have Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and the usual Russian hand-me-down small arms.
And they're fighting the "mighty" Russian Army clown posse to a standstill.
By any objective standard, the Russians have been getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of them, six times a week and twice on Sundays.
This is why the Russians are now attacking passively, by holding up short, and shelling cities full of civilians from 15 miles outside of town: because when they go toe to toe with the Ukrainian ragamuffins, they get their asses handed to them, shit their pants, and retreat.
At the height of the Vietnam War, we had about 500K troops in-country.
On the absolute worst day of the Vietnam War, the day after the 1968 Tet offensive, when battles broke out in 100 cities and hamlets nationwide, what happened?
If every day in Vietnam had been that bad, the entire war would have lasted just 8 months, to get to the number of deaths (over 58,000) it took 10 solid years to accomplish.
The Russian forces in Ukraine - half the size of the US Army in Vietnam - are dying at nearly twice that number, every single day for two solid weeks. They'll have suffered a Vietnam in just 4 months, at the current rate.
If any American commander since 1960 had suffered 10% KIA and 25% casualties and equipment losses for anything short of nuclear warfare, they'd have been relieved and court-martialed.
The Russians are and have been suffering Kasserine Pass levels of ass-whupping, every week they keep this up. And every day, they get weaker, while the Ukrainian forces get stronger.
If you can't conceive what a dick-punching is being delivered on Putin's invaders, you simply can't count. It's worse that WWII, and it's worse than Vietnam on its worst day. TheRussians are not getting better at it over time, and they're burning up war stocks of material and ammunition of which they only have a finite supply.
[BTW: Russian doctrine when they're getting rolled, since the 1950s, stipulates that Plan B is to drop chemical or tactical nuclear weapons, to rock the enemy and gain offensive momentum. How curious that they just magically "discovered" 'bio-warfare labs' in Ukraine, just as their invasion fleet runs aground on the rocks of Reality, and just after they shipped in a good supply of chemical warfare suits for their troops in Ukraine. Just a serendipitous coincidence, I'm sure.]
Putin has pulled his own pants down, and the Ukrainians are smacking his sky-clad cheeks with a board. Every other nation that doesn't like Russia can see that, and that only destabilizes the entire world, and makes future pushback against Russia not just likely, but inevitable.
You got Bunker?
There's something else to consider in this. Just Apples to apples here and WW2 comparisons. The German war machine was pounding the ever living shit out of the logistics, armor and aircraft manifacturers, supply dumps and airfields. To the point that the US was the main supplier of equipment to the Red Army in some areas and timeframes of the war. The Soviets were spread out over hundreds to thousands of miles at any given point in time. There is no one attacking their home, they are even worse not going thousands of miles to Berlin. They are attacking next door. There should be very few if any logistic logjams especally due to distance traveled.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what starts to happen when the spring thaws hit. I can't help but wonder if the Russian Army will be the third one to hearn the lesson about spring bogging one down in the Eastern Europe like the Nazi's did and the French army under Napolian..
Aesop, a question for you (and maybe completely unrelated to the math problem): assume that for whatever reason, Putin no longer is an issue. What do you think is likely to happen then (beyond a surrender or retreat back to current borders, of courses)?
ReplyDeleteJoe doesn't have a reference for where he got the figure of 6000 KIA. With all the propaganda floating around I'm skeptical.
ReplyDelete@Borepatch:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-death-toll-invasion/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/11/russia-ukraine-war-military-dispatch-march-11-2022#:~:text=Casualties%20and%20refugees&text=Ukraine%20says%20more%20than%2012%2C000,had%20been%20killed%20in%20Ukraine.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220308-pentagon-estimates-2-000-to-4-000-russian-soldiers-killed-in-ukraine
Plug in any value you find.
If Russian casualties are at the low end of estimates, why is Russia all but stalled?
If they're higher than I allowed, things are even worse than I supposed.
Heads I win, tails you lose. :)
Russia is f**ked.
@TB,
ReplyDeletePutin gone:
1) Russia leaves skid marks, apologizes profusely, pays reparations: status quo ante, in about 2 years.
2) Russia doubles down. Becomes known as Somalia North in about 5 weeks.
3) Russia defeats official Ukraine forces. Inherits 10 year guerrilla war, that kills 500 Russian troops/week, and starts terrorist bombing campaign inside Russian cities.
Russia can not win this game.
They can mitigate how badly they lose, or they can just keep sticking their faces into the woodchipper until they get tired of it.
Aesop your good with numbers and dates. A few to ponder
ReplyDeleteRussia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, accounting for more than 18 percent of international exports.
In 2019, Russia and Ukraine together exported more than a quarter (25.4 percent) of the world’s wheat, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).
There are two wheat crops in Ukraine — a fall planting of winter wheat, which is harvested in June, and a spring planting that begins in mid-March. The current crop looks good, Nivievskyi said, but that’s where the optimism ends.
Contrary to Mr. Bloomberg's idea that farmers simply have to dig a hole, drop in a seed and harvest right about now is the pre-harvest work of spraying herbicides as so the Winter wheat can be harvested properly. The Wheat Combines do very poorly with lots of weeds. Lots of breakdowns and expensive repairs so farmers spend the cash for herbicides. That and the preparation of tilling and such for the Spring Wheat crop.
That and Ukraine they are NOT exporting wheat as of last week given the strong likelihood that starvation would occur.
Russia and Ukraine are among the world’s top wheat exporters. With one ravaged by war and the other shackled by sanctions, there are fears the conflict will have a large impact on global food supply.
“People will fight for whatever’s left,” Dalhousie University food security expert Sylvain Charlebois told CTV News. “In some parts of the world, you’re likely going to see some civil unrest.”
Shortages are expected across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia in countries that depend on imports. Lebanon’s economy minister for example says they have enough wheat for a month-and-a-half.
Fertilizer numbers are very similar to the above wheat numbers and thus almost 1/3rd of the world export fertilizer (most to the US last year). Plenty of farmer chatter on ag boards that they are unsure if they can even get fertilizer and if so at what prices.
Personally, my annual order of fertilizer was first delayed then canceled by Agway. I've spoken to my favorite Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers and so far, they are NOT Selling CSA Shares yet, they are still working out fertilizer issues and thus pricing and number of shares available.
Studies about effects of NOT fertilizing Wheat: studies in Oklahoma show a 40 percent wheat yield decline without regular N and P additions. A long-term study in Missouri found that 57 percent of the grain yield was attributable to fertilizer and lime additions.
So, I'd be a bit concerned about the Wheat and Corn crops in our own country GIVEN the Sockpuppets shutting down domestic fuel production used a lot in both fertilizer manufacturing and of course running the machinery of Big Ag.
As you may know that affects everything including animal feeds and thus eggs, meat and milk-butter-cheese etc.
Given China has made great efforts to secure over the past few years oil, coal, and all sorts of foodstuffs they have better than 2 years' worth of reserves. At first as a defense against Trump and Farming export bans now they look pretty clever given a worldwide shortage of basic food stuffs awaits.
I wonder given their long game efforts just how much grain reserves they have to get folks to join in their Belt and Road cooperative. I KNOW the Saudi's are very concerned about the lack of Grain.
Today the US national grain reserves have apparently vanished, primarily due to deregulated global markets and globalization, and the 1996 abolishment of our national system of holding grain in reserve – which was gradually depleted until 2008, when the USDA decided to convert all of what was left into its dollar equivalent.
I think China will win the Ukraine War.
BTW, Borepatch, I was waiting for that question, or something close to it, because I knew someone would try it.
ReplyDeleteAs I was working this post out in my head at work last night, the question reminded me of the archaeologist who explained to the minister than according to his research, the biblical account of a miraculous parting of the seas that allowed the Jews to escape Egypt in Exodus had to be wrong, because the Jews had actually crossed the Red Sea through reed marshes only 6 inches deep.
Whereupon the minister then asked the jet-fuel genius to explain how Pharoah's pursuing chariot army had all drowned in six inches of water.
Is there a comparison we can reasonable make in a face of between US Citizens and the US Army in a CW2.
ReplyDelete@Michael,
ReplyDeleteI think any country that's a net importer of grain, and depends on other people's crops to survive, is going to be seriously screwed for years.
That would include China.
@Old Corps,
ReplyDeleteYou're thinking!
If people would unf**k their heads, and stop getting wrapped around their own axles now, they'd stop worrying about Putin good/Putin bad, and start thinking in terms of .GOV = Putin, Ukrainian people = us peasants, in about five minutes' time.
But most of those who trip over that thought will get up, brush themselves off, and continue onwards oblivious.
Aesop who is going to ship in anti-aircraft missiles, Anti-tank missiles, medical supplies and far more food than any of my gunnie friends have?
ReplyDeleteWe are dangerous IF we don't shoot each other over silly things like starvation.
In Afghanistan we didn't destroy their food system, it was so localized trying to starve out Afghans would have never worked barring genocide.
You're always talking about logistics, that's IMPORTANT. Starving families makes for less effective warriors. Medical support systems might also be nice. Going to a Gov Hospital might not be an option.
China has more than a two-year reserve in energy and food. That gives them time to allow revolutions and die offs and "recruit" more farmers in the soon Chinese Siberia.
Maybe after the shooting stops in America and when satellites show little evidence of civilization in America, China can bring in mop up crews and start enjoying our natural resources.
Grim but possible. China might win the Famine Wars.
It took us 3 centuries to "pacify" the natives.
ReplyDeleteChina, should they arrive at some point, will have neither much of a tech advantage, nor an amenable innocent native population, and we'll be much better armed than v1.0 was.
They stand a better chance of colonizing the moon than they ever do of occupying America.
I kinda have to wonder if China would not be playing both sides in this. Heck they may not even have to worry about the states and crossing an ocean. Russia gets bled dry by their idiocy in the Urkaine and someone has to start selling land.. to China. Bunch of big companies in the states that produce food are either entirely or majority or even minority owned by Chinese interests. They might be hedging bets by aquiring Russian land or farming companies. While I don't think Russia and China are at a shooting war, to call them very close allies I think is mistaken.
ReplyDeleteI think what's also very possible is while Russia and China don't share exact copies of everything in the military inventory anymore there's enough similarities in the equipment that China is paying very close attention to what's working and what's getting torn up. Especally with you know, those pesky areas around them they are trying to crush.
@Aesop
ReplyDelete"...and just after they shipped in a good supply of chemical warfare suits for their troops in Ukraine." Not sure what doctrine the RusMil runs on but man, the ChemBio Warfare gear goes on every. fucking. mission. in the US DotMil. MAJOR pain in the ass. That included every. time. I. went. to. the. field. while on Active Duty... Promask, MOPP gear, all the pain in the ass takes up a metric fuckton on space and usually got left in the "B" Bag in the battalion areas. "B" Bag if you didn't know is where you stash the extra 2-3 uniforms, the spare pair of boot, the long johns, extra bullshit that you can't hump in your "A" bag, the ruck... kept those with the battalion trains...
Even as a fucking contractor I had a full issue of that bullshit... hell, it's the reason that I STILL have 4-5 M-40 variants and at least 2 full JLIST suits in my size (successor to the MOPP gear, much cleaner, no nasty charcoal lining) plus extra filters and hell, even a full on M256 detector kit laying around the house. (they always forgot to ask for it back, go figure)
So IF they run field operations the same way as we did, the stories of "OMFG THEY SHIPPED IN CHEMBIO GEAR!!!!!" means someone found/over-ran the Rear Echelon Battalion Trains areas and found all the not-needed for now stashed gear IMO... leastways that's SOP for the US DotMil.
So, we'll see... either way it's gonna purely suck.
Got MOPP4?
Thanks Aesop. I suppose the follow on question for option 1, status quo in two years, is what Russia looks like - another Putinesque sort of character or something completely different?
ReplyDeleteGiven that it took us months of preparation, weeks of preparatory bombing, total air dominance, 180,000 troops, 26 days and basically destroying everything from water supply and the electrical grid, to knocking out all comms, all against the Iraqis who were markedly inferior to the Ukrainians,just to take Baghdad, I'd say the Russians are doing just fine. They are doing it their way, to their timelines, and doubtless could care less about western military standards, and they aren't getting AWAC, JSTARRS, or RIVET JOINT data being constantly fed to them either. Meanwhile, half the Ukrainian Army is jammed in a pocket in the Donbas, or surrounded in Mariupol. The Ukrainian's can't maneuver, can't counter attack and can't resupply. The Russians will not quit, will and will get what they want whatever it is, and the west will be left holding their collective dicks.
ReplyDeleteOthers suggest that when Ivan gets tired of playing Wak-Mole, there will be heavy artillery for siege and destruction.
ReplyDeleteThe Ukraine is the key piece in Russia's monopoly on the fuel for Europe since there are gas, oil and coal reserves. Putin HAS to secure the DonBass and the Crimea and its coastal resources. Russia imports almost everything and needs the fuel profits to pay for it.
https://neveryetmelted.com/2022/03/07/russias-motivations/
Putin has sent 2nd tier conscript infantry. Expendable. Next comes MRLS and tube artillery. It would have been "nice" to take the cities and infrastructure intact, but the gas, oil, and water for the Crimea is where it's at. The ethnic-Russians were sent by the Soviets to replace all the Ukrainians that they starved to death (Holodomor). Did it once, they'll do it again.
Worth adding that the Ukrainians claim (with some evidence) to have taken out two Russian major generals (one near Kyiv, trying to unfuck the northern column, one - Vitaly Gerassimov - near Kharkiv, which they were able to confirm because the Russians don't have encrypted comms (!), because the encryption system depends on the cell phone towers they've been knocking down (!!!)). When's the last time an American flag rank officer died in combat? I think you have to go back to the 1860s for that.
ReplyDeleteSo, math is not your forté?
ReplyDeleteThe Russians are using 250,000 men, not 180,000.
The Ukrainians are about as formidable a force as the Idaho National Guard.
Baghdad is 300 miles from Kuwait; Kyiv is 56 miles from Belarus.
The Russians OWNED every square foot of that territory from ever until 1990, so it's not like they need a Rand McNally atlas to find their way around.
So what you're telling me is that an entirely cut off and trapped army has managed to fight a vastly superior force to the one that went 6 times farther in Iraq to a virtual standstill, and inflict upon it over 4 1/2 times the worst casualties they suffered from the entire German Wermacht under the blitzkrieg, on a man-for-man basis, even with the Russians having to revert to wantonly shelling entire cities, and the Ukrainian resolve has stiffened, not slackened; and you think they're doing "just fine"?!?.
https://i.imgur.com/N1tMbb5.jpg
Okay, Pookie. You hug your teddy real tight, and keep telling yourself that. Baghdad Bob had nothing on your spin. Your take is risible.
The Ukrainians are going to be slitting Russian throats there every minute of every day until Ivan fucks off back to Moscow, with his tail between his legs, even if the Russians raise their flag in Kyiv and declare victory. Even the ethnic Russian Ukrainians want to bleed Vlad's troops.
Putin has punched the tar baby with both arms, and now he's kicking it with both feet. It's going to be his ultimate undoing, and make Russia a pariah state for a century or more. The Russians have no path to victory unless they depart Ukraine, in haste. Anything else is a bleeding sore that festers in perpetuity. Once a country gets a taste of liberty, they don't knuckle under to tyrants nearly so willingly.
The longer this goes on, the more likely Russia becomes a backwards backwater vassal of China.
ReplyDeleteIf this appears to be 'winning' I don't want to consider what 'losing' looks like -- https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-urging-chinas-military-help-ukraine-biden-admin-says-sunday-afternoon-media The only question -- is the request real or psyop?
ReplyDeleteAdd the fact that Russia also asked for assistance from a client state, Syria, one has to ponder if the burn rate on personnel that UA claims is the more accurate number.
Anyone believing anything being put out my the mainsewer media or the mainsewer government about what's going is as delusional as Biden. There is little to no truth coming from those sources.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading that Russian killed in action in this war is coming in at a rate about five times higher than during WW2 your first thought should be "OK we obviously have the wrong numbers here." The other big conspicuous data point is that the power and internet are still working in Kiev and the other major northern cities. It's hard to imagine the effort required to have not *accidentally* taken any of that offline by now.
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me like the Russians swallowed their own BS about these people are oppressed and we'll be greeted as liberators. Now they're in a well shit moment where blasting the cities to rubble is, to put it mildly, counterproductive, but camping outside with their dicks in their hands isn't doing any good either. My guess is they sit and do nothing in the north and focus on defeating the Ukrainian army in the southeast. The hope being that once the bulk of the Ukrainian military has surrendered there the government will capitulate.
1) The Ukes claim twice the number of KIAs that CBS put out, based on US estimates.
ReplyDelete2) The Russians admit to "only" 498 in the same time frame, not the 6000 I used. (Ignoring totally that having 6 generals killed, and two fully loaded IL-76 transports full of airborne troops erased in milliseconds points rather decisively to the 6000 Russian KIA figure being far more dead-on-balls accurate than 498).
3) So let's use the Russian numbers. Now one has only to explain how a force of 250K (bigger than the entire US Marine Corps), suffering only 498 casualties in two weeks, is nonetheless stopped cold, and unable to take much beyond their Day One gains, and has been forced to revert to falling back, and shelling cities from 30 klicks away, as video after video is released showing the Ukes giving Ivan's guys a daily shit sandwich.
[Hint: That wasn't a Ukrainian armored regiment getting the shit blown out of it on YouTube the other day, and retreating with their tails between their legs; that was all Ivan taking it up the tailpipe.]
4) Your ball; please show all work.
5) "Blasting the cities to ruble" is exactly what the Russians are doing, around the clock, with neither rhyme nor reason.
So, in your experience, how many Ukrainian hearts and minds is that liable to win them for the next 10 years of occupation? (I'm betting the Ukrainians will be killing Russians just because they can, and wherever they find them on five continents, for the next 50 years, even if Russia withdrew unilaterally tomorrow.)
6) The bulk of the Ukrainian army is now 20M males aged 18-60, who seem to be doing quite well, and could be expected to continue to do so even if Kyiv fell tomorrow, and Zelenskyy was put up against a wall and shot on the spot.
In your experience, how well did getting rid of Saddam (2006) and Bin Laden (2011) do for ending our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and assuring our victories in those two countries?
Once again, please show all work.
I really don't understand the idea that Russia is blasting cities to ruble right now. That's not logically consistent with the power and internet still working all over the country (at least the northern cities). I couldn't find a totally up to date live cam, but here's one from March 11 of Kiev:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od78OZa2FtA
It's a day long and a whole lot of absolutely nothing happens.
I've tried finding video/streams/information from the southeast where the separatists and Ukrainian army have been fighting for the last 8 years. Most non-western sources say that is the principle focus of the Russian army right now, encircling and defeating the Ukrainians there on behalf of their new "independent states." For the north as far as I know they don't even claim to be trying to take control over the cities.
They're randomly shelling bunches of them. What makes you think that power is working?
ReplyDeleteThe internet is a function of Elon Musk. Unless Russia wants to spread this to space, it's going to be pretty hard to take down the 'net in an entire hemisphere.
Kyiv is central north, and Russia has been trying (and failing) to cut off the city since Day One.
If that's news to you, you haven't been paying any attention.