Any Day Now™ - Day 657

WASHINGTON (Wall Street Journal) --The war in Ukraine has devastated Russia's pre-invasion military machine, with nearly 90% of its pre-war army lost to death or injury, and thousands of battle tanks destroyed, according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence assessment shared with Congress. 

The intelligence assessment, according to a congressional source, says that 315,000 Russian personnel have been killed or injured since the February 2022 invasion, or 87 percent of Moscow’s prewar force of 360,000. Russia has also lost nearly two-thirds of its tank force, or 2,200 out of its 3,500 pre-invasion stock, the source said.

While it is widely known that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military has sustained vast losses in Ukraine, the assessment provides new details about the extent of those setbacks.

If you still want to keep huffing hopeium, and/or kissing Vlad's ass, go ahead on; we don't care. If you're convinced the intel from any twenty Russian shill blog sites are giving the straight poop, shovel it down with both hands with our enthusiastic blessing.

Your delusions are your own problem, not ours.

Note this estimate, nor this blog, doesn't hereby conclude that Ukraine must therefore be "winning", for any value of that word. {Google France post-WWI if the greater concept eludes you.} And as we told you as early as May of last year, IIRC, Ukraine having shifted to dependence on the West for support continues to leave them at the entire mercy of the West not to withdraw that support.

But as we told you from days of the outset of Russia's asinine exercise in futility, the likelihood that Russia ever can score anything like a win is less likely than Bigfoot swooping onto the Capitol steps on a winged unicorn to crown Trump Emperor For Life next Novermber.

So if you'd like your reality just like your whiskey - straight up - this estimate of Russia's situation is likely a metric f**kton closer to the real story than anything else you can cobble together from your underpants.

For those of you inclined to froth and gnash your teeth at any suggestion that Russia Could Be Eating A Big Shit Sandwich despite all available evidence, and jonesing because you haven't had anything to gibber and caper about here lately, consider this your Christmas present.

But when your Any Day Now™ delusions all come crashing down, and there's nothing left to scrape out of your underpants and fling at the wall in response to the voices in your head, remember: you were given fair warning.

Related:

This figure closely aligns with data from the Dutch open-source intelligence firm Oryx, which tracks military equipment and vehicle losses through verifiable photo and video evidence.

Oryx's findings indicate that Russia's verifiable tank losses stand at 2,541, with a significant portion destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured by Ukrainian forces. The U.S. intelligence report also highlights the loss of 4,400 out of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles, representing a 32% loss rate for the Russian Armed Forces. These figures are in close agreement with Oryx's documented losses of 3144 infantry fighting vehicles. The enormity of these losses has compelled Russia to take extraordinary measures to sustain its military efforts. This includes a partial mobilization of 300,000 personnel and the relaxation of recruiting standards to include convicts and older civilians.

This new intelligence from the United States not only confirms the extensive material and human losses suffered by Moscow but also provides a clearer context for understanding Russia’s setbacks in the Ukraine conflict.

As Warren Strobel of The Wall Street Journal points out, while it was assumed that Russia had incurred significant losses, these latest revelations offer a more detailed picture of the extent of the impact on Russian military capabilities.

Suck it, crybabies.