Thread by @ArmchairW

Yesterday the Ukrainian government admitted their vehicle loss figures, revealing catastrophic losses over the course of the war thus far.

This tells us something critical about the info war: that the Russian MoD's claims about their own operations are basically true.

To provide a little background - the Russian Ministry of Defense puts out daily updates about their operations in Ukraine. They're quite dry and consist largely of statistics about artillery fire missions, airstrikes, and Ukrainian equipment and facilities claimed destroyed.

I have maintained in the past (and been harshly criticized for doing so) that these statistics are truthful and that if the Russian MoD is lying, they're lying by omission rather than making up figures.

Two key pieces of information came out recently to validate my position.

First of all, the Ukrainian government admitted last week that the Russians are firing approximately 50,000 artillery shells at them daily. This was in line with an earlier logistical analysis I did using official Russian fire mission figures.

Source for the above: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…

Second of all, this Wednesday Ukraine's deputy minister of defense for procurement made an astonishing admission in an interview with National Defense Magazine - that their units are operating with between 50-70% of their rated equipment.

Link: nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/…

This is a current deficiency of some 400 tanks and 1300 infantry carriers, as well as 700 artillery pieces.

Bear in mind that these appear to be -net- losses representing current deficiencies in unit tables of equipment, not -gross- losses of total vehicles destroyed thus far.

This distinction is quite important - Ukraine has already gotten hundreds of donated foreign vehicles, and it had a considerable post-Soviet stockpile of unallocated reserve equipment prewar. Damaged vehicles are also frequently repaired and put back into service.

And yet despite all of this Ukraine is still currently short some 1700 combat vehicles and 700 cannons.

To tie this back in: the Russian MoD is claiming that over the course of the war they've destroyed 3600 Ukrainian combat vehicles and 2000 cannons and mortars.

(note that the Russian kill category is broader than the Ukrainian claim by also including mortars, which would be elsewhere in a Ukrainian brigade's ToE than the artillery systems discussed in the interview - although the Russians also claim another 547 rocket launchers)

Even if the Ukrainian admission represented -gross- losses this would still be fairly accurate, as good battle damage assessment is quite difficult (consider fatal ammo fires versus harmless reactive armor fires), vehicles get repaired, etc.

Considering that this is a -net- figure taking into account the full effects of foreign donations and reactivated reserve vehicles to replace losses, however, it appears that the Russian MoD's kill counter is highly accurate and based on a pretty good battle damage assessment.

This Ukrainian admission is further buttressed by their request last week for a gigantic amount of combat equipment - basically enough to fill this identified deficiency. I addressed this in a previous thread.

As such we now know (with some confidence!) that the Russians are putting out their own real, internal assessments in their daily updates - and not made-up figures for propaganda purposes. /end

Addendum: I've seen it suggested that the Ukrainians are now exaggerating their own losses in an attempt to get more Western aid, but I don't consider that particularly credible. It would be a wild 180 from their previous messaging, and it's not consistent with the battlefield.