This is a quick thread on Russian plans, maps, and trucks.🧵
We are going to start with Ukraine & explain. 1/
Most people have no clue as to how truely large Ukraine is. So, to cure that, I have gone to the thetruesize.com appin order to educate people.
In this case by laying the US state of Texas over Ukraine. The Texas-Louisiana border to El Paso is roughly the distance 2/
between Ukraine's Russian & Polish borders.
The distance of Kyiv from the Belarus border to be about that of the Oklahoma border to Dallas, Texas.
The tip of Crimea to the Ukraine-Belarus border is roughly from Brownsville Tx to the Red River border w/Oklahoma. 3/
Driving from Texarkana on the N.E. tip of Texas to El Paso at the western tip is 814 miles & 12 hours 13 min. non-stop on US interstates with a 75 mph speed limit
There was no way the Russian trucks like this were going to make it from Belarus to Kyiv 4/
Putin's generals thought it would take 3 days to overthrow the Ukraine government and 12 more days for the 190,000 troops to occupy the entire country of 43 million people, twice that of Texas.
That is one Russian conscript per 266 Ukrainians & 3.1 sq. km 6/
This plan assumed the Ukrainian military would put up a token resistance and the newly installed Puppet government would arrange the surrender of Ukraine's army of 250,000 men and 45,000 man territorial defense force without any weapons or soldiers going insurgent. 7/
Nor do those armed Ukrainian numbers include the six annual conscript classes that filled up that 250,000 man army in the eight years of fighting in the Donbas.
Assuming 1/2 of 250,000 x six, that is 730,000 combat veterans who would take great exception to Russia's puppet 8/
Assuming only a perfect plan for the Ukrainian Army, territorials plus Russians faced only 150,000 of those conscript classes. Russian & puppet forces would only outnumber them 3.2 to one in a popular insurgency.
That isn't enough to win.
9/
See these #'s
"However, when facing broadly popular insurgencies, counterinsurgents lost every time they possessed a force ratio advantage of 5-1 or less, failed half the time with odds between 6-1 and 10-1,
...but succeeded three-quarters of the time when outnumbering the insurgents by 10-1 or more."
Short form:
Putin lost the moment he decided to invade Ukraine.
Russia has no political or military options to achieve successful war termination. 11/
The only agents in this war with the power to achieve war termination in Ukraine is the Ukrainian people.
Not the Ukrainian government
The people.
Ukraine is engaged in a national people's war against a Kleptocratic potentate. 12/
The Ukrainian people's terms are "We want the Russians gone, all our lands back and even then we will still keep fighting Russia while Putin is in power."
No Ukrainian government can force them to settle for anything less. 13/
Since Putin's 15-day plan has failed & Ukraine's military is fighting. Lets turn to another map that represents the reality on the Ground in Ukraine.
Ukraine is big.
So big that we have a lot of space between conventional armed formations like the WW2 N. African campaign. 14/
There are more armed Ukrainians than Russians in Ukraine.
While the Russians are fighting conventional Ukrainian Army unit for cities and choke points.
The Ukrainian territorials are fulfilling a role much like the colonial militia of the American revolution.
They are
15/
...filling the the space between armed units and destroying Russian Army truck convoys in the 21st century like the Colonial militia destroyed British army foraging parties around Philadelphia in the 18th century & impelled then to retreat or starve.
President Zelensky claimed on Mar 9, 2022 that more Russian equipment has been captured than Ukrainian equipment lost in the campaign to date, and thus all Ukrainian losses have been covered in operational units by Russian AFV trophies, especially MBTs.
/19
Contrafactual Short form:
Ukraine is winning the vehicular firepower war of attrition with Russia because it has trained & combat experienced reserves from its previous conscript classes to fill those tractor captured Russian AFV's.
Long conventional war favors Ukraine.
20/End
PS.
Yes, the thread turned out to be long, not short.
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Alright, a few Mud, Road & Truck maintenance observations here.🧵
The BTR-82 tire treads in this video are the same as those on several Russian trucks captured with sh--ty tires by Ukraine. They may have the same flawed Chinese tire issues.
That piece of pavement is so heat damaged it's going to crack and throw pot holes from day night heat cycles and precipitation, let alone any military truck traffic. The road is in none too good a shape to start with.
This sort of 'pavement attrition" 2/
...is happening everywhere the Ukrainians and Russians destroy combat & support vehicles on Ukrainian roads
The end result is what's called "Friction" in war. It takes more and more effort to do the simple things
Destroyed roads like this are a cascading systems malfunction 3/
This is a useful video to watch for several reasons. A Ukrainian missile comes from the right (Javelin? NLAW?) & kills a Russian tank with a top attack setting off its ammo.
No one got out of that tank.
The key thing here is that you are seeing this drone video at all. 1/
This is a Ukrainian talking about not believing Ukraine would be invaded by Putin again
Putin's intentional nerve gas poisoning of Sergei & Yulia Skripal plus Charlie Rowley & Dawn Sturgess as innocent bystanders inside nuclear armed Great Britain convinced me it was certain. 1/
Alright Ladies & Gentlemen, we are going to have a round of "Mud, Blood & Truck Medical Supply Chains" as we look at the casualty implications of the break down of Russian Truck Logistics in Ukraine. 🧵
1/
First, I'm going to pull some modern warfare casualty ratios from the book UNDERSTANDING WAR.
20 out of 100 troops hit in combat are killed IMMEDIATELY
Modern late 20th-early 21st century war w/tanks artillery and planes has a death to casualty ratio of 1-to-4.
This requires modern trauma care, which is "non-trivial." It requires a supply chain with fresh whole blood & hemostatic dressings. sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing… 3/
Alrighty folks, it is time for another trip in the realm of "Mud and Truck Maintenance."
This thread 🧵 is going to excerpt from the single most important article on Russian Army Logistics in the latest invasion of Ukraine by ALEX VERSHININ.
"It is possible to calculate how far trucks can operate using simple beer math. Assuming the existing road network can support 45 mph speed...
2/
...a single truck can make three trips a day at up to a 45-mile range: One hours to load, one hour to drive to the supported unit, one hours to unload, and another hour to return to base. Repeating this cycle three times equals 12 hours total.
3/
I've done three posts on Ukraine's Maidan Color revolution & aftermath, in this one I get into how Ukrainians are wired in dealing with dishonorable enemies.