Thread by @PhillipsPOBrien

There is a lot of discussion about Russia moving to a strategy of attrition. If so, that’s a sign of failure and desperation. They will run out of forces in Ukraine before the Ukrainians, unless they massively reinforce (which they are not doing so far).

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1505064029232025600

Thought I will develop this more. There are signs that the Russians have realized that they are terribly overextended and are digging in and even retreating in places to try and rationalize their frankly bonkers number of different efforts.

There are satellite images from around Kyiv, showing Russian forces constructing fortifications as if they plan to be there for a while. This makes some sense individually, as the Russians have nowhere near the forces to surround and attack Kyiv.

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1504921997561761795?s=20&t=qw3nIWp2UcsHQpuBZYz9Yw

On the far other side of the Russians ridiculously long, overextended line, they have retreated from Mykolaiv, which was to be (we assume) the staging point for the assault on Odessa.

https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1502199923055419396?s=20&t=qw3nIWp2UcsHQpuBZYz9Yw

Again makes sense in traditional military thinking for Russia to do this. Stop the drives where they might be overextended, and start focussing on the drives right over the border which are holding up their supply lines.

Looking at the map above, it would be rational in a military sense for them to put all their efforts into taking Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and link up the Donestk front with that coming down from Kharkiv.

That way they could gain access to working road and rail lines straight from Russia, which would allow later assaults on Kyiv and Odessa, once they had established large forward supply dumps closer to the targets. IOW, rational understanding of logistics and war.

The only problem with this rational war of attrition on the edges and attempts to open up secure supply lines, is that it will take a very long time, and there is no way that this Russian Army could do it.

We are talking months (and probably more than 2) before they could rationalise their efforts, mass enough force in the east to try and take the cities, open up the supply lines, create forward depots and begin to create a force to attack Kyiv and Odessa.

and btw, Ukrainian defense might be so effective that and Russian morale and inability to launch complex operations so poor, that even this is far too ambitious to this army.

Even if they did it, which would require great skill and organization, the losses they would incur would not only exhaust, they would lead to the completely deconstruction of the force that they have in Ukraine today.

So far, being in combat against the Ukrainian Army has cost the Russians about 30,000 casualties (dead, wounded, captured) in 22 days, so around 1,360 soldiers a day. And this has involved taking only one large city--Kherson.

If they went into more large cities (Kharkiv and Sumy) the casualties might rise. But even if Russian fighting methods improve drastically and they reduce losses to only 1000 a day--they would still lose 60,000 in two more months of attritional limited war.

So best case scenario the invading army has suffered 50% casualties (more than that in equipment losses) and been at the front line for almost three months. The greatest armies in military history could not do this.

So, the Russian army would be broken and they would not have taken Kyiv or Odessa. Thats the problem with the attritional strategy. Makes sense militarily, however the Russian Army in Ukraine cant do it. Which only makes sense as it was assembled for a quick, easy campaign

Returning to this tween about the Russian attempt to take Kyiv which was put together almost a week ago. The mathematical dilemma is even worse now for the Russians.

https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1503418780705189889?s=20&t=qw3nIWp2UcsHQpuBZYz9Yw

worth noting that the ISW report saying that the Russians have lost the first stage of the war, suggests that the only way for them to recover is to regroup and resupply as outlined in this tweet thread. It adds, however, that there is no sign that they are doing this.

If the Russians dont reorganize, resupply and reinforce, their only options are to die in place through attrition, try to reach a negotiated settlement, or escalate with Nuclear/Biological/Chemical to try and force a victory through mass destruction.

In any rational world, they would try to negotiate a settlement. But this whole operation has been irrational from the start.

Here is the first tweet I saw about the Institute for the Study of War report.

https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1505292675611779076?s=20&t=XC6ASM3m6Sd2jzLQM0aLdw

Here is maybe my favorite map of the campaign, showing the present situation. A stationary, attritional campaign in these different, broken thrusts would be disastrous.

https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1505303293915971589?s=20&t=XC6ASM3m6Sd2jzLQM0aLdw