Thread by @GresselGustav

1/ So after a long time a wrap up tweet on where we are in the 🇷🇺>🇺🇦 war. I wanted to do this a long time ago, esp. as our last @ecfr twitter space was some time in the past. But this 👇 delayed everything a bit.

2/ Russian breakthrough near #Popansa yesterday a shark reminder that the #Donbas offensive is still ongoing. 🇺🇦 hold most lines, but such breakthroughs are always possible as long as the offensive is going on.

https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1527423190984962048?s=20&t=gBhge-5-i0qtcAEzoLj-hQ

3/ However, I would not start to draw encirclement circles (something quitre fashionable in recent months). 🇺🇦 have been expecting this and prepared lines in the rear. We'll see in the next days if they can stabilise the situation with reserves.

4/ As stated in early April, progress in terms of territory is not the bigest priority for 🇷🇺, but rather achieving a better attrition rate. Russia is preparing for a long war. The Donbas was deemed a better theatre to erode the 🇺🇦 armed forces. But is it?

5/ I used @oryxspioenkop list of destroyed equipment to calculate attrition rates of the inial phase (blue) and the Donbas offensive (orange).
So we see bad river crossings. But overall, attrition rates have not improved, and 🇷🇺 still takes high losses 4 each destroyed 🇺🇦 system.

6/ Where will this end up? Russian forces are already plagued by shortages in men. You can see this in how they fight. They avoid larger towns/settlements, because they lack the infantry to clear them.
Voluntary recruitment does not provide the numbers to sustain the war effort.

7/ From the spring-draft 2021, RuAF roughly gained 60000 volunteers by May. At that time, a lot of contract soldiers with expiring contracts demanded to be relieved. Most of them were, to avoid disciplinary issues.

8/ We have to assume roughly 20000 🇷🇺 soldiers KIA, and that suggests at least two times that number as WIA on top.
Voluntary recruitment can't plug the wholes. The force is dwindling.

9/ On the other side, 🇺🇦 forces are growing. You heared about the wast swaths of voluntaries in February/March. Well, it takes a lot of tuime to train a soldier, and even more to form functioning military formations from these soldiers.

10/ But 🇺🇦 will probably add them over the summer. How many is a close guarded secret. But UA had 400.000 #Donbas-war veterans in civilian clothes, just to give you a rough idea how many there may be.

11/ If 🇷🇺 authumn-draft again provides insuficient voluntaries compared to KIA/WIA and expired treaties, September/October may be the time things may start to turn sour for Moscow.
For the time being, Russia sticks to voluntary recruitment.
reuters.com/world/europe/r…

12/ This may still change. However, even declaring war and mobilisation has its risks.
First, even mobilisation will not solve 🇷🇺 problems quickly. It will enable to send conscripts to war, plugging the most urgent manning shortages.
But mobilised forces need training, equipment.

13/ Above all time. Russia has lost a lot of officers, particularly Lt-Capt. ranks. Given the lack of propper NCO, this will drastically slow training and decrease quality of mobilised troops.
They will not come quickly, and not be best quality.

14/ Again, in the meantime 🇺🇦 will have also created new formations, and in the West all gloves on arms suppy may fall (there is still a lot we could give the Ukrainians...).
At the same time, economic costs are severe, especially on the long term.

15/ Political risks as well. Many Russians do not want to get involved in this, despite propaganda and pressure. Forcing them in would mobilise society, but not in the way the regime wants.
There is no fee lunch in this for Putin.

16/ So then what is the most likely course of action? First, push the offensive while you can.
Then look for a ceasfire and a Minsk agreement. Try to persuade the West to force Kyiv to accept it, for the sake of "peace".
There are enough "don't humiliate Putin" Idiots that ...

17/ ... may second this. However they are irrelevant. The relevant West (🇺🇸) will keep support 🇺🇦.
How far would 🇺🇦 go pushing back? Honestly, that depends on the shape and size of both forces in authumn. Till we get there, a lot of battles will still be hard to predict.

18/ While 🇺🇦 has the men and women it needs, it lacks a lot of the equipment. Systematic destruction of domestic defence industry by 🇷🇺 missiles has made it more dependent on imports from the West than ever before.
We are still much too slow and reluctant to provide heavy weapons

19/ and especially doing this in a planned and coordinated manner. I hoped the #Ramstein meeting has smoothed this a bit, but national cackophony on isolated items hasn't died.
On this note, a further comment to recommend: ecfr.eu/article/all-ou…