Michael Bond Profile picture
Jun 6 60 tweets 29 min read
Thread🧵consolidating updates from May 30 – June 5 on the large scale unit repositioning and resupply efforts ongoing in Ukraine. This thread will be incorporated into my primary thread on combat losses, which will be linked at the bottom once complete
Combat Strength
Of an estimated 120 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) committed by Russia to the invasion, it is believed there are currently 110 BTGs in Ukraine. No change this week

Here is the recent history of Russian BTG counts
The Russian ground forces committed to Ukraine are believed to represent 80% of combat ready total forces


Here is the history of US estimates of Russian combat strength

A professor who is a close observer of the war cites apparently declining losses, possibly due to reduced vehicle inventories



and suggests that the battle of Donbas has reached its static phase
A Russian affiliated observer also believes that the Russian offensive in the Donbas has exhausted itself


However, other experts are not ready to call the fight a stalemate
Russian Equipment and logistics
While a convincing argument is being made that Russia simply did not structure its forces well for the current war



Russia continues to commit new equipment, including older T-62 tanks
It is suggested that these older tanks are being deployed primarily because they are those used by the reserve units that are available


Other observers agree and this thread contains a lot of context on the use of this equipment
Doubts still remain about the speed with which Russia may be able to make certain equipment available for combat, as other reports have found how reliant modern Russian equipment is on advanced foreign components

Russia’s apparent problems with incorporated some modern systems are evident where an Su-25 appears to rely on a commercial GPS device

The General Staff of the Armed forces of Ukraine is keeping an eye on the movement of Belarusian vehicles as a potential source for Russian resupply

Captured Equipment
In recent weeks I have been incorporating figures for captured equipment into my larger thread on available forces using a conservative estimate of only 1/3 of captures being suitable for short term reuse
New Equipment for Ukraine
For an effort to keep an ongoing count of equipment supplied to Ukraine see
oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answer…

Here is another helpful collection of the data
ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-aga…

There is also a list now being maintained on Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f…
After last week’s second monthly meeting of donors of military aid to Ukraine, announcements of new aid continued. The third meeting is now scheduled for June 15


Here is a map of the donors of military and other aid to Ukraine

Ukraine has reportedly circulated a wish list of additional weaponry

The US announced a new $700 million drawdown from the massive funding bill that was recently approved. This includes:

Germany recently defended its contributions, noting that it has committed:


However, the German SPD leader was quoted as saying that Germany would not meet the 2% of GDP spending on military funding every year

m.faz.net/aktuell/politi…
And there has been frustration at the uncertainty surrounding an expected German-Polish ring exchange deal in consideration of approximately 240 tanks that Poland has already provided to Ukraine

m.faz.net/aktuell/politi…

No progress on ring exchange

spiegel.de/politik/deutsc…
Despite the uncertainty of the German-Polish arrangement, a new Greece IFV ring swap with Germany is now expected



as part of a larger announcement of military aid from Greece
There is now speculation that Spain may provide leopard tanks to Ukraine

MLRS
At the top of the Ukrainian wish list were HIMARS MLRS systems. The US has now announced that it will be providing four units



HIMARS were pre-positioned in Europe in anticipation of beginning training

Ukrainian officials have expressed concern both that this number of units is not enough compared to their need for such systems



and concern that the longer range munitions will reportedly not be provided

While Russia initially suggested that the delivery of HIMARS would be escalatory, Putin has recently downplayed Russia’s concerns about the systems

Britain also announced this week that it would be sending M270B MLRS

The Swiss vetoed the transfer to Ukraine of Danish Pirhanna



However the Swiss did authorize the export of parts for other vehicles

Australia has committed several more vehicles, including 20 more Bushmasters



It is important to note that the US is also donating commercial vehicles, which don’t show up in the compilations of military aid

Artillery
The continued significance of the artillery duel can be seen in pock marked fields

While not part of Ukraine’s requests this thread attempts some rough math on what the numbers would be like if Ukraine were to switch its artillery units over completely from 152mm to 155mm

In addition to 18 Polish AHS Krab self propelled guns already donated to Ukraine, it was announced Ukraine intended to purchase 54 more units. South Korean cooperation in providing chassis is expected to speed up the manufacturing



This purchase of additional SPGs from Poland may also reflect an intention for closer industrial cooperation between Poland and Ukraine in the production of weapons

France announced the intention to provide more CAESAR SPGs

Australian howitzers have been seen in use in Ukraine



but the need for further artillery on the battlefield is seen in the use of older artillery guns in use by Ukraine

Lithuanian crowdfunded $5 million in donations to buy Ukraine a Bayraktar drone



The deal was signed



and the Turkish manufacturer offered to donate the drone Lithuania can use the funds to buy munitions

Observers confirmed that 14 Su-25 jets were provided by Bulgaria

Ex-Afghan helicopters continue to be delivered by the US to Ukraine



With more helicopters announced to be on their way this week

Sweden announced the donation of Robot 17 anti-ship missiles, which are lighter than many other anti-ship weapons and may offer unique deployment options

The Ukrainian success with DIY drones creates economic advantages

novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/…

Here is an excellent video demonstrating Ukraine’s use of drone spotting of artillery fire

However, there are indications the Russians are finally using electronic warfare more effectively



But Ukraine also has smaller scale EW capability, such as anti-drone guns from Lithuania

However, not all crowd funding efforts go well, including an example of a Ukrainian crowdsourcing fraud



and failed attempts to source specialized equipment in Europe for Russia, where Estonia has arrested a drone donor

Russia has focused on attacking Ukrainian logistics capacity in the past several weeks, but this has repeatedly failed to stop the flow of military aid



Including an attack on a Kyiv rail repair facility



This is an interesting historical comparison at attempts to cut rail logistics

We have seen Russia target electrical infrastructure, but recently they targeted a solar field



Given these concerns, it is interesting to see Tesla Powerwall products provided to Ukraine

At the same time, Starlink satellite uplinks from Space X have continued to be quite useful, according to the Ukrainians themselves



Training of Ukrainian personnel
Training on Dutch and German Pzh 2000 SPH



Training on Slovakian Zuzana 2 artillery

According to Ukrainian claims, they learned how to use the M109 in just a week and prefer it to Soviet models

Ukrainians training on US mortars



Where a refresher on training is required there is always the options of a personal phone call

Repair
This is the first evidence I have seen of the Russians engaging in field repairs, apparently using a crane truck

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More from @HelloMrBond

Jun 6
June 5 Full update to thread🧵on estimates of #Russia and #Ukraine losses compared to available forces, using RU and UKR claims along with the best available #OSINT observations and estimates
OSINT % losses of Russian Committed (Russian total) vs Ukrainian total
Personnel 36.3(9.9) vs 7.2
Armor 42.4(12.6) vs 12.5
Tanks 44(22.8) vs 15.7
Artillery 15.5(4.7) vs 4.1
Aircraft 8.3(2.2) vs 15
Helicopters 15.7(4.7) vs 9.7
Read 51 tweets
Jun 5
In case you missed the big updates last week (I finished at 3 am😅) they were:
⁃ updated Ukraine personnel to 550,000
⁃ Added up Russian daily claims of Ukrainian losses for 38,257 killed
⁃ Used Pentagon estimates as cross check

Details below👇
New update coming later today
I updated the Ukrainian personnel size to 550,000 based on additional detail revealed by the Ukrainians

As supported by a count of personal equipment received as military aid

Read 5 tweets
Jun 3
I was recently asked: "Some western businesses initially suspended their operations in Russia and said they would pay employees for around 3 months. Are they now pulling out of Russia entirely?" Here is an update
We start with the list maintained by Yale
som.yale.edu/story/2022/alm…
The list maintained by team of experts at Yale CELI, grades companies' disengagement from Russian business on a scale similar to school grades from A-F
At the moment, the breakdown is:
A 335 'withdrawal'
B 466 'suspension'
C 159 'scaling back'
D 159 'buying time'
F 244 'digging in'

Compare these numbers to values over two months ago
Read 10 tweets
May 30
May 29 Full update to thread🧵on estimates of #Russia and #Ukraine losses compared to available forces, using RU and UKR claims along with the best available #OSINT observations and estimates
Summary
OSINT % losses of Russian Committed (Russian total) vs Ukrainian total
Personnel 35.7(9.7) vs 6.9
Armor 42(12.4) vs 12.2
Tanks 43.2(22.2) vs 15.3
Artillery 15.4(4.6) vs 4
Aircraft 8.1(2.1) vs 16.3
Helicopters 15.2(4.5) vs 8.3
Read 59 tweets
May 25
The Russian Central Bank continues to publish updates on Russia's foreign currency reserves. The net balance varies quite a bit from week to week, but we can see that it was flat from mid-March through mid-April and has been negative for a month at an average outflow of ~$1B/day
Note that the foreign currency reserves in the graph above above represent the available reserves. $320B has been subtracted from the values in the table to reflect reserves frozen overseas. Additional details can be found in this report

cbr.ru/Collection/Col…
Note that European energy purchases from Russia are adding inflow of ~$1B/day in the last few months. This may be dwindling as several countries have reduced their purchases or had energy flows cut by Russia. If such purchases were eliminated, the net outflow would be ~$2B/day
Read 5 tweets

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