Cathi, You seemed a bit dispairing a day or so ago. Here’s what Dima (Military Summary Channel) has to say today about the battle fronts and the future (for last two or three days before today he was very negative in describing the RF Liman situation) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTRKqU__0kg
I did post yesterday that I doubted the RF would not decline to engage in a tactical retreat from Liman unless the RF had something in the works.
I see that Alexander Mercouris is of the same mind and has an interesting take on the reasons for the RF’s slow operational tempo recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U1HhA4z9DA
Yes, I found Dima’s report today quite surprising. But, I also found Alexander’s program today quite surprising as in one regard they contradicted each other.
Dimi offers the reason for Ukraine’s inability to encircle Russia’s Liman forces as had been expected because Ukraine “ran out of blood.” Yet, Alexander said that Shogui said Ukraine currently has 400,000 troops. I have not been able to find Shoigu’s interview (only a few sentences from it in the our media) but one of the sentences I had seen from Shoigu is that Ukraine began the war with 201,000-202,000 troops on the battlefield. I realize they have had 7 so called mobilizations. But, all along they have been losing them faster than they have been able to feed them into the grinder.
Ukraine has had unbelievably high losses (as multiple other sources have indicated.) In my opinion MUCH higher than Shoigu estimated (61k dead; 49k wounded.) It is much harder for a combatant to measure the enemy’s losses since they don’t have the identities and locations of the troops the way they do their own troops so real tracking is impossible.
But, if you accept Alexander’s Ukraine numbers and his “rumored” approximate current Russian numbers you get an 8 to 1 current numerical Ukraine advantage. And, Alexander is quite critical of Russia’s military as a result. I think that is completely inaccurate.
I think Dima’s report is much more probable. Russia would not be starting a major offensive Monday with those odds.
My explanation for slow Russian gains and the retreating Russian forces resulting in Kharkov loss of territory during the counter offensive is much simpler. Russia came to the “special military operation” with modest goals and an appropriately small force. NATO/Ukraine resisted those goals and massively escalated requiring a change both in Russia’s goals and the necessary forces to achieve them.
Russia always keeps it’s cards close to it’s vest and never provides enough information which leaves everyone free to speculate allowing the supporters of their opponent to find comfort in delusions...:-)
In my opinion what has actually been surprising is that Russia has been able to take 20% of Ukraine and inflicted casualties at a better than 10 to 1 ratio with a military force that was structured to be withdrawn after providing enough pressure that would allow for modest changes (guarantees for Donbass and neutrality for Ukraine.)
It is going to be interesting to see how this progresses.