Military gap between Russia and Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

Military gap between Russia and Ukraine

economist.com

54 pointsfumblebee106 comments

The bigger gap is between the size of Ukraines fighting age population, their motivation and the 'home court advantage' for want of a better term.

Scared Russian kids are fighting for crappy pay 1000's of km from their home against far more numerous people that are defending their families and their home country against an invader.

The Russian losses are already mounting, but obviously you won't hear about that inside Russia.

A human life is inconsequential in an authoritarian regime. The only thing that counts is that the dictator stays in power, trumping all other concerns.

This holds in both China and Russia.

This is so true. The veil of nationalism is only a tool for the authoritarian. Individuals who fall for the authoritarian are merely "useful idiots".

If you are Russian and reading this, fight to end authoritarism in your country.

That's very true. But the ability to wage war is subject to real world constraints, no matter how deranged the dictator.

I don't think this is generally true, there are already dissenting voices quite high up in the Russian government hierarchy. The full-scale aggression against the whole of Ukraine seems to have caught many high-ranking government and military officials by surprise. The decision was made in the Kremlin. Of course, it is unlikely that these people will take huge personal risks to rectify the situation, so it doesn't make too much of a difference in the short term. But I thought it's worth mentioning.

Yes, but they don't have any power, until someone actually stands up it is Putin that is in charge, and if someone does stand up it will still be a very iffy outcome, chances are that that person would be dead in 24 hours.

Watch the inner circle security council meeting in Russia for some idea of how afraid everybody is of him.

There has to be so many questions in so many of the Russian boots on the grounds minds about this.

That matters more IMO than what the military brass thinks.

.... I don't think this is quite true in China. The Chinese political system is complex, but I think it's trying to do right by its people. It just has an extremely non-Western perspective on the concept of "right." The Chinese political establishment doesn't concern itself with the rights and outcomes for individuals, in the way the West does. It concerns itself with the outcome of populations.

In the US, the needs of the individual outweigh the needs of the many. In China, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If an individual or a group is disrupting the collective good, they need to be managed.

China has done amazingly well for improving the general welfare. It was a very poor country until just a few decades ago. Extreme poverty is on-track to being eliminated, if it hasn't been already (depending on where you place the threshold). Thing like access to housing, food, and medicine are improving. Schools are excellent.

Once you have those basic needs met by everyone, China seems to be moving onto handling issues like stress; the human load of the progress, in terms of work weeks, was tremendous, and China is trying to curtail that, perhaps not to Western standards, but to something manageable.

China has increasingly started cracking down on corruption too.

It has problems, and I'm not trying to downplay those, but it's not Russia, where an oligarchy is draining and bankrupting the general population for their own betterment.

China is also happy to steam roll large portions of its population, e.g., Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong; and has no regard for privacy or free speach or democracy. I'm not sure a genocidal regime can really be said to treat its people better than Russia.

I think China is trying to do right by China, while the people are secondary. They are such a different culture than the West it’s hard to see their system from our perspective as anything but totalitarian and abusive, but the idea that the collective is more important than the individual is a valid perspective, just not one that fits with Western ethics, which we hold to be the superior perspective, naturally.

This is a video game view of war though. As if the authoritarian has a video game controller that lets the video game characters do as the authoritarian pleases.

This has nothing to do with the reality of the Russian military on the ground.

Surely, the Iraq invasion was over so fast exactly because so much of the Iraq military did not want to die to defend Saddam Husein.

The will to fight is so asymmetrical in Ukraine. Surely, the Russian military is not oblivious to what the world thinks of this. So one side is willing to die to defend their country and the other side probably just wants to get back home alive and get this over. The Russians also can't just level every city to the ground and call that victory. They have to break the will of the people without destroying everything.

It is a recipe to lose the war even if you win some battles. The Russian path to victory is extremely small and maybe even impossible in this situation.

And there is no Russian 'endgame', they will be under attack forever, whereas for the Ukrainians there is a very clear goal.

Yes, I actually feel quite bad for the Russian soldiers. Russians view Ukrainians as, well, family. So, to be told that you are going in to kick a few Nazi asses and you will be welcomed as liberators, and then be faced with the reality that your "brothers" are fighting tooth and nail against you must be quite jarring. As you say, losses are mounting, and eventually, it will be noticed. This morning, I saw that Zelensky has requested that the Red Cross help repatriate the bodies of the Russian soldiers. He framed it as a humanitarian act, but doubtlessly, he wants the Russians to see their war dead coming home.

I feel bad for the Ukrainian soldiers. The Russian ones are well aware that they are in a war of aggression, and they have the option to desert.

I don't mean to imply that I don't have the utmost sympathy for the Ukrainians . . .

The Russians were not told that it was a war of aggression; many probably did not realise it until they got there. Is desertion truly a reasonable option? Where are they going to go?

> Is desertion truly a reasonable option?

Likely the orders will be to shoot deserters. Even so the first desertions have already happened.

> Where are they going to go?

POW separate from the other POWs.

And then what? They can never go home again. You said, yourself, that they are "scared kids."

Edit: I have no doubt that there have been some desertions and I am sure that there will be more, but I am not sure that it is reasonable to expect that any given "scared kid" will do so even if they believe they are on the wrong side.

> They can never go home again.

Beats being buried.

> and they have the option to desert.

sadly it's a lot more nuanced :(

-- (apologies for x-posting this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30477618) --

Russia had some trouble[1] recruiting for this mission. Pay is a joke, and they had to hire a bunch of aging convicts with nowhere else to go:

>> Two Meduza sources referred to the formations taking shape in the “people’s republics” as “Dirlewanger brigades,” because they actively enlist former inmates. “Those [joining up] in Luhansk were in prison,” said an individual personally acquainted with members of the new unit. “And then suddenly they turned up in this detachment. They’re real criminals, and besides that they’re no spring chickens [aged 45 and up].”

it gets worse:

>> Indeed, Meduza’s sources believe that those who accepted the recruiters’ offers likely have a rather low level of training. “All the rest are [on combat trips] in Africa or in the sands [Syria],” explained a Russian security agency veteran familiar with the recruitment campaign. “Nobody’s raring to go to the ‘field of spoil tips’ [the Donbas].”

>> “They just don’t want to go there, because there’s a regular army [the Ukrainian Armed Forces]: it’s difficult to fight against it,” said a former Wagner Group mercenary. “If there’s a regular army, there will be big losses.”

There is another[2] recent article that suggests Russians aren't going to Donbas/Luhansk voluntarily. If so it could explain the losses and shocking morale.

________

[1] A road to nowhere Russian recruiters are mobilizing mercenaries for a ‘trip to the Donbas.’ What they’re expected to do there remains unclear. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/12/23/a-road-to-nowhere

[2] ‘I’m panicking — where is my child?’ Conscript soldiers are being sent to fight against Ukraine, their relatives say. Here’s what their families told Meduza. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/02/26/i-m-panicking-where-...

And then there is the Chechens.

> Scared Russian kids are fighting for crappy pay 1000's of km from their home against far more numerous people that are defending their families and their home country against an invader.

I noticed following in POW reels: there are no Russian POWs from Moscow, and central regions seemingly at all.

Yes, noticed that too. All kids from the far East of Russia.

When the war started in 2014, there were many reports of soldiers refusing to fight against Ukrainians and the army recruiting soldiers from faraway republics to minimize the feeling of fratricidal war.

That has always been the Russian strategy, that's also why Russian riot police is usually from cities far away.

The will to defend your country proved to be a strong factor to be considered in many modern wars.

Not only that but in close combat and urban environments being well supplied and locally supported takes priority.

Sadly, this means unfortunately, that refugees have a short time window to get to safety. I see Russian troops getting to control border points of Ukraine so as to restrict incoming arms supplies.

That's a lot of troops to put in extremely well known locations which aren't that useful to overall control of the land mass though.

Nah. There is math behind it.

3 to 1 attack ratio rule says there should be three times more attackers.

If the morale is very low on one side and very high on other - it can easily be 5 to 1 or more.

Indeed. To me the situation is like if USA were to invade Canada. They share a similar culture, language, plenty Russians know or have lived in Ukraine or viceversa.

The morale hit is enormous. Especially when these kids are told they're sent there to liberate it from the Nazi government and they see people that look, talk and shit exactly like them. How long can they follow the orders and trust the chain of command? And how long can the internal propaganda convince the Russians that their war is not a senseless massacre of cousins and friends?

Is this a founded rule or rather anecdotally?

It's a combat rule. Known from Sun Tzu, and later.

It's not an exact science, 3:1, 5:1, highly dependent on morale, local conditions and so on. But defenders have an advantage assuming equal weaponry.

Russia has air superiority so that definitely upsets the balance, but so far they have not been able to use that very effectively. They did not even manage to protect their troop transport airplanes all that well, two of which got downed, and that really adds up in casualties.

I don’t know how much that will help here.

Most of the time that worked, the wars were at the end of a long supply chain (see Afghanistan for USSR, Vietnam for USA, Afghanistan and Iraq for USA) and were not felt to be vital (see protests over Vietnam).

In Ukraine, the war is next door to Russia and easily supplied. In addition, whatever it means to the Russian people, Putin has a lot staked personally on this war. In addition, Russia will be operating with a lot less restrictive rules of engagement (the invasion itself is a war crime, so adding other war crimes on top of it really is t going to change a whole lot of opinion for them).

Rather I predict this will be like the Boer War or the US war in the Philippines where despite spirited local defenses, the resistance is ground down.

The USA never had a problem delivering troops and supplies to Vietnam and Iraq. They just docked cargo ships at secure deep-water ports and unloaded.

Afghanistan being landlocked was more difficult to sustain a large mechanized military force.

Ya right who the fuck is going to want to go do business or work in Russia after this lunacy. They are on track to pariah state no matter what happens in Ukraine.

As an average joe I have no important information, but people need to eat, need access to water and energy. Tweets implied destruction of plants and reserves.. if this keeps going they will simply not be able to resist on their own.

Then there's the logistical implication of Russia, videos of heavy (if not extreme) ballistics are floating around.

I love rooting for the underdog but the line is getting thinner.

A territory must at least sustain itself in the long run. Russia does not have the economy to fund Ukraine. So they can’t just level it: they have the means but not the ability to hold it afterwards.

Russia certainly has the means to win all the battles, they might just then find they cannot keep the spoils.

Not saying that you are wrong, but on Crimea Russia was able to improve the infrastructure in comparison with Ukraine

In Crimea, it’s true that the local population was more willing to cooperate. A large fraction were ethnic Russians.

In Ukraine, it seems there are more volunteers to fight than weapons.

Do they want to keep Ukraine? I would guess they plan to change the government and install a puppet. Perhaps with annexing a small bit.

The puppet government will need support from military/Russia police, control of cities, transport links and so on.

Look how quickly the US-backed Afghan government fell when US troops retreated.

Another sad possibility is that Russia just wants to cause as much death, havoc and destruction, then retreat. But that seems a lot less like an achievement.

If they wanted to just cause death, Kiev would be a whole lot flatter by now. It looks like the war crimes and murdered civilians are not part of the plan for now.

There is always a balance to be found. US could for sure win the war in Afghanistan if barbaric was an option. The same for Russia. Is Putin willing to pay the price for a terrible war with a huge body count from both sides?

https://archive.is/sMU8F

Not much there, just a chart implying that Ukraine’s military spending is about 20% of Russia’s, after adjusting for some “military purchasing power parity” formula, rather than 10% as numbers might suggest.

It doesn’t go as deep as trying to estimate or break out Russia’s spending on nuclear weapons vs conventional forces, which would narrow the gap even further.

Perhaps also that Ukraine would be leveraging everything that's available to them, but Russia has to hold back somewhat to keep military capabilities in place elsewhere.

Not to mention Russian spending on hypersonics and naval assets which are unlikely to be useful in Ukraine.

The Russian navy was heavily involved early in the war by launching cruise missiles and then conducting an amphibious assault. Less useful for an ongoing occupation, though.

Stand-off weapons like cruise middles may not matter in door to door fighting.

The radars and missile sites they destroy may not matter if nato provides free replacements.

NATO isn't going to provide any sophisticated replacement weapons like large guided missiles or radars. Too likely to be captured and fall into Russian hands.

Not much of a loss on 20 year old gear. Or newer gear which is widely deployed or exported.

This, and also Russian troops are now in enemy territory where a couple RPGs that costs a fraction of a fraction of a tank can score a win against it.

The Russian tank losses seem to be considerable and are hampering their progress (you can't gain territory without tank support).

Several T-80's with their turrets blown off were shown, probably defeated with Javelin missiles provided to the Ukrainians by the West.

Turrets blown off is usually because the ammo inside the tank explodes after a hit pierces armor.

Or hit from above like with the top attack profile of the Javelin.

Reportedly it’s a bit warmer than they anticipated. Tanks have an easier time on frozen ground, or they get stuck.

Is the maintenance of the nuclear stockpile likely to be a significant part of the Russian military's budget? Some quick googling indicates the US military's nuclear forces amount to about 7 percent of the overall defense budget.[1]

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57240

Well, we both have about the same size nuclear arsenals, while the US’ military budget is 10x more than Russia’s. In other words, we spend almost as much just maintaining our arsenal as they do their entire military budget. Again, same size arsenals - so yes, I’d say it’s probably a pretty huge proportion of their spending.

Or how much of the budget is actually being pocketed by politicians & generals. (although both countries are very high on the corruption index, so might be a tie there)

On the contrary I wouldn't be surprised if the Russian defense industry is more effective (ratio result/spending) than the US one

Interesting premise for an article, then it just ends without going further into the topic. Meh.

Ya I noticed that too. Probably a deadline, or “the weekend is here” and they submitted

The population of Ukraine is 40 million.

The Russian invasion force is 200,000.

If every Ukrainian had a gun and instructions for a Molotov Cocktail, Ukraine would be unconquerable without general genocide.

I'm not sure how close they'll get, but that's what the Ukrainian leadership is aiming for.

It’s worth bringing up the case of the Chechen war, where Russia eventually prevailed, but at enormous human cost of to all sides and, as usual, civilians.

“prevailed”

Please enlighten us on your opinion on what otherwise happened..

A pyrrhic victory if any, even today Kremlin hardly controls Chechnya.

Of course a country without infrastructure or cities is pretty much as valuable as not having conquered it at all.

Though literally nothing about this war makes a lick of strategic sense for Russia.

> Though literally nothing about this war makes a lick of strategic sense for Russia.

see "Natural gas transmission system of Ukraine" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_transmission_syste...

the discussion about Norstream2 and to a lesser extent NATO membership: Since Russia is an oligarchy its "sense" is defined by Putin's ego such as "reuniting Russia" again as it was and ruling it as its Tsar.

I think that their leaders should sit down and negotiate, rather than stick weapons in the hands of ordinary people and deter Russia with the threat of causing genocide. Nobody wins in that scenario, unless Russia backs down which seems unlikely at this point in time. Dialogue is the way forward, not improvised video game weapons.

Negotiate what exactly? It's a war of aggression.

Putin articulated his ultimatums for Kyiv: Recognize Crimea as Russian - Rejection of NATO accession - No weapons supplies from the West - LNR and DNR gain territory that the regions had pre 2014

Or, and this might be a wild idea, Russia could mind it's own god damn business in it's own god damn territory seeing as how 50% of that list is "respect our previous wars of aggression against your territory" and "don't join alliances which would've prevented our wars of aggression against your territory".

But the internet is rife with Russian shills at every turn right now.

I'm sure the internet is rife with Russian shills, but there are also a number of non-interventionists who don't want to get whipped up into a war frenzy and get involved another foreign war.

I wish Russia and NATO/US could agree to a basic Neutrality and non-intervention treaty for Georgia and Ukraine.

Well golly gee, I guess the last 20 years of Ukraine not being in NATO was just too much of a risk. Nothing says "don't try and join NATO" like ongoingly and continually trying to invade and conquer a country because they're not a member of NATO.

Hey, I wish we lived in a perfect world too. I really do, but countries have conflicting interests, and always put their security first. The first step in navigating the real world is understanding that things are not perfect, and trying to understand the motivations of others. Russia has an agenda, NATO has an agenda, and Ukraine has an agenda. The more people are in denial about this fact, the more suffering there will be.

The nefarious Ukrainian agenda of checks notes "continuing to exist as a sovereign democratic entity by the self-determination of its people".

Dialogue & militarization isn't a mutually exclusive choice as in some video game either

Ukraine needs to be able to threaten a costly conquest for Russia, as other countries are showing they won't intervene with their own military. Only when they can demonstrate that cost will there be incentive for dialogue from an attacking force

The Ukrainian president was open to discussing a ceasefire and dialog, sounds like Russia isn’t interested at this time.

Everyone only wants to discuss a ceasefire on their terms. Not very useful.

Let's just settle this through a fair fight.

Russia just said Ukraine said no to a ceasefire and dialog.

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1497553764517036035?t=5WjH...

It's almost a parody, but with real innocent deaths.

If anything has been proven in the last one month, it's that Putin says one thing and does another.

I bet the exact opposite happened. Ukraine must have offered ceasefire and Russia said no.

I can confirm that. BBC says this was offered by the Ukrainians but Russia chose not to engage.

Thank you for your expert confirmation and no less from such a reliable source as BBC.

I don’t believe that for a second

Negotiate on whether to invade Ukraine or not?

I was somewhat surprised that the State Dept. claimed that Russia was willing to inflict mass casualties on the Ukrainian population.

I assume they've discovered through espionage that Russia intends to unleash nuclear, chemical or biological warfare on the Ukrainians.

That’s an improper assumption. You can do a lot of harm with regular explosives

Given enough time, yes. But I'm pretty sure Putin doesn't have the luxury of this war lasting too long.

He'll want to force his adversaries on their knees within a week and considering the snail's pace at which the Russian military are gaining ground that doesn't seem likely.

You can inflict mass casualities with convential means, case in point, the Dresden bombing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...), in the second world war.

Or starvation. Again. Russia killed 3.5 million Ukrainians that way, likely within the lifetime of your grandparents.

I am developer from Lviv, Ukraine. I already prepared molotov cocktails. Ukraine is united as never before. Lot of people donate big amounts of money, buy necessary goods for army, everyone is very supportive, everyone knows what to do. There is no single pro-russian people there. Every citizen will fight for our land, because truth is on our side, and it become obvious to the whole world.

We stand with you.

Do you know a paypal compatible donation link I could use ? (the few I tried had technical difficulties)

You can do Swift transfer to the official national bank of Ukraine account to support army

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...

Thanks, that's very useful. I will disseminate that link wherever I can.

My minor googling suggest molotov cocktails won't do much against modern tanks except worry the crew. Probably best to leave the real tanks alone and focus on smaller vehicles.

Edit: unless the hatch of the tank is open!

In particular: trucks carrying fuel, spare parts, and ammunition. Tanks can't run on patriotic spirit.

We stand with you.

Not surprising. If supplied well Ukraine can push russia back. Russia is propaganda and nukes.

I predict that if the war gets bogged down Putin will threaten to nuke Kiev to force them to surrender.

It is big, but military budgets alone don't mean everything.

Ukraine inflicted as much casualties on Russia in 3.5 days as total Russian losses in Second Chechnya war (excluding later insurgency)

And remember, Russia did not lose much advanced military hardware back then, but it did now.

> Ukraine inflicted as much casualties on Russia in 3.5 days as total Russian losses in Second Chechnya war.

I‘d like to quote that. What‘s your source?

Ukraine MOD. Total losses in the active phase of 2 Chechnya war were 3500 troops. The rest were due to many years of insurgency.

Also it is worthwhile to remember that a big chunk goes to paying salary, pensions and healthcare. Russia has the largest standing army if I remember right.

Larger budget isn't necessarily large gains militarily. It is responsibility for larger upkeep.

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