Putin ‘purges’ 150 FSB agents in response to Russia’s botched war with Ukraine
thetimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
When things go bad in a war, you can always throw more bodies on it to turn it around.
People always bring up WW2, but in WW2 USSR was being invaded, and had a lot of material support from the west. They could keep "throwing more bodies on it" because
1. Those bodies were still very motivated, since they were being invaded and,
2. They had useful equipment for those bodies, in significant part from western support (lend/lease etc.
Ukraine is more like WW1 for Russia. That didn't end so well for the Russian leadership.
The scale was incredible - hundreds of thousands trucks and jeeps, thousands of tanks, thousands of airplanes, as well as small arms, ammo, explosives, etc. Food, too, and lots of oil. A huge part of the Red Army's success was having the US backing them up.
The Winter War of 1939 started with deep Russian humiliation. But then the Russians won.
The WW2 started with deep Russian humiliation and mind-bogglingly terrible losses. But then the Russians won.
On the other hand, the Russo-Japanese war and the WW1 were lost because of the political decisions rising from unrest at home.
This war started by Russian humiliation. How it's going to end remains yet to be seen.
Russia lost that war and had to settle borders with Poland in the Treaty of Riga.
Heres a list of Russias visually confirmed losses, the real numbers are likely much higher.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...
But even though things look hopeful, there really is no countermove to Putin bombing every major Ukrainian city.
So it looks like a stalemate unless Putin successfully conquers Donbas, at which point he might negotiate some kind of peace.
But with heavy vehicles such as tanks starting to arrive for the Ukrainians, a quick resolution to the invasion seems a long way off.
It also looks like Russia will have to spend Dollars from sale of gas and oil on debt payments.
If that happens it will be even harder to manufacture more missiles.
So far shooting down the planes works. (eg see https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/03/29/the-russian... )
And even if they are build to abandon, they only have so many of them, Russia has reportedly already burnt through ~33% of the tanks that they have committed to Ukraine.
The Russian tanks are smaller and use 3 people, and an autoloader. But the ammo is stored in the crew compartment. The American M1 abrams is larger, has a human as a loader, and has a separate compartment with blow out panels so the ammo can cook off and the crew could survive. I've no data on that survival rate, but presumably it's much higher than the Russian tanks.
1. Russia makes almost no industrial parts itself. They don't have the know-how or machinery to do so, because it has atrophied from unuse over the last thirty years. Most industrial parts come from Europe. Europe has banned exporting industrial parts to Russia. Therefore Russia can not make more of its current tank types (or anything really). They'd have to reboot all their industry from scratch to be able to build from scratch. A decades long project at least.
2. Most of the reserve of russian tanks are in long term storage. They are reportedly in complete disrepair and far from combat ready. Russia doesn't have the industrial capacity to repair them, see point 1.
Bottom line is that the tanks Russia has committed to Ukraine are it. Ukrainians are blowing them up at an alarming rate, and Russia has only weeks worth of tank supply left before they are at a direct disadvantage in tank supply compared to the Ukrainians who are gaining supply.
Can I ask where you found this data? Specifically, I'd like to see the math of the war. Ideally, I want to see graphs over time.
https://github.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine
In particular this graph here which shows Russia is at at steep net loss over time, while Ukraine is gaining modestly over time:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine/m...?
"Ukraine has more tanks available in country than Russia, thanks to European deliveries of Soviet-era T-72 tanks: senior defense official"
This is having a profound emotional impact on villages already reeling before the war from the lack of young men to start families (due to rampant alcoholism and suicide).
This conflict alone will result in 1 million fewer people in two generations as it stands, and this number will only grow as Putin tries to save face.
Russians could've easily lost as much even with better military hardware.
Most of Russian military hardware losses are not from battles, but from soldiers routing, and abandoning their vehicles, which are LATER destroyed, or captured.
Most Russian tanks were disabled by artillery, and missiles, not tank vs. tank battles. No tank in the world would survive a 40kg missile, or an artillery shell hitting its roof. So, the quality of hardware is irrelevant.
What is really low quality is the Russian military leadership.
The key here is to understand that losses do not come from 40kg missiles themselves, but from Russian generals knowingly sending their troops into ATGM, and artillery killboxes, and from Russian troops knowing their generals intentions, and acting accordingly (routing upon first battle damage)
However, Finland lost 9% of its territory and had to relocate 12% of its population as a result of that war.
Losses is not everything that counts.
Not to mention they are incapable of currently replacing the tanks, and even if they could they only make about 100 hundred a year. Most of the tanks they have where built during the Soviet Union era and where just progressively upgraded.
Finland ceded territory because they where losing the war, Ukraine does not at least yet seem to be losing the war.
A T-34 would be next to unless in Ukraine, and would just be a death sentence, a T-34 probably isn't even worth fielding against the more modern armour and ATGM's that are in Ukraine.
Not to mention that Russia likely doesn't have any tank groups trained on the T-34 so they would need to spend time doing that as well.
If Russia calls a general draft they are beyond desperate, their actual contract army is already doing incredibly poorly in Ukraine, called up conscripts would do even worse.
Its worth keeping in mind that Russia still needs to defend the rest of its territory whilst invading Ukraine, they are incredibly paranoid about NATO and if Finland/Sweden join NATO they will need to deploy more troops to that border to try look like a real super power again.
Russia had a "Made in Russia" program for the military. But apparently bribes let many side step the rules and post proud "Made in Russia" announcements in the press, while basically relabeling imported parts. Even more amusing is a fair number of those parts come from the Ukraine.
More factories isn't going to help, and these days it's hard to steer, power, target an enemy, or communicate without chips, which Russia is running very short of. Intel, AMD, and even Russia designed CPUs (Elbrus) are hard to come by, TSMC (and other foreign fabs) are honoring the sanctions.
Apparently even the basics like steel are getting hard to come by.
>Apparently even the basics like steel are getting hard to come by.
aren't they a sizeable steel exporter? "2018, Russia exported 33.3 million metric tons of steel, a 7 percent ... Russia exports steel to more than 130 countries and territories."
This has been reported in western media; it might be true, or it might be a part of information war. Assuming it's true, shall we expect this to be a permanent problem or a temporary one?
> it's hard to steer, power, target an enemy, or communicate without chips
Hard but not impossible. Given that there's a military attache in each Russian embassy, and given the chips are sold over the counter pretty much anywhere, shall we expect this to be a permanent problem or a temporary one?
You realize you are also being fed Propaganda?
You can also generally tell from the markings on the side of the tank who it belongs to.
A large number of the confirmed tank loses are likely from videos of the two forces attacking each other which makes identification quite easy.
The Russians should be more concerned that the longer this goes on the more handheld weapons are going to stockpile in Ukraine. What portion will end up traded or given to groups that want a rematch in Syria, Belarus, Chechnya, ..., even if the Ukraine doesn't decide a policy of destabilizing Russia is the easiest road to short term security?
I don't suppose there's ever been any doubt that Russia can defeat Ukraine. The numerical superiority makes a Russian "defeat" essentially impossible.
That still leaves plenty of ways to "botch" the war, even in "victory." Russia is doing this both by wasting resources in poorly planned attacks and by incurring collateral damage amongst the civilian population. They're also botching the "PR" aspects of the war.
All of this is going to make the ongoing occupation/subjugation of the Ukrainian population much more challenging than it needed to be for them, so it makes sense that heads would need to roll.
After all, that Russia managed to defend itself against the Germans in WW2 had a lot to do with the supplies it got from the US.
However you look at it, this war cannot have a positive outcome for Russia, unless just laying Ukraine to waste is enough for them. This is my greatest fear that complete destruction would be a success for Putin and he would be willing to go all the way to achieve it. Like using nukes.
My big hope though is, especially after withdrawing from quite a lot of regions of the Ukraine already occupied, that after all the losses, the Ukraine together with the supply from the west might be able to hold new offenses from the east and perhaps even push them back. That depends a lot of how many reserves Russia still has and which further weapons they are willing to use.
It also seems that Russia underestimated the impact on NATO. Now multiple countries are increasing military spending, several countries are now looking to join NATO, and the supply of weapons to the Ukraine is substantial. The current gen anti-tank weapons are so good that even a few hours to a few days of training can allow a solder or two to take out a tank. Sure intelligence on where the tanks are is helpful, but the Ukraine citizens, foreign powers with satellites, and heavy use of drones have that handled. It's amusing to think of a 1-800-got-tank hotlines causing serious problems for Russia. Keep in mind the GDP of countries helping the Ukraine is on the order of $40T, and Russia is $1.5T. Sure Turkey, India, China, and others are receptive markets, it's unclear how many soldiers and weapons they are going to send, especially since they do not want to lose access to the $40T GDP worth of market.
So Russia's advantage in tanks has largely been offset by anti-tank weapons and attacking supply lines. As a result armored vehicles have been withdrawn from various cities. Russia also has a substantial advantage in artillery and missiles, but the reports I've seen who that they are close to burning through their inventory of usable equipment, in particular ammunition and missiles. Apparently quite a bit of equipment is out of order because of the lack of preventative maintenance and production isn't anywhere close to the current burn rate and inventories are dropping precipitously. Sanctions are hurting their ability to produce, the only tank factory in Russia went idle in March for lack of parts, not heard if that's been fixed.
I do think the pending attack in the East will be more difficult for the Ukraine. Shorter Russian supply lines, lessons learned on the Russian side, and heavier dependence on completely destroying cities before invading will make things harder for the Ukraine. But lack of training, calling in the reserves (which aren't trained like the a weekend a month/2 weeks a year reservists elsewhere), and lack of preventative maintenance aren't easily fixed.
Much will depend on how generous the west is with larger and more sophisticated systems like longer range missiles, better anti-air weapons, tanks, and artillery pieces. I'd say currently Russia is no way going to take over the Ukraine, and even just encroaching from the east to take over a few cities is far from certain.
It's looking like the invasion is likely to be one of the biggest blunders of the century. In particular Germany, Finland, and Sweden have made it a priority to increase military spending and provide a unified opposition of Russia. Collectively just those 3 countries have about 3x the GDP of Russia, before the sanctions. Keep in mind Russia can't go all in on the Ukraine, they have to defend various borders from countries they have taken land from, in particular Japan (which all alone has 3x the GDP of Russia) seems quite interested in taking some islands back.
I wouldn't want to be Russia right now.
It’s the comparison to Stalinist purges that’s a problem.
Normally an employer can only fire you. But when your employer is also a dictator, you can indeed end up in jail for bad performance.
So no, firing is not really a proper term.
The first paragraph of the news piece states that "the head of the department responsible for Ukraine was sent to prison."
Here's the second paragraph:
> In a sign of President Putin’s fury over the failures of the invasion, about 150 Federal Security Bureau (FSB) officers have been dismissed, including some who have been arrested.
I couldn't read more paragraphs as the article seems paywalled.
It also crippled the Soviet army, which is why a much "weaker" Finland held its own when the Soviets attacked them - the majority of the senior, capable military leaders had either been killed or imprisoned in the Purge, leaving behind a rather incompetent military.
None of which is to say Putin’s regime is anywhere near the atrocity machine that Stalin’s was. That’s an extreme that’s hard to imagine and very exclusive. But this notion that Putin’s regime isn’t committing the kinds of mass violence on Russian society because it isn’t on full display is neglecting both how his own regime has operated as well as how most did/have since the 70s-80s. They just do it with secrecy and plausible deniability.
¹: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_i...
Erdogan also has many identical campaign methods, can I compare him to one of these leaders but not the other and if so how does your nationality not play a role in your analysis?