As the shelling continues across Ukraine, it seems clear that while Putin cannot win in the long term (and is in fact alienating those he will need to support him), he may not even win in the short term and from various seasoned observers on social media, it is not now impossible that he could actually lose. On the first day of the invasion, 24 February the world was stunned as Russian armour poured across the border and everyone, including Putin himself, thought it would be over in a matter of days.
Yet here we are on the 11th day and cities continue to hold out, Russian incursions are limited to not much more than was gained about day 3 or 4. The Ukrainians, against the odds, are not only resisting the onslaught but launching counter attacks and inflicting huge losses.
Morale among the Russian forces is said to be zero with little enthusiasm for invading and causing massive destruction in a fellow Slavic country. Ukrainians are growing in confidence. It's the old tale of one volunteer being worth ten pressed men.
There is a lot of commentary on Twitter which seems to me to be plausible
With virtually all Russian forces now deployed in Ukraine, progress is somewhere between slow and non-existent.
Antti Paronen, an assistant professor at the Finnish National Defence University posted an interesting thread (in Finnish but translated below via Google) on Friday which seemed to summarise the situation well:
"There is one thing that can be outlined about the development of military force in Ukraine. Although Kiev's defences appear to be facing challenges, it is time and inevitably a progressive mobilization on the Ukrainian side. This means that the defender continues to gain new combat power in his ranks, and in particular a significant amount of western weapons aid. Consequently, the achievements of Russian superiority, which is now in place, could soon be under threat."
The Russians are said by the Ukrainians to have last 44 aircraft and 44 helicopters. This may be a slight exaggeration but the confirmed losses are certainly well into the 30s and surely unsustainable. Independent sources put the number of military vehicles lost at over 700. After just ten days this is incredible.
One US retired Defence Department civil servant claims the 40 mile column headed for Kyiv which has been stalled for days is out of fuel and food. Others remark on the lack of any supply dumps to replenish the troops. This American says while Russia may yet encircle Kyiv, these armoured vehicles will never be involved in it and will take weeks if not months to recover.
There are also questions about the quality and maintenance of the Russian kit much of which is very old.
Mr Paronen says, "a significant part of the Russian army's immediate readiness force is caught up in the Ukrainian operation and is being destroyed at a constant, even intensified, pace. Nor have they shown significant fighting fitness and success."
Western intelligence is apparently part of this, plus the regular arms deliveries are a concrete demonstration of support for Ukraine. He also foresees:
"An attempt to rectify the situation from Russia would soon be to launch an at least. partial mobilisation of its reserves. This would, of course, put Russia in the spiral in which it is currently in Ukraine: troops are being fed into the fight as resources poured over the operational problem.
"This operational problem consists of a lack of coordination of fire use, movement and logistics combat operations. Understandably, it just won't be solved by increasing troops or even flight attendants."
"From the defender's point of view, there are conditions for success here. You just have to endure and be able to sustain the loss to the striker. At some point, its critical strengths become weaknesses and the possibility of counterattacks opens up. This isn't going to happen overnight."
"The essential thing about such a strategic approach is to keep the production of cumulative losses going and to trust that the enemy's order of struggle will fall apart at some point. In this journey, avoiding your own losses is paramount.
"The situation in Ukraine is therefore difficult, but not impossible, for the defender. Victory is not achievable immediately and may not look like what Kyiv hopes for, but it is possible."
Meanwhile, an article for the highly respected Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) questions the whole of Russia's capacity to manage complex air operations and concludes they may not have enough experienced pilots!
There is also the question of the lack of 'smart' guided bombs since the Russian Air Force is now having to use low level operations to drop dumb bombs, making them vulnerable to man-portable air defence missiles. On Saturday alone the Russians lost 9 aircraft - 4 fixed wing, 4 helicopters and an unmanned drone. That rate of attrition is just impossible to sustain.
Definite list of Russian Air Force losses over #Ukraine in the past 26 hours:- 1x Su-30SM multirole aircraft (pictured)- 2 Su-34 strike aircraft- 2 Su-25 close air support aircraft- 2 Mi-24/35 attack helicopters- 2 Mi-8 transport helicopter- 1 Orlan-10 UAV pic.twitter.com/I2JIj19BUD— Oryx (@oryxspioenkop) March 5, 2022
The Ukrainians claim Russia has already lost 9-10,000 troops killed after 10 days. In Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989, they lost 15,000. This also doesn't include the wounded which is probably double that number.
Someone remarked that Russia's problem is that they want to have US levels of military spending with Italy's GDP and sooner or later the arithmetic will tell against them.
With condemnation coming in from every quarter and global businesses pulling out of Russia as the economy implodes, Ukraine will be seen as a huge miscalculation on Putin's part. He has give the west the best possible excuse to squeeze him until he's ousted.
He wanted to reunite Russia but his legacy will be a united Europe, a stronger and more cohesive NATO and the rest of the world coming together to get rid of him.
