Ru has "3500 Vehicles or pieces of heavy military equipment destroyed" since invasion with many more projected due to influx of advanced Western weapons.
Oryx is conservative in their estimates. They only count vehicles destroyed that are verified with images. They admit they are almost certainly under counting losses on both sides. Even though it's coming from one of the combatants, the numbers the Ukrainians report might be more accurate. They are larger than Oryx's count, but only by a plausible degree.
In any case, Russia's losses have been staggering.
Video shows partly cloudy skies. Maybe worried about Stingers. A high altitude flyby would be unimpressive and a tacit admission of weakness.
I doubt anybody has smuggled Stingers to Moscow. Russian security throughout the city was probably on the highest alert.
It is possible the flyby was just canceled because of the weather. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Does anybody remember the Korean War? I don't, but I've read enough about it and I'm worried about potential parallels. Before I go into this far-fetched analogy any further, I want to clearly state that this has nothing to do with China entering the Ukraine War.
In 1950, North Korea crossed the border and invaded South Korea. After initial retreats the South Koreans and the US (euphemistically called the UN) pushed North Korean forces back and pressed on towards the Yalu River, which was the North Korean border with China. This incursion was so close to its border that it brought China into the conflict and eventually resulted in a military stalemate. The leader of the US forces, General Douglas MacArthur was on the side of antagonizing China and President Truman was the voice of caution.Truman wanted to end the war as quickly as possible and stop the fighting while MacArthur wanted to continue the fighting and invade China. Truman relieved MacArthur of his command.
Anyway, the Ukrainians may not be content with pushing Russian out of Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian army may get so close to the Russian border that it may trigger a bigger conflict. Crimea could also be a trigger point.
There's a tendency to believe in the West that Russia's invasion has failed solely because it has just been inept. But although I agree about ineptness, it's also true that Russia is fighting a limited convention war. They haven't thrown all their forces against Ukraine yet. I believe this is mostly due to fear of excessive Russian casualties and a severe domestic political backlash.
Is Zelenskyy a latter day Douglas MacArthur? Can anyone stop him from becoming too adventurous? I hope that we don't have to find out.
The Russians have committed the vast bulk of their army to this war. At the start of the war their army had 170 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) and it was confirmed they had committed 120-125 to the fight, leaving ~50 to defend the entire country. The Russian army is built around BTGs, it's their primary combat formation.
The Russians struggled from day 1 to keep those 120 BTGs in the field. Their supply system is built for a defensive war against a foreign invader. It's based around the railroad system with trucks just delivering supplies from a nearby rail head. As a result they started the war with vastly fewer trucks that similarly sized armies around the world.
The Russians have always been weak on supply transport. In WW II they relied on seas of American made trucks to move supply for their offensive. Without American trucks their offensive would have stalled at the Polish border.
Russia's combat arm is also a very supply hungry system. They make heavy use of rocket artillery. That requires a massive supply chain to keep the artillery supplied. Gun artillery requires a lot of ammunition supply too. Add in their large fleet of tanks and you add a giant fuel requirement on top of the heavy ammunition requirement.
By comparison the Chinese army of 1950 was much easier to supply. It relied heavily on foot soldiers with little heavy equipment.
The Ukrainians knew about this weakness from the start of the war and they hunted Russian trucks behind the lines in the first weeks of the war. They have destroyed a vast swath of Russia's military truck fleet. A number of civilian trucks have been seen on the battlefield in recent weeks. This is a sign of major weakness in the Russian supply system. Military trucks are built for abuse on a battlefield. They have some offroad ability and have overbuilt suspensions and such. Commercial trucks are designed to always drive on finished highways and city streets.
When a war starts the wear and tear rate on trucks goes up 20-30X. Trent Telenko has written a lot about the logistics of this war. He was involved in rehabbing American trucks in the Iraq war. He found they showed signs of 20 years of wear after 1-2 years of use in Iraq and the US is hyper about maintenance while the Russians aren't. Those commercial trucks have been in the field for a month or so now and they are probably beginning to break down.
As a fleet of miscellaneous brands and models of trucks break down, repairing them is going to be difficult. The country is under sanctions anc buying replacement parts is difficult. Plus any parts that are available have to find their way to the correct supply depot to go on the correct truck. With an army that is poor at logistics, good luck with that adventure.
Russia's supply logistics is breaking at the seams trying to keep the 75 or so BTGs left in the field. They don't have the trucks and they don't have the means to make many more. The remaining 50 or so BTGs left in Russia have probably been stripped of all their ammunition and supply vehicles to feed into the cauldron in Ukraine.
Russia also has a serious manpower problem. The birthrate is so low and has been for so long that they struggle to conscript enough soldiers to fill out their peacetime conscription program. Russia has about 140 million people. France in 1914 had about 45 million. Russia's pool of conscriptable soldiers is about the same size as France's in 1914. It's a country of old people. That also makes it more difficult to build up factories to make war goods, even if they can with the sanctions. They simply don't have the workforce to scale up production.
There is a myth that Russia has been working with one hand tied behind its back, but it hasn't. This is a full on war effort on the part of Russia and they have nothing left in the tank after their current force is used up.
Interestingly I saw a couple of articles on just this before coming here today
Thread by @PhillipsPOBrien on Thread Reader App
Thread by @PhillipsPOBrien on Thread Reader App
If Putin's government is allowing analysts to say on TV that they can't mobilize, Russia is admitting they can't scale up their military. They may be preparing the population for something like coming to the negotiation table in good faith. Though they are going to try and hold onto the parts of Ukraine they took in the war.