Tank storage counting was interesting, the author put a lot of funds into that effort. So over 2 years left at his best guess. Mostly t72, hundreds of more modern as well.
He did point out that most of the T-80s in storage have stayed there. Those tanks may not be capable of getting running again. The T-80 has a gas turbine engine and maybe those in storage have blown engines with no hope of repair? They seem to have left service in Ukraine too. Few have been seen in months.
The biggest bottleneck for Russia is probably not their tank numbers, but their tank crews
The Russians Aren’t Just Running Out Of Tanks—They’re Running Out Of Tank Crews, Too. And It’s Going To Get Worse.
About a year ago Trent Telenko had a thread about the design of western vs Russian tanks as far as crew survivability goes. Western tanks have been designed to maximize the chances crew members survive losing their tank in combat, while the Russian tank designs have always been cavalier about crew losses and loss of a tank very frequently results in loss of the entire crew.
In a short fight that doesn't make much difference, but in a drawn out war of attrition, it makes a huge difference. He gave an example of a hypothetical fight between an army equipped with T-90s vs one with Abrams and both sides have ample supplies of extra tanks. If in the first engagement, both sides lose, say 10 tanks. If the T-90 side is lucky one person survives from each tank crew. That's 10 people with 20 dead (the T-90 has a crew of three). On the other side the Abrams equipped army has lost 10 people with 30 survivors (crew of 4).
Both sides get new tanks and replacement tank crew members. The T-90 army now has 10 veterans and 20 green crew members in their replacement tanks. The Abrams army has 30 veterans and 10 green crew members. Each veteran has to try and train up 2 people each while the Abrams crews have three vets training each crew member.
Keep repeating this cycle and the T-90s will be mostly equipped with green crew members while the Abrams army will have green crew members, but a lot of veterans to bring along the newbies.
Now compound the problem with what the Russians did stripping all their training facilities of trainers and sending them to combat. The green crew members are now showing up without even knowing the basics of how to operate the tank. The Russian army has been through a few of these cycles now and most of their crews that have been in service a while barely know what's going on. These people are trying to train new crew members who know absolutely nothing.
There were stories last year about Russians running tanks with only two crew members instead of three and that is was widespread. The commander in the turret had to do the job of both commanding the tank and acting as gunner. That would vastly slow down the rate of fire and increase the likelihood the tank would miss something important like something lethal getting a bead on them.
The Ukrainians have taken tanker losses too, but their training has not declined (in many cases it has improved with western help) and they have been much more careful about exposing their tanks to danger. So they have many more veteran crews combined will well trained newbies who at least know what's what inside the tank.
Russia has essentially run out of crews for their tanks and they are substituting amateurs who don't know what they are doing.
Illustrates the point made here by others of the need to pull all useable weapons into service.
Looks like a parade tank. They paint the St George's ribbon on the tanks used for military parades.
About these supposedly leaked documents
A recent leak of sensitive US intelligence documents leads to stranger corners of the internet than initially thought.
www.bellingcat.com
This person did a fair bit of analysis on the leaked documents and found a lot of problematic things
In the article you posted, it said the originally posted on a Discord channel by a Filipino gamer. That's an interesting intersection with Ron Watkins who was identified in a documentary on QAnon and the most likely Q. He appeared to slip and admit it in one interview with the documentary maker. Ron Watkins is the son of an American who emigrated to the Philippines and married a Filipino woman. The father owner 8chan (now 8kun) and his son Ron was the technical guy behind the site. If I remember right Ron was also an avid gamer.
After Q fizzled, maybe Ron was trying to create something new to draw attention? Just an idea. There are a lot of people in the Philippines and it could be someone else.
Sometimes I think we shy away from passing along learning - like lessons in empathy - out of political correctness. We need a slightly different balance as too many adults are walking around with patently crazy thoughts spinning around between their ears; thoughts most parents should have dispelled them of at a young age or committed them for if not successful.
Rather than political correctness, a lot of bad parenting is due to parents who have not dealt with their own childhood (or other traumas).
I don't doubt the Imperial message is heartfelt amongst the the nationalists and that it is a recurring theme in the Media outlets, but I find it hard to believe that tail is wagging the dog.
Russia spent years (decades ?) weakening Ukraine from within. They thought an invasion would be easy and swift, and could quasi-reasonably argue that the Russian speaking population favored the intervention, similar to the excuses Hitler would use for invading countries to protect ethnic German minorities.
Beyond that, there is
- NG
- NG
- NG
- Oil reserves
- Oil reserves
- A large, educated population
And beyond that, Russia wanted a disposable buffer between itself and NATO
Russia tried to keep Ukraine weak because it felt it had the right to do so. The resources in Ukraine are a factor too.
A plan was leaked a month or so back about the Russian plan to weaken Belarus to a point where it was part of Russia again.
JRP3, BitJam and lolachampcar have all already written excellent rebuttals..
I'll just add:
I find it absolutely hilarious that you bring up the Military Dictatorship that is Saudi Arabia in a post complaining about corruption in Ukraine...
And NATO (excluding Hungary and Turkey), Australia, Japan, South Korea and Sweden happen to constitute basically the entire Democratic World...
The Israelis are probably too scared to get nuked.
Don't forget Australia and New Zealand on that list. But I do agree, NATO and a relatively few other countries make up the world of liberal democracies. Any country that has elected leaders is sort of a democracy, but there are quite a few that are democracies in name only and there are few guaranteed protections for all people.
And even in liberal democracies the protections are uneven. A lot of electrons and ink have been dedicated to the problems in the American justice system and how some people get better protections than others. Same thing with availability of other government protections and services in not just the US, but other democracies.
However rule of law and protections are better in the developed democracies than in other countries where corruption and capriciousness by officials is much more rampant.
A bit more data on Russia's supposed "winning" in Ukraine
"Actually yes. In last 5 month Ukraine liberated more territory than russia occupied. 0.65% vs 0.12% so Ukraine liberated 5.5 times more territory than russia occupied. Since April 2022 during one year russia occupied only 0.52% (
) while Ukraine liberated 8.14%."
How is Russia winning when even during the slack period this winter they lost much more territory than they captured?
