From all I've read about it, the troops near Robotyne have been starving for supplies for some time. Moving another unit into the region just stresses a supply system that is already stretched to its limits.
It's a desperation move on the part of the Russians. They burned up their reserves fighting the Ukrainians in front of the trenches instead of letting the Ukrainians come to them. Now they don't have the forces to hold their positions.
I agree with the Ukrainian assessments that getting through the 2nd and 3rd line of defenses will be easier than the first. Though the first took most of the summer. They also are expanding their salient to give a safe space in the middle for artillery and HIMARS to operate safely. That will take a few weeks.
A little bondo and some paint and she'll be as good as new...
The VDV have 4 divisions and 4 independent brigades.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Russian_Airborne_Forces.png
The brigades may look the same size as the divisions, but the divisions are made up of regiments and the brigades are made up of battalions.
These units have been mostly gutted at least once in this war. The bulk of their forces now are troops raised since the war started. Unlike the large mobik formations, the Russians sent their airborne recruits to Belarus to get trained there. So these troops do have at least boot camp level training, which at this point in the war means they are the elite of their ground forces. In real world quality they are mostly green troops with just basic training with a handful of veterans who are trying to whip them into some semblance of the former VDV while in combat. I don't expect it's going very well.
The ChrisO thread is interesting. The Russians are now throwing away their artillery troops on pointless assaults with shovels. It also appears Moscow may not be aware this is going on. Throwing away specialist troops like that is a bad move. Even if they get more guns and/or ammunition, they aren't going to be able to use them because the trained gunners got killed.
It's not difficult to get people who can stuff shells into a gun, but the Russians are still dependent on a guy with a clipboard and a calculator to calculate the shot. Lose those guys and Russia's inaccurate artillery will become hopelessly inaccurate. Game over for the most effective arm of their ground forces.
The cold war USSR was much stronger than Russia is now. Not only was the population double in the USSR, they also had the countries of Eastern Europe in their sphere. Soviet weapons were made in many places outside of Russia, including Ukraine and Eastern Europe. All that production capacity was lost when the USSR fell apart.
They retained some of it by keeping some countries in their orbit, but the control was more indirect that it used to be. Between the kleptocrats running Running the new Russian empire and the economy being much smaller, a lot of military production capacity within Russia withered and died. They kept some industries going, more for the export market than for their own consumption. Their own military only got new equipment when there were enough foreign orders to buy some things for the Russian military from the profits. Then a lot of it got stolen.
Russia is still a large country and if they decided they were going to get rid of the kleptocrats and turn the country into a giant North Korea, they could build out their military production and draft all young men into the military, turning the country into a state on a constant war footing. They would risk regime ending rebellion getting there and they can't do it while fighting the war, but this is one scenario for a post war Russia that we need to avoid. The world would be less safe with a fully armed Russia.
This would eventually collapse because Russia doesn't have the youth to keep this up for more than a few decades, but we could see a tense few decades if this happens.
