Fog of War

Fog of war. New Russian Offensive. That much seems clear. Now, depending on who you listen to, it's not clear how things will turn out. One side, like Scott Ritter et al, think that Russia is going to steam roll the Ukrainians. That they have too many people and tanks to be stopped. 

Others are saying their weapons, their conscripts are weak and will lose:

According to the usual suspects the Glorious Russian Winter Offensive has begun in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It is super effective, the Russians are gaining ground rapidly, Ukraine is on the verge of total military collapse. Surrender now ye Hohols. 

Back in reality initial information on the Russian attacks in Zaporizhzhia Oblast looks very bad for the Russians. There were attacks across a large section of the front, most of the attacks appear to have been conducted by mobilized personnel with BMP-1 and T-62 tanks. (Both built in the 60s, both outclassed by the 80s) Russian air support remains limited though claimed shootdowns by Ukraine spiked in the past 3 days. 

It appears that to save on vehicle losses Russian infantry are dismounting well short of their objectives and walking towards Ukrainian lines while the Russian armor sits back and provides distant fire support.

This gives Ukrainian artillery time to set up and dial in with devastating results.

It is possible that this is not the "real" offensive. It is possible that the Russians are engaging the Ukrainian lines with disposable conscript troops. It is possible they will attempt to breakthrough with professional soldiers armed with relatively modern equipment in Zaporizhzhia or elsewhere.

But at this point it looks like they fed thousands of conscripts and a bunch of 1960's equipment into the meatgrinder for no real gains.

Is there any way to actually know the truth (fog of war aside)? Seems little too hard to me. I have no clue. Not on the ground and know few on the ground there. 

My main thoughts are that: I don't even know the casualty ratios for the war right now. Wikipedia seems to have large ranges (but ones that favor Russia). Ukraine: 100k casualties whereas Ritter claims 250k (dead, I believe). The Russia: 100k-180k casualties. The dead breakdown could be anywhere around there. Note it is in each side's interest to lie about these numbers. So I'm not even sure how one comes even close to figuring out what the final is. On the face of it, it would seem to make sense that the offensive force has more. Or else, how would they take any land against a well trained force?

On the other hand, who knows? Each side points to comments or singular instances (meat grinder that Ukrainian forces are currently going through, that either side has conscript forces that are useless etc etc) that don't clarify. Are there 100k+ missing on the Ukrainian side and they're so corrupt that they aren't reporting this? I don't know. Seems like there would be a revolt among the wives and mothers of those missing people if this were the case. 

The same goes for the offensive. On one hand when I hear of a few tanks being sent to Ukraine (when they asked for 100s), that doesn't seem like it would make a difference. But how much does incompetence play a role? Again, the other example is America defeating the Iraqi army with less soldiers. Things like that really do matter. So hand waving it away isn't right IMO. But claiming Russia is equal to Iraq in either war also seems like a tall stretch of the truth (which no one knows... yet). 

Some claim that the lack of Russian success comes down to how they had bad intel (thought Ukraine was very corrupt and thus would roll over) while not wanting to fight all out (Ritter again), but that too doesn't seem entirely legit. For most of these things, we can only use past information (I've noted how both US and Russian military lied over and over in previous conflicts, so hard to know what to trust) from these groups and wonder if they're telling the truth at this moment?

For the dissident voices in the US, it would seem that their track record is better than anyone in the mainstream, let alone those in our gov. On the internets, if you try to raise any questions about the western narrative (Russia on the verge of collapse) you just get called a Putin Troll. I'm sure it's similar in Russia, but the other way, but still it makes me believe that it's a narrative that's more likely to be true [1]. To that end, I tend to believe the Russia offensive will be damaging to Ukraine and I don't think the worst is behind us in this conflict (note: if Russia does lose, that's when they will go nuts.. And this doesn't mean Putin isn't replaced... just that he might be replaced by someone more hardline). Your thoughts?

[1] even if I know that the narrative being pushed has no bearing on the truth, it doesn't mean it's automatically untrue. 

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