After the total destruction and capture of the small town of Avdiivka near Donetsk in February 2024 (the only success of the Russian army after the destruction and capture of the ruins of Bakhmut in May 2023), Putin is trying to make the most of the favourable situation of the lack of weapons and ammunition among the Ukrainians (due to the delay munitions supply from the US) and develop their success. Since then, for the last six months, Putin’s army has been constantly trying to gnaw through sections of the front on various stretches, expanding the zone of its offensive as much as possible. The recipe for small advances (in most areas of the so-called offensive, the advance during this period is from several hundred metres to two or three kilometres) is simple – complete erasure of another Donbas village from the ground by artillery and aviation, and ceaseless “rolling” with frontal battering ram attacks. We are not talking about any military art here.
Putin is trying to push Ukrainian defences, obsessed with the war against Ukraine at the cost of any losses. The main thing is to “grow into new territories.” According to his calculations, he can afford much higher material and human losses in a war of destruction than Ukraine can. To reduce the possibility of Ukrainian resistance, Putin, instead of concentrating resources in one or two directions, began to “advance” simultaneously in several areas from Kharkiv in the north to Zaporizhia in the south.
The Kremlin enlisted the support of Iran and North Korea and assumed that it could win a resource war (Russia is accustomed to operating in conditions where its artillery superiority reaches from 20 to one shot to at least five to one), put the economy on a war footing, constantly carrying out covert mobilization (recruiting for the war every month, mobilizing up to 30 thousand). Putin resorted to decisive pressure and fell into a resource trap. Having smeared its huge, but still not unlimited, military potential over the widest part of the front, trying to advance constantly, without operational pauses, regrouping, under the constant control and active action of Ukrainian UAVs, the Russian army is suffering insane losses, both human and material, which cannot compensate for the current rate of renewal of military equipment and living resources.
Over the past two months, Russia has broken all its own records for casualties. In May and June, Russia’s losses (38,940 and 35,030) exceeded the current capacity of the Russian mobilization machine to replenish troops. In June, the Russians also lost 359 tanks. Taking into account that the storage bases of suitable military equipment that can be restored are almost empty, and the Russian military-industrial complex is capable of sending an average of 350-400 (mostly old restored units) tanks per month, Russia is reaching a point where it will be challenging to compensate for losses, and the formation of any stocks is not worth talking about. The situation is similar with armoured combat vehicles. Their losses in June reached 603 units, and this can be compensated for only by restoring very outdated equipment or using unarmoured civilian transport to transport personnel, which significantly increases personnel losses.
The situation is similar with barrel artillery. In June, a record number of losses was recorded – 1,415 units. The Russian army suffered heavy losses in the anti-aircraft defence system (59 complexes), effectively exposing and leaving whole sections of the front and army formations without cover.
Russia also suffers huge losses in the section of so-called special equipment, together with the personnel of the sapper-engineering units.
The exclusive advantage of the use of guided aerial bombs, with which Putin erases the Donbas villages from the ground (which he should protect and liberate), allows the Russian army to continue to maintain offensive momentum.
Not being able to ensure the covert movement of its stormtroopers to the front line on protected combat armoured vehicles through safe passages cleared by sappers and engineers, Russia throws small unprepared groups into “banzai assaults” on motorcycles, whose task is to wedge into the enemy’s battle formations and try to gain a foothold. Most of these groups have been dying since the beginning of this move. But this does not stop Putin, realizing that at this stage it is an extreme opportunity to advance at least somehow, Putin is acting on the spur of the moment, believing that he can achieve at least some success, and in case of failure, immediately seek a ceasefire on the existing demarcation line. Putin’s negotiator Orban has already probed similar proposals recently in Kyiv.
In fact, the Russian dictator hedged his bet. Currently, the key problem with such a high rate is the critical shortage and its inevitable increase in the future of all necessary resources. This is what has already turned the mechanized “second army in the world” into a futuristic crowd of bums on motorcycles and golf carts in the style of “Mad Max”. If Putin compensates for the critical lack of armour with whatever he can, the problem of the lack of human resources becomes more and more apparent.
The slave-owning war market, when each region increases the level of payments to the mobilized, to drag them from other regions, is already failing. There are fewer and fewer volunteers, and the “population swept away in the war” and the losses suffered in some regions are off the charts. For example, in the sparsely populated Tyva, every tenth person has already been grabbed, and the number of orphaned children has increased by several thousand in recent years. Other small nations, enslaved by Russia, are experiencing a similar destination.
Since there are fewer and fewer stupid and poor people willing to go and die in the war, and the prisons are cleared of “volunteer prisoners”, Russia has to resort to extraordinary methods of replenishing personnel.
Since the beginning of the year, according to the testimony of the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, about 10,000 naturalized Russians have been sent to war. Russia carries out mass raids on the places of residence and work of so-called illegal migrants aiming to use them as cannon fodder in the war. There are frequent attempts to fraudulently attract foreigners to civilian jobs and send them to the front. The government of Sri Lanka has already officially demanded compensation from Russia for the citizens who died in the war and the return of the living to their homes.
Russia has high hopes for the North Korean construction and engineering corps appearing at the front because its own builders have long been reformatted into attacking aircraft and honed in frontal attacks.
Having selected male prisoners from the prison, Russia resorted to the aggressive recruitment of female prisoners into the army, whose death at the front has already become a common phenomenon.
However, the most savage form of recruitment is the cannibalistic practice of forming stormtroopers from wounded and unfit men.
In Russia, there are mass reports of men being recruited to the front from hospitals, in casts, with immobilized limbs, who are driven to clear the passages under the threat of being shot. Recently, among the captured Russians there are mainly those who were immediately thrown into battle without any training, unfit and of limited fitness.
Information from the soldiers of the 205th Russian brigade, whose wounded soldiers are being sent to the front in packs, received a wide response. Any complaints about such actions to the military prosecutor’s office remain inactive. The wounded and their families are threatened, and in the case of justified refusal, criminal proceedings are immediately opened against them and they are sent to the front.
In Yakutia, wounded members of the so-called SVO, who refuse to go to the war against Ukraine, are forcibly detained in the Yakutsk pre-trial detention centre. In addition to the usual torture, the security forces play Shaman’s song “I am Russian” at full volume.
Serhiy Chebotaryov, a mentally ill mobilized welder, recently seriously wounded at the front, was thrown into battle again. The military formations of the occupiers, which suffered heavy losses, instead of being withdrawn and replenished, are disbanded, and their fighters, even wounded, become donors for assault groups of other formations. The families of those mobilized from the sixth company of the HC 29601 from the Republic of Bashkortostan were recently informed about this situation. Without any preparation, their relatives are thrown into the assaults. They have no evacuation teams, food or water. This practice is widespread.
Even Putin’s military personnel, such as Svyatoslav Golikov, publicly writes: “The number of our forces, in principle, does not correspond to the tasks of active offensive actions. The quality of the personnel is not much better, both among those replenished and those who serve for a long time, among everything else, also due to the ordinary wear and tear of the body. Plus a frankly irresponsible attitude to the issue of saving people by a large part of the command. The enemy may not fall before our opportunities to attract a contract might significantly decrease. We no longer have enough strength for the radical development of success in several operational areas. Not to mention that once again we could be sadly stuck somewhere.”
However, Putin does not pay attention to such cries, “Moscow does not believe in tears”, especially since he is fighting with consumables not from among his own children and not from the children of Moscow’s beau monde. War to the last Tuvan, Bashkortostan, Buryat, Kalmyk, Yakut is a completely acceptable option for him. If necessary, he will send them in packs on scooters, because who said that the goal of denazification concerns only Ukrainians.
For the Kremlin dwarf, it is worth physically eliminating any possibility of resistance among the colonized and enslaved nations for decades. Moreover, it seems that Putin revels in the blood and mass murder of “his own”. Because, as you know, if there is no person – there will be no problem…
