I'm becoming increasingly convinced that if this IS a war of attrition, that is a war Russia will inevitably lose. Russia cannot outproduce the west in terms of vehicles and ammunition. Russia is also not killing off Hohols at a rate necessary to deprive them of Military Aged Males any time soon.
It all paints a bleak picture for Russia going into 2024. Increasingly desperate efforts to hang onto the gains from the 2022 sucker punch. And come 2025, it is all going to collapse. Russia needs to come to terms with Ukraine now while it still has a bargaining position. There is still a chance for the moment they get out of this mess keeping Crimea.
Russia is not trying to win via KTD ratio, or by production. The attrition they are hoping to outlast is the Eurocuck's attention spans and tolerances for disruption.
Also don't underestimate Russia's ability to start cranking out soviet-level equipment. They have large deposits of coal and iron ore, as well as nickel and zinc - everything you need for steel. What they lack is the ability to get optics, but they could be making replacement barrels and mechanical spare parts instead of pulling them from the boneyards.
As for why Russia hasn't been leveraging their soviet production, remember: Russia is under no threat from Ukraine and never has been. The absolute worst case for them is they lose Crimea and Donbabwe - territories they never really had and if they do lose them, will allow them to scream for the next century about unfair NATO imperialist opression.
There is no reason to go full war economy.
There may also be a bit of 'crazy like a fox' going on; those boneyards are from the USSR. Much of that equipment, even if properly maintained, won't be of any use in a future peer or near-peer engagement. Might as well get your use out of it now.
Remember post-Kharkiv when there was a huge shift in territory controlled, Russia's response was to cram the front with underequipped, untrained, and often unarmed mobliks.
No terms are going to be come to right now. Ukraine is not going to give up Crimea without a significant fight, that is, unless it becomes clear it cannot be retaken militarily. Also, Ukraine won't trust any deal Russia offers; it will be seen as a way for Russia to buy time for the next attack. So I don't see any hope for a negotiated settlement for a long time. Most likely, fighting will slow down in a year or so, and the conflict will be frozen at some borders, and perhaps a cease fire will be worked out that concedes no territory but stops the shooting, temporarily. Or Putin dies, and his successor puts an end to this absurd and senseless war.
A sane solution would be Russian withdraw from Donbabwe, and effectively leasing Crimea - tying the lease to such things as water rights and ensuring russians get special treatment.
But we'll never see that while Putin draws breath.
Wait, Russia can real time decrypt Ukrainian communication?
Has anyone here deeper knowledge on the stuff used? Because I'm pretty sure every internet capable device could decrypt stuff, field equipment would chew on for years.
Real-time decryption of 256-bit encryption is not trivial. Assuming this isn't BS, then either the Ukes' equipment is using some defective encryption algorithm with known exploits, the Russians have access to their encryption keys (perhaps they were captured and aren't being cycled frequently enough, or a spy or bribed insider is passing them along), or Russia really does have 7-dimensional quantum-entagled decryption hardware regularly posted along the front. I'll leave it to you all to decide which of these outcomes is most likely.
I'm pretty sure the equipment used by Ukraine uses aes-256 encryption, which is not breakable in any useful amount of time (certainly not in real time) with currently available hardware and software. It's either a lie, or there's more to the story. Possibly the ukies are all reusing a known key, or maybe they're not encrypting their comms at all, despite having the capability. Or perhaps Russia has managed to obtain the keys somehow, which would imply a severe security breach within the uaf.
I'm going to tl;dr here:
It is very unlikely that Ukraine is using military grade aes-256 on its expendable drones. they are probably using Alibaba specials that promise "256 bit encryption" but have simple and reused keys. These are the same radios that russia is using having been embargo'd.
It is also possible these off-the-shelf radios are being used for squad-level coms.
Especially if you know the keys, its not too hard to decrypt - the question I'd have is the real-time. This is like DEFCON wardriving where they sniff wifi packets and get your Wifi password - if they sit on a channel long enough they are going to start finding similar data. Military AES is supposed to cycle the keys regularly to prevent this, but a lot of OTS radios use either a static key or a small pool. Its still 256-bit encrypted but its much easier to crack.
