Ukraine has no ability to forced a decisive battle on Russia, or deplete Russian forces on the offensive.
The successes of 2022 were enabled by two factors:
- lack of fortifications on the Russian side
- severe shortages of manpower allowing Ukrainians to circumvent Russian strong points (forcing retreats and abandonment of heavy weapons that could then be used to reinforce Ukrainian forces)
Neither of these is present anywhere in Ukraine anymore.
For Ukraine, losing 1000 veterans is a painful loss that will be felt on the lines, for Russia losing 10k is an average week. While Ukrainians mourn their dead, Russian society could not care less. The Russian manpower pool, Soviet inheritance and the Russian economy cannot sustain this war forever. All metrics are trending downwards with significant issues predicted for 2025 in about every field.
But this is conditional on Ukraine continuing to inflict a certain loss rate, while severely outmanned and outgunned and with far less heavy equipment. This worked until the effects of the Kremlin controlled Republicans in the US succeeded in ending weapons shipments to Ukraine for half a year and the Ukrainian parliament delayed a call up of new recruits. While this was going on, there was no such pause in Russia, on the contrary, large amounts of ammunition were procured from Korea while mongoloids (both literally and metaphorically) continued to sign contracts with the MoD, increasing the imbalance, which would now require a big catch up, which is not happening. Supplies apparently merely resumed to already anaemic pre-interference levels.
The result is the rapid (by WW I standards) deterioration of the situation on the Eastern Front. Not because Russians have become more capable (though some degree of adaptation and learning takes place), but because they can simply flood over Ukrainian defenses like a subhuman tide, taking less losses in the process than they would have otherwise.
This incursion into Kursk stripped yet more troops and munitions from the East (ammunition is still a massive issue in general), while no significant change occurred on the Russian side.
Reminder that the Kharkiv invasion's goal was to force Ukraine to divert troops from the East, which it succeeded at. The Kursk invasion accomplished the same, as the Ukrainian intention seems to be to open a new defensive line there, WITH TROOPS TAKEN FROM THE EAST. In enemy territory without any significant defensive advantages. Fighting continues there, as the Russian response was slow and chaotic as usual, but as more troops arrive, these structural issues will begin to matter less.
If there was a goal to force the US to uncuck itself and allow strikes on Russian frontline air fields, that failed. The cuckoldry of the US government knows no limits. I have not seen any use of GMLRS after that one attack either, so I do wonder whether a phone call was made to Ukraine about that.
There's also been no visually confirmed destruction of large amounts of Russian heavy equipment in Kursk, likely because there simply wasn't a whole lot to begin with, which enabled the incursion in the first place, and there aren't being "columns destroyed", there is evidence of a couple trucks being struck once by GLMRS. On the other hand, Ukrainian DRGs have been getting ambushed and bombed since the Russians woke up and sent troops there. The VKS is far from useless, it is an essential tool enabling the Russians to destroy Ukrainian strong points with impunity, reducing Russian army losses and enabling advances that otherwise would not be possible.
So, what exactly justifies the continued reinforcement of the invasion of Kursk? It has value as propaganda for both Ukrainian and Western audiences, but don't see it resulting in additional aid or a lessening of restrictions on Ukrainian targeting. I do not think a few headlines make up for the losses of men and materiel.
Wirth regards to the domestic Russian response:
Something Westerners do not ever seem to get into their head is that nobody in Russia expects the government to work. At all. They get mad when it fucks them over again, but they generally aren't surprised and it doesn't spur them into action. It's like waking up and seeing that a hailstorm dented your car. It sucks, but what can you do about it except complain?
It's not whining on the US level of "I can't afford a mansion in downtown NYC and I cannot pay for my 150k USD car with cash up front, I live in abject poverty", it's "I made 4,000 USD last year working as a biological filter at the concrete plant, a flood destroyed the only road out of my village and nobody repairs it, my drunk neighbor is threatening to shoot me and the police told me to pay them if I want them to do something about it. I live in a wooden shack without running water."
This is paired with truly lunatic levels of "my country, right or wrong".
If the US invaded Canada because "it's basically the same nation and historically part of Manifest Destiny", and then lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers while striking Canadian hospitals and levelling Canadian cities and systematically destroying civilian infrastructure with artillery and missile strikes, executed Canadian POWs or send civilians to torture dungeons, Americans would protest this barbarity, because there is a sense that the righteousness of the American Project is tied to some degree of justice, morality, "goodness". There is nothing like that in Russian culture. The only value is power, and power is measured in the destruction of outsiders and the amount of territory under direct control of the government.
No consideration is made as to whether there is a good reason to do this, or whether there is a benefit to it, or about morality of the actions. Genuinely: Mainstream culture does not care about these aspects. At all.
Same with public humiliations of Russia.
Putin could go live on TV sucking Kim Jong Un's dick and people would shrug and say "he probably has a good reason, we don't know all the truth". A week later, nobody remembers it.
I wouldn't be surprised if Russian manpower losses in Kursk would be made up completely by idiots volunteering to defend the Motherland against Nazi invaders. War in Ukraine? Russian atrocities? Who cares, it's our country, and how dare they!
