“Everything is ready,” Ukraine’s deputy chief of military intelligence tells Wall Street JoeRanel’. “The manpower is in place, the lists are ready.” He talks about a new massive recruitment in Russia for the big offensive.
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All signs indicate that the attack is imminent. The first anniversary of the invasion will be on February 24. A non-celebratory feeling will prevail in the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin did not prepare for such a long war, and he did not prepare his people.
Russia’s losses are huge. They put this war on a par with World War I, if not with World War II. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, until last weekend 136,880 Russians were killed, with the addition of the comment “estimate, needs confirmation”. According to the Ukrainians, last Saturday 1,140 Russian soldiers were killed.
American and Western sources told the New York Times last week that the number of Russian casualties, dead and wounded, reaches 200,000. Themoscowtimes.com website wrote on Friday that independent media outlets had to recruit volunteers in recent days to keep up with the count of the dead.
It goes without saying that Ukraine also suffered huge losses. But the willingness of the Russian generals to throw masses of inexperienced soldiers into the line of fire amazes Western observers; The Ukrainian generals are trying to save human lives, also because they have much less.
At least two more years
In recent days, Russian pressure has increased greatly on the Donbass front, near the small town of Akhmat and the even smaller town of Wahldar. The Russians have progressed a tiny bit in their attempt to capture these cities, and claim victory just in time for the anniversary. But they seem to have suffered heavy losses, in manpower and equipment.
The British Ministry of Defense, which usually publishes reliable information about the course of the war, says that a Russian attack this week ended in failure, costing the attackers 30 armored vehicles.
The comparison with World War I is not arbitrary. One distinct side of imagination is the prolongation of the war far beyond what was predicted.
One of Putin’s agents, Yevgeny Prigozhin, predicted on Friday that Russia would need two to three years to meet the tasks that would allow it to claim victory: to take over the entirety of the two eastern regions of Ukraine, or to expand its rule over the entire eastern bank of a river The Dnipro (Dnieper, in Russian).
Prigozhin is the owner of the mercenary army known as ‘Wagner’, whose weight has increased in the last months in planning and execution. Prigozhin is the originator of the idea of recruiting criminal prisoners in exchange for amnesty. Their corpses cover the killing fields of eastern Ukraine, probably in their thousands.
The Jewish chemists in 1915
Another side of similarity with the First World War is that at this stage of the war, in 1915, ammunition ran out on both sides of the barrier. Two famous Jewish chemists bought their world when they developed substitutes for gunpowder.
One of them was Prof. Haim Weizman from the University of Manchester on the British side; The second was Prof. Fritz Haber from the University of Karlsruhe on the German side. The prolongation of the First World War can be attributed in no small measure to their genius. Weizmann received the Balfour Declaration in return, more or less.
Wars end, among other things, when one side runs out of ammunition. In this war it seems that both sides are close to emptying their stocks. Both make a frantic effort to fill the gap. Russia has a clear advantage, also because it has a much wider industrial base, also because it destroyed a significant part of the heavy industry in Ukraine, also because they continue to wreak havoc on production lines and infrastructure.
Ukraine used to be not only Russia’s granary, but also its steel granary. Much of the Soviet military industry was in Ukraine, including planes, tanks and even spaceships. One of the first things the Russians did on the first day of their invasion was to destroy the world’s largest plane, made in Ukraine, parked at a military airfield near Kyiv.
Ukraine’s manufacturing capacity has suffered a fatal blow, although its development capacity remains intact. It depends almost entirely on foreign sources, not only for advanced weapons, not only for heavy weapons, but also for the most basic matter: ammunition. This was the reason why the USA asked the Israel Authority last month to transfer large quantities of ammunition from American stockpiles to Israeli soil.
Zelensky skips Europe
The Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Holga (Olga) Stepanyshina, spoke late last week about the “greatest panic” of the need for ammunition. “We don’t have the necessary amount,” she told the Financial Times. According to the newspaper, the Ukrainian army “consumes ammunition at an unprecedented rate”, more than 5,000 shells a day. This is the number of shells that a small European country purchases in a whole year. The production lines of Europe or America are not prepared to fulfill such needs.
While Ukraine is waging a war of its own, Russia’s logistics problems are homegrown. She didn’t realize what a trap she was setting for herself. According to the US Deputy Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Celeste Wallander, the Russians have so far lost half of their tank strength. Under the burden of international sanctions, Russian arms production has slowed, although “Russia has managed to fill some of the gaps” , through partnerships with other countries, especially Iran.
Zelensky’s hopping tour of European capitals last week was intended to illustrate Ukraine’s anxieties. He returned and spoke publicly about the need for fighter jets, causing discomfort among his interlocutors. Even the most enthusiastic, for example the president of Poland, made it clear to him the unreality of the wish. But it is clear that even if Zelensky hoped to advance the matter of airplanes, the practical emphasis of his journey was on needs that could and must be filled immediately.
The history of supplying arms to Ukraine is full of hesitations. It started in 2014, when Putin conquered the Crimean peninsula. This continued on the eve of the invasion and in the months that followed. Weapons that were refused at key moments were eventually provided.
The latest aid package from the US, announced by the White House on February 3, includes ammunition for the HIMARS missile launchers, 155 mm artillery shells, 120 mm shells, 250 Javelin anti-armor missile systems, 2000 anti-armor missiles, Two Hawk missile systems, and more.
Ukraine will rise or fall on these in the coming days.
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