Attrition in the Ukraine

It looks like the war ends with the last Ukrainian. However, the last Ukrainian is now in sight.

It is difficult to know the number of human casualties on both sides, but when self propelled artillery get destroyed, it is sufficiently obvious and important that we do have good data. And the number of self propelled artillery losses is likely to be indicative of the number of human losses, since in war of attrition the main role of humans is sandbags to protect artillery from artillery and drones

For a long time, losses of self propelled artillery were roughly comparable on both sides, which meant that Russia, having more men and more artillery, was massively winning the war of attrition. As war of attrition approaches its end, the side with ever fewer men and ever less artillery suffers greater and greater losses, while the winning side has fewer and fewer losses.

Over time, Russian losses of self propelled artillery became less and less, and Ukrainian losses greater and greater, and it is now overwhelmingly one sided. So this would indicate that the end is near.

The village of Ternuvate is a little way west of a strong natural line of a defense, the Haichur river, with open flood plains on either side of the river, and overlooking the river and the plains a line of hills, hills now reinforced with anti tank dragon’s teeth, concrete bunkers, machine gun emplacements, and all that, from which troops can sit in comfort, dug in, and shoot anyone attempting to cross the river and the flood plains.

Theoretically, one of Ukraine’s better battalions was sent to man the defense line east of Turnuvate. But, being one of Ukraine’s better battalions, has been sent hither and yon into the worst of the fighting all over the front.

The Russians, in twos and threes, quietly crossed the river and snuck into these mighty bunkers.

Revealing that there are not many men left in this battalion. From the bunkers, they snuck into the little village of Ternuvate, which is now a base for Russian drone operators. Again, revealing that rather few men were left in this battalion.

Increasingly, the Ukraine is defended by ghost battalions, that exist mostly on paper, because nearly everyone has been killed, seriously injured, has deserted, or has been taken prisoner. That the Haichur river defense line was undefended suggests that the Ukrainian command does not know how many men it has, that a lot of ghost soldiers were still drawing pay.

That the defense line has been penetrated renders all those mighty defenses irrelevant. The Ukrainians then proceeded to scrape up some more troops, and recapture part of the village. It was undamaged when the Russians captured it, but is now being quite thoroughly leveled.

Recapturing part of the village is quite useless, unless the Ukrainians can recapture their mighty defense line on the hills overlooking the river flood plain.

Russian shell production is now so high they are refilling their strategic reserve which implies a lack of targets. Russian advances are clearly not motivated by territorial acquisition. Rather, they are looking for more targets so that they can apply their huge and rapidly increasing artillery advantage to attriting Ukrainian capabilities.

So, when Ukrainians, as now, go on the offensive, the Russians halt their advances on that part of the front, because now targets are coming to them. Once the Ukrainians stop sending more targets into Ternuvate, the Russians will resume expanding their bridgehead across the river.

This does not mean the Ukrainians are about to suddenly lose a lot of territory. Rather, they are going to be stretched thinner, because they will need to rely on meat to hold land, rather than concrete and rivers. So, if they let the bridgehead across the river and the valley into the hills stand they will lose men and artillery, and when they try to recapture, are losing men and artillery.

The Ukrainians were able to recapture most of the village, because the Russians had no strong reason to hang onto it if Zelensky was sending them more targets. They do have a strong reason to hang onto some territory across the river, because that is a bridgehead that renders a mighty natural and artificial line of defense irrelevant.

The Zelensky regime is now launching counter offenses all over the front, which have recaptured some territory here and there, but just as The Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive was a catastrophe because the Ukrainians were unable to penetrate the Russian defense lines and lost an army and most of the West’s supply of tanks and armored personnel carriers attempting to do so, the current counter offenses will also have been a catastrophe if they are unable to recapture any important defense lines.

War of attrition just gets worse and worse for the losing side. The fewer men they have, the more men they lose, and fewer men the winning side loses.

You have probably heard that front is collapsing all over the Ukraine. You have probably also heard that Ukrainian retreats are insignificant. Both are true simultaneously.

If Russians and Ukrainian spend years fighting over a grove of trees and a village, and eventually the Ukrainians withdraw to next village and the next grove of trees, that is an insignificant tactical retreat. If they spend years fighting over a grove of trees and village, and eventually the Ukrainian troops in that grove of trees and village are no more, it is a collapse of the front. The amount of land the Ukrainians are losing is insignificant. The problem is that in many cases, they are losing that land because they lost the military formations that were defending that land.

The Ukrainian war will end when the Ukrainian army vanishes, and the quiet undramatic fall of the little village of Ternuvate reveals that it is getting close to vanishing. It is only a little village, the Russians only took a few square kilometers, but in taking it, they rendered a mighty line of defense irrelevant, and in taking it, revealed that there are rather few Ukrainian troops remaining.

Trouble is that if Nato is stubborn about the Ukraine, the Ukraine war is likely to become the Polish, Lithuanian, and Moldovan war. A war can only ended by a deal — and inevitably that deal is going to be grossly one sided in favor of the Russians. And the longer this goes on, the more one sided that deal is going to be. It is pointless to hold out for a better deal, when you have fewer troops every day.

War is a test of will and capability. The test has been done. It is way past time to accept the outcome.