At Newsweek Brendan Cole posts quotes from a Russian source that explain why Russia will lose the war:
In a video clip that has gone viral and tweeted by Ukrainian internal affairs adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, Girkin again lambasted Putin, saying, “our commander in chief is not going to win this war at all.”
“Whatever victories our army achieves in this war, we are going to lose it with this kind of approach of the country’s leadership,” he said.
In front of a red flag of Novorossiya, a historical name for southeast Ukraine popular among separatists, Girkin said that one year ago “the enemy was attacking nowhere and Russia had the initiative. What do we see now?”
“In June 2023, Kherson is abandoned, Izium is abandoned, Kupiansk is abandoned,” he said, criticizing how many Russian tanks had been destroyed “in only a few days.”
“He’s never seen a tank except in a parade, what’s wrong with his head?” said Girkin of Putin. “He’s really acting not even like an old man, but like a child.” He then took aim at the “unprofessional” and “uneducated” Russian high command which meant “we have no chance of winning.”
while at 19FortyFive Daniel Davis explains why Russia will win the war:
First, Russia had nine months to prepare some areas of the defensive belts and thus had time to make them very thorough and survivable. Second, as this war has routinely shown, attacking is much more complex than defending. Third, Russia has a number of critical military advantages over Ukraine that are very nearly impossible to overcome.
Moscow has near air supremacy in the tactical front over Ukraine; a significant edge in air defense systems; an advantage in the density of artillery rounds; superiority in electronic warfare capacity, which shows most clearly in Russia’s ability to deploy attack and reconnaissance drones while severely degrading Ukraine’s attempts to do likewise; a near-limitless supply of anti-tank mines; advantages in the number of armored personnel carriers and tanks; and the ability to launch sustained missile barrages against Ukrainian cities and fuel and ammunition depots near the front.
Critically, when needing to penetrate deep minefields in multiple belts, Ukraine appears to have grossly insufficient mine-clearing equipment. And perhaps above all, Russia has millions more men from whom to draw replacements, and a fully functioning military industrial capacity to keep the weapons of war rolling indefinitely.
These advantages are enduring and fundamental to determining who wins and loses wars, and there is nothing that will change them in the foreseeable future. Ukraine has been unable to advance to the main line of Russian defense in two weeks, yet the most difficult defensive fortifications are still to come: tank ditches, dragon’s teeth, massive minefields, and mobile counterattack formations in depth.
As I’ve said ad nauseam I have no idea how anyone can assess what’s happening. I continue to think that the advantage is with Russia and that the longer the war continues the greater that advantage will become.
Russia has more resources but crap leadership. Sounds about right to me.
Steve
I still think predicting the outcome is far too early because of the attrition strategy both Russia and the US is choosing*.
The thing with attrition strategy is many wars of attrition have a decisive outcome; for every Korea; there is the Western front in WW1 or the Virginia front in the Civil War. Years can go by where the fighting is held with 10-30 miles, and then within weeks a side collapses and has decisively lost.
*I think its clear the Russians are taking an attrition strategy. I chose “the US” deliberately; while Ukrainians probably prefer a shock and awe strategy, the limiting factor in Ukraine’s war making capability is military supplies from US/NATO; and the US prefers to grind it out since a true “shock and awe” strategy requires US troops and far more weaponry that it likely spirals into a nuclear escalation.