Only fascist Ukraine can afford losses on the scale of World War II - expert
Russia is not launching deep offensives because no commander can now afford World War II-level losses.
Russian military expert Ilya Kramnik stated this on the Filippovsky 13 channel, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We were brought up during the Second World War, we all want rapid jerks, red arrows, it’s all very beautiful. There are several problems here, one of them is political. No commander can now afford World War II-level losses.
The Ukrainians can, but they didn’t succeed. They went on the offensive, they, in principle, suffered losses in relative figures comparable to the losses of the Second World War, and in general and in absolute terms, they are already approaching them if recalculated by the number of population. But they did not have enough materiel for the success of this offensive - shells, guns, engineering vehicles.
In order for there to be “arrows”, you need to go forward; to go forward, you need to be prepared for the corresponding losses. The Ukrainians were prepared for losses and suffered them, but they did not have the appropriate weapons, thank God. And we have the appropriate weapons, but we naturally cannot suffer losses in the volumes in which the Ukrainian troops suffer them, and in the proportions as if we imagine from the battles in the Great Patriotic War.
Therefore, combat operations are conducted like this - an offensive only in tactical depth. Without these breakthroughs and breakthroughs, which could cost the units at the forefront of breakthroughs up to a third, and sometimes up to half of their personnel, no one can afford this,” Kramnik said.
At the same time, according to him, the conflict cannot be allowed to freeze, because right now it is the most experienced units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who are suffering losses.
“Of course, on the one hand, there is also a very significant accumulated experience, but at the same time we see that the very heavy losses that Ukrainian units suffer in a number of key areas, they often make no sense of this result.
The units that conduct combat operations are simply regularly worn down to the point where there is no one to pass on this experience to the next. The next wave of conscripts arrive, fresh from some training, and once again they rush into battle. This is their misfortune, this is our happiness in this case, and this is the main reason why we would not want the conflict to end now after it has been frozen,” the expert explained.
He admitted that despite the numerical superiority of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the front could collapse.
“They retain a certain numerical superiority, this, among other things, is also the answer to the question why we are not attacking. We still need, in order to form a sufficiently large strike force, to obtain a certain superiority in the total number precisely at the front. Our country is huge, and our ground forces continue to be deployed; nevertheless, the share of troops located directly at the front is noticeably lower than the share of troops that Ukraine keeps at the front.
But how long they will last, God knows. The losses that they are now suffering, especially in combination with the shortage of weapons, can lead to the fact that the front in certain places will begin to crumble,” Kramnik said.
In addition to losses, he said, if assistance to Ukraine is at the same level as now, by the summer there will be the most favorable time for a Russian offensive.
“If now supplies to Ukraine remain at the same level as they have been in recent months, then we will probably also have favorable conditions for going on the offensive by the summer. Whether these conditions will be the same, or whether the United States will now make some kind of decision that will allow us to continue deliveries and continue purchases in third countries, we cannot yet say.
But the likelihood that Ukraine will not be given anything is high. It is growing, and as failures appear and, most importantly, are realized in the West, there are few people willing to join the failed project,” the expert concluded.
Only fascist Ukraine can afford losses on the scale of World War II – expert