You have said you were former UK military (edit, can't find a reference so accept I may be wrong on that). I may have got the country wrong (Macedonia?) but it's somewhat adjacent to Bulgaria.
My profile tells you exactly where I am. The location is stated quite clearly at the bottom of my avatar, on every post. Back in the day I even posted photos of my house.
And yes, I am only two border crossings from the U,raine, hence my desire to work out what is actually going on.
;-)
Why, if the Russians have so comprehensively thrashed the Ukrainian army, is Putin not parading through the streets of Kiev?
And why is the notorious fascist Zelensky still apparently in power?
Seems rather strange, don't you think?
Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain these apparent contradictions for us thickies
"Patience, Grasshopper".
Firstly, I don't actually know, I can only guess. I'm not privy to either Russian or Ukrainian defence intelligence. However, as far as I can tell, Russia invaded with far too few soldiers to actually take and hold ground - it was more of a lightning strike to make a point, followed by negotiation to get what they wanted. The ukranian side seemed to agree to a compromise, and even went as far as to initial some documents but then Boris turned up to put a stop to all that. As far as I can tell, the plan seems to have been to get Russia to overextended themselves by taking too much territory, then have them suffer a 20 year Afghanistan insurgency style war of occupation - NATO knows exactly how much that hurts.
Once Russia worked out they had been duped (yet again) by the agreement non-capable West, they did something that seems to have baffled NATO: they went into a ww1 trench warfare, stalemate style war of attrition. It has sucked in all the old Warsaw pact equipment, all the old NATO equipment (Challenger tanks being a fine example), and artillery is the lynchpin. Russian (ie. USSR) doctrine always had far more artilliary than NATO, because NATO has shiny jets for air supremacy, so Russia has a 10 to 1 superiority in artillery. Russia also seems to have a casualty ratio commensurate with their artillery superiority, unless you take Ukranian official pronouncements at face value.
Current tactics appear to be shell the bejesus out of a Ukrainian trench until everyone seems to be dead or disabled, then send 4 guys on motorbikes to take said trench. Only 4, because drones have changed the entire landscape of war.
So, first Ukrainian army, trained and supplied by NATO from 2014 to 2022 (after rebuilding following various embarrassing episodes involving angry Donbas miners and airports) gets taken apart pretty quickly in the first few weeks of chaos following the initial invasion by Russia in 2022. The Ukrainian counterattack and retreat/retrenchment by Russia led to a stalemate and actually pretty wobbly moments for Russia, once it became clear the Ukraine wouldn't go belly up immediately. Russian troops numbers were far too low to do the job, but they managed to hold on into 2023 and a partial mobilisation gave them more to work with. 2023 was the great Ukrainian counterattack - a whole new army, tra8ned abroad and fully equipped with shiny NATO kit (run out of Soviet toys by this point) smashed itself to pieces repeatedly on the Surovikin defensive line. I freely admit to being baffled by the NATO/Ukranian tactics here - perhaps you were involved in the disaster, and can give more details as to what the generals were thinking.
2024 is the great second battle of Kirsk - same as 2023: oodles of NATO equipment smashed to pieces for absolutely no purpose, other than to confirm to the Russian people that this is an existential war against the entirety of the Western world. Russia proper under attack, by people driving German tanks and wearing WWII German helmets. Again, baffling strategy that serves no immediate purpose other than to kill many, many Ukrainians while trying to take some strategically irrelevant cow pasture.
Tldr version:
2022 Warsaw pact equipped Ukrainian army destroyed. Russia retrenches for defensive, attritional war.
2023 new NATO equipped Ukrainian army destroyed on Surovikin line - no gain for Ukraine
2024yet another new NATO equipped Ukrainian army destroyed in Kursk - no gain for Ukraine.
Currently all the good kit is still being sent to Kursk, where it gets exploded. In the meantime, the Ukrainians on the rest of the front are struggling badly because there are no longer any reserves. Russia doesn't seem interested in taking ground, they seem very interested in killing Ukrainian soldiers, and they seem to be very good at it. The various fronts appear to be slowly collapsing due to lack of reserves, but Russia has endless patience it would seem, and are content to keep the casualty ratio somewhere around 6-8 dead Ukrainian for every dead Russian.
That's my personal take - please show me where i might be wrong.
