The Russia v Ukraine dust-up is continuing apace, and Vladimir “Yes I’m former KGB” Putin has made a rare admission – that the Russian Army is running out of modern equipment. Business Insider has the news:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted that the Russian military needs to modernize its weapons if it is to win the war in Ukraine.
In a statement posted on the Kremlin website Friday, Putin said that the Ukrainian offensive had begun and Russian forces were successfully resisting it.
He said that this was due to the “the right command of the troops and the high effectiveness of Russian weapons, especially modern weapons.”
He then conceded that Russia needed to increase its supply of modern weapons, a significant remark in the light of reports that Russian troops on the front line were using outdated, Soviet-era equipment.
“We do not yet have enough modern arms, but the defense industry and the military-industrial complex are developing rapidly and, I am sure, all the challenges facing our defense industry will definitely be met. We are intensively building up production of modern weapons,” Putin said.
This is a pretty big admission for the Vlad, as he’s been overtly bellicose and confident in most of his public statements until now.
But the question is, can Russia ramp up quickly enough? Color me skeptical. Russia today is essentially a gas station with some nuclear weapons, and it’s a gas station that will have more and more trouble finding attendants over the next couple of decades, as the Russian people just aren’t having babies. Their economy is nothing to write home to the collective farm about, and while they have a lot of natural resources, a lot of those resources are difficult to get to.
Every war, ever, has been won by logistics. Napoleon famously said that “…an army marches on its stomach,” and in his Gallic Diaries, Julius Caesar spilled a lot of ink describing his processes for moving food and equipment up to his Gallic legions. In the case of the Russia-Ukraine dustup, it’s largely about ammo and vehicles, and Ukraine – while badly outnumbered – has the advantage of fighting on their home territory, which eases the task of moving beans and bullets forward. Russia is at the end of their supply line, and are beginning to have resupply issues.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been the beneficiary of lots of donated weapons and ammo, including from the United States, our thirty-three trillion in debt notwithstanding.
Russia is also having personnel issues. They are re-activating reservists, but that’s not always working out the way the Vlad has hoped. Ukraine faces similar problems, and they have been making noises about wanting to join NATO – which would obligate the Alliance, including the United States, to a direct war with Russia. I can’t help but think that’s a bad idea.
Here’s the big question: Putin has someone he can turn to for more troops. Will he??
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First, that was just someone engaging their mouth before she could get her brain going.
Second, I can’t imagine a bigger threat to peace in Europe, and Russia for that matter, than Russia inviting 2-3M Chinese troops onto their soil.
Europe would, rightly, see an alliance between Russia and China, especially when they’ve put 2-3 Million troops that close to Europe as a massive military threat.
For another thing, inviting that many foreign troops into ones country has, if history can be believed, never worked out well for the ‘host’ country, especially a power like China that dominates the host country both militarily and economically so, a China that close to the Russian seat of power would be a grave threat to Moscow and, if the Chinese were successful, the peace in Europe.