1y ago

Russia's army is now 15% bigger than when it invaded Ukraine, says US general

www.businessinsider.com

Russia's army has grown bigger despite sustaining losses when it invaded Ukraine, says a US general.
US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli said the Russian army "is actually now larger — by 15 percent."
"Russia is on track to command the largest military on the continent," Cavoli said.

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1y ago

Russia's army is now 15% bigger than when it invaded Ukraine, says US general

www.businessinsider.com /russias-army-15-percent-larger-when-attacked-ukraine-us-general-2024-4

28 comments

Yes, that's what happens when you have forced conscription.
Large doesn't mean effective.
- Just an FYI, both sides including conscripted soldiers. Russia is 18 - 30, Ukraine is now 25 - 60.
  
  Okay? Ukraine also has a fraction of Russia's population. Why would that give it a larger army?
  
  My armchair General theory is that conscription works better for defensive armies than offensive. Taking a random 18 year old and forcing them to go fight in a different country only leads to questions of why they are there. Convincing that same 18 year old that they should sign up to go fight in a different country out of misplaced patriotism works a lot better. Ironically, that means giving people the choice tends to support imperialism more than forcing the issue.
  Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
This isn't at all surprising, in fact a lot of people were trying to point out at the outset that the longer the war dragged on, the larger and more sustained Russia's military would grow.
Ukraine simply doesn't have the population to keep up indefinitely.
- Also have to consider loss of experience, equipment and morale/exhaustion, along with economic costs on the civilian population.
  May be larger, but are they professional forces that are well trained and equipped (for russia) or warm bodies and second tier equipment? What about the losses of experienced non-coms and officers?
  
  At what point does a military cease being fatigued and start being 'battle hardened'?
  I think the most the West expected was to drain Russia of their military capabilities, but they've overshot that goal and now Russia has doubled-down on their military production. Absent NATO getting more directly involved, I don't see how this trend is good news for Ukraine.
  
  That's how they always do it though and it didn't stop them in the past (to be fair, from invasion though which is a lot different)
Define army. Do kids without training or equipment count?
- To Putin? Absolutely.
  This has been their MO since before the soviets. When they failed the lightning raid on Kyiv, they went back to their old tactics- relying on attrition and simply assuming tbhat any losses can be replaced - which is far from true if Ukraine.
- The IDF seems to think so.
  
  Judging by their actions the IDF's definition of enemy combatant seems to extend all the way down to fetuses still in their mother's womb, so their actions are not really a reasonable metric for comparison with normal soldiers in a normal war.
  Wars driven mainly by massive racism and with a background of in the aggressor country for over half a century the target etnicity having been relentlessly protrayed as less than human ("human animals" as Israeli members of government openly said) are conducted outside any and all rationality, much less humanity, whilst wars driven mainly by greed still have some rationality, if only because even any last minute attempts in such wars by the leaders of the aggressor nation to turn their soldiers into monsters towards The Enemy to try and win, are nowhere as effective at creating monsters as conscripting as soldiers young adults who have grown up in an environment swamped with extremelly racist views of the etnicity of The Enemy.
  For all the evil the Russians have done in Ukraine, their actions seem to be mainly driven by greed and a general disregard for human life, whilst Israeli soldiers' actions seem to be mainly driven by extreme racist hate.
- Zelensky's regime of NATO servants has not yet called for children. The age of mobilization in Ukraine is 25 years old. But people from the age of 18 are not allowed out of the country
  
  Imagine simping for Putin as hard as this хуйло does. Tongue so far up Vladimir’s ass, he can taste his breakfast.
The US needs to get a lethal aid package passed. It has been stalled in the House for half a year. We aren't pulling our own weight. Luckily, Europe is pulling much of our slack. Poland and the Baltic states in particular have really stepped up to the plate.
- It has been stalled
  More like that it's been purposely blocked back by the Republicans.
  
  Are they so selfish that this is self serving and too stupid to realise they are playing into Russia's arms or do they do this willingly and only pretend to not realise.
  Either one is horrible and regrettable but I am genuinely curious if they are opportunist idiots or trecherous idiots.
  
  What happened to those weapons for israel that were blocked by Republicans? Somehow those managed to end up in israel.
"Based on my experience in 37-plus years in the U.S. military, if one side can shoot and the other side can't shoot back, the side that can't shoot back loses," he continued.
This guy generals.
Putin will need to keep his new big military busy or they might turn on him, and he knows it.
Yes if you include all the mercanarys and the new recruits and those civilians being drafted also the region in Ukraine is known for guerilla warfare so a long term un welcome occupation won't last long
Obviously more US aid is crucial, and it's recent absence is clearly having negative consequences in Ukraine.
If there is a silver lining, it's that all of Europe is finally getting it's military shit sorted out.
Russia is settling into it's war economy and the rest of Europe has decades of dust to shake off it's military capabilities.
Obviously NATO and individual European counties aren't fully engaged in war like Ukraine is, but the resources consumed by war is proving just how under prepared Europe is for a long campaign.
- Awww. Looks who's back again with another new account. LOL.

28 comments