The Kiev regime, i.e. the Western bloc, is facing a number of constraints which, apart from the massive human and material losses, are severely limiting its ability to sustain the conflict in Ukraine and leading to its constant retreat under the onslaught of the Russian army.
The regime manages to maintain drone strikes deep inside Russia. However, the targets hit are mostly of no military significance; the regime only wants to show that it can reach deeper and, if possible, disrupt the operation of civilian airfields. The political goal is to provoke Russia into thwarting ceasefire initiatives, which will multiply under the Trump administration.
But the West can no longer sustain a war with Russia on the military front with the conventional means at its disposal.
Let’s take a rough look.
Limitations
Each Patriot battalion has 4-6 batteries, and each battery has 6-8 launchers. When referring to the Patriot system, it is usually the batteries that are meant, as each battery is an operational unit with a radar, engagement station, launchers and missiles. In the U.S., there are 15 Patriot battalions (active), which means an average of 75 Patriot systems. It is unclear how many Patriot batteries are active around the world, but it is generally estimated to be between 150 and 170 (ignoring the more rare and therefore extreme numbers of 60 or 220). The comedian-president of the Kiev regime said on 24 July that they had already received 25 Patriot systems, i.e. 15-17 per cent of all active batteries. On 9 December he announced that they would buy 10-12 more batteries – with what money? Russia’s frozen assets:
I really don’t understand, one system costs 1.5 billion dollars. Please take it from Russia’s assets, take this money – $ 30 billion. The price is $30 billion, but it will completely protect our airspace’.
When the figures are so loosely expressed, astronomical escalations in tariffs become unclear. If we ignore the Kiev regime’s promises to transfer $30 billions of Russia’s assets to the RTX vaults, which are reminiscent of the ‘president’s’ previous occupation, like something out of a bad headlight, and look at the proportion of systems that Ukraine is to receive, we get the following picture:
In August this year, at the start of the conflict, Russia announced that it had destroyed 12 Patriot batteries. This means that 7-8 per cent of the world’s active Patriot systems on Ukrainian territory have been destroyed. Not content with this, the regime wants a further 8-9 per cent of the world’s remaining active Patriot batteries. In total, this would amount to 19-21 per cent of active batteries by February 2022.
It is not just a question of willingness to provide these systems, or the theft of Russia’s frozen assets to pay for them. There is a more fundamental issue: production capacity. At best, Raytheon can produce 3-4 batteries a year. In other words, the 12 batteries that Russia destroyed in two years are the product of a 3-year production process.
Production capacity constraints exist for all weapon systems, including ammunition. On 5 May 1941, Stalin said at the graduation ceremony of the War Academies: “Artillery is the god of modern warfare. This statement will remain true as long as war is fought by conventional methods. That is why the ongoing crisis over 155mm artillery ammunition is so significant, despite the fact that stocks are being shipped to the Kiev regime from countries’ stockpiles, some of which are known and some of which are kept secret. In May this year, Sky News reported that the US and Europe were expected to produce a total of 1.3 million rounds of artillery ammunition over the course of the year, while Russia produced 3.5 times that amount at 4.5 times the cost. In other words, even the total ammunition production of the countries at war with Russia does not meet the needs of the war.
A third constraint is the impact of Russian electronic warfare systems. As early as July this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russia had succeeded in neutralizing high-precision projectiles through electronic warfare, for example, the M982 Excalibur was no longer usable, the HIMARS was ‘deafened’, the GLSDB high-precision ammunition jointly produced by Boeing and Saab, and even some radio-electronic warfare equipment. In other words, between the lines of Western sources, the statements of the Russian Defense Ministry are generally confirmed: the destructive effect of the conventional weapons systems of the Western bloc is being weakened, and this is pushing them to work on even more advanced electronic warfare systems. Undoubtedly, they can and will develop more militarily advanced systems, but if they do so while Russia develops its own electronic warfare systems at the same pace, this move means maintaining superiority.
The fourth limitation is military resources. The Western bloc is determined to fight Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’ (in the pithy words of Johnson, Britain’s bankrupt and defunct prime minister), but Ukrainians are not infinite. Earlier this month, Trump put the Ukrainian death toll at 400,000. (At the same time, he put Russia’s at more than 600,000.) Rutte, NATO’s young secretary-general, said recently that the total number of casualties since the conflict began had reached 1 million, with 10,000 killed or wounded every week. Russia says its own casualties bear no relation to these figures, and that the Kiev regime’s losses are much higher. On 27 December, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov announced that this year alone the other side’s losses in terms of dead and wounded amounted to 560,000, of which only 40,000 were in the Kursk direction. This means that Ukraine’s total losses since 24 February are over 1 million.
Given that earlier this year Putin put the ratio of ‘irreversible losses’ at five to one, Russia’s losses must be closer to 200,000. In any case, Russia’s human losses are not irretrievable, as it recruited an additional 450,000 contract soldiers during the year. In early April, Kiev lowered the age of conscription from 27 to 25. In early December, the U.S. State Department announced (on the run) that ‘the United States and its allies have found it necessary to lower the age of conscription in Ukraine to 18’. U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller also said that if the age of mobilization was lowered to 18, the Kiev army would be able to meet its needs for additional equipment. Dmitry Litvin, an aide to the comedian-turned-president of Kiev, claimed that there were no plans to lower the age of mobilization, but the Rada immediately announced that work was underway to lower the age of mobilization.
Lowering the age of conscription to 18 will not, however, completely solve the shortage of personnel in the armed forces. As the Independent wrote a few days ago, quoting the Finland-based Black Bird Group: ‘Even assuming everything else is perfect, that nobody leaves the country, that there are no desertions, that people don’t dodge the draft, that they turn up at recruitment offices, the age of 18 will not bring the army anywhere near 85 per cent of its required strength.
The fifth constraint is manpower. According to the UN, by February 2024 a total of 14 million Ukrainians had left their homes and 6.5 million had left the country. This does not include 5 million people who have gone to Russia (and not just the inhabitants of the four federal districts that have joined Russia). From around 40 million at the beginning of 2022, the Ukrainian population fell to 29 million by the middle of this year, according to the best estimates. In addition, the number of people leaving the country is growing rapidly throughout the year. According to Ukrainian data, a total of 3.2 million people left Ukraine (excluding Russia) from the beginning of this year until 19 December alone. Nikolai Azarov, Ukraine’s prime minister from 2010 to 2014, rightly said last week that these people cannot be expected to return even if the war ends: ‘It must be admitted that 50 per cent of those who left Ukraine will never return, because they left with their families, they found jobs and houses. About half or a certain percentage of those who want to return will only return when there is a normal government, and a real reconstruction of the country begins. As long as the current regime remains in place, 90 per cent of those who left will not return because they see no future for themselves in this situation.
Armistice
It is necessary to put the terms in their proper place. A ceasefire is an agreement on the military situation on the ground, which may cover part or all of the front. It does not necessarily have to be in writing, especially if it covers only a certain part of the front, and in some cases, it is applied only as a gentleman’s agreement. An armistice is a general ceasefire. A ceasefire is signed or agreed between the military parties on the front, while a ceasefire is signed between states. It gives time for the final political organization to remove the causes of the conflict. A peace agreement aims to remove the political causes of the conflict.
In the current situation, an armistice at the line of contact seems inevitable.
