Putin won’t make the same mistake twice and attack them with half measures.
Yeah… sure.
Russian helmets
I don’t know what you mean by Russia attacking with “full force” sometime in the future.
They’ve already done that. They literally threw everything they have into their attempt to conquer Ukraine. They’re just astoundingly inept, to a degree that surprised most people. Decades of endemic corruption and an absurd ratio of desired scale to actual spend have reduced the Russian military to a joke – nothing works, the equipment or the people. On paper they have always had some large number of divisions, tanks, planes etc but in reality almost none of it is functional.
Their “elite” airborne forces tried to surround and capture Kyiv and got an absolute spanking. Their armour can’t move because they have no fuel, and when they do get some they sell it to buy booze. The only thing Russia has is people, which they just keep pouring in.
Ukrainian forces are pretty average (obviously improving rapidly) and are able to hold them, assuming constant resupply to deal with the Russian meat grinder tactic that Peter mentioned. If it came to an actual ground war involving modern western armies, you’d be talking about entire Russian divisions being routed by a single battalion, perhaps even a company.
We should also not forget that in WWII and during the cold war, the Soviet Union included Ukraine, Belarus, the baltic states etc, a few Something-or-other-stans.
Current Russia has about half of the population of the states which formed the Soviet Union, and while on paper it has nearly 3/4 of the GDP, a lot of that is natural resources, which really does not contribute much to producing stuff unless you buy it abroad….
With that, they have to support a nuclear arsenal and a Navy which Ukraine does not. Ukraine built a specialised military with one purpose – defend against a Russian invasion. Ukraine needs to produce 10 anti tank weapons where Russia needs to produce one tank, which cost quite a bit more.
So even before western aid, the numerical advantage Russia has over Ukraine is less than it seems.
Russia’s GDP is below Italy (wikipedia)
Russia built their arsenal by impoverishing their population (standard for communism – no other implementation has ever been done anywhere) and then by not maintaining it properly. Their ~5k nukes are probably not maintained either, but you don’t need 5k to make a huge mess somewhere (5 would do, and just 1 would take the whole agenda out of Putin’s control) so that is not much comfort.
Ukraine has some way to go on drone development. The obvious way to go is a drone dropped bomb, like they have now, but with a guidance package with an IR imager on the front, and guidance via some simple vanes on the back. The imagers are not cheap (3 digits, good ones are ITAR but the US would authorise it, and the chinese make the ones which DJI use) but you could get a 100% kill rate on any vehicle, armoured with a shaped charge, or a group of soldiers, or even the entrance to a hideout. With jam proof comms, or INS nav, an armoured invasion would be almost impossible.
Ukraine’s biggest problem will be traitors – they must have a million of them.
Peter wrote:
Ukraine’s biggest problem will be traitors – they must have a million of them.
By the same token, there must be plenty of Ukrainian agents in Russia, and it’s not immediately obvious which side has more of them.
Graham wrote:
They’ve already done that. They literally threw everything they have into their attempt to conquer Ukraine.
Not really. They went in there in the expectation that they can walk down the streets of Kiew and be welcome by the “oppressed” people. Well, they got bullets instead. He called this a “police operation” and that is how it originally was set up. He made the major mistake of underestimating his adversary. He now knows a lot better than before.
A full attack would have meant total comittment with all forces targeting total destruction of the government in Kiew not via a ground attack but concentrated air bombardement “shock and awe” style, followed by ground troops only once the whole infrastructure of Ukraine was totally destroyed. Putin did not want to do that as Kiew is a “holy” city in a manner of speaking to the Russians, which needs liberation, not destruction. Yet, destroying the government district of Kiew by massive air attack or even a nuke would have taken out Selenski and left also NATO and the allies in a state where he could have basically told everyone, ok, either piss off or you’re next. An attack like this would have gotten a lot of rethoric but imho not anywhere close the support Ukraine has now.
If Putin however is given time over the whole winter now to regroup, restore and retrain his forces, possibly getting new people and weapons online, he may well start a very different kind of warfare in spring. He still has his nukes, heavy bombers, cruise missiles. He can’t win in Ukraine with conventional ground forces, that much is sure, but he can, if he sees fit to do that, make a point with a massive attack when nobody really expects it.
Russia will most probably loose this war because they underestimated their enemy. I can only hope that NATO does not fall into the same trap.
@Graham has it right. Russia cannot commit meaningfully more forces for an attack. They are running out of smart weapons and trained combat troops rather fast. They don’t have air superiority over Ukraine, which rules out the large scale conventional air raids suggested by M_D.
Yes they can use nukes, in theory. In practice that is a terrifying scenario which does not give Russia any strategic advantage. Rather it destroys any face-saving way out of this for Russia, while probably not forcing Ukraine into submission. And if Russia doesn’t want to occupy a radioactive wasteland, they can only do this once .
Can Russia regain a few miles of territory in spring when the recently drafted troops are trained to a level slightly above pathetic? Probably. Will this change anything in the overall strategic situation? No.
when nobody really expects it.
Not possible due to satellite surveillance. The 2022 invasion was seen as coming too; why Ukraine didn’t defend it as well as they could is a story for another time.
even a nuke would have taken out Selenski
I doubt Zelensky is anywhere outside a very deep bunker, except on random occassions when he pops out.
Can Russia regain a few miles of territory in spring
Possibly, from whatever the front line position is in the spring 
Peter wrote:
I doubt Zelensky is anywhere outside a very deep bunker, except on random occassions when he pops out.
I won’t even try guessing where he might be, but one of the tactics that has been invariably giving Ukrainians an edge over Russians in this war is to have no permanent base and be on the move all the time (especially applicable to HIMARS).
Peripherally relevant to this topic, I have just been reading a really good book on the SR71 and in it it mentions that the SR71 could track submerged Russian missile subs.
That was in the 1980s so they are probably tracking them all today.
