Ukraine Slaughter of Russians At Avdiivka Drove Kremlin Casualties Up 90 Percent

If there is a war of attrition being fought in Ukraine this winter, only one side is fighting it. And that's Ukraine. Because they are suffering relatively few casualties while heedlessly attacking Russian dead and wounded over the course of the war are up 90% due to the senseless Russian attacks at Avdiivka. 

The result is that Ukraine is causing attrition of Russian forces and equipment instead of the other way around, which was ostensibly Putin's grand strategy. JL

David Axe reports in The Telegraph:

The battle for Avdiivka “resulted in a 90% increase in Russian casualties.” But these extreme losses didn’t buy the Kremlin new territory. In a war of mutual attrition and bombardment, the Russians have a massive advantage. But instead of taking aim at the Ukrainians with thousands of howitzers, the Russian military has attacked. Every day, attacking Russian columns get demolished by mines, artillery and drones. In attempting to advance, exposing themselves to Ukrainian firepower, the Russians have wasted their own firepower advantage. Worse, the Russians are letting the Ukrainians inflict casualties without taking many of their own. And Russian resources aren’t limitless. After losing more than 300,000, the Kremlin balked at mobilizing another half million men

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has made it clear: he intends to keep his half-million troops fighting in Ukraine until Ukraine and its allies tire of fighting back.

“There will be peace when we … achieve our goals,” Putin said in a December press conference. “Victory will be ours.”

 

Western analysts have taken Putin’s words to mean that he, and Russia, are committed to a grinding war of attrition in Ukraine. A war where the balance of forces, and casualties, matters more than any bold maneuvers. In a war of attrition, the side that does the most killing usually wins.

But Russia’s military moves since Putin’s statements have made a mockery of the apparent plan. Maybe the Kremlin aims to wage a long war of attrition. But if so, it’s already losing. For Ukraine, that’s an opportunity. A way to win.

In a true war of attrition, a competent army would look for opportunities to kill enemy troops without risking its own. In Russia’s two-year-old wider war on Ukraine, that should mean bombardment. 

In a chilling echo of World War I trench warfare, both sides in the current conflict are increasingly dug in along the 600-mile front line that threads through southern and eastern Ukraine. Both sides know where the other’s troops are, broadly speaking.

 

It’s straightforward, if not easy, for either side to target the other with ground-launched artillery and rockets, air-launched missiles and drones. And in a war of mutual bombardment, the Russians should have a massive advantage. 

Even after suffering heavy losses, the Russians still have more munitions than the Ukrainians. A lot more. With domestic munitions supplies bolstered by North Korea, the Russians can probably fire 10,000 artillery shells a day; now that pro-Russian Republicans in the US Congress are withholding aid to Ukraine, the Ukrainians can probably fire a fifth as many.

But instead of digging in even deeper and taking aim at Ukrainian lines with thousands of howitzers, the Russian military has gone on the attack. All along the front line almost every day, mixed columns of Russian infantry and armored vehicles assault Ukrainian fortifications. 

Every day, these columns get demolished. Exposed and battered by mines, artillery and drones, the Russians rarely gain any ground: when they do, it’s at enormous cost. In two months of nearly daily attacks on the Ukrainian garrison in the eastern city of Avdiivka, starting in October, a pair of Russian field armies lost more than 200 tanks and fighting vehicles and 13,000 soldiers – many killed, the rest maimed.

 

The battle for Avdiivka “resulted in a 90-per cent increase in Russian casualties,” according to the UK defense ministry. But these extreme losses didn’t buy the Kremlin a lot of new territory. Russian troops advanced a couple of miles north and south of Avdiivka. The city itself holds.

In attempting to advance, and thus exposing themselves to Ukrainian firepower, the Russians have wasted their own firepower advantage – and also wasted their opportunity to wage the war of attrition that Putin appeared to want. Worse, in attacking while the Ukrainians hunker down, the Russians are letting the Ukrainians inflict casualties without taking many casualties of their own.

 

In that sense, there actually is a war of attrition being fought in Ukraine. But only one side is fighting it. The other is trying, and failing, to gain ground. 

Why the Kremlin has squandered its advantage is something of a mystery, but the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian think-tank, has a theory.

“Russian forces are attempting to capture Avdiivka before the Russian presidential elections,” scheduled for March 17.

 

If that’s true, the ruins of Avdiivka represent a sort of election-day present for Putin, whose victory in the sham vote is a foregone conclusion. 

Avdiivka, which lies just northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk, wouldn’t be the first Ukrainian city that Putin or his political lackeys fixated on. Last year, for some reason they chose Bakhmut, 30 miles north of Avdiivka.

By the time the Russians set their sights on Bakhmut, the city was all but devoid of civilians. It was basically a giant Ukrainian bunker. Ukrainian commanders wisely viewed the Russian assault on the city as a chance to trade space for dead Russians. 

Slowly withdrawing from the ruins while inflicting thousands of casualties on the attackers, Bakhmut’s defenders fought the same kind of one-sided attritional battle that Avdiivka’s defenders are fighting today.

If leaders in Kyiv are smart, they’ll order their forces to bleed the Russians around Avdiivka until there’s no more blood to spill. At that point, the Avdiivka garrison can quit the lifeless ruins. Avdiivka, or what’s left of it, will have fulfilled its purpose in Ukraine’s overall war effort. 

Russian resources aren’t actually limitless, after all – despite what Putin might insinuate. After losing more than 300,000 killed and wounded in the first two years of the wider war, the Kremlin balked at the opportunity to mobilize another half million men. 

It’s not that the Russian military doesn’t need more people: it does. But even Russian society, as numb to suffering as it is, starts to fray when hundreds of thousands of people come home with lifelong wounds … or in boxes.

That’s how Ukraine can win. If the Russians persist in pointless and costly attacks, the Ukrainians should be able to turn Putin’s attrition strategy against him.