Why 13 Russians Are Being Killed For Every 1 Ukrainian At Stepove and Avdiivka

The Ukrainians are in strong defensive positions, fighting with superior weapons like FPV drones and US-made M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. They are destroying not only hundreds of inferior Russian armored vehicles, but proportionately, thousands of Russian troops manning or riding in them. 

It is not a fair fight - and it is certainly not a stalemate as Russia's European and American appeasers would like to believe. JL

David Axe reports in Forbes:

The Russians are losing a lot more equipment and people in Stepove and Avdiivka than the Ukrainians are. Since mid-October the Russians have lost or abandoned at least 488 tanks, fighting vehicles, howitzers, trucks and other pieces of heavy equipment in the area. A Ukrainian M-2 blew up three Russian BMP fighting vehicles that the Ukrainian 109th Territorial Brigade had just immobilized. If manpower losses are proportional—and there’s no reason to believe they aren’t—13 Russians are dying in Stepove and Avdiivka for every one Ukrainian who dies.

The village of Stepove, just north of Avdiivka in northeastern Ukraine, is ringed by a road like a racetrack. A racetrack that’s just 1,000 feet long from west to east and 500 feet long from south to north.

Look closely at videos from some of the most dramatic recent skirmishes in Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine. Many of them take place along this compact track, which feeds Russian tanks and fighting vehicles into Stepove—and directly into Ukrainian ambushes.

When two American-made M-2 infantry fighting vehicles tag-teamed a Russian T-90 tank and knocked it out with their 25-millimeter autocannons, the M-2s raced back and forth along the track in order to complicate the T-90’s targeting.

In a separate incident, an M-2 swept along the northernmost west-east leg and blew up three Russian BMP fighting vehicles that the Ukrainian 109th Territorial Brigade had just immobilized. “Fucking have it!” a territorial barked as the 30-ton M-2 filled the 16-ton BMPs with one-pound 25-millimeter armor-piercing rounds.

That so much intensive fighting takes place along what amounts to few city blocks—day after day, week after week, month after month since October—underscores the state of the wider war. The Russians are on the attack, but gaining little ground. The war is, in other words, positional.

The positional fighting favors the dug-in defenders, but it’s not a totally one-sided fight. At least one M-2 got knocked out in the same vehicle graveyard on the northern edge of Stepove that’s mostly filled with the hulks of blown-up Russian BMPs. A Ukrainian T-64 tank also got hit apparently while trying to tow away the M-2.

But the Russians are losing a lot more equipment and people in Stepove and Avdiivka than the Ukrainians are losing. According to the open-source analysts at Oryx, the Russians since mid-October have lost or abandoned at least 488 tanks, fighting vehicles, howitzers, trucks and other pieces of heavy equipment in the area.

The Ukrainians have lost 37. If manpower losses are proportional—and there’s no reason to believe they aren’t—13 Russians are dying in Stepove and Avdiivka for every one Ukrainian who dies.