[Salon] Atlantic: When We Ignore Its Attrition Ukraine Wins

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/03/atlantic-when-we-ignore-its-attrition-ukraine-wins.html#more

Atlantic: When We Ignore Its Attrition Ukraine Wins

March 08, 2025

In The Atlantic two military historians are claiming that:

Russia Is Losing the War of Attrition

Wars are rarely won so decisively, because attrition is not only a condition of war, but a strategic choice. Smaller powers can, through the intelligent application of attrition, succeed in advancing their own goals.

Hmm ...

Attrition warfare ...:

... is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel, materiel and morale.

There are two (or more) sides in a war of attrition. To see which side is winning one has to estimate each sides capabilities and losses. The side which is the first to run out of the necessary resources will lose the competition.

A piece that claims that this or that side will be losing due to attrition should therefore provide numbers for each side of the conflict and compare them to support the claim.

The authors of the Atlantic piece fail to do so.

They mention the state of Russia's economy, the Russian loss of armored vehicle, and Russian manpower shortages - which, they claim, are all bad. But they, at no point, write about the state of the Ukrainian economy, its losses and dire manpower shortage.

The sources they quote are dubious to laughable:

Russian casualties have mounted steadily. According to the British Ministry of Defence, in December 2022, they stood at roughly 500 a day; in December 2023, at just under 1,000; and in December 2024, at more than 1,500. In 2024 alone, Russia suffered nearly 430,000 killed and wounded, compared with just over 250,000 in 2023.

That is indeed what the British Defense Intelligence claims. But does that make sense? Russian losses during the bloody Battle of Bakhmut in late 2022 early 2023 are given as 500-600 per day. Current losses, with a rather quiet frontline and no ongoing big battle, are claimed to be triple of those. That's simply not plausible. Other western sources are giving much lower Russian casualty numbers.

Ukrainian losses are, by the way, not mentioned at all.

The authors then switch. From pointing to Russian losses while ignoring Ukrainian ones they now point to Ukrainian success in production:

In 2024, the Ukrainian military received over 1.2 million different Ukrainian-produced UAVs—two orders of magnitude more than Ukraine possessed, let alone produced, at the beginning of the war. Ukrainian production rates are still rising; it aims to produce 4 million drones this year alone.

The authors of course fail to mention that Russia is producing even more than those.

The following paragraph has another cute trick the author try to play on their readers:

UAVs are crucial because they have replaced artillery as the most effective system on the field of battle. By one estimate, UAVs now cause 70 percent of Russian losses. Ukraine’s robust defense industry is innovating more quickly and effectively than that of Russia and its allies.

Cause "70% of Russia losses" speaks for the authors thesis but only until you click through to the source where you find that the number applies to both sides:

Drones, not the big, heavy artillery that the war was once known for, inflict about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament. In some battles, they cause even more — up to 80 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say.

[Sidenote: I for one doubt that number for both sides. We do see a lot of videos of FPV drone casualties but that is only so because every drone has a camera. Artillery, which is historically causing 70-80% of all battlefield casualties, has not stopped firing and has not lost its effect. Each side is firing some 10,000+ artillery rounds per day. That sums up to more than 7 million rounds per year. A million drones, of which many fail, add to the damage artillery causes but do not replace it. Drones are, like all other weapons, part of the game but not game changers.]

Back to the Atlantic claim that Russia is losing the war of attrition.

The authors mention alleged Russian problems on some issues and Ukrainian successes on other issue. But the have failed to make even one comparison of losses, or successes, on both sides. Their conclusion ..:

Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse, and it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is losing the attritional war, ...

.. is not supported by any evidence.

It is a sad state when the weapon industry can not come up with better propaganda than this.
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Posted by b on March 8, 2025 at 18:48 UTC | Permalink