Cogitation in the Time of War #5 - A quick look into another point of view

I was thinking about writing tomorrow, that is Carnival day (or Mardi Gras as some know it), that for sure there would be people thinking the military columns are a parade of floats (decorated cars) and in a month (April 1st) would say all of these talk about an invasion was all a lie.

I was reserving that sort of joke for tomorrow but today I already encountered some posts online (tweets and comments) saying that what we are witnessing now is a staging, all an act (and the authors seemed to be convinced of what they were saying). That means that someone already got ahead of me on that idea, that I admit I thought was kind of original, so might as well write and publish it now to see if I can still claim some credit for this "joke"...

I wrote the above some moments ago on Facebook and in Portuguese since this is a jest that doesn't work so well in English also because the Portuguese Carnival traditions are not well known outside of the country (I suppose) nor many countries outside of (some) catholic ones celebrate Carnival (but due to the one from Venice and from Rio de Janeiro many people know about it and of course in the US for example there's the Mardi Gras tradition although that one is much more know for girls flashing their boobs in exchange for beads, at least in New Orleans).

I wrote yesterday (Cogitation #3) about points of view from "the other side" that actually means ppoints of view from the Russian prespective, or from those who support Russia, and now I'll open the door a little bit, connected in a way to Carnival and April Fool's, considering that the site I cheecked seems to play with the truth. To note that I'm not sure where this site is based nor who runs it, but it is a site I found that shows another view of the ongoing war, as compared to what we have seen here in the West, and it claims the "special military operation" has been actually pretty successful for Russia: 72 Hours Into the War: How Successful Has Russia's Campaign in Ukraine Been So Far?

And one thing is true, Russia has not committed its best units, nor committed most of the ones at the border, so all gains so far had been achieved with a "fairly" low level of commitment.

However I found some discrepancies on the articles (this one is the starting point, there are others), such as mentioning very high losses for Ukraine, without any source, and very low losses for Russia, also without any source (and yes, the numbers we get from Ukrainian sources are for sure exaggerated).

They also say Russia is only using T-72 MBT (in its different variants) whilst there have been evidences of destroyed and damaged T-80s, and Russia already started to use TOS-1 MRLS and (if the sources are correct) also the Iskander cruise missile. So the new assets have been introduced, unlike the claim in the article. This might be a case where it was written before confirmation of these deployments, though.

But this article, and the site, claim the destruction of the UKAF and their Air Defense in the first hours of the invasion and it is by now clear that on day 3 the Ukranians still had units active, fighter and attack aircraft as well as SAM batteries.

So my main disagreeing factor with the articles and message from this site concerns the equipment losses reported for both sides. I don't base those on what the Ukrainian sources have been reporting, since they will obviously inflate those numbers while at the same time under reporting their own losses. I have been using a page from an independent site that is documenting the material losses for this war based on published, verified and geolocated photo and video evidences: Attack On Europe: Documenting Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

Still, this Military Watch site represents in a way the other side of the coin and it's always worth reading the different opinions and views, and most likely as usual the truth is somewhere in the middle of the 2 opposing versions.

And I end with the clarification that I don't think Ukraine is "winning" the war. I just think that Russians so far have done poorly due to a failed strategy based on wrong assumptions. And the Ukrainians have done better than expected and it seems to me that they have managed to inflict higher than expected losses to the Russians, even knocking out more advanced equipment.

But the issue is, as mentioned by Michael Kofman (Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA), that the Russians are not fighting as per their own doctrine (proper usage of BTGs, battalion tactical groups) and once they correct this, the war can become a complete different thing...