Those following me, or are my friends, on Facebook might have noticed, that "coverage" of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine has decreased both in frequency and in intensity. Even in the blog there's a break of more than 48 hours. That also happens because the flux of tweets (it has been my main source of info, by following a couple of relevant and trustworthy accounts, plus a couple of Ukrainian journalists for some more details coming straight from the field) is much lower now. I guess this is normal as the initial shock is now over, the second week of fighting has passed, and the operation is moving slower so there is less changes every day. It somehow stabilised and that lowers the intensity of the outside interest. Time also normalises a situation, so there's that as well.
I am also translating previous texts into my (Portuguese) blog (main purpose is documentation as my blog double-acts as my journal) so that takes some of my time as well, leaving even less to properly reflect and share it here.
But there continues to be developments, and things worth talking about. For instance this post, where I want to revisit the site Military Watch that I shared one article from, 10 days ago.
After seeing their latest articles, still mostly mentioning high losses (equipment) for Ukraine (and almost none for Russia) and continue with the idea that Ukraine can't do anything to stop Russia (their tanks are old and obsolete, their biggest assets are from the 80s, their air defence and air force are almost obliterated), I no longer consider them a credible source (facts and opinions).
Note that back on the 28-Feb, the people from this site considered that the Ukrainian Air Force and Air Defences were already destroyed, and 10 days later are still saying that they are close to destruction (latest claim is around 90% destroyed).
And their article about Russian armoured units being outnumbered but not worried because Ukrainian tanks are too weak, just made me realize that these military enthusiasts, or supposedly experts, are ones that think that in wars tanks fight directly against other tanks and are meant to take each other out.
That is false, even in WWII, where huge tank battles did occur.
Because tanks are not supposed to go and fight directly other tanks, that is not the point. In the same way that combat aircraft is not meant to simply take out enemy aircraft. That is a part of the mission, to obtain air superiority and them use it to attack the enemy from above and properly support the troops on the ground.
Tanks are supposed to be a weapon that allows to break through the lines, not just fight other tanks. In WWII most tanks were taken out by artillery; second biggest cause of tank destruction were land mines. Even when tanks were up against other armoured divisions, it were other type of vehicles, properly called tank destroyers, that took out most of the tanks.
And we see it here in Ukraine. The Russian tanks are not taken out by the old T-64s or T-72s of Ukraine. They have been taken out by anti-tank weapons, used by light infantry, most notably the ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles).
But aren't Ukrainians taking losses? Of course they are. The Oryx page I also shared before (Attack On Europe: Documenting Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine) has plenty of evidences of equipment loss for the Ukrainian side. One objection is that most of the evidences are coming from Ukrainians and so they are mostly documenting and sharing the enemy losses. Also, Russian soldiers are not allowed, and also can’t since Ukrainian operators are in theory blocking access to Russian SIMs, to share their own photos, thus another reason for the lower photo and video evidences of ukrainian equipment losses. I agree that needs to be considered, but I have to counter that it's worthwhile noticing that even the official sources from Russia, like their Ministry of Defence, are reporting very few losses for Ukraine. As an example, in a period of 36 hours (between the 7th and 8th March), they only reported 6 POWs, 1 destroyed IFV, 4 captured APCs and 2 captured tanks.
I think that is a strong indication that Ukrainian losses are not that high (and very likely in accordance to what Oryx is reporting), when even the Russians don’t claim many of them (except accounts from Russian fanboys like the source of the image I used on top, right side).
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