Russia’s Army Is Running Out Of Ammunition | OilPrice.com
As the Ukraine War enters its ninth month, intelligence agencies are suggesting that Russia’s army is gradually being overtaken by “shell hunger”oilprice.com
Aggregation article. Oilprice.com is well...lets just say very pro oil site.
Looks like a pretty solid article. If a source has good data but questionable opinions I'm OK sorting one from the other.
At the rate Russia has burned through supplies, there are signs they are scraping the bottom of the barrel across the spectrum. Despite staggeringly high losses among mobiks on the front, they have not been sending more into combat. They don't appear to be training them, just building what amount to homeless camps for them. There are stories of mobiks getting rusted AKs and pictures of mobiks with rifles from the WW II era. Other museum piece equipment has been seen in many places.
Many troops have complained that all they have are a rifle and nothing else. At the start of the war every squad had a number of MANPADS and ATGMs as well as grenades, grenade launchers and squad level machine guns. All of those things are disappearing from units.
All troops traveled by BMP or other personnel vehicle at the start of the war, but intercepted phone calls talk about units only have a few BMPs and tanks left. More elite units are probably better equipped, but many units are getting very poor levels of equipment.
Intercepted calls also talk about a lack of food and even water at the front. Many talk about having to drink from puddles.
Perun's latest video was about winter warfare. He did make the point that the individual Russians at the front have mostly come from parts of Russia that have harsher winters than Ukraine. They have some concept of how to survive winter. But to keep an army in the field in winter requires more supply. First winter uniforms are needed, but once the men have warm enough clothing, there are many more needs. The need to rotate troops off the front line becomes more necessary. In the summer troops on the front line for too long will be miserable and suffer from low morale, but in the winter they will be getting sick and suffering from frostbite and hypothermia if left out there too long.
Fuel needs go way up in the winter too. Burning fuel to keep people warm becomes necessary. Vehicles are also less fuel efficient and will need to be idled when sitting to both keep lubricants from gelling and keep the crew warm. Russia has a fuel transport problem. Their ability to move fuel to the front by rail was hurt by the Kerch bridge attack and they have had a chronic shortage of fuel trucks the entire war. A shortage that has just kept getting worse.
Russia also has an alcohol problem in their ranks. A lot of troops are drinking heavily and that both leads to people who may know better doing things to harm themselves in the cold as well as cause people to loose body heat that they need for survival.
I think Russia is trying to support an army in the field that is much larger than their logistics infrastructure can fully support. The cold weather is going to make this problem a lot worse.
Apparently the USA will negotiate for the release of a WNBA player that has such luke-warm feelings that she won't stand for the national anthem, but she takes priority over someone that's actually served his country with honor, a retired Marine.
My country disgusts me at times, and this is one of them.
Who is Paul Whelan? Brittney Griner's freedom draws attention to U.S. Marine veteran still held in Russia
Paul Whelan, a 52-year-old retired U.S. Marine Corps veteran, has been imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges since his arrest at the end of 2018.www.cbsnews.com
From what I read the Russians flat out refused to negotiate for the release of Whelan. If your opponent is willing to negotiate for one person but not another, you save the person you can.
