Ukraine Military History Institute
Russians Complain About Fuel, Not About the Dead
Why strikes on fuel and power register with Russians when casualties do not, how the negotiating leverage shifted, and Ryan O’Leary on the governance trap waiting in occupied Crimea.
Russia's Staying Power
Recruitment against losses, the economy behind the recruitment, and the honest answer about where Russia's breaking point sits: nobody knows.
Every assessment of how this war ends rests on a claim about Russian capacity, and most of those claims are more confident than the evidence allows.
What the guests here offer instead is a ratio and an admission. Russia is recruiting roughly enough men to replace its losses and not many more, which is a different situation from both collapse and inexhaustibility. And nobody, including people with good access, can say where the breaking point sits. The honest position is that it is unknown, which is itself the most useful thing to understand about it.
Underneath the manpower question is an economic one, and the signal that keeps surfacing is domestic rather than military: Russians complain about petrol more than about the dead.
Drawn from Episode 10 Episode 15
2 pieces in this topic
Nobody Knows Where Russia's Breaking Point Is
Rob Lee on Russian attrition now running level with recruitment, why that stops new units forming, what mobilisation would change, and the Azov-direction assault that showed Russia learning tactically.