For the attrition model to be effective, Ukraine must be wiping out more than three units of personnel and matériel for each one unit of its own.
I'm basing my opinion on the nature of the fighting and the inequalities in weapons, tactics, morale, training, leadership and medical care. Many more wounded Russians don't get any medical help and if they do it is late and inadequate. It is a Ukrainian offensive, but the Russians are attacking and most of the killing is done at long range and not in personal combat.
Speaking of ground attack missiles, have the Russians interdicted a single train carrying arms from the west? They can hit fixed targets, but are useless on the battlefield, attacking cities and civilians won't help them on the battlefield. This time Ukraine promises retaliation for winter grid attacks by going after their oil, not their power grid. The Ukrainians can spot a target on the battlefield and have a HIMARS or ATACMS in the air in minutes, not so the Russians.
Without a mirror to the Russian loss estimates, there’s no way to calculate, even approximately, the weight coefficients needed to factor the bolded in in a convincing manner.
A lot of what you get in war is opinion, the Ukrainians are maintaining excellent OPSEC and not much is leaking out. The Russians on the other hand leak like a sieve with cellphones, texts and telegram posts with anger, complaints and general discontent. The array of obsolete junk they are fielding and buying artillery shells from North Korea and drones from Iran says the most though. I think China is giving the Russians the cold shoulder and I saw they were bitching about it trade is important to Xi and his economy is in bad shape.
For all their unhinged bluster, perhaps the Russians are capable of reason in certain matters. I can imagine that this is a political calculation.
I've posted links to the many advantages Ukraine has, the most fundamental being the shift in perspective to western military culture and responsibility for taking objectives distributed to those doing the job. The valuing of human life and unit cohesion when soldiers care for one another. This is reflected in the tactics used, they don't use unsupported human wave meat attacks with blocking troops at their backs. In terms to casualty ratios, it makes all the difference, as does medical care to avoid most of them being KIA.
So we are left with one equation in two variables, with a large solution space. So long as we acknowledge that we’re taking long shots.
I'm speaking of a train in Ukraine on the 1000km journey from the Polish border to near the front.
So, discounting the human-wave attacks, the casualty ratio might be more like 1:1?
I think that’s a rough equivalent to an embassy bombing.
I think Uncle Sam is keeping the most careful count of all and he isn't saying much... I tend to believe the Ukrainian estimates on Russian losses and so do many others. As I said before though, it is about the attrition of equipment not troops that counts and I think those numbers are the most accurate of all. The Russians had a much bigger advantage in equipment and munitions than in manpower, but mostly pissed it away doing stupid shit.
It is a dynamic situation and I think it varied, when the Ukrainians were trying to hold in the east a year ago when the Russians were firing lots of shells it has high for them. Now with new weapons and the Russians diminished a lot it is in the Ukrainian's favor I figure and will stay that way.
The Russians are masters of maskirovka, operational deception. I consider the absence of unrest in regions that have a mortal hatred of their Russian occupiers to be a big datum leaning in the direction of large equipment reserves held apart from the Ukraine war.
I war realism and caution are the order of the day, but so is optimism and good morale. War is a struggle and that is what is happening here. I've been trying to explain Joe's reticence in providing certain arms to Ukraine that could end the war and what I've come up with is they want to attrite away the Russian equipment, particularly the modern hard or impossible to replace stuff. Call me cynical, but a victory next summer with the Russians on the run from Ukraine would be good for Joe in the election and if he didn't win, he would make sure Vlad was screwed before he left.