European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.
But the show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.
The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the draft statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.
Except most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is mostly fought with irregulars who are not given the best of equipment. Why waste good equipment on poorly trained irregulars?
Russia had 170 BTGs fully composed of professional soldiers at the start of 2021 but only sent in 64-69 of them in 2022. Russian BTGs were also sent into Ukraine at half strength. This is similar to what happened during the war in Donbas with BTGs keeping half of their strength at home, again similar to War in Donbas.
The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. There is a reason why losses for professionals are so low. Aside from these formations, there is also 51st GCAA and 3rd GCAA made up of former Donetsk and Luhansk units. There is also 3rd AC which is a irregular volunteer formation that was formed during the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov where Russian professionals withdrew under the cover of 3rd AC who was thrown into the meat grinder to stem the tide.
Motorized Rifles: 6,457
VDV: 3,257
Naval Infantry: 1,305
Tank Crew: 1,806
Artillery: 851
Special Forces: 736
Engineering: 291
Navy: 291
VVS: 265
Other: 957
Total: 16,216
Source: MediaZona
For comparison:
US losses from 2003-2005 mainly against insurgents: 5175
Source: Defense Casualty Analysis System
MediaZona also proves that the majority of losses now are volunteers from irregular volunteer formations. These are irregular volunteer formations by the way:
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These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment not the federal government. This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:
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They also rely heavily on donations:
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Thankfully Chechnya has recently taken on the burden of training and equipping them (why you see them being shipped from Chechnya) as shown here:
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Chechnya training and sending more batches of volunteers from across Russia to the SMO zone:
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