De Russen zouden streven naar een 5:1 verhouding bij het Donbass-offensief.
General Sir Richard Barrons, a former British military chief, said: “[The Russians] will try to put more ground forces in the face of the Ukrainians at once to get the force ratios right, knowing the Ukrainians in the east are in very well-prepared positions.” He said well-established defensive positions were “really difficult to overcome” and that experts talked about the need for a force ratio of at least five to one, if not seven to one, in a frontal assault. Although Russia was unlikely to be able to mount a force seven times bigger than the Ukrainian one, Barrons said, “this will be a very hard attritional fight”.
A western official said yesterday that as many as 38 Russian battalion tactical groups (BTGs), comprising up to 1,000 troops each, were no longer effective for combat, leaving about 90 BTGs. “Many of those are either awaiting orders to move or are moving to reinforce operations for the Donbas,” the official said. With a force ratio of five to one, 90,000 Russian troops would take on 18,000 Ukrainians.
Bij de start zouden de Russen juist de helft aan troepen hebben van de Oekrainers.
At the start of the invasion Ukraine had about ten brigades in Donbas, which western officials said amounted to slightly less than half the overall Ukrainian force.
Vreemd genoeg verwacht men dat Oekraine alsnog wint met een 10x zo ongunstiger verhouding, erop rekenend dat de nieuwe troepen niet van het niveau zijn die al verslagen zijn. Het lijkt me wat optimistisch. Quantity is a quality of its own immers.
James Heappey, the armed forces minister, said the battle for Donbas would be between two “very well-matched” militaries and it was “quite likely” Ukraine would win. He told Times Radio: “The Ukrainians have got the wind on their back. They have seen off the initial advances [and] defeated some of Russia’s best regiments and battalions. The next wave of Russian troops that come at them in the Donbas will not be Russia’s best.”