/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>17571138
Everything visible indicates that the Russians are barely hanging on. Ukraine is being badly damaged, but Russia is only glacially gaining ground, and is losing equipment and soldiers rapidly.

Best guess right now for the Russians is about 11% overall casualties of which 4% are KIA, from their initial invasion force. Considering it's only been three weeks, that's enormous. They are withdrawing forces from everywhere else including Syria and Georgia in order to reinforce their invasion. Some of their weapons usage also hints that they are running out of the cheap stuff that they were trying to invade with, and are having to use the expensive stuff that they probably didn't want to have to burn up, like cruise missiles.

If Russia keeps this up, they won't have any tanks or helicopters left.

On the other side of this is the relentless propaganda that Ukraine is about to lose any second now, that cities are being overrun, and so on, none of which seems to actually ever happen. It may be that Russia is simply taking a breather to prepare for a surge (with all those new troops), and some knowledgeable military people have said as much, noting that the reason we see so many Russian losses is because Ukraine is using them to keep its troops' morale up, while Russia doesn't want to publicize what it is accomplishing quietly. But it's awfully hard to see satellite photos of helicopters burning at a Russian-controlled airport on three separate days, and not think "damn, those guys are getting hammered, and not just on vodka."