“The Russian military is overbearing and precarious if Ukraine turns into a protracted war,” said Seth Jones, vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, in a social media post.
“If we accept 150,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine and a population of 44 million, this is a force ratio of 3.4 soldiers per 1,000 people. “You can’t hold territory with those numbers,” Jones said.
He compared this ratio of Russian forces to occupations after previous wars around the world, saying that the successful ones had proportions of power that were “astronomically higher”.
For example, he said, the Allied forces that occupied Germany in 1945 had 89.3 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants; NATO forces in Bosnia in 1995, 17.5 troops per 1,000 inhabitants; NATO forces in Kosovo in 2000, 19.3 to 1,000, and international forces in East Timor in 2000, 9.8 to 1,000.
In a 2003 review of the RAND Corp. think tank, analyst and mathematician James Quinlivan said the ratio of strength to a successful profession was about 20 to 1,000.
The ratio of US to coalition forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003 was only 0.5 to 1,000 and 6.1 to 1,000, respectively, according to statistics cited by Quinlivan.
“The large number of soldiers and police is crucial to establishing basic law and order,” Jones said. “In fact, the number of Russian troops in Ukraine is not even enough to keep big cities for long.”
And if the Russian occupiers face guerrilla warfare in the event that the Ukrainian government falls, the chances will not be in their favor, he said.
“They will be in serious danger of being torn apart by Ukrainian rebels.”
Soviet forces waged a protracted campaign against Ukrainian insurgents after the end of World War II. Guerrilla warfare lasted until the late 1940s in parts of western Ukraine, but the Soviets crushed most of the armed resistance in the early 1950s.
U.S. officials also noted how long Russia’s supply lines have become, even in the early stages of the invasion.
As a senior US official told CNN, Russia expected a quick victory and may have failed to plan enough supplies. The supply lines, this official explained, are “a certain vulnerability”.
But US officials said Monday that Russia is expected to step up operations in Ukraine.
Officials warned lawmakers at secret briefings that a second wave of Russian troops is likely to consolidate the country’s position in Ukraine and could be able to overcome Ukrainian resistance, according to two people familiar with the briefing.
“This part was discouraging,” an MP told CNN.
However, a map of Russia’s current position shows that Moscow’s forces have gained control of only a small part of Ukraine, a vast country slightly smaller than the US state of Texas.
Again, looking at past conflicts, Russia faces enormous challenges in capturing Ukraine’s urban areas, such as Kyiv.
“Urban terrain offers incredible resources and strengths for the defense force to cause a disproportionate number of casualties per attack element, to deplete the attacker’s time in the strategic environment, and ultimately to stop the momentum of the attack,” John said. Spencer and Jason Geru wrote this month for the Institute for Contemporary Warfare at West Point, home of the U.S. Military Academy.
The two, former US and Canadian soldiers, respectively, cited conflicts from World War II to the Korean War to Chechnya to Syria, where city defenders managed to inflict heavy losses on their attackers.
With a column of 40 miles (64 kilometers) of Russian military vehicles and armor lined up in the direction of Kyiv, what Spencer and Geru point out happened to Russian armor in Grozny, Chechnya, in 1995, may be especially ominous for Moscow’s current forces.
Chechen separatists, operating in teams of less than two men and using only rifles, grenades and grenade launchers, have targeted Russian armored vehicles from basements and upper floors of buildings, they wrote.
“Major tanks and other weapons cannot respond effectively to fire,” Spencer and Geru said.
Once trapped, ambush teams will strike at the vulnerabilities of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers, strike front and rear vehicles, retreat quickly, and then move up the flanks to strike paralyzed Russian columns again. ” they said.
In three days in January 1995, a Russian brigade lost 102 of its 120 armored vehicles and 20 of 26 tanks to Chechen separatists in Grozny, they said.
If this example is even partially true of what the Russian invaders will face in the cities of Ukraine, the war will not end quickly.