Latest / Combat Veteran News / Russian Territorial Losses ACCELERATE In June

Transcript

Russian Territorial Losses ACCELERATE In June · Combat Veteran News

0:00
In May, Vladimir Putin probably told
0:02
himself that things couldn't get any
0:03
worse. They were losing territory to the
0:05
Ukrainians and Ukrainian strikes were
0:08
hitting all across Russia. Well, someone
0:10
should have had him talked to any US
0:12
Army soldier cuz they could have told
0:14
you, "Buddy, there's always room for
0:16
things to get worse." And they have
0:19
because Russian territorial losses
0:21
appear to be accelerating. Yikes. Let's
0:25
talk about it. Plus, of course, Vladimir
0:26
Putin's cope. So,
0:28
this is an analysis from actually an
0:32
a man with a with a company called
0:34
Roshan Consulting who offers a frontline
0:37
summary for June where they find that
0:39
Russian forces
0:41
gained about 25 square kilometers,
0:43
remember in May, but that due to some
0:46
unconfirmed Ukrainian advances, they
0:48
likely had a net loss. I e. Russian
0:50
forces took 25 square new kilometers,
0:52
but lost probably lost more than that.
0:55
Not a ton more as we talked about in in
0:58
Institute for the Study of War assessed
0:59
that net Ukrainian gains were like 10 to
1:02
20 square kilometers, right? Really tiny
1:04
stuff. But, most notably, it combines a
1:06
slowing Russian advance with a growing
1:09
Ukrainian advance. In June, it looks
1:11
much clearer with Russia's net
1:14
territorial balance falling decisively
1:16
by approximately 40 square kilometers
1:18
meaning that Russia now controls less of
1:21
Ukraine than it did 30 days ago. This is
1:24
a huge metric, but not even as huge as
1:27
the even more important metric as what
1:30
it cost Russia. Now, the report is he
1:34
claims that Ukrainian forces are
1:35
conducting counterattacks
1:37
in the Veliko Novosilka area as well as
1:39
north of Lyman,
1:41
Sloviansk, right?
1:44
And we're going to talk about all that,
1:45
but what I want to point out in a war of
1:48
attrition, the territorial the actual
1:50
territory is less important, right? I
1:52
want you to to show you this chart. This
1:54
is going back to January of 2024. This
1:56
is net territorial gains. You can see
1:58
March 26th, you see the confirmation of
2:01
Ukrainian
2:02
uh liberation of Kupiansk. This actually
2:04
happened much earlier, but then you also
2:06
have uh a kind of Russian resurgence
2:09
effort, I think, in
2:11
um near Kostantynivka and Toretsk. But
2:14
then you see May right they assess the
2:17
unconfirmed Ukrainian advances, and now
2:19
you have a loss in June of 40 square
2:24
kilometers. But look at this
2:26
blue chart here. This blue chart
2:28
represents Russian losses. Or sorry,
2:31
versus Sorry, this represents total
2:32
ground assault activity. All right, you
2:34
can see that the average Russian assault
2:37
that Russia has never conducted more
2:39
assaults and gotten less for their
2:42
efforts. And that is really telling,
2:46
right? And the Center for International
2:49
uh
2:50
Security Studies
2:52
uh CSIS says that actually they assess
2:55
Russia has actually lost the initiative.
2:57
And yes, the Russia I want to be clear
3:00
that along some axes where it really
3:02
where Russia wants to, it is able to
3:04
make gains, but making gains in one
3:07
place costs them
3:08
more territory in other places. And
3:13
as we have talked about, cities, urban
3:15
areas like Kostantynivka, are most
3:18
amenable to Russia's tactics because
3:20
instead of having to assault across
3:21
large distances,
3:23
the average Russian infantryman simply
3:24
needs to scamper from house to house.
3:26
Again, like a
3:28
uh like a cold moving through an area,
3:31
right? If I have a cold, my nearest
3:34
neighbor is in a farmhouse 100 you know,
3:37
100 m away, 200 m away,
3:40
they're probably not going to catch my
3:41
cold. But if it's packed and the
3:44
distance they have to each bacteria has
3:46
to jump is small, say at a Taylor Swift
3:49
wedding, uh well, then you're going to
3:52
see that cold pass from person to person
3:54
very quickly, right? That's sort of the
3:57
dense urban areas
4:00
allow Russian infantry to jump from
4:02
building to building quickly and easily.
4:04
E- easily
4:06
being a, you know, subjective word here.
4:09
Now,
4:11
um
4:12
the In other sectors south and north of
4:15
Konstantinivka, Russians actually had
4:17
net losses.
4:18
And
4:19
that
4:20
uh
4:23
It says Russia advanced 30 km across the
4:25
front line in June, but Ukrainians
4:28
actually took advanced 70 square
4:30
kilometers.
4:31
And
4:32
the
4:33
uh
4:35
balance again.
4:38
The fact is that
4:41
I I think there's a deeper story here,
4:43
right? And I want to take a look at
4:45
where this is happening, okay? Because
4:47
one,
4:49
we need to acknowledge that
4:51
decisive control is itself kind of
4:54
squishy right now. And it has been for a
4:57
while because, just like in World War
4:59
II, right? You had
5:01
you had
5:02
allied lines and axis lines, right?
5:05
And in between there was no man's land,
5:07
about 500 m where nobody controlled,
5:09
nobody could. Well, in this war, the no
5:12
man's land is 15 km deep. So, we and a
5:16
lot of these mappers do their best to
5:19
say, "Okay, statistically, who do we
5:21
think is in control of this chunk of
5:25
turf, right?" But, the reality is that
5:29
what you're looking at is probably close
5:31
to something like
5:33
this. This is probably a representation
5:36
of approximately the swath of un- of un-
5:42
where decisive control is lacking. Now,
5:44
obviously, when Russia advances, the
5:47
areas where they can comfortably control
5:50
creep forward and the areas of the gray
5:52
zone creep backwards, just just like
5:54
World War I.
5:56
But,
5:57
some of these tiny assessments, like,
5:59
you know, who controls which building in
6:01
Rodynske, well,
6:04
it's not really that useful a
6:06
conversation. However, there are some
6:09
places, right, where you look and you
6:10
see that where
6:13
where Ukrainian first forces are
6:16
confirming where they're doing
6:17
significant work, notably in
6:19
Zaporizhzhia, right, in this region
6:21
here,
6:22
where you can see that uh we're moving
6:25
backwards through time right now, guys,
6:26
by the way, right? Um
6:29
so, you can see that the Ukrainians,
6:31
again, these are small, localized
6:34
counterattacks. I want to make that
6:36
clear. But, what they
6:38
indicate is not a large-scale operation,
6:42
but what they show is that in local
6:45
places, one, Ukrainians have a method to
6:48
take back territory that can be reliably
6:50
repeated. Two, that Russians lose
6:53
territory and lack the reinforcements to
6:57
do anything about it. Normally,
6:59
right, for the in 2024 and the first
7:02
half of 2025, when Ukrainian forces
7:04
would push into an area,
7:06
they the Russians would deploy their
7:09
reserves and push the Ukrainians back
7:12
out. That was a core part of the
7:15
strategy. Now, it is considerably
7:19
different from that, right? You're
7:21
seeing yes, you're seeing a lot of
7:24
Russian activity in a number of regions,
7:27
but you're seeing Ukrainian
7:29
counterattacks move territory move sort
7:32
of control forward and keep it there.
7:35
Again, I think it's especially
7:36
pronounced in the south, but there is
7:38
reportedly a non-trivial amount of
7:41
Ukrainian retaking and counter-attacking
7:44
happening here in kind of the northern
7:46
pocket that actually these Russians
7:49
trying to form the top pincher in
7:51
Kostantynivka just cannot do it and are
7:53
reportedly getting rolled back pretty
7:55
routinely. So,
7:58
again, this isn't to say
8:02
I'm even reluctant to to say the
8:05
Ukrainians are
8:08
seizing the ground initiative in the way
8:10
that we're talking about.
8:12
But, what I do think you have
8:15
is that the
8:17
casualties, and this is the biggest
8:19
takeaway, the rate of casualty is
8:22
skewing badly against Russia. That is
8:24
the most important story here. Right,
8:25
here is a map depicting essentially
8:28
daily casualties, daily casualty
8:30
averages since the start of the war,
8:31
right? You can see at the initial
8:33
invasion, right, through 2022 casualties
8:36
are actually pretty low. And you can see
8:38
that there has been a steady increase,
8:41
right, through 2023.
8:43
You can see the casualties rise, but
8:45
then, right, look at the scale of these
8:48
casualties. You can see this is the big
8:51
Russian push into um Avdiivka and to a
8:55
lesser extent Bakhmut, but now you can
8:57
see that basically other than 2024,
9:00
early 2025 Battle of Avdiivka, when
9:02
Russia really pushed hard, uh
9:06
the Russian casualties have actually
9:08
experienced a really localized surge,
9:11
particularly in since about May, where
9:15
again, the key difference here, when
9:17
Russia burned all of these troops in
9:18
2024, early 2025, Russia was taking
9:21
territory. Those the the troops per the
9:24
territory per casualty was actually like
9:28
I mean, none of these are good by any
9:30
modern war standards, but they were
9:32
measurable. Here, again, they've lost
9:36
I mean,
9:37
35, almost 40,000 troops
9:40
in a given month. And to show for it,
9:42
they have
9:43
almost nothing.
9:45
All right, I mean, you can see it. It
9:46
looks like the average here, probably
9:48
about I'd say about 1,400 losses a
9:51
month. I mean, absolutely insane
9:53
numbers, right? Let's see if we can do
9:55
it by months. So, when we look at it
9:57
again by month, I mean, you can see
9:59
pretty clearly,
10:00
uh going back to the start of the war
10:02
that this is a
10:04
a spike in losses without
10:09
achieving anything on the battlefield.
10:11
This is This is what Russia has to lose,
10:13
again, to keep territorial losses
10:16
limited to just a net loss of 40 sq km.
10:19
Think about that. This is what they have
10:21
to burn to stop from losing.
10:25
And
10:26
when you combine that with the fact that
10:29
most numerous reports, not just Marco
10:32
Rubio, but other independent analysts
10:35
have found that, yeah, the Ukrainian
10:37
losses are between 1/5 and 1/8 of what
10:41
Russia's losing, you start to see that
10:43
the battlefield is actually turning
10:44
against Putin.
10:46
But,
10:48
notice that he's starting to roll out
10:49
the cope. He's starting to look,
10:51
right? Again, you notice he's wearing
10:54
the military uniform. That usually comes
10:55
out when he's going to make some kind of
10:59
I'm going to say decision,
11:01
uh that is
11:03
not not great for the Russian people,
11:05
but a decision that reflects a
11:07
militarized state, when he's moving
11:09
towards making the country more
11:11
militarized. And that seems to be what
11:13
he's doing, right? And he
11:16
again,
11:17
projects this reassurance. This is a
11:19
very pro-Putin outlet, so they use uh
11:22
they use uh the Russian propaganda terms
11:25
for some of these areas, describing, for
11:26
example, occupied uh Luhansk Oblast as
11:30
the Luhansk People's Republic. This is
11:32
an unrecognized um term for
11:36
Well, it's very confusing. It's not Even
11:38
Russia can't decide if it's part of
11:40
Russia or if it's actually an
11:42
independent republic. But,
11:44
they um
11:48
he calls it the liberation of Luhansk
11:49
People's Republic has been recently
11:50
completed, claiming that they control
11:52
all of Luhansk Oblast. And
11:55
the
11:56
uh
11:58
he also argues that Russian forces have
12:00
taken full control of Kostyantynivka, uh
12:03
a city he describes as having great
12:04
strategic significance.
12:06
Uh I've been to Kostyantynivka. I would
12:09
It's a lot of things. It does not have
12:10
great strategic significance. It is the
12:13
next thing after Toretsk.
12:16
That's about all it is. Um but this
12:20
again, they do not have control over it.
12:22
They're likely he's likely using uh a
12:25
Russian term called fire control, which
12:27
is means that you can basically put
12:29
fires onto the area.
12:32
Um
12:33
but it is not decisive control,
12:35
obviously. If you have If you had
12:37
control, Ukrainians wouldn't be able to
12:39
put people into it.
12:41
And again, comically, he calls it key
12:43
transportation hub and major industrial
12:45
center of Donbas. Um
12:49
this is just not correct. I I don't know
12:52
what else to tell you. It's not those
12:54
things.
12:55
Um it's not insignificant, right?
12:57
But right now, it's a war zone. Again, I
13:01
was there in 2024. It's just a war zone.
13:02
It was evacuated in 2024. No one lives
13:04
there.
13:05
And interestingly enough, and this is
13:08
the most interesting part actually,
13:09
Putin said the Russian forces have taken
13:11
control of 133 settlements and more than
13:13
3,000 square kilometers since 2026. And
13:17
I think I mean, that's probably a little
13:19
bit fantastical, but it might be
13:22
grounded in something vaguely resembling
13:24
truth because, or we talked about,
13:27
Russia the the Russians do make gains.
13:29
Like they do make gains.
13:31
But what they do not do
13:33
is offset but those gains are offset by
13:35
losses elsewhere. Again,
13:39
these deep state mappers generally will
13:41
not uh publish Ukrainian gains until the
13:44
Ukrainian armed forces confirm them. And
13:47
Ukrainian armed forces generally aren't
13:48
confirming ongoing operations. So,
13:51
I think it's really interesting to see
13:53
him roll out what's obviously cope,
13:56
right? What's obviously an untrue lie
13:58
about the state of the Russian military.
14:01
Now guys, it's July 4th weekend, which
14:02
means that if you want your energy,
14:04
right? We've got you covered. If you're
14:06
tired of chugging energy drinks, right?
14:09
Strike Gum is the energy drink
14:10
alternative, right? Zero sugar, 100 mg
14:12
caffeine, 90 100 Sorry, 90 mg caffeine,
14:15
100 mg alpha GPC, made in the USA.
14:19
It's a no-brainer. What do you Why are
14:21
you spending five bucks on on an energy
14:23
drink at the gas station? I know what
14:24
these things cost. It's way too much.
14:27
So, that's why we we're made in the USA.
14:29
We're not trapped in a ship in Hormuz,
14:31
okay?
14:32
We haven't raised our prices since 2023.
14:34
And oh yeah, cuz it's July 4th weekend,
14:36
giving you 15% off. Snap sale, uh 4th of
14:39
July, the the promo code is 4 Jul 26,
14:42
the military way of writing the date and
14:44
time group. Uh and you'll get 15% off
14:46
your order. That easy. Go to
14:48
strikegum.com, do it. Thanks to our
14:50
Colonel tier members, Charles Shield,
14:51
Brent, Andreas, Jim, John, CPC,
14:53
Leonidas, Gabriel, and all Lieutenant
14:54
tier folks.
14:55
Couldn't do without you guys. Also, hit
14:56
subscribe. We'll see you next one.
14:57
Cheers.