Occasionally I write a post on the status of the Russian military - really this is just my way of updating my personal running estimate like a good staff officer. Let's look at the state of the Russian Army going into Spring 2025 - and possibly the decisive battles of the war.⬇️ I'm going to deepen my analysis from previously by looking at both personnel and equipment. There's enough information out there that with some educated guesswork we can get a good picture of the Russian Army's force build-out as we go into the third year of the Ukrainian War. Prior to the war the Russian military maintained approximately 180 Battalion Tactical Groups on an establishment of some 340,000 personnel between the Ground and Airborne Forces, creating a "tooth to tail ratio" of approximately one maneuver battalion with appropriate fire support and logistical enablers for every 2,000 personnel. Remember this ratio, we'll use it later. Now, the thing is that most of that "peacetime Army" is functionally combat-ineligible in the present war because most of its junior ranks are filled with conscripts undergoing their mandatory military service. These conscript-manned units have generally been held back from heavy combat operations, even on Russian territory proper (although they've performed well when called upon). The Russians have instead built a parallel and significantly larger "wartime Army" alongside it to carry the burden of the Ukrainian War. This wartime Army has accreted personnel around the initial cadre of about 100,000 prewar professional soldiers drawn from the peacetime Army that actually went into Ukraine three years ago - LDPR troops, mobilized reservists and, after the first year of the war, ever-increasing numbers of Russian volunteers.* * I am omitting Russian PMCs such as Wagner in this analysis because Wagner "came and went" and the vast majority of its personnel never became part of the formal Russian force structure. So how many troops are we talking about? Probably 70,000 LDPR troops, 300,000 reservists called out "for the duration" in September 2022, and volunteers recruited at around 30,000 per month from the start of 2023 (although small-scale recruitment efforts started earlier). This would give us 1.46 million total Russian personnel under arms from the start of the war.* Subtracting a likely 200,000 incapacitating casualties per Mediazona's count (assuming somewhat more than one debilitating wound per KIA, in line with past wars), that gives us approximately 1.26 million Russian Army personnel currently in the field, counting both the "peacetime" and "wartime" armies. * abstracting conscripts in the "peacetime Army" as static personnel - they actually cycle a class of 131,000 every six months. At the ratio above - one battalion per 2,000 soldiers - this would produce a Russian force with 630 maneuver battalions plus all enablers. This is obviously a gigantic force that would require an equally gigantic amount of equipment, despite the Russian Army generally getting lighter over the course of the war. Even assuming a quarter of those battalions are light infantry, that gives us some 470 battalions to equip with tanks and APCs - a task which would require approximately 6,000 tanks and 12,000 APCs, given the existence of a relatively small number of armored battalions with 3:1 tanks to APCs rather than the usual (reversed) ratio for mechanized units. Perhaps we can find those vehicles somewhere to validate this force buildout. Fortunately, brOSINT actually tracks this sort of thing - drawing the wrong conclusions of course, but they have been tracking materiel drawdowns at Russian storage facilities for tactical vehicles. Now the thing is this isn't a perfect metric, so let's fill in the gaps before we go into the figures. Per the IISS by way of Grok, prewar the Russians had approximately 12,800 tanks and 18,500 infantry carriers on hand in total - of those, approximately 2800 tanks and 6000 carriers were on active duty with the remainder in storage. BrOSINT by way of Mediazona identified approximately 7300 tanks and 18,000 personnel carriers in outdoor storage yards prewar (the obvious discrepancy high in APC numbers is likely explained by the prewar IISS count excluding some 7,000 MT-LBs and BRDMs, which aren't really APCs). The remainder of the equipment - some 2700 tanks and 6000-odd APCs - would have presumably been stored indoors and not subject to satellite observation. This would also have been the equipment in the best shape and subject to activation first. BrOSINT identified that about half of this outdoor fleet in storage - some 3800 tanks, 3600 IFVs, and 5700 APCs - had been moved elsewhere as of the end of 2024, presumably for reactivation. Adding this to the estimated figures for equipment stored indoors gives us a total "reactivated or moved for reactivation" fleet of 6500 tanks and 15,300 carriers, plus the 2800 active tanks and 6000 carriers from prewar, plus "hundreds" of completely new-manufacture tanks and APCs - perhaps 500 and 1,000 respectively. This is more than enough to equip their current force build and future expansion through 2025. Now of course the Russians have taken substantial equipment losses in Ukraine. But we can also estimate these by way of their casualties from earlier. Let's simply assume that equipment losses scale with personnel losses - ergo, that for every 2,000 incapacitating casualties the Russians will also take catastrophic-loss casualties* of some ten tanks and thirty APCs, a standard mechanized battalion. This would suggest hull-losses of around 1000 tanks and 3000 APCs in the conflict thus far, which is generally in line with my prior estimates based on confirmed casualties among armor crewmen. It's also generally consistent with the overall picture painted by Mediazona's casualty list, in which the overwhelming majority of casualties are clearly infantrymen. * As in prior wars, most vehicles knocked out in this one are not destroyed but are rather recovered and repaired. Far more than 1000 Russian tanks have been knocked out in combat, but then subsequently recovered, repaired, and put back on the line. I'm dealing with vehicles reduced to smoking wreckage here. So in line with my identified requirement for 6,000 tanks and 12,000 APCs from earlier to support an army of a million and a quarter men in the field, and accounting for likely combat losses, the Russians have a fleet of 8800 tanks and 19,300 APCs either in service or at least moved for presumed reactivation. So - bottom line - the Russians have not only built a huge force but have also fully equipped it and are in the process of refurbishing huge amounts of reserve equipment (and manufacturing new materiel) to replace combat losses and support further expansion. This is consistent with observed Russian activity in Ukraine, with a strong front line made up of well-equipped units that rotate back and forth from the rear in an orderly fashion. It's also consistent with the ability to "roll tanks" and launch an extraordinarily large offensive on short notice, should the opportunity or necessity arise - an operation that would be far larger in scale than the initial invasion of February 2022.

Last night I announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement—reducing emissions by 51 to 55 per cent by 2035. This target is both ambitious and achievable, ensuring we do our fair share while driving economic growth.

🎈Nianhuawan, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. Happy Chinese New Year!