The Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 – part 3

There is a big difference between 72 hours and never.

See: Russia ‘will not capture’ any of Ukraine’s cities, Ukranian defense minister says

Now, I have no inside knowledge or deep understanding of Ukrainian defensive capabilities, so cannot comment on who is right. But U.S. General Miley did suggest that Kiev could fall within 72 hours. That seems like a pretty bizarre statement to me; as I don’t think that even if Russia starts a conventional warfare operation next week, Kiev will be the objective.

On the other hand, I am concerned about Kharkov (second largest city in Ukraine) and Mariupol (which connects to Crimea). 

Anyhow, the Ukrainian defense minister says the Russians “…will not capture either Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, or any other city.” That may be true, as I still suspect we are not going to see any major conventional warfare in Eastern Europe this month. If there was, I do not have the knowledge to say that this would be the case. As Russian will have air superiority, hard to imagine they won’t be able to make some progress.

 

Old posts on the subject:

So Is Russia going to actually attack Ukraine? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Russian Invasions | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

The first post “Russian Invasions” was made on 5 December 2021. The next one was done on 22 January 2022. Over the last two months, nothing that has happened has changed my opinion. 

Share this:
Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1455

One comment

  1. Saddam had his nukes, such as they were, that he needed for breathing room. No breathing room, and being the top gun of a country can get kind of stale.

    “Joining NATO” seems to be in that sort of territory. Russia I think has done a credible job of demonstrating the “NATO” doesn’t get you an invisible force field. Particularly as your one of your main power plants keeping that forcefield going (Germany) needs fuel for its plant.

    So the Ukrainians, go back and forth on the NATO think to give themselves some wiggle room presumably. Seems kind of dangerous to poke the bear to me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *