The Russians thought that they had destroyed Ukraine's long range artillery capability. Then western systems like the HIMARS and CAESAR reintroduced Ukraine's ability to hit Russian supply depots and airbases. The Russians in charge of tracking western weapon systems, and then destroying them with cruise missiles were probably lying for months about how good they were doing.
Russia definitively knew they were not hitting them, they just had a lot of wishful thinking and can't back up now that due to how invested politically they are, its been clear for a while that Putin is aiming at the West being fickle and forgetting about Ukraine.
Russia's obsession over inflicting higher casualties also put blinders on that they were winning, when, in reality, Ukraine was rebuilding and learning. Russia also made the mistake of clustering its artillery in a futile attempt to take Donbass via shelling alone. Russia artillery appears to have been scarce on the ground where they needed it in Kharkov. Supply depots are pretty standard practice -- just in time shell delivery doesn't work when one is dealing with thousands of shells fired a day. If you notice, the Ukrainians are firing less, but hitting much more accurately than the barriages Russia favors.
It wasn't a mistake, its simply that they CAN'T, Russian logistical issues were known by people even BEFORE the war, but the world was simply delluded into what the RAND experts were saying.
The whole American "amateurs talk strategy, experts talk logistics" proved to be true, while the Russian army had on paper the capability to defeat Ukraine fast, it simply lacked the logistical support to keep those advances going.
Look at this article from 2021 months before the war, they were already predicting that a "Russian Blitzkrieg" would be bogged down as it advanced due to logistical constraints.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/
I am interested to see what exactly they have in reserve. Is it true that they've lost the cream of the crop? If so, they need to go full mass mobilization now or surrender.
They have absolutely shit.
The paramilitary number (and the navy number, which includes marines) includes units like Azov that were certainly ready for combat at the start. Also, you're changing the definition of outnumbered to only include professional troops. We both know how silly that is.
I include ACTIVE forces because those are the ones that can actually react to an invasion. Reserves need to be mobilized first.
Also i didn't count the paramilitary because i didn't count the DPR/LPR numbers either.
Again, if they ran out of supplies at the front, they would literally not be able to resist Ukrainian forces and would have collapsed everywhere months ago. Modern warfare involves huge muntion expenditure. How did they level Mariupol if they did not have rounds?
I already pointed out that its FAR easier to keep supplied artillery that is close to a supply dump, than trying to keep the needs of a forward fighting force way ahead of the supply dumps and whose needs are way more diversified.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/
This was already predicted as i said, before the fight even began that Russian army logistical capabilities would be a bottleneck for the Russian army advance, that's why they moved from mechanized warfare to the whole mass artillery and level everything while we slowly crawl forward gaining territory, which worked until HIMARS entered the battlefiedld.
I mean you can deny it all you want but this is well known, the plan was for the VDV to take Hostomel airport via air lift and the Russian army would relieve it on the ground, but that never happened, the Russian army literally ran out of gas on the spearhead.
