| | | Russia and Ukraine are already deep into a "war of attrition" that will likely continue through 2024, according to a senior defense official on NATO's eastern frontier.
Kusti Salm, the permanent secretary at Estonia's Defense Military, told Newsweek in an exclusive interview that Kyiv and its Western partners need to "believe in the statistics" as they try to plan out how the Kremlin's full-scale invasion will end.
"It is attritional warfare," Salm said. "Russia deliberately wants us to think that they will outlast, they will outproduce [their Ukrainian and Western enemies]," he added, making it imperative that Kyiv is able to continue "grinding" down Moscow's forces through what is expected to be a difficult winter.
..........
In Estonia—long among the European Union and NATO nations most skeptical of any detente with President Vladimir Putin's Russia—Salm said the outcome of the war is a matter of mathematics.
Every six months, he said, "the Russians can recruit 130,000, but what they can form into units is 40,000." That 40,000, Salm said, can be used as an offensive force to capture new territories and impose Moscow's will on occupied areas.
The remaining 90,000 new recruits each month cannot be used as anything more than "biomass," Salm said. "They are cannon fodder; you use them once and throw them away."
"The Ukrainians are currently killing or severely wounding more than 50,000 [every half year]," Salm added. The current attrition—the real rate of which might be even higher, Salm said—means Moscow is losing a portion of troops equivalent to around 37 percent of those being newly recruited every six months.
"We are at the poker table," Salm said. "You need to believe in the statistics."
.................
newsweek.com |
|
