Zelensky could indeed be lowballing, but it's not going to be on the same level as RU's lowballing. Zelensky doesn't control the media in UA and his credibility is important outside UA, so lying is a dangerous game to play (though "fudging a little" and "white lies" are a different matter) and Zelensky presumably has the option not to disclose losses at all.
Anyway, rather to my own surprise, reviewing the last two weeks of [re]tweets by Trent Telenko today has brought my confidence back up to 85-88%. He makes a good case; the only thing I wonder is whether key facts are missing (edit: I also wonder why he takes that high Russian deaths estimate of ~30,000 at face value... but over the next two months we'll have decent evidence as to whether he was right to have done so, at least in the sense that if he's right then Russia will probably not make any major gains in the next two months beyond maybe capturing Severodonetsk and the occasional villiage, or something along those lines.)
Edit (June 9): somehow I misinterpreted the number “208,000 155mm rounds allocated for Ukraine” from the U.S.; the number felt bigger than it is, though still higher than I knew about before. Google/Bing wouldn’t tell me how many shells Russia is using, but I seem to recall somebody claiming Russia uses 30,000 shells per day and Denys Davydov saying Russia fires 20 shells for every shell fired by Ukraine. It should be noted though that much of Russia’s artillery is imprecise and slow to configure (basically ‘Uragan and Smerch’ is lousy, see here, and by contrast I’ve seen some impressive videos of precise Ukrainian artillery). It seems like the Russians have just dumped a lot of their shells indiscriminately on cities until Ukraine has “nothing left to defend”, and the spread-out shelling patterns on Ukrainian trenches also demonstrate low precision. As Small Wars Journal noted in 2020 (discussing 2015), “Ukrainians claimed that for every salvo they fired, they received 10 to 15 salvos in return”. So it’s not entirely clear that Ukraine will get as much gear as they need, and I have to suspect I’m missing some info that is favorable to Russia. On the other hand Russia doesn’t seem to use its artillery effectively and I don’t think I weighted partisan/guerilla fighting enough. Overall I’m reducing my confidence to 80%. Most likely Russia will settle for one more small or medium-size land grab, then try mainly to hold the territory they got. They will probably lose territory before year-end, but state media will ignore or deny the loss and Russians will be given an impression that “Putin strong”, whether or not they blame Putin for Russia’s severe economic conditions.
Explanation on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1534786957024169986
Edit (June 10): very bad news today lowers my confidence back down to 60%. the reported casualty rate has risen to ~150 Ukrainian soldiers killed per day. This is probably higher than Russia’s casualty rate and certainly higher than the rate of losses for Russian nationals. Since Ukraine is mostly in a defensive posture, this should not be happening. In fact, I’ve decided that even though I earn minimum wage (and can’t get a tax deduction for Ukrainian charities), I will donate $1000 today.
Edit (June 30): it’s been clear for a week or two that Trent was wrong; Russia is not close to exhaustion, and Ukraine’s limited artillery supplies remain a problem. I think Ukraine’s high casualties are caused by the relatively immense amount of artillery used by Russia. Estimating 50% chance, given their failure to hold the line south of Lysychansk.
Edit (August 23): Lowered to 35% due to Ukraine’s failure to hold the line NW of Donetsk city; may be related to an excessive reallocation of forces toward Kherson before Aug. 2. (Edit again: actually, make that 40%, because it could be that Russia degraded Ukrainian defenses along that line to the point where it wasn’t as valuable to defend it. From here, we’ll just have to wait and see the effects of lend-lease.) Ukrainian casualty rate is probably down significantly; still expecting all the biggest cities to hold.
Edit (August 30): Back to 50%, as Ukraine shows it can do an offensive, Russian ops in Donbass seem to have stalled, and a source that predicted Russia’s large-scale invasion over a month in advance [followup 1, followup 2] is optimistic. He was also confident on March 11 that Russia would not take all of Ukraine and that Ukraine couldn’t drive Russia out; this still sounds right.
Edit (Sept. 3): Spoke too soon. 42%, as Ukraine seems to be suffering heavy losses in its Kherson counteroffensive; Russian losses are unclear.
Edit (Sept. 9): Up to 80%. Ukraine launched a second, smaller counteroffensive, pushing the front line 58 km in 3 or 4 days, plus a few small pushes elsewhere. Russia failed to defend the area, demonstrating a severe shortage of infantry. Russia may take some of this land back, but their weakness is clear. Russia has hit its manpower limits, while Ukraine’s manpower is adequate, and early next year they will have tens of thousands of fighters trained in Britain. New toys like US Excalibur guided shells will further increase Ukraine’s accuracy advantage over Russia. And Russia’s options are limited. They probably can’t spare enough missiles to destroy the major bridges over the Dnipro; military mobilization would be slow and destabilize Putin’s regime; and using weapons of mass destruction would further reduce global support for Russia. Shutting off Nordstream 1 hurts the Kremlin’s short-term and long-term revenue, suggesting that Putin is desperate and still misinformed. Perhaps Russia can still make minor advances now, but doing so will weaken its forces further.
The smart move is for Putin to take these actions, almost at the same time:
- Quietly negotiate sanctions relief in exchange for withdrawal (though I suppose the degree to which Russia can escape sanctions is limited unless they withdraw to pre-2022 borders and pay to rebuild Ukraine using funds that were frozen in March)
- Minimize discussion of Ukraine on Russian state media, and make gentle efforts to quiet down the Z milbloggers so that Western Russians hear as little as possible about losses. Spin a story of Russian success.
- Abandon the Kherson area. If Russia loses any more ground beyond that, keep repeating the lie that “our goal was Donbas”, but move all forces to Donbass for real this time (and Crimea, of course).
I doubt Putin will change course fast enough to preserve his reputation inside Russia, so Ukraine will push the Russians out of Kherson by force, increasing the chance of total military defeat.
Edit (Sept. 10): Up to 97%. The Russians’ rapid retreat surprised even various Ukrainian observers, and on top of that Ukraine launched other counteroffensives that are rumored to be going well, notably in Lyman. Russia’s retreat was a wise military move if they have competent fighting forces left in the area, and a necessity if not. Either way, Putin’s empire is smaller now than on May 13, a bunch of Russian military hardware has fallen into Ukrainian hands, Ukraine will probably win the Kherson region before next May, and Russia is in a weaker negotiating position.
