Do not declare victory too quickly.
At a meeting of the Estonian Ministry of Defense on Friday, Colonel Grosberg, head of intelligence, insisted that "as
sad as it may be, there is no sign of a quick end to this war
”, as reported by the Estonian media ERR.
According to him, “
despite the terrible losses of Russia, its military capabilities have not disappeared
”.
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It is true that since September, the conflict seems to be turning to the Ukrainians' advantage.
The counter-offensive in the east and south-east of the country progressed rapidly, leading to the recapture of Kherson.
The Kremlin has admitted that Crimea is now under threat.
The Estonian intelligence chief nevertheless wanted to temper the most optimistic, by mobilizing several precise pieces of information on the forces still available to the Russian army.
3000 mobilizable Russian tanks
Colonel Grosberg first said that Russia had lost about 1400 tanks since February 24.
Notwithstanding this figure, which he described as “
staggering
”, he affirmed that this loss was ultimately not so high given the reserves of armaments that the Russian army has.
“
To date, Russia has about 9,000 tanks in repair and storage sites.
They are not the most modern or the newest, but they are tanks
,” he said.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: Russia sends 200 of its most modern tanks, T-90Ms, to the Donbass
According to him, three of these tanks can be considered to provide enough parts and materials to make a tank operational.
In other words, "
Russia has the potential to bring in at least 3,000 more tanks, which is obviously a very, very large number and poses a threat not only to Ukraine, but to all of its other neighboring countries," he said
. the Estonian colonel.
200,000 soldiers available
Margo Grosberg made more or less the same observation concerning the soldiers that the Russian army would still have.
He recalled the figure of 100,000 losses (killed, wounded or soldiers put out of harm's way) recently put forward by the American Chief of Staff.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured
He then recalled that the mobilization effort had increased Russian manpower by around 300,000 soldiers.
"
Again, simple calculations show us that even with 100,000 casualties, they have the capacity to send 200,000 [additional] troops to the Ukrainian front
," said Grosberg, who conceded, however, that those troops were not necessarily as well trained as the soldiers mobilized at the start of the invasion last February.
Sufficient ammunition for at least another year.
Same reasoning concerning artillery ammunition, which is a central issue for the army, on the Ukrainian side as well as on the Russian side.
“
We estimate that Russia had around 17 million shells before the war started, of which 10 million were used
,” he said.
However, the Russian armaments industry was able at the beginning of the war to recondition approximately 1.7 million units per year.
But this figure increased considerably, following the acceleration of the rate of the factories after the beginning of the invasion.
Read alsoRussia and Ukraine face the battle for ammunition stocks
The Estonian intelligence chief now estimates that the army has a stockpile of 10 million artillery munitions and that Russian industry is able to produce an additional 3.4 million each year.
"
Which means they would have enough ammunition for at least another year, if not more, of war
," the colonel concluded.
