This is How Ukraine Can Avoid a Stalemate
Contrary to popular belief, it was mud, not snow, which stopped the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
That same mud is on its way back, what the Russians call the rasputitsa (“muddy road”), as the Fall rains soak the Ukrainian plains ahead of what’s guaranteed to be a cold, dark winter.
As we approach Ukraine’s coldest season, it’s becoming clear now that the summer counter-offensive didn’t quite have the results everyone had hoped for.
Now, Ukraine faces the real possibility of a protracted stalemate — precisely the type of war that Russia was built for. Russia’s “tooth-to-tail” ratio favors slow, immobile slug fests as opposed to blitzkrieg-style attacks.
The tooth-to-tail ratio is the idea that it takes X amount of support soldiers to enable X number of infantrymen. In the U.S., this ratio is about 10–1; as in, it takes ten support personnel like medical, logistics, and cooks for every one U.S. Army infantryman to be combat effective.
The Russian military doesn’t have a significant support structure to speak of… At least, not one that functions as it should. We witnessed this firsthand when Russia tried to sprint to Kyiv at the war’s start only to find itself unsupported — out of gas and out of ammo.
