Are you sure about that? I would think that transporting food that was either ready-to-eat, or also transporting facilities in which to prepare it would be quite expensive.
And MREs are surely a much more expensive way of feeding troops than a barracks cafeteria.
Ukrainian propaganda reports that Putin’s boytoy aka Mr. Shoigu seems to have disappeared…
It somewhat depends on the definition of “much”. No, I don’t know how to compare the costs of artillery shells, bombs, missiles, and rockets to the cost of producing durable food and transporting it. I’m going on gut feel alone.
Trying to do better than gut feel, let’s think about weight and cost. Think of the bullets, shells, missiles, etc that the “average” soldier fires in a day. What do they weigh, and what do they cost to produce? Now think about the MREs or whatever ration they get. What do they weigh and what do they cost? Yeah, this is tough because lots of soldiers don’t fire anything for long periods, but an artillery unit fires rounds by the ton. I guess it’s still gut, but mine tells me the ordinance is heavier and more costly.
We could send them ear plugs.
They’re $80 on amazon! Talk about eating rich!
https://www.amazon.com/IRPRUS-Military-Russian-kilogramm-emergency/dp/B01N215JJO
Somewhat more seriously…
My random guess is that food won’t matter much… It’s only about 150k people, only about a days drive from home, and they can pillage and hunt and and forage, and they don’t need to eat MREs, and they don’t need to eat everyday. They just need more calories than the besieged Ukrainians.
That drive becomes challenging when you’re getting shot at though. And if you want your troops fighting all day it’s best to not expect them to spend an hour a day scavenging for food.
Scouring for food sounds like a huge risk for an invading force. That is splitting people up and sending them out in small scattered groups. That’s exactly what a defending army in a guerilla warfare campaign wants. Small groups in unfamiliar territory are easy to pick off.
Sounds GREAT for the already-downtrodden Russian troop morale.
Yeah, I’m not recommending they go picking berries. Just saying they have options, and the Ukrainians do not.
That Russian MRE has an expiration date of June 2021.
I suppose that makes it fresher than some of what their troops have been provisioned with.
First prize one expired MRE, second prize two
This is promising…
Agreed. The two sides appear to be moving closer to resolution. How the West responds will be interesting.
Specifically, what about those sanctions? Will the West agree to eliminate some or all of them? Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of leverage there. For the sanction coalition, the domestic response to dropping the sanctions could prove stressful. But Putin is going to be similarly pressed to eliminate them.
Hard choices ahead.
Is this an 8d chess move?
Putin falls back and takes the two states he wanted most, got an option to maybe take the whole country, and now everyone will be content enough with him “only” getting the Donbas?
I think this was indeed Putin’s backup plan, but I don’t see Zelenskyy making that deal.
I think the West will maintain a lot of sanctions IMO.
I don’t know if they will or not. I hope that Russia isn’t a “normal” country until Putin and his cronies are all dead.
I don’t think so? Even if Ukraine concedes and sanctions disappear (which seems unlikely) he suffered stupidly heavy losses for nothing, and “freeing” the region comes at a cost, since it means giving up leverage.
That’s my sense as well although I haven’t followed the military losses too closely.
Surely he could have focused his troops solely on Donbas and taken it with much lighter losses.