I really like Peter Zeihan, but often his military knowledge is lacking in comparison to his other talents. I am starting to think his primary military advisor is someone with lots of time in DC and little time in places where mortar fire is more common then campaigning in locals where waiters serve flutes of bubbly.
This is my view of what Peter is missing in his model of the coming campaign season.
Peters view of Russia ignores issues like their new troop call up is short of trained veterans to be cadre for the spring offensive. The Russians expanded their cadre trying to fix their last spring offensive.
The last call-up of 300,000 men was lacking ~100k troops; the convict call out of 30000 dregs just freed 24 convict a to freedom after 6 months of fighting. Less than 1%, casualties for the convicts may have been 80%.
Nearly half of the Russian contract soldiers,( professional, not conscripts) have refused to extend their contracts. I should say the ones still alive seemed to have issue with not being paid and were left to live off the land for food while in Ukraine.
Russia is having to pull out old T-62s because their newer tanks had not been maintained in the depot and/or high-tech components were looted by the people that “maintained the tanks” for profit. Thermal sights seem to be an issue. Items that need western parts that are not being sold to Russia currently. Not sure the T-62s in storage ever had a main gun upgrade to 125 mm. That means ammo is most likely 40+ years old.
Russia had ~ a million military-aged males flee the country. That is over a year's intake for conscripts. Even if they can reach the goal of 500k troops for the spring offensive the Russians will have an army that is the equivalent of PFC’s and 2nd Lieutenants with very little combat training, little support, with questionable leadership. I doubt the new Russian troops will be technically proficient and I see no way for them to be tactically proficient.
Equipment that is 3 generations old, not maintained for decades, ammo, and expendable items twice the age of the untrained soldiers being led by political reliable appointees sounds like a swell time to be at the end of the broken manufacturing/logistic/transportation system.
All without the belief of defending the homeland to stiffen the Russian soldiers.
yeah its going to be a really sucky year for the Russians.
But there is still a chance for them to win this off of numbers and brutality alone, but the butchers bill would be a very large one. In all likely hood if Russia loses this they are done as a regional power for a generation at least.