I suppose it's obvious, but Russia is basically out of useful (self propelled 152mm) guns and their ammo. Yes, they can scrape together some crap grade towed artillery tubes and mortars, old SP mortars and light (122mm) guns, and substandard shells for them in a siege operation; but a more mobile fight like the one in Kursk takes brigades of SP 152mm guns with new barrels (50-60 guns each), and properly made new shells by the kiloton, in order to really have a prayer when fighting like Russians.

That said, so far no one has seen so much as batteries of those SP guns (6 each) showing up at that salient; nor is there much chance left that we ever will. If they had them, they wouldn't be using hundreds of towed Stalinist era AT guns and T-62s as artillery in a desperate attempt to have anything on the line at all. Ok, so far Oryx only documents the combat loss of a fifth of their entire paper pre-war stock of SP 152mm guns; but even if that were complete and accurate, the best Russian gun barrels wear out after maybe 1,500 shots. So everything has long since worn out, and Russian industry is too worthless to fix them except in trivial quantities.

Which means a significant counter attack will require masses of meat cubes; but they've only been raising those about as fast as they've been losing them (if that). Which makes the existence of a massive and unused Russian reserve of actual trained infantry unexpected, to say the least. So unless they strip the rest of the front and abandon all other offensive operations, the Ukrainians will probably be in Kursk for a while.

Since the last post, Ukrainian cruise missiles (still popularly called 'drones') have destroyed tens of thousands of tons of Russian owned munitions. I put it that way because much if not most of it was probably North Korean or Iranian to begin with; but when they were visited by Ammo Dump Jesus they were in Russian hands. From what I've read, a significant amount of this was artillery rockets and missiles of various kinds; domestic surface to air, Iranian and Korean ballistic missiles, that sort of thing. The rest would have involved a lot of aerial bombs and shells of various kinds.

If they had to replace all of it themselves, it would take the Russians considerably over a year to do it. In terms of consumption, it's several months worth at current rates. This is going to put a significant dent in their usable military power going forward.

Three years into the war, I'm not sure that we fully understand the Russian war economy, there have been multiple predictions of them running out of vehicles, missiles, materials, and they somehow keep going. I know that Hong Kong has become a major transshipment point for Russia to evade international sanctions. So have several of the former Soviet republics ending in -stan. They're getting stuff, and it doesn't seem to be adequately tracked.

They are, but it's not terribly useful except for terror weapons. They've got no modern armor and very little modern artillery, the obsolescent ones are disappearing from the battlefield, and they can't really launch an attack until and unless they get in a shipment of third rate shells from North Korea. So long as Ukraine can't shoot down or blow up Russian bombers on the ground, then they can kill civilians and properly support roughly one small attack at a time with their own equipment; but that's about it.

This election in the US may prove interesting. Trump will abandon the Europeans in a heartbeat, while Harris may very well be less terrified of the results when Putin is slaughtered along with Russia should she gives Ukraine license to do what they should have been doing all along.

Well, the Europeans are getting abandoned.
And the German government just imploded.

I suppose that could be helpful; if Germany can assemble a government without the free-market types, which still actually wants to do something. But Europe's days of 'we can get the US to protect us from Putin without paying full price for our ticket' are definitely over; they've got to make some unpleasant choices, and fast.

There are folks suggesting that Zelensky went into that poop show in the oval office specifically to force European politicians to ante up or be removed from the table; and it seems not unlikely to me given the way it's playing out.

Basically: knowing that Trump (and the US that will tolerate his party) are worthless, he wanted to force Trump to play his cards in public (which means, in this case, in front of TASS but not the AP). So having been warned that the agreement, which was never supposed to have been concluded, was not going to be honored; he decided to force Trump to own it in public.

Now European politicians have no way to lie that they can somehow still free ride on American defense spending (however much a lot of them want to), or that Russublicanism not a dire threat. And it's working wonders at Zelensky's meetings in Europe right now.

from what I understand, it's Trump who wanted this meeting to be live, so that he could show he was a strong man and own Zelensky and show his electors that he could do of the man anything he wanted.

To me, the whole thing was set for the purpose of humiliating Zelensky. It didn't go exactly has planned.

Yes, but Zelensky was warned ahead of time by high level Traitor Scum Party types (twice); and that 'wear a suit' poop was the kind of blatant setup a three year old could see through (though not someone so cretinously stupid as to be a non-rich Republican). Still, he knew exactly what was coming before he got there; and went ahead with it without falling into any of the retarded traps Trump could come up with.

Had Zelensky bailed somehow, or played along? Then Trump would just betray him when the cameras weren't there, and all of the usual criminals would find excuses to pretend it didn't happen. Now they can't tell that lie to anyone but the cretinously stupid; Trump owns it before the world, and the world has to admit it.

Trump and his little minion Vance definitely set up Zelensky for humiliation on purpose, but whether Zelensky was tipped off or not, he must have known something was hinky about the entire negotiation. The US demanding half of Ukraine's mineral wealth in return for *wishy washy* nuffin? Ukrainian negotiators saw the US was full of crap when they refused to give any security guarantees. What kind of idiot would sign a deal like that? He wasn't gonna be Charlie Brown letting Lucy pull away the football.

Zelensky's had since November to prepare for the total withdrawal of US aid (apparently Trump has now stopped the aid that was already approved under Biden), and his only play is to shore up European support.

That was the amusing part of the agreement Trump torpedoed; the Americans who were supposed to come up with a complete ripoff treaty screwed up like real Republicans, and negotiated something Zelensky could actually sign without cost. If you looked at what the text actually said, it was only an agreement to negotiate an agreement; no timeline, no guidelines, nothing. Trump wouldn't get three grains of used kitty litter out of it, and apparently someone who could read explained it to his boss to explain to him.

Someone also explained to the boss that said mineral deposits (1) are in the parts of Ukraine that Putin invaded, so he'd get buggerall from Ukraine unless Ukraine takes that territory back.

(1) If they exist, since this is all based on Soviet era geological surveys.