Katerina Schwartz14:44, 01/03/24

Moscow will face significant public resistance, the expert suggested.

If Russia’s current impressive rate of personnel losses continues, they could shorten the war by an entire year, says strategic management consultant Steven Kopits, the Kyiv Post reports .

“According to official Ukrainian estimates, in November and December the Russians lost only about 1,000 people a day,” the author writes.

According to his calculations, at the current rate, Russia’s losses will reach 650 thousand by the end of 2024. He suggests that when this happens, Moscow may face significant public resistance.

“If this turns out to be the threshold of public tolerance, the war could end at this time. The next stop is one million dead Russians, which could be expected by the fall of 2025 at the current rate of destruction,” the expert noted.

As Kopits added, the war is completely discretionary for Russia: the Russian Federation does not suffer any territorial losses, there are no military operations on Russian soil, no one attacked Russia, the war does not pose an existential threat to Russia. And against this background, the Kremlin will have to justify the losses of 650 thousand people.

“Russia’s Achilles heel is precisely the low stakes in this conflict. Putin could order the troops to return tomorrow, and Russia’s position would be no worse than in 2014, when Russia was actually experiencing a kind of renaissance,” the consultant said.

(C)UNIAN 2024