"...In September 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, Russian Sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his platoon seized a four-story apartment building—later dubbed “Pavlov’s House”—overlooking a large square. The building had long lines of sight from three sides. Pavlov’s men place barbed wire and antipersonnel and antitank mines around the building, smashed and cut holes in walls to create interior walkways, and placed machine-gun firing points in the building’s corners. They would move to the cellar as indirect fire struck the top of the building or to higher floors when German Panzers approached so they could fire antitank rifles down onto the tanks’ vulnerable, thin roofs. Pavlov and his men held the building for fifty-eight days against numerous mechanized and combined arms attacks, causing an unknown number of German vehicle and soldier kills in the process..."
Russians have serious logistical problems
now. There are Twitter videos of some of their tank crews stuck on Ukrainian roads
without fuel and being taunted and asked if they want for a ride back to Russia by Ukrainian passers by.
These cost a million dollars a piece to Americans. I'm not sure how much Russia pays for each Caliber cruise missile, but the (short-range ballistic rather than cruise) Tochka-U is somewhere around $150k.
Also, for what it's worth, Russia used 26 Caliber missiles on a single day in Syria back in 2015.
Russia doesn’t have the same stockpiles of Precision Guided Munitions, they don’t have the same infantry level access to NVGs, they have some high speed high tech gear, but limited amounts compared to Americans.
Stockpiles of munitions are vital, you can’t simply expend infinite numbers, they take time to resupply. At times even American troops were supply constrained on certain missiles.
The point is, Russia has to be selective, especially since Ukrainian AD is still active.
They are having to supply fuel, food and ammunition to 200,000 men over a 500 Km distance in hostile territory. You would need a fantastic logistical operation to be able to support that even in your own country.
"Ukrainian citizen confronts Russian soldiers after tank runs out of fuel"
This is incredibly baffling. How can a tank "get lost and run out of fuel"? The tanks don't have GPS or even a map? They don't have radio connection to some kind of command that know where its tanks are? Like ... how?
I don't even know. This seems like a plausible deniability for desertion or something. "We ran out of fuel, oh well, nothing we can do." Not that I'm complaining, I'd rather get lost and captured than fight for Putin either.
