Ukraine’s Tooth to Russia’s Tail

If we add all those up, we can see that Ukraine has a very significant advantage, and that list is not all-inclusive. I will think up things I should have added before I finish this article, no doubt. And there it is — I forgot one. Russia has one big advantage that Ukraine doesn’t have regarding logistics — Russia doesn’t care if their troops starve or have to drink contaminated water and contract dysentery, so they don’t need to ship as much food or water. Come to think of it that might not be such a big advantage after all. But what does it all mean? Russia has around 1,300,000 troops, and Ukraine has 700,000, according to some reports that I don’t put particular faith in, but we will use those numbers here. If we look at the US historical “tooth-to-tail” ratio, we can see that somewhere between 8% and 28% of the total size of the army is actually involved in combat roles to some degree, even if that is just holding the line in a trench somewhere. I think that Ukraine conservatively has a tooth-to-tail ratio of around 50%. <a href="https://medium.com/@dylan_combellick/ukraines-tooth-to-russia-s-tail-2b87265fd4a1">Learn More</a>