Trolls & bots fail to understand or accept that Russia is anything but infinite and inevitable - but numbers are numbers. They’ve spent half of their entire Soviet inheritance to steal what they sit on today. The war doesn’t end when they get to zero vehicles. The half they’ve squandered is surely the BETTER half, and they still need an army for territorial defense and internal repression. Ukraine is not about the break, and this is probably the best position Russia is ever going to be in. This is the endgame of this messy, abusive Divorce, and Pootz has to come up with some whopper lies to say it was all worthwhile.
They seem to have run out of tanks about a year ago. They of course have thousands left, but they now have to consider the risk that a tank might be destroyed today and thus not usable tomorrow. They still use tanks, and lose a few, but they no longer take risks with tanks without considering the costs and so they don’t use nearly as many as they used to because they want to preserve those they have left.
We generally expect the same is happened to artillery about now, though we don’t know exactly when. They get to choose how many they will risk.
Whether they have run ‘out’ is moot. They’ve squandered their BEST, at any rate, and aren’t bothering to use what remains, and that’s kind of the point. Saying that it’s ‘half gone’ is the same as saying it’s ALL gone in the context of trying to conquer ukraine. You have to keep a fleet available for credible border defense, future offensive operations (which are now probably off the books) and internal oppression of your own population. And as you say - both in terms of armor and artillery - even if you have remaining stockpiles, you can’t sustain this burn rate, and each piece you move forward is less effective that the one it replaced, both in terms of age, utility and the caliber of who’s left operating it.
Capabilties degrade when you piss away your army in a sunk cost fallacy revenge project.
I have had the understanding since already around summer 2022, that the Russia is completely all-in. Putin sees it so that the Russian Federation equals Putin. For him the loss of his junta means the death of the Russia. If not putting everything in play means your junta will be toppled (that is, in your eyes: Your country will be destroyed for good), then you will absolutely put everything in use. After all, what use is it that you’ve saved some tanks in storage if your country gets destroyed for good?
They might hold on to a part of their tanks for a couple of months or so, but quite soon they will be on the front as well.
Consider that they are rational and greedy. Like gangster barbarians, which they pretty much are, the only difference being they traded fur pelts for tailored suits. The smartest among them realizes that the project has failed, and that only hubris is keeping them going, hoping for something - anything - to change. But if having practical control over the obese, octogenarian U.S. president isn’t enough to extract a favorable peace, then it’s hard to see what else could possibly create a strategic win for Russia.
Why would they not fight to the last man, tank and artillery piece?
Because even now, life is worth living for the perverted gangster ghouls in charge. They haven’t really lost anything personally significant. There is no opposition, and they can still live comfortably by Russian oligarch standards. Their biggest fear is each other.
You still need an army for token territorial defense and internal oppression. Russia is run by their intelligence services, after all. They’re not fighting to the last man. They are already in negotiations with a position growing weaker by the day.