Looking ahead to the May 9 anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, Russia’s politically savvy generals are massing 25,000 soldiers to deliver Vladimir Putin a Ukraine victory. Unlike Red Army soldiers who rode tanks through the ruins of Berlin in 1945, Russia’s soldiers may bounce into the ruins of Chasiv Yar on dirt bikes and Chinese golf carts.

A provincial town with a pre-war population of 12,500, Chasiv Yar has a name with an inglorious translation:  “Quiet Ravine.”  Reflecting Russia’s lowered ambitions and snail-like advances, Chasiv Yar is 10 miles west of Bakhmut. Almost one year ago, that city was conquered by Russian soldiers — at the cost of an estimated 40,000 Russian lives.

Why motorbikes and golf carts? Russian generals would answer that they are fast and can swarm Ukrainian lines. Russian soldiers would answer that they would prefer tanks and armored personnel carriers, or APCs. However, despite Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s photo op visit to a Siberian tank factory last week, Russia’s cupboard is increasingly bare.

This is expected to get worse as early as next week with the new $61 billion American military aid package signed yesterday by President Biden. Artillery shells and anti-tank missiles are to be included in the first shipments from American stocks forward deployed in warehouses in Europe.

Starved this winter of artillery shells and anti-tank missiles, Ukraine’s Army resorted to taking out enemy tanks and APCs with home-made kamikaze drones. In response, Russia fields this spring ‘turtle tanks.’ Designed to deflect drones, these tanks travel under hair nets of steel netting or shells fashioned from sheets of  corrugated metal.

By one conservative tally, Russia lost 2,930 tanks in 20 months of warfare — 20 times the 147  lost by the Soviet Union during its decade in Afghanistan. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says Russia has lost  7,242  tanks  — 49 times the number in Afghanistan. The conservative tally comes from Oryx, a Netherlands-based warfare research group that reports only  visually confirmed losses.

Capable of producing 150 new tanks a month, Russia replenishes losses by drawing on its stocks of 5,000 mothballed tanks. Some date back to the Korean War. The carnage continues. Over the last 10 days, 62 Russian tanks were destroyed, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.

Similarly, Oryx reports Russia has lost 3,841 armored personnel carriers. Ukraine reports Russian losses at 13,928, or 10 times losses in Afghanistan. Ukraine’s losses of armor seem to be about one quarter the level of Russia’s.

Ukrainian tenacity will spoil the Kremlin’s Red Square Victory Day parade in another way. On May 9, the day Russians celebrate as the end of World War II, it is traditional for descendants of Red Army veterans  to march holding photos of their fathers and grandfathers.

This year, in cities across Russia, this civic exercise has been canceled. Why? As the number of Russian dead and severely wounded in Ukraine approaches the half a million mark, authorities fear parades would be infiltrated by women and children holding photos of husbands and fathers killed in Ukraine.

Two weeks ago, General Christopher Cavoli, head of the United States European Command, testified before the House Armed Services Committee that more than 315,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded in Ukraine. Britain’s Defense Ministry  says that this spring 900 Russian troops are being killed or severely injured every day.

Ukraine’s tally of Russian losses was 461,940 through yesterday. By this tally, Russia has lost 101,930 killed and severely wounded since January 1. By contrast, about 90,000 Soviet soldiers were killed or wounded during the 1980s in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had twice the population of today’s Russia. Two months ago, President Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. The estimate is considered low.

Over the last month, Russia has lost 24,550 soldiers to gain 33 square miles of Ukrainian land, Harvard’s Belfer Center reported Tuesday in their latest ‘report card’ on the war. To keep the war going, the Kremlin resorts to ferocious censorship. 

On Monday, a Moscow court sentenced a man to five years of compulsory labor for telling a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter in a sidewalk interview: “Our government unleashed this: Putin and his gang of thugs. Russia created all these problems for itself.” 

While the state press covers up huge losses of military personnel and arms, soldiers seem to know. Russian exile news site Mediazona reports that March saw a record 684 cases of military courts dealing with soldiers who have gone AWOL, or absent without leave. In almost all cases, soldiers were sentenced to return to the front.

President Putin’s deadly obsession with conquering Ukraine seems to be part of a larger plan. Last week, the Washington Post reported on a secret appendix to a Foreign Ministry document from last year. The document says the outcome of the war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order.”

Not surprisingly, American congressional approval of military aid to Ukraine was met with undisguised gloom by Russian state TV. Speaker Johnson was denounced as a “traitor” to Republican right-wingers. His opponent, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene, was praised  by Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan as “a beauty.” Ms. Simonyan gushed on national TV of the increasingly marginalized congresswoman: “She is a blonde, who wears white coats with a fur collar.”

Even before Wasington-induced gloom settled on official Moscow, Peking University professor Feng Yujun wrote two weeks ago an essay in the Economist predicting: “Russia’s eventual defeat [is] inevitable.”  Writing from China’s capital, the state university employee wrote of Russia: “In time it will be forced to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. Its nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Didn’t a nuclear-armed America withdraw from Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan?”

Arguing that China should edge away from Russia and return to its traditional “non-aligned” stance, the Chinese expert on Russia  concluded: “The war is a turning-point for Russia. It has consigned Mr. Putin’s regime to broad international isolation.”