Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza => Topic started by: Jubal on February 18, 2022, 10:30:11 AM
-
So, Russia has a lot of tanks parked on Ukraine's borders and is demanding that Ukraine abandon any intention of joining NATO and also claiming that Ukraine is attacking Russian-speakers in the east of the country. Ukraine has already had one significant chunk of its territory annexed by Russia within the past decade and is basically bracing for Russian tank columns to start rolling in at the slightest provocation. There are allegations from the US and UK that Russia may be planning to "false flag" attack its interests in some way as a pretext for invasion (Russia has accused Ukraine of planning much the same thing).
It's a mess, and the stand-off increasingly has Europe/US allied behind Ukraine: one of Putin's original gambles, it seems likely, was that Germany would try to take a pro-Russia or neutral stance for as long as possible to defend Nord Stream 2, the Russia/Germany oil pipeline project. The generally very cautious and somewhat more Russia-friendly SPO, however, are now in coalition with the Greens who hold the foreign office and the FDP who are more aggressively liberal on foreign affairs, and seem to be taking a harder stance (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60422103) than Putin might have hoped.
The brinkmanship from Russia is probably part of the point: in part, Putin is forcing the west to not ignore him in order to strengthen his hand across the board. He probably also genuinely believes that Ukraine should be part of Russia, and wants to put back together a Russian influence sphere where surrounding governments are dependent on the Kremlin's goodwill (see also his placing Russia as increasingly the core peace broker in Azerbaijan/Armenia, and his propping up of the Kazakh regime recently). One thing that I think is also under-appreciated is the colonial aspect of all this: Russia very much was an Imperial power, even if for most of the C20th it was an empire run by statist-Communists rather than conventional dynastic imperialists, and the attitude towards Ukraine really feels like that towards an astray province. For the international audience Putin focuses on the idea of defending Russian speakers in a nation-statist form of argument, but AIUI experts on this tend to see the Kremlin as thinking more about Russia's provinces still in that Imperial-colonial mode, as peripheral areas and peoples that are there to be subjugated by the "real" Russian centre.
So that's where we are, we'll see where we go next...
I also wrote a longer piece yesterday on my blog about claims circulating on social media that Ukraine and the US backed a pro-Nazi stance at the UN: one tactic of left wing pro-Russia posters is often to imply that the Ukrainian regime are fascists. Unsurprisingly, the truth about the vote and resolution they're talking about is a lot messier than some of the glib tweets and maps that circulate tend to show: https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/2022/02/17/on-fighting-fascist-memories-ukraine-russia-the-us-and-the-un/
-
Here is one of Gwynne Dyer's columns (https://gwynnedyer.com/2014/a-premature-history-of-the-second-cold-war/) on the crisis in 2014.
Hilariously, I am told there are in fact many neo-Nazis in Ukraine and the Ukranian diaspora in Canada. That is as ridiculous as the Greek Neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn (how many Greeks did the Nazis shoot, starve, work to death, or gas?) but its a mad world. Otto Wächter and his inoffensive son Horst Arthur Wächter in Austria are good names to look up.
Edit: One problem interpreting the jingoism in the US and UK media is that Russia's invasions of Ukraine are exactly as illegal and dangerous as the US and UK's invasion of Iraq. And the US's problems with Russia and China have nothing to do with how they treat their own people (see US policy towards Israel and Saudi Arabia and the dictatorship in Egypt), and everything to do with old-fashioned great power rivalries. So its very hard to find anyone I trust to comment and not just spout propaganda. For what it's worth, Gwynne Dyer has been skeptical that Russia plans to invade Ukraine (although as he warns, you don't get your money back if he is wrong).
-
Caspian Report on youtube had good explanation of the strategic motivations for an invasion of Ukraine. As I recall it's partly that Russia has no hard borders as is, so pushing into Ukraine would allow Russia to use the Dnieper and other major rivers as a defensive western border from potential land invasion whilst also securing fresh water supply to the Crimea, which itself has immense strategic value as a base for naval power in the black sea.
Could be that Putin's just trying to put some pressure on and stir the pot for diplomatic leverage but a large nation without natural borders is always going to be prone to paranoia and trying to strip away it's buffer zones probably hasn't been the smartest move from the West.
-
pushing into Ukraine would allow Russia to use the Dnieper and other major rivers as a defensive western border from potential land invasion whilst also securing fresh water supply to the Crimea, which itself has immense strategic value as a base for naval power in the black sea.
But who on earth could possibly invade Russia from the west? First, Russia has atomic weapons, and second, Russia has large and well-trained conventional forces. As far as I know, the only power which could do it would be the United States, and first they would never get buy-in from the EU and Turkey, and second they are trying to focus on their long-term encirclement of China by withdrawing from Europe and the Arab world. Gwynne Dyer laid out the issue in the oughties: the USA can see that its position as sole superpower is crumbling as India and China grow economically, so it does what great powers in that situation do and launches a series of far-fetched aggressive gambles. Invading Iraq with a small army was supposed to intimidate the middle powers like Iran, while at the same time the USA was busy building an anti-Chinese alliance (https://gwynnedyer.com/2005/japan-china-andcongagement/) around the Pacific rim.
The Russian seizure of the Crimea and de-facto seizure of the Donbas sort of made sense in an old-fashioned kind of way, but invading central Ukraine would just cut off Russia's markets and get it entangled in a giant bloody war.
-
I think both perspectives may be right - that is, the fact that nobody actually would invade Russia from the west doesn't mean that this isn't something Russian officials aren't treating as if it's still a real threat. In general I think Russia is probably adopting quite an outdated idea of what a Great Power ought to look like (see also its interventions elsewhere). I think the narrative of "NATO expanded east and this was a mistake" is a bit in error though, in that NATO has expanded east far more slowly than Russia's neighbours have wanted it to. Georgia has been trying to join for years. So I'm not sure it's really true that the west has tried to strip away Russia's buffer zones, more that Russia has played the diplomatic game very badly with its former-province neighbours and has consquently left them in a position where they see NATO and the EU as the only route to retain meaningful independence. I'm not sure the alternative, in which NATO explicitly permitted Russia to "grow a sphere of influence" by sitting on its hands, would have helped: it would just have meant Russia running puppet governments in Ukraine and Georgia and the Baltics and then expanding its reach until it was butting on NATO countries again, potentially more willing to engage in a war.
And yeah, it's also true that Russia can't hold Ukraine the way it is now, and the Russians must know this. I'm not sure what their endgame is and I think it may be a mistake to assume that they really know either.
EDIT: Also, may be worth looking more than we have been doing at Russia's actions in Belarus, where its prepared stance on Ukraine seems to have been transferred to a full-scale military presence, and where reportedly (https://twitter.com/Den_2042/status/1495342681748291586) today their armed forces chief cited Putin, as well as Lukashenko, as if he was a superior in deciding to keep Russian forces in Belarus with no time limite
-
A lot of coverage does not seem to observe that the dictator of Belarus has been struggling to keep control in the face of nonviolent resistance for the past year or two. Remember when Belarusian forces forced down an airliner containing an opposition journalist (https://gwynnedyer.com/2021/belarus-an-unexpected-opportunity/) in May 2021? (Just like the USA forced down an Ecuadorian diplomatic flight in 2013).
Russia often sends troops to support allied regimes against popular protests, as in Syria. So one reading of the Russian troops in Belarus is that they were sent to keep Lukashenko in power.
Edit: someone shared this link to an opinion piece in Belarussian Pravda https://belprauda.com/budni-soyuznoj-reshimosti-2022/ (https://belprauda.com/budni-soyuznoj-reshimosti-2022/) That is a paper which a US project recorded during the 2020 Belarusian election (https://archive-it.org/collections/15042), so it least it has not been put up in the past few months.
Military exercise "Allied Dexterity - 2022" on the territory of Belarus will definitely be included in the annals of Belarusian history. If not for the number of military personnel who take part in them, then at least for the opportunism ("pofigism") of its participants relative to both themselves, and "surrounding" which is our country.
...
In addition to disease, among the locals there is fear, and not even of war, but first, of the occupation, because no matter how much they say that the Russian military will leave the country at the end of the exercise, there are still doubts about this.
- COVID Omicron spreads rapidly and fills the field hospitals
- Russian soldiers are getting drunk, raping, and stealing. People are afraid to go to the police.
- Belarussians are worried about all the non-Slavic minorities in Russian forces
- Russian armoured vehicles are destroying the roads
- Vast amounts of wood are being cut down for fuel and building of the camps, including from parks and beauty spots
- At Kharkopkovka in the Gomel region, some Russian soldiers "of Asian appearance" were found passed out and frostbitten after getting drunk on moonshine.
- The Russian soldiers are not well fed, and while some are stealing or extorting better food, others are selling fuel, uniforms, and possibly weapons and writing them off as "expended during the exercises."
So further Russian incursions into Ukraine would be monumentally stupid and destructive, but there is plenty of both in world politics.
Edit: Dr. Jeremy Morris in Aarhus has this take from the end of January https://postsocialism.org/2022/01/29/if-russia-invades-ukraine-again/ See also his essays on who writes and comment on Russi (mostly people sponsored directly or indirectly by Russian or NATO intelligence and armed services) "Russia coverage on Twitter is dominated by Washington DC policy types who may not be frauds (although some of them are), but who often have a very narrow, and second-hand, knowledge of Russia the country, and Russia the diverse population, as opposed to Russia the foreign policy problem. I’ve written about ‘imperial’ hierarchies of knowledge production before here. ... These issues pertain just as much to ‘natives’. There are plenty of Russian Russia experts who have long had a comfortable DC or US media gig and who have a weak direct grasp on events. Just as much as others, they are vulnerable to bad takes due to the secondary, or belated sources of their analysis. Another hobbyhorse of mine is the extreme self-selection and self-reproduction of this group: in the main they are privileged Russian liberals who are often the last people to ask about the diversity of Russia itself. Think for a moment about who can and who can’t up-sticks and move to the US, regardless of the level of repression in Russia. ... If the first elephant is the clear leveraging of latent public sympathy abroad for the Russian regime by our friends at the English-language offices of RT, then the other elephant is the continuing relevance of academic and think-tank contacts with the security services in the West."
-
Well, I was wrong.
I think the next thing to see will be whether Russian forces have enough of an advantage in skill and equipment to smash through Ukrainian forces with less than a thousand dead (I don't think they have greater numbers deployed than the post-2014 Ukrainian military). That will determine whether this is a horrible grinding conventional war, or a horrible grinding insurgency.
-
People are apparently trying to flee Kyiv en masse and Russian tanks have reached Kharkiv (which is Ukraine's second city, though it's practically on the Russian border).
From what little I've heard so far it doesn't sound like the Russians are rolling over the Ukrainian army without a fight though of course it's hard to tell. But I don't think this is an Afghanistan type situation where the national military will just dissolve under pressure.
The US Republicans are claiming that this is Biden's fault and that Trump would have stopped the war, which is, as they say, a take. Iran and China have both blamed "NATO provocation" for the war, so Russia has its allies in this matter it seems.
Edit 13:23 - just seen reports that the Russian northern column, invading from Belarus, has reached Kyiv oblast. Suspect the strategy on Russia's part is to try and knock out Zelensky's government as fast as possible and then attempt to install their own regime, or some such.
-
Yes, I would see that as a third possible outcome but unlikely. My understanding is that politically Ukraine is a lot like Russia was in the 1990s, its a democracy but the national government exists to keep a few well-connected people rich. That is one major reason why Ukraine is so poor, but I don't think the government is so unpopular that the military will fall apart.
Canada has shamefully evacuated its embassy from Lviv. The Guardian has printed an opinion piece saying that "Britain must show its steel" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/24/the-west-syria-ukraine-us-allies-vladimir-putin) which is a lot easier than explaining what Britain should do when another nuclear power has invaded a country 1,000 km away the only access to which is through the federated Europe the UK has noisily separated from and through Turkish waters.
My rolodex is completely empty of people competent to comment on modern conflicts, and experts on Ukraine. The only two things I can say are this. War is the most unpredictable things people do, that is why the ancients said it was in the realm of the gods. And there is no cheat code that Russia can use to make counterinsurgency or urban conflict end in a quick and clear victory. Ukraine is close to Russia and the Ukrainians speak a language pretty similar to Russian, but taking defended cities is hard and suppressing an insurgency is hard.
-
A few further things.
- Reports currently are that Russia tried to capture a major airport near Kyiv but was pushed back by a Ukrainian counterattack. Don't know if that's reliable, but if it's true, maybe suggests Ukraine is not seriously folding.
- I think it can both be true that the national government is not hugely naturally popular and that wealth gaps are very large, and also that people will rally round the flag in these circumstances. Like, I'd be willing to bet that polls right now (if you could conduct them) would give Zelensky a massive approval rating, because the polarisation and because there seems to be very little willingness to surrender among Ukrainians.
- In terms of what other countries do: mainly asset freezes and banking sanctions seem to be the weapons of choice, though how long they will take to kick in and if they'll be effective without China playing ball remains to be seen. Some MPs in other countries including the UK have suggested general visa freezes on all Russians or similar which seems horribly counterproductive to me.
- I've seen reports that Putin has a very small inner circle now which he hugely dominates, and that he's making all the calls more or less on his own. That's pretty concerning because it suggests he's less likely to act in anything approaching a rational way.
- There seems to be a lot of anti-war sentiment in Russia. Even with its draconian anti-protest laws and tendency to ban dissenters with public faces from state TV (which is to say, ending their careers) there have still been a number of Russian public figures opposing the war and sizeable protests on the streets of major Russian cities. This may grow if the Russian economy starts snarling up: Putin may not actually have very long to win his war before it destabilises him at home.
I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.
-
I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.
Well, paying attention and not adding to the noise on social media is worth something. And at least, judging by preliminary reports, the first day of this war is not a bad day (although the future of Ukrainians in a war or under Putin's control is very worrying). Ukraine is claiming that 137 soldiers and civilians have been killed, and in a war like this that is a small butcher's bill. Its possible that Russia is holding back some of its ground troops while it bombs every Ukrainian base, vehicle park, and command post it can find and the full offensive will come when it thinks Ukrainian forces can no longer communicate or maneuver.
And yes, this seems likely to tilt sentiment in Ukraine towards the EU and away from Russia even if Putin can put a puppet government in Kyiv.
This appears to be a small, online-only paper in Kyiv https://kyivindependent.com/
-
Yes, the Kyiv Independent AIUI was formed when the Kyiv Post's owners threatened the paper's editorial independence, leading to an argument with journalists and ultimately the owners firing every single journalist at the paper, who then went and formed the Kyiv Independent together, so from what I know I think they're good people. Anything by Terrell Starr is usually worth reading on Ukraine too, he's a US journalist/analyst with a lot of worthwhile perspectives on Ukraine, Russia, and colonialism.
Watching the mythology of the war build as it happens is something I think is not done enough: like, plenty of people comment on these things from an IR or military standpoint (whether or not they have the expertise to do so), and historians often rightly point out that their views are not necessarily the most important ones right now since explaining the long run can be interesting but not always useful - to focus solely on the long history sometimes obfuscates the short-term goals of people like Putin in favour of long-term explanations that miss the point. But anyway, mythologies of war are something I really have never seen discussed much in the public domain, and there's clearly tons going on there.
- The thirteen defending soldiers of Snake Island, a small Ukrainian-owned rock in the Black Sea, were killed. Their final recording has been relayed and released, and involves a chilling exchange in which a Russian ship commander tells them to surrender or he will open fire, and is responded to with "Russian ship, go f*ck yourself". (Link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKSFewA9rdQ))
- A video has been released of a Ukrainian lady berating Russian soldiers for invading, and offering them sunflower seeds to put in their pockets so that when they die Ukraine's national flower will grow on the spot. (Link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJJ8zmcBH2A))
- Rumours have been circulating online of a "ghost of Kyiv" Ukrainian flying ace who single-handedly downed six Russian fighters yesterday (entirely unconfirmed/probably not true).
- The speeches of Ukrainian leaders have been geared on this angle too, whether intentionally or not - Zelensky's speech to the Russian populace where he emotionally reminisced about friends and times in the Donbas and talked of his family in response to allegations of Nazism (Zelensky is Jewish and his grandfather was a Soviet colonel) has been widely shared internationally (Link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwzb_JX7u04)). I've also seen a lot of sharing of a chilling exchange at the UN in which the frustrated Ukrainian delegate told his Russian counterpart ther "There is no purgatory for war criminals - they go straight to hell, ambassador." (Link (https://youtube.com/shorts/fd_-hqIA3u8?feature=share))
Frustratingly I'm finding a lot of this stuff really difficult to find on places other than Twitter (there are often wider articles, but actually you end up getting more depth from journalists doing original Twitter threads on the topics than from the actual news websites). Anyway, a bunch of these pretty definitely happened (Obviously the speeches, Snake Island seems as reliably verified as these things get, and I've seen video of the lady talking to Russian troops), and some are more dubious like the Ghost of Kyiv, and some of the ones that did happen may of course be missing context. But I think "did they happen" isn't really the point, in any case. The mythologisation of the war and the intensity with which that seems likely to strengthen the sense of Ukrainian nationality and anti-Putin sentiment in the country has an awful lot of power to make Putin's life more difficult, and I think it's worth watching how those sorts of urban legends of resistance grow.
It does seem like the overall likelihood is a slow military defeat for Ukraine followed by an even slower insurgency, and that might be quite destabilising for Russia too: what Putin's doing feels like taking on the Iraq war but if the insurgents were signficantly better trained and funded, had a more unified national sentiment (and probably a government-in-exile to rally round), and with a fraction of the resources the US-led coalition had to spend. Though I do also worry that if there is even the appearance of success in the short term, that will embolden Putin to go after Georgia and Moldova in particular.
-
I'm still honestly just frozen up at the whole thing. I find it really hard to know what to say or do at these times: as a political activist and a historian interested in the wider region I don't feel I should be silent, but I'm also very far from an expert so it's hard to know what's best to say or not say, especially in more publicly-read locations.
There's some typically thoughtful commentary from Brett Devereaux in his blog post today (https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-war-in-ukraine/). In terms of advice, he says: So one thing you can do is contact your representatives and urge them to support sanctions and stand by Ukraine.
There is already so much written about the conflict that I'm doubtful any addition will make much difference; persuading Western governments to take the strongest possible action against Russia seems to me like the most productive use of time.
Brett Devereaux (and, no doubt, many others) notes the unfolding humanitarian crisis, within Ukraine and in its neighbours to the west. Support for organisations such as the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres will be very welcome, I'm sure.
-
And yeah, it's also true that Russia can't hold Ukraine the way it is now, and the Russians must know this. I'm not sure what their endgame is and I think it may be a mistake to assume that they really know either.
Yeah I can't see how this ends in a long term strategic win for Russia.
I could see the Russian military taking out as much of Ukraine's military infrastructure and airports as they can and then pulling back to the regions they really want to hold and think they can keep the populace onside. But I can't imagine how that would actually be worth it.
This invasion seems (from my very uneducated peep into it) to be putting more strain on Russia's relationship with Turkey, and I'd imagine that a friendly Turkey is worth a whole lot more than a little slice of eastern Ukraine. But then again I suppose Turkey was never likely to ditch Nato anyway.
Putin baffles me, maybe he really is just desperate to avoid a steady decline of Russian influence and couldn't think of any better plan. Maybe he's got a terminal illness and is just trolling the whole world.
Either way I hope he dies soon. Although god knows what would come after him, the thought of Russia descending into anarchy like Libya or Syria is not exactly comfortable. I'm sure a lot of nukes would be unaccounted for by the time the dust settled.
Happy Friday folks!
Edit:
Also am I the only one who has a real craving to fire up a TW game and play a faction centred around Crimea? It feels weird how easy it is to dissociate the events from the actual human reality until you're actually watching some of the scenes on the ground.
-
This invasion seems (from my very uneducated peep into it) to be putting more strain on Russia's relationship with Turkey, and I'd imagine that a friendly Turkey is worth a whole lot more than a little slice of eastern Ukraine. But then again I suppose Turkey was never likely to ditch Nato anyway.
From what I remember, the situation in Syria was:
- Turkey supported the Islamist rebels as long as possible and hates the Kurds
- the rest of NATO supported the Kurds and the other rebels who kept the atrocities off the teevee and kept the names "ISIS" and "Al-Quaida" off their propaganda
- Russia supported the Syrian government because Russia really values having a friendly country in the Mediterranean and does not care if that government murders and tortures a city or two
So the Turkish government is on bad terms with both Russia and NATO right now. Before Erdogan Turkey wanted to join the EU, and its still nominally part of NATO, but it and NATO supported opposite sides in Syria.
For all the vague noise in newspapers about the Russians besieging Kyiv or closing in on the city from north, east, and south, This map (https://maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor) shows just the column from Belarus having penetrated close to the city.
I don't know what to make of Putin saying he invaded Ukraine to demilitarize and denatzify the country on Thursday, then calling for the Ukrainian military to overthrow its government (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/feb/25/russia-ukraine-invasion-latest-news-live-updates-russian-war-vladimir-putin-explosions-bombing-invades-kyiv) on Friday.
-
Frustratingly I'm finding a lot of this stuff really difficult to find on places other than Twitter (there are often wider articles, but actually you end up getting more depth from journalists doing original Twitter threads on the topics than from the actual news websites).
There are also the stories about Russian conscripts being flogged across the border (Herodotus to the courtesy phone please) and Russian soldiers deserting or surrendering when they realized that they were invading Ukraine or that Ukrainians are fighting back. Edit: rando birdsite account (https://nitter.net/RVAwonk/status/1496977466908459012#m) citing Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers (Russia) via the Daily Beast (USA) (https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-used-beatings-and-tricks-to-forcibly-send-soldiers-to-ukraine-human-rights-group-says?source=twitter&via=desktop).
Twitter scares me as bad as anything short of nuclear weapons, and I'm trying to make peace with the fact that if people I thought I was like liked that site, maybe we don't have as much in common as I thought. It does scary things to people who hang out on it.
-
I am seeing one argument on corporate social media that Russian forces had two problems: a lack of supply transport, and a Table of Organization and Equipment which mixed up veterans, first-year-conscripts, and ghost soldiers, and functional equipment, broken equipment, and equipment which someone sold off in 2006 to pay for his kid's education. They argue that as a result, the attack on Kyiv from Belarus has fragmented as Russian formations hit Ukrainian defenses, detach someone to pin them, and split off along parallel roads to keep moving while they still have food and fuel. The three problems are that this makes the forces harder to command, that it makes it harder for Russian forces which run in to trouble to call in artillery or air strikes or just reinforcements, and that these detachments can be defeated individually and have trouble keeping a continuous front that Ukrainian forces can't get behind to destroy their supply transport.
Its possible that the initial ground attack on Kyiv was heavy on special forces without heavy tracked vehicles and with more money for fuel and supply trucks than the average infantry unit
-
Kazakhstan reportedly refused join the invasion and hasn't recognised the "independent" eastern regions, which is interesting since Kazakhstan is normally a very strong ally of Russia. It could be because of recent unrest at home or maybe they just don't see anything to gain from it.
I've read one theory that Putin had simply been told by his intelligence chiefs what they thought he wanted to hear, that Ukrainians were generally pro-Russia and that their government was widely unpopular. If that were so his swift invasion could have been a tactical success, although it would still seem like a poor strategic choice as far as I can see.
-
According to Ukrainian figures, the Russians have lost 4300 troops so far. That's equivalent to America's losses in the entire twenty year Iraq war. And Kyiv and Kharkiv still haven't fallen. I do wonder if modern war is at a point where armies are capable of obliterating cities but almost nobody is capable of capturing them intact. Fallujah is one of the only serious urban battles I can remember in recent times where the attackers won, and a) Iraqi insurgents who were outnumbered three-to-one are hardly the Ukrainian army and b) Fallujah is about a quarter the size of Kharkiv.
Kadyrov, the rather infamous leader of Chechnya, seems to have had one of his lead generals killed in a tank convoy that tried to approach Kyiv.
Part of Russia's attempt at a PR strategy seems to involve obviously non-starter ideas for "peace talks" like inviting the Ukrainian delegation to Belarus to discuss the demilitarisation of Ukraine. And also now Russia has shifted its nuclear posture up a gear which is obviously scary.
Regarding some other points, I saw an interesting masto thread (https://mastodon.acc.sunet.se/@werekat/107870413826920580) on neo-Nazism in Ukraine, which is real (as in most European countries) but does seem to have been quite exaggerated in scope despite all the claims still circulating around pro-Russia "leftist" circles. Also I've seen a number of takes of "oh look, these liberal pro-Ukraine hypocrites support asymmetric warfare against Russia but didn't against America", which frustrate me because, well, whilst I haven't generally supported most US interventionism, it also doesn't seem to me that fighting for the elected government of Ukraine and fighting to reimpose a brutal theocracy on Afghanistan are particularly morally equivalent even if they both come under the umbrella of asymmetric warfare against a military superpower.
-
Yeah there's been a ton of smooth brained takes around the internet, lots of reddit users seem to think we should just fire and not worry about whether that kicks off a nuclear war. The "USA is just another evil empire" take isn't exactly new, there truly is a lot to criticise about US military actions in the last century but you'd have to be pretty blind to think the USA and the USSR were equivalents.
-
Well one thing is for sure - I would not want to be tank crew driving into an enemy city if the defenders had access to the kind of anti-tank weapons we've been sending to Ukraine.
Those things are terrifyingly effective against the kind of obsolete tanks and APCs the Russians are sending in. And any building could contain an angry enemy hiding with an NLAW waiting to literally cook me alive in my metal coffin.
-
I am seeing claims that the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion) from Mariupol has been issued with arms on the grounds of "well, we did say any Ukrainian citizen who wants them ..." They are sharing tasteful videos of their fighters rubbing bullets in lard " against the Kadyrov orcs." If they and the Chetchen militias blast each other to pieces I don't think anyone but their parents will be very sad.
I've read one theory that Putin had simply been told by his intelligence chiefs what they thought he wanted to hear, that Ukrainians were generally pro-Russia and that their government was widely unpopular. If that were so his swift invasion could have been a tactical success, although it would still seem like a poor strategic choice as far as I can see.
I saw one account claiming to be a Ukrainian who said that under the previous two presidents, they might have shrugged if the Spetsnaz showed up one morning and hauled away the president and half of parliament. But I would still have expected a vigorous reaction from Europe, and all it would take to start an insurgency or mass resistance would be one region which did not like having Russia overthrow their government. My understanding is that parts of Ukraine are very hostile to the Russian government, and parts are very friendly to the Russian government or just worried that their remaining jobs will vanish if Russia stops buying their products.
Putin would know that the Soviet war in Afghanistan began with landing Spetsnaz to kill or capture the president while ground forces rolled over the border!
-
According to Ukrainian figures, the Russians have lost 4300 troops so far. That's equivalent to America's losses in the entire twenty year Iraq war. And Kyiv and Kharkiv still haven't fallen. I do wonder if modern war is at a point where armies are capable of obliterating cities but almost nobody is capable of capturing them intact. Fallujah is one of the only serious urban battles I can remember in recent times where the attackers won, and a) Iraqi insurgents who were outnumbered three-to-one are hardly the Ukrainian army and b) Fallujah is about a quarter the size of Kharkiv.
The Syrian government won in Damascus and Aleppo, the Philippine government retook Marawi, and Baghdad won in Mosul, but cities where a serious urban battle takes place end up looking like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Destroyed_neighborhood_in_Raqqa.png This has been true since 1914, and even in 1870/1871, the Prussian army refused to try to enter Paris. There is no way of driving a few thousand determined men with infantry weapons out of a city without terrible destruction or terrible loss of life.
Glad werekat is back posting on the fediverse.
-
The Russian death tolls being reported seem pretty wild, especially when compared to the Ukrainian losses. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's just propaganda, idk who would confirm them in this situation. The Russian losses definitely do seem to be much higher than the Russians would have expected I think. Hopefully this doesn't lead to them trying to completely flatten Ukraine's cities.
-
It really is fascinating to watch flightradar24.com for the sheer quantity and variety of USAF/RAF/NATO designated planes buzzing around the western borders of Ukraine.
Refuelling tankers, cargo/personnel transports, surveillance drones, SIGINT/AWACs etc... and thats just the ones they allow us to see
I wonder how much of that surveillance/SIGINT intel is making its way to Ukraines armed forces...
-
Reports of massive GRAD missile attacks on residential areas of Kharkiv, seems like the Russian army are willing to kill indiscriminately even in the areas that they are supposedly liberating.
-
Oh, I'm sure we're funnelling intelligence, tracking, and spotting data to them.
And yeah, Russia is apparenly now using cluster munitions in Kharkiv, which is getting even more clearly into war crimes territory and is going to lead to hugely higher losses of civilian life. Everything is likely to get a lot uglier soon, I fear :(
Here in Vienna the local game dev community has been good in organising people to try and help Ukrainian arrivals - I've signed up in case anyone needs help with e.g. English paperwork, and donated to the UK's red cross fund for humanitarian aid.
I'm really trying not to just doomscroll feeds constantly for information but my brain gets very locked onto these things. A lot of the takes on social media continue to be very grating. Today's have included a threat claiming that the racism in a lot of portrayals of Ukrainians and refugees (which is there - Roma and black Ukrainians are being treated horribly on the Polish border, and there have been a lot of bad press takes about Ukraine being "more civilised" than other war zones in the recent past which is reaaaaally dodgy dogwhistling) is all down to "western liberalism" which... what?
-
It really is fascinating to watch flightradar24.com for the sheer quantity and variety of USAF/RAF/NATO designated planes buzzing around the western borders of Ukraine.
Refuelling tankers, cargo/personnel transports, surveillance drones, SIGINT/AWACs etc... and thats just the ones they allow us to see
I wonder how much of that surveillance/SIGINT intel is making its way to Ukraines armed forces...
I would not be shocked if the Territorial Defense militia woke up to find some burly, bearded trainers who speak workable Russian but no Ukrainian and have an encyclopedic knowledge of Soviet and post-Soviet hardware.
The Kyiv Independent can no longer post live updates
-
Really? I last got a Kyiv Independent update six minutes ago in their Telegram group.
-
Maybe they switched from a daily update page to https://kyivindependent.com/news-archive/ and telegram? I am scared to watch anything political on text apps or YouTube.
Lets hope we can use some of this energy to end foreign intervention in Yemen! And to treat Afghan refugees decently. Finally doing the right thing in one case is not bad because it sets a precedent to do the right thing in others.
-
Whilst I think it's important that we deprive the Russian state of the capacity to finance Putin's war, I think we may soon also have to think more on how to reduce humanitarian damage in Russia as well as Ukraine with how heavily these sanctions are biting. Collective punishment for Putin-regime crimes feels wrong: it's not like Putin cares about ordinary Russians, or like they had a fair chance to elect anyone else. And the more people in the west go full Russophobia, the more it pushes Russians into Putin's hands, to a certain extent.
Crass takes of today award go to the Scottish and Welsh nationalists who are comparing being part of the United Kingdom to being Ukraine under threat from Russia. Whether or not you agree with Scots/Welsh independence that just feels intensely wrong as a comparison.
-
Whilst I think it's important that we deprive the Russian state of the capacity to finance Putin's war, I think we may soon also have to think more on how to reduce humanitarian damage in Russia as well as Ukraine with how heavily these sanctions are biting. Collective punishment for Putin-regime crimes feels wrong: it's not like Putin cares about ordinary Russians, or like they had a fair chance to elect anyone else. And the more people in the west go full Russophobia, the more it pushes Russians into Putin's hands, to a certain extent.
I agree. The overwhelming international response has been encouraging, given that Russian state broadcasters seem to have been told to prepare the line that "A multipolar world has finally become a reality - the operation in Ukraine is not capable of rallying anyone but the West against Russia." (https://www.think.cz/english/politics/ria-news-translated) But its important that we use this anger to hurt Putin and his backers and help Ukrainians and not just to make ourselves feel better.
Short of NATO attacks on Russian forces in Ukraine (which I would have trouble supporting), and aside from helping refugees, the two things which seem most useful are finding and freezing the stolen wealth of oligarchs, and making sure that Ukraine has enough arms for its people. Industrialized war consumes astonishing amounts of munitions. I would like to hear more about which factories have increased production starting yesterday.
Some Americans are saying that it has been a warm, wet February around Kyiv. The Pripet Marshes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat_Marshes) north of Kyiv are hard to navigate in the best of times. And many of the Russians do not seem to have been rotating their truck tires once a month to spread the pressure and sun damage (https://nitter.net/TrentTelenko/status/1499164271900774400#m), so they are prone to bursting when they drive offroad with heavy loads. The Black Sea coast has a different climate and different soil, so that may explain why the advance on Kyiv was so slow and chaotic and why the Russian army has more success in the south.
Putin has scheduled a speech for 3 March on the "special operation" in Ukraine. I wonder if he will change his line that this is nothing the Russian people need to worry about just a glorious reunification of the Russian people. Because if this war goes on, he will need more from the Russian people than "keep your head down and send your sons to the army." While thousands of people (https://ovdinfo.org/) (including a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad (https://therussianreader.com/2022/02/28/siege-survivor-antiwar-protester/)) have been arrested for protesting the war, Dr. Jeremy Morris says that most ordinary Russians he talks to are following the state line (https://postsocialism.org/2022/02/28/russians-react-to-the-beginning-of-the-offensive-against-kyiv-the-looking-glass-world-but-with-some-cracks-in-it/).
-
Russian and Russia-based journalists say that Putin has imposed censorship stricter than in late Soviet times, including up to 15 years in prison for calling the war a war and a special school curriculum. The last remaining independent radio, TV, newspapers, and news sites have been shut down or stopped talking about Ukraine; journalist Alexy Kovalyov (https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexey-kovalev) of https://meduza.io/ (https://meduza.io/) has fled.
One party in the Duma is writing a bill to conscript all antiwar protestors and send them to the Donbass.
In xenophobia news, Kovalyov says that his domain name provide namecheap has taken down all domains registered to Russians including his website https://noodleremover.news with investigative journalism on Russia today.
Edit: I hear that Mastercard, Visa, and paypal have more or less independently halted service in Russia. That is definitely going to hurt ordinary Russians more than the oligarchs.
-
On myths, a news article on the Kyiv grandmother who destroyed a drone with a jar of tomatos is https://life.liga.net/istoriyi/article/eto-byli-pomidory-ligalife-nashla-kievlyanku-sbivshuyu-vrajeskiy-dron-bankoy-konservatsii - https://dronedj.com/2022/03/08/ukrainian-woman-russian-drone-cucumbers-tomatoes/
Per https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/ (https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1754194.html), Someone has made a music video of clips of Ukrainian farmers recovering Russian equipment and a popular Ukrainian children's song "Here comes a tractor, a blue tractor."
Anglo military commentators seem to be slowly coming around to the realization that the "overwhelming Russian offensive using their fearsome doctrine" may not always be a day or two away. They can do a lot of damage with what they have where they have it.
-
Yes, the war still grinds on. It's very very hard to know what's happening and what will break first - the Ukrainians' ability to provide resistance against the much larger Russian forces, or the Russian economy. It's just so depressing watching it all.
It does seem like the original Russian plan was shock and awe - apparently they packed dress uniforms for an expected victory parade at the expense of supplies - but given that's faltered, it soes seem like their new preference (or perhaps forced circumstance) is a much more slowly-surely approach where they don't try and push anything too fast but maybe try to build a new picture of inexorable Russian progress. But whether Russia can keep that up, I don't know.
-
Although my understanding is that Russia does not have more troops, just more tanks, artillery, and aircraft. And it seems like many of those aircraft can't actually fly, or at least not in groups of more than 2 or 4 or in the vicinity of modern air defenses. All those tanks and guns can do a lot of damage.
I am told that Ukraine has 6 groups of 60,000 veterans who each passed through training, did a term in the Donbas War, then returned to civilian life. So even though Russia has a larger population, Ukraine has more trained combat veterans to draw upon.
Kvetun Armoury is one of the entire businesses which has upped sticks from Russia to anywhere that accepts their passport and is not ruled by Vladimir Putin (they chose Georgia which was previously not known in the medieval reproductions industry) https://kvetun-armoury.com/
-
I'm pretty sure Russia has more troops in total on paper but on practice they can't actually mobilise all of them at once of course, or at least not without stripping literally every other border of troops. And that's even disregarding the logistical issues of supplying large troop numbers.
Russia does have a lot of artillery though, they honestly could be doing a hell of a lot more damage than they already are. Hopefully that's not the next step but who knows.
-
One other thing thats amazed me - the number of videos I've seen of Ukranian defenders sprinting to battle in civilian vehicles, unloading their vicious arsenal of anti-tank missiles, then scooting off before the enemy can react.
With the increasing lethality of modern hand-held anti-armor weapons, it makes a lot of sense.
Unarmored civilians vehicles do have a lot of advantages over armored military ones in this environment - significantly faster, more mobile, more fuel efficient, lighter (less likely to stick in mud or on poor roads) etc.
Has anyone read the book 'Red Storm Rising' by Tom Clancy? He pretty much predicted the effectiveness of NATO anti-tank weapons mounted on much lighter mobile vehicles in that book.
Although he didnt quite reach the extreme concept of a 'rocket Honda Jazz' :D
-
Russia does have a lot of artillery though, they honestly could be doing a hell of a lot more damage than they already are. Hopefully that's not the next step but who knows.
I think that may come down to logistics again. Rockets and howitzer shells are heavy, and the Russian army is short of trucks. Back when Putin was making threats, one of the arguments that he would not act on them went like this:
The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps. To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades. To gain familiarity with Russian logistic requirements and lift resources, a useful starting point is the Russian combined arms army. They all have different force structures, but on paper, each combined army is assigned a material-technical support brigade. Each material-technical support brigade has two truck battalions with a total of 150 general cargo trucks with 50 trailers and 260 specialized trucks per brigade. The Russian army makes heavy use of tube and rocket artillery fire, and rocket ammunition is very bulky. Although each army is different, there are usually 56 to 90 multiple launch rocket system launchers in an army. Replenishing each launcher takes up the entire bed of the truck. If the combined arms army fired a single volley, it would require 56 to 90 trucks just to replenish rocket ammunition. That is about a half of a dry cargo truck force in the material-technical support brigade just to replace one volley of rockets. There is also between six to nine tube artillery battalions, nine air defense artillery battalions, 12 mechanized and recon battalions, three to five tank battalions, mortars, anti-tank missiles, and small arms ammunition — not to mention, food, engineering, medical supplies, and so on.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/
Now of course the Russians are trying to lay pipelines, rebuild bridges, and get Ukrainian railroads back in service, but its hard when there are drones in the air and when sometimes your engineers get shot up by the Territorial Defense or your truck convoys roll into a minefield and an artillery barrage. This is why the Americans spent a few weeks bombing Iraq and smashing its airforce before they invaded in 1991 and 2003 (and the US military was built for a war like this, the Russian army is not).
The Russians also seem to have bad command, control, and communications, so they can't do showy things like having 200 shells from 100 guns hit the same target at the same time.
Edit: I suspect that many of the officers who are drifting out of radio contact with their units know that this was is unjust and unlikely to end well, so they are doing the least possible. That is also preventing the Russian army from being as devastating as it could be in theory.
-
Russia does have a lot of artillery though, they honestly could be doing a hell of a lot more damage than they already are. Hopefully that's not the next step but who knows.
I think that may come down to logistics again. Rockets and howitzer shells are heavy, and the Russian army is short of trucks. Back when Putin was making threats, one of the arguments that he would not act on them went like this:
True for Kyviv but Kharkiv is basically on the Russian border so Russian troops there should be able to be supplied largely by rail (of course there has been shelling here but how heavy is it compared to how heavy it could be?) and Kharkiv and Mariupol are on the coast where Russian ships should be able to supply their troops. I know Kherson was taken so perhaps it wasn't shelled because the Russians were expecting to take it, could be the same with Mariupol.
Looking into it Kharkiv has been shelled pretty heavily already so I could be way off here. I'm also pretty sure rockets and bombs are very expensive so a relatively conservative approach makes sense considering the cost. And of course the cost of rebuilding these cities if Russia actually wants to annex these regions is a factor to consider and it may be that annexation of these border regions is still the goal (it looks like they're trying to annex Kherson in a similar manner to how they took Crimea, which makes some sense since it secures water supply to Crimea).
-
Russia does have a lot of artillery though, they honestly could be doing a hell of a lot more damage than they already are. Hopefully that's not the next step but who knows.
I think that may come down to logistics again. Rockets and howitzer shells are heavy, and the Russian army is short of trucks. Back when Putin was making threats, one of the arguments that he would not act on them went like this:
True for Kyviv but Kharkiv is basically on the Russian border so Russian troops there should be able to be supplied largely by rail (of course there has been shelling here but how heavy is it compared to how heavy it could be?) and Kharkiv and Mariupol are on the coast where Russian ships should be able to supply their troops. I know Kherson was taken so perhaps it wasn't shelled because the Russians were expecting to take it, could be the same with Mariupol.
Looking into it Kharkiv has been shelled pretty heavily already so I could be way off here. I'm also pretty sure rockets and bombs are very expensive so a relatively conservative approach makes sense considering the cost. And of course the cost of rebuilding these cities if Russia actually wants to annex these regions is a factor to consider and it may be that annexation of these border regions is still the goal (it looks like they're trying to annex Kherson in a similar manner to how they took Crimea, which makes some sense since it secures water supply to Crimea).
According to this handy map dated 13 March there is no railway along the coast from Crimea to Mariupol in the Donbas. The closest railhead in Russian hands is Melitopol (and I have heard there are Ukrainians sitting across the railway to Melitopol).
(https://www.bookandsword.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ukraine-invasion-logistics-1024x602.jpeg)
And there are no other major ports along the Ukrainian Sea of Azov coast west of Mariupol. You can unload cargo onto open beaches or into little fishing and tourist harbours, but its slow and has limited capacity. And this is not D-day, the Russians did not spend years planning how to build harbours to supply months of major combat operations before they took and de-mined the first port.
I am not sure about the siege of Kharkiv either, other than that the Russians are attacking everywhere with an army which does not actually outnumber the Ukrainians (those 150,000 or 190,000 men they amassed are similar in size to the Ukrainian army). And they seem to have expected that Kharkiv, so close to the border, would greet them with flowers not light antitank weapons.
-
Yeah, a lot of the miscalculation around places like Kharkiv seems to be around the idea they would be greeted as liberators (reminiscent of the US invasion of Iraq there). And they clearly have been shelling Kharkiv very hard including use of e.g. cluster munitions, which will have done more to push Russian-speaking Ukrainians away from Russia than anything that's happened previously.
I've seen lots of posts of people online suggesting different ideas of what Russia's strategic objectives in the war are, and I suspect they're all operating from the incorrect premise that Russia has a clear strategic objective at this point. I suspect to the extent that Russia has much of a strategic outlook it's just "how far can we push to maximise leverage and options in the inevitable negotiation stages" - but even that is muddied by the fact that some people in Russia still feel compelled to pretend that a long-term occupation of Ukraine is achievable whilst other people in Russia feel compelled to pretend that the war's objectives are limited and that independence for the Donbas and recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea would be sufficient to end the war. The sort of superposition of contradictory ideas about what's happening can be very effective for information warfare, but aren't a very good way of working out what to do with an actual army. So the army just keeps rolling forward with very little idea of what it's doing there, which must be horrendous for morale.
-
Some people say they have seen photos of Territorial Defense travelling in unmarked cars, and the Ukrainians have released photos of a Russian ambulance full of weapons. So Russians are shooting up civilian cars which don't stop, and Ukrainians may start firing on Russian ambulances.
Edit: The Ukrainians claim to have destroyed 200 vehicles and a headquarters near Melitopol on the Dneipr, so even in the area close to Crimea, there are still large Ukrainian forces operating behind the columns.
I've seen lots of posts of people online suggesting different ideas of what Russia's strategic objectives in the war are, and I suspect they're all operating from the incorrect premise that Russia has a clear strategic objective at this point. I suspect to the extent that Russia has much of a strategic outlook it's just "how far can we push to maximise leverage and options in the inevitable negotiation stages"
I think that is why many Anglo military and think-tank commentators have overestimated Russia's chances. Their whole identities and careers are tied to the idea that through professional advice and the latest military equipment, any state can use a bureaucratic military to achieve rational policy objectives. But what do you do when the chief executive is totally out of touch with the facts on the ground, his subordinates are too scared to say so because they would have to explain why the army was in bad shape, and you need their permission to move towards objectives you can actually achieve? That was the US and UK situation in Afghanistan and Iraq for a long time, the military was not there to win just to avoid embarrassing the current government by losing. And from the government's point of view, making the concessions that would lead to achievable objectives were more embarrassing than keeping the war going.
Its possible that the Russians will break through somewhere before they run out of bodies and equipment, but I don't know what they would be able to achieve that would last even ten years.
Edit: A US DoD spokesperson says that the US has not seen any significant Russian forces outside the initial 190,000 troops entering Ukraine. So again, the invaders were outnumbered even before the Ukrainians started arming the people and calling up veterans of the Donbas War. They have more artillery, tanks, and aircraft but not more troops (and to take defended cities you need huge numbers of infantry).
-
As I think I said upthread, we seem to now be in a world where "pound this city into rubble" is simply an easier task for most militaries to accomplish than "capture this city intact" and that probably isn't a good thing for the fate of cities in wartime.
A Turkish journalist on Twitter posts (https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1504049924043952129):
"Russia greatly values Turkey’s balanced attitude towards the Ukraine crisis and appreciates Ankara’s full implementation of Montreux convention on the straits, Lavrov tells Cavusoglu in Moscow"
Which is interesting, given where all Ukraine's favourite Bayraktar drones come from. And I think suggests that Moscow knows it's in a great deal of trouble here.
Also, Russia is set to start defaulting on loans already, which is going to really start hitting their ability to pay for literally anything:
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/russia-debt-repayment-default-ukraine-putin-b988421.html
This article has some interesting thoughts about China's role and outlook:
https://www.rferl.org/a/china-long-game-russian-invasion/31755869.html
-
Kyiv seems to be under heavier bombardment now, I imagine this is meant to put pressure on Ukraine for the negotiations going on. Ukrainians clearly aren't going to welcome Russian control anywhere so I guess Putin might as well use full on terrorism against them now.
-
Thomas Piketty has an opinion piece on what sanctions targeted at oligarchs would involve, and how rich people in the Atlantic world won't like them https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/16/russia-rich-wealthy-western-elites-thomas-piketty
-
As I think I said upthread, we seem to now be in a world where "pound this city into rubble" is simply an easier task for most militaries to accomplish than "capture this city intact" and that probably isn't a good thing for the fate of cities in wartime.
I'm not sure how much this specific situation extends to the general case.
On the one side, Ukraine has access to the most cutting edge NATO anti-armor missiles, and their army has had several years of Western training on the use of these weapons. Also, Ukraine lack the vehicles and airpower to fight their own offensive war, so are quite limited to defensive operations, ambushes and special-forces style raids.
So most heavy conflict is happening in urban areas because those are the areas that Ukraine are contesting heavily.
On the other side, Russia are using massive quantities of some fairly obsolete equipment which doesn't have the armor to stand up to those NATO anti-armor weapons. Russia also seems quite tolerant of high casualties and equipment losses.
The doctrine around use of such armor in urban/close quarters combat normally calls for infantry to screen the armor. Russia haven't been doing this, which is one of the big questions surrounding their tactics. Is it because of poor infantry training? (too many conscripts)... Poor communication equipment? (Russians have been pictured using civilian analog radios ffs, and Ukranians are able to listen in and jam by drowning out the relevant wavelengths with the Ukranian national anthem!)... or something else?
Also, a lot of the city damage is being caused by conventional artillery. If Ukraine had more air/artillery power themselves, the Russian artillery would not be able to sit back and lob shells/rockets without taking massive counter-battery fire.
If the Russian artillery knew their shells/rockets would be tracked and counter-battery fire would commence literally minutes after they fired themselves, they would be forced to pick their targets a LOT more carefully. Suddenly, shelling random non-military targets like apartment blocks doesn't seem such a smart move in that kind of environment.
So although this is one of the less 'asymmetric' modern conflicts we've seen in recent history, its still quite lopsided in some very key ways that make it quite unusual.
Doesn't really help the situation the Ukranian cities find themselves in of course...
-
In contrast, this is what using artillery/rockets against a truly modern military looks like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsVUISS8oHs
Also note the screams for 'get some H.E.' at the end. That is the gunners calling for counter-battery fire. Thats how fast the incoming fire is tracked backed to its location, and the counter-battery fire starts.
If the Russians were faced with that sort of defensive setup, in combination with a lethal defensive missile system like Patriot/THAAD/Iron Dome... their artillery (and air force) would be paying a much higher price for this medieval tactic of flattening cities with uncoordinated, inaccurate fire.
-
I don't know of any time in the past 5,000 years when fighting your way into a fortified city that was ready to resist was not a bloody and risky affair, or when it was not common to threaten atrocities against the civilian population to force the combatants to surrender. A woman on a roof with a clay tile killed Pyrrhos of Epeiros, and refusing to let people leave the city unless it surrenders goes back to the Lament for Sumer and Urim (https://www.bookandsword.com/2017/07/15/an-old-dilemma/) (CW: atrocities against civilians).
Without going to war against Russia, I don't know what can be done other than donating to relief organizations and helping refugees.
The Ukrainians say they are shooting down most cruise missiles aimed at Kyiv, I saw some claims that units in the south were stripped of their air defenses to reinforce Kyiv before the war began.
-
Its a very strange combination of factors leading to the current situation.
- Ukraine has an extreme ability to counter Russian armor (lethality of NATO weapons vs obsolete Russian armor and tactics)
- Russian close-air support is also very vulnerable to these NATO weapons
- Russian infantry doesnt seem up to the job of screening the armor effectively
- Russian air-force is strangely non-dominant considering its advantages
- Russian precision weapons like cruise missiles are working up to a point, but these are expensive and in short supply
This leaves the one area where the Russians have a plentiful supply, is sufficiently simple to coordinate, and the Ukranians have a limited ability to counter - dumb-fire massed artillery. This combined with Ukraines limited ability to conduct offense means Russia can shell cities with near impunity. This would *NOT* be the case against NATO, thats for sure.
This is a very weird war - it feels like it should be modern, but it actually isn't. Ukraine has extreme modern weapons in very narrow areas like man-portable missile systems. Russia has modern weapons on paper, but is relying heavily mainly on WWII/Cold-War era equipment and tactics.
I think analysts are going to be writing books about the utterly weird underperformance of the Russian military for decades.
-
This is a very weird war - it feels like it should be modern, but it actually isn't. Ukraine has extreme modern weapons in very narrow areas like man-portable missile systems. Russia has modern weapons on paper, but is relying heavily mainly on WWII/Cold-War era equipment and tactics.
This might be a good topic for the upcoming chat, but keep in mind that just like the UK and France can't equip their troops as lavishly as the Americans can, most countries can't reach UK standards. The Canadian Armed Forces currently have no air defense capability (https://rusi-ns.ca/air-defence/) other than fixed radars and fighter-bombers. In a war against anyone with an air force, our air defense would be calling up our allies and asking for cover. A friend who used to be in the New Zealand army said something similar: "we are equipped to fight insurgents and militias, because that is what we get asked to do." I think we have pretty good arty, and Leopard II tanks with some upgrades, and our home-made Light Armoured Vehicles, but I am sure there are gaps in our kit if we sent the CAF into a war against a large state.
There is also the giant civil war in Ethiopia, where the Tigrayan rebels seemed to be much better fighters than the government troops despite having less kit. That also involved massive violence against civilians.
-
This might be a good topic for the upcoming chat, but keep in mind that just like the UK and France can't equip their troops as lavishly as the Americans can, most countries can't reach UK standards. The Canadian Armed Forces currently have no air defense capability (https://rusi-ns.ca/air-defence/) other than fixed radars and fighter-bombers. In a war against anyone with an air force, our air defense would be calling up our allies and asking for cover. A friend who used to be in the New Zealand army said something similar: "we are equipped to fight insurgents and militias, because that is what we get asked to do." I think we have pretty good arty, and Leopard II tanks with some upgrades, and our home-made Light Armoured Vehicles, but I am sure there are gaps in our kit if we sent the CAF into a war against a large state.
Sure, all militaries have gaps in their capabilities.
But the Russians seem to have gaps in some very basic areas - like RADIOS. They seem to be relying on unencrypted civilian gear. Pictures of Russian soldiers with walkie-talkies that look like they are from Radio Shack. Russian fighter cockpits with civilian GPS systems clamped to the dash. etc. etc.
This is just baffling, and almost certainly contributing hugely to both the Russian lack of coordination, and the Ukranian ability to locate and intercept specific high-value targets like Russian generals.
And seeing pictures of Ukranian infantry is like browsing some kind of bizarre multi-century arms catalog. Cutting edge missile weapons being carried alongside random rusty Cold-War surplus gear and 1930s-era Tommy Guns.
-
This might be a good topic for the upcoming chat, but keep in mind that just like the UK and France can't equip their troops as lavishly as the Americans can, most countries can't reach UK standards. The Canadian Armed Forces currently have no air defense capability (https://rusi-ns.ca/air-defence/) other than fixed radars and fighter-bombers. In a war against anyone with an air force, our air defense would be calling up our allies and asking for cover. A friend who used to be in the New Zealand army said something similar: "we are equipped to fight insurgents and militias, because that is what we get asked to do." I think we have pretty good arty, and Leopard II tanks with some upgrades, and our home-made Light Armoured Vehicles, but I am sure there are gaps in our kit if we sent the CAF into a war against a large state.
Sure, all militaries have gaps in their capabilities.
But the Russians seem to have gaps in some very basic areas - like RADIOS. They seem to be relying on unencrypted civilian gear. Pictures of Russian soldiers with walkie-talkies that look like they are from Radio Shack. Russian fighter cockpits with civilian GPS systems clamped to the dash. etc. etc.
This is just baffling, and almost certainly contributing hugely to both the Russian lack of coordination, and the Ukranian ability to locate and intercept specific high-value targets like Russian generals.
And seeing pictures of Ukranian infantry is like browsing some kind of bizarre multi-century arms catalog. Cutting edge missile weapons being carried alongside random rusty Cold-War surplus gear and 1930s-era Tommy Guns.
I agree that its bizarre that a country with a space program can't manage secure coms between its generals and fighter planes and their units or bases! And its eerily reminiscent of the Battle of Tannenberg where the two Russian colums started sending radio messages back and forth in clear and the Germans realized they could fight one column at a time.
I have not seen those Thompsons, but I recall that some US National Guard units invaded Iraq carrying old M3 Grease Guns. And the CAF still use their old Browning HPs because our procurement system makes sloths look agile. But I am an ancient historian not a modern historian, so I'm not up to speed on all the variations of a Kalashnikov or a RPG. I think wooden stocks tend to be on older models and newer ones have synthetic stocks?
-
My understanding is that the state of the Russian army is in part because for the last half decade the primary qualification to be a senior Russian military type has been "can you keep both Putin and the Oligarchs happy" not "can you run and supply an army effectively". Russia essentially retains some of the political weaknesses of autocracies, and a big tendency to do things for show rather than effectiveness.
I guess there are some questions here about what a "normal" war is these days, given it almost never is symmetrical any more. I see the point psyanojim makes about the weird mismatches of capabilities, but I feel like expectations of matched capabilities may be entirely a thing of the past anyway (with the one exception of nuclear weapons where the biggest powers all hit "world destruction" in their capability and there's not much point getting far above that). But it feels like for non-nuclear warfare, the range of capability types and levels is probably far more stratified than at most previous points in history, to the point where it'd be relatively rare not to have a bunch of weird mismatches in any given war one could hypothesise.
-
Sure, I would always expect some kind of capability mismatch.
What I DONT expect is a country with nuclear weapons, stealth fighters and a space industry to be struggling to provide its troops with basics like radios!
And yeah, we'll see how long this Ukraine inability to counter the Russian city bombardment lasts. The latest tranche of weapon systems being provided by NATO such as starstreak missiles and switchblade drones seem designed to help with this very problem. At the very least, these should give Russian artillery and bombers something to worry about before revealing themselves by firing at militarily low-priority targets anyway...
-
Yeah, that's very fair and it's clear there is a massive specific problem there. We'll see how it unfolds I guess. The amount of pain Russia is inflicting on civilian targets now is just sickening.
-
One of those dissidents suggests that Ukraine should rent some hostels in Egypt or Turkey and announce that Rusisian troops who surrender and are not suspected of atrocities will be sent there with a special visa for the duration of the war. He figures that just the prospect of a vacation somewhere warm (instead of spring behind barbed wire near Lviv) would speed up desertion.
My understanding is that the state of the Russian army is in part because for the last half decade the primary qualification to be a senior Russian military type has been "can you keep both Putin and the Oligarchs happy" not "can you run and supply an army effectively". Russia essentially retains some of the political weaknesses of autocracies, and a big tendency to do things for show rather than effectiveness.
I guess there are some questions here about what a "normal" war is these days, given it almost never is symmetrical any more. I see the point psyanojim makes about the weird mismatches of capabilities, but I feel like expectations of matched capabilities may be entirely a thing of the past anyway (with the one exception of nuclear weapons where the biggest powers all hit "world destruction" in their capability and there's not much point getting far above that). But it feels like for non-nuclear warfare, the range of capability types and levels is probably far more stratified than at most previous points in history, to the point where it'd be relatively rare not to have a bunch of weird mismatches in any given war one could hypothesise.
Jubal, one of my professors who studies war since 1914 assigned us this paper which you can probably track down:
Stephen Biddle, "Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 139-179
To me, the fact that Russian generals have to come into artillery range to give orders is way more surprising that in a war of hundreds of thousands of troops, a lot of the kit is not the latest and greatest. Encrypted radio comms is a basic WW II capability (your average tank squadron or infantry company did not have it, but the larger formation they were part of did). And even in WW I they had runners to go from the commander to the frontlines!
Mosul ended up looking like Stalingrad even though the airstrikes came from by NATO forces with plenty of guided munitions.
-
My go-to US military veteran and professor of military history is tearing his hair out at photos of the Russians digging in in the open, with no attempt to hide the removed earth and vehicle tracks or cover the work against aerial observation. Apparently, since Duffer's Drift it has become NATO doctine that you stretch out the camoflage nets whenever you stop for more than a few minutes.
I don't know whether that is lack of kit, lack of training, or pofigism (a lack of regard for one's own or anyone else's life or property).
The Kyiv Independent accuses the Russian proxy states on the Don of conscripting subjects and throwing them into combat without training (https://kyivindependent.com/national/russia-throws-untrained-civilians-from-occupied-donbas-into-hot-spots-of-its-war-in-ukraine/).
I see a claim that Belarusian railway workers are using strikes and sabotage against supplies for the invasion.
-
So the news now, and the pretty clear message of the below-linked speech by Russian commanders, is that Russia is now claiming to be refocusing on the east and Donestsk - presumably as an attempted face-save and trying to scale back the war to something achievable. If it is indeed achievable for them, which we'll see, I guess.
https://eng.mil.ru/en/special_operation/news/more.htm?id=12414735@egNews
Zelensky was pretty scathing about the Hungarian government when talking to European officials, which is perhaps interesting.
User AndrejNkv on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AndrejNkv/status/1507365192405073920) posted the following rewritten ditty which I found darkly amusing:
I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battle plans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General!
-
So the news now, and the pretty clear message of the below-linked speech by Russian commanders, is that Russia is now claiming to be refocusing on the east and Donestsk - presumably as an attempted face-save and trying to scale back the war to something achievable. If it is indeed achievable for them, which we'll see, I guess.
https://eng.mil.ru/en/special_operation/news/more.htm?id=12414735@egNews
Yes, the problem is that Russian forces in Ukraine have already suffered serious casualties, and they don't have a strategic reserve ready to deploy. More than 10,000 dead is a lot when you had less than 200,000 troops to start with. Even if they can extract troops from the northern and southern fronts, they have a long way to travel to the new area of operations, and they are already tired and hungry and disillusioned with lost or broken kit.
In addition, there is a rule of thumb "never reinforce failure." The attack from the Donbass has failed, and the attack east of Kharkiv hit its logistical limits a few weeks ago (https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/03/14/the-iron-horse-in-ukraine/). Maaybe they can take Mariupol but that will take a lot of their remaining infantry.
I don't know if that video of police arresting a passer-by trying to give foreign reporters a pro-Putin statement at the Kremlin is authentic, but it would be a complete change in style for Putin to try to put the nation behind his war. And I don't know if that would help before the economy collapses from sanctions or the army collapses from sheer bloody ineptitude and lack of manpower to protect its supply lines and hold the areas it is operating in.
I still have not heard anything about proposals to vastly increase NATO munitions production starting yesterday, so there will probably be a "shell crisis" in the spring unless the Russian army collapses by the middle of April. Some people say the Russians are already running out of guided bombs and missiles.
Edit: and if we want a poem here is one (https://www.bookandsword.com/2019/08/17/good-king-roberts-testament/) ...
On fut suld be all Scottis weire, // weire = Wehr, defense
By hyll and mosse themself to reare. // reare: roar? an earlier edition has weire “defend”
Lat woods for wallis be bow and speire,
That innymeis do them na deire.
In strait placis gar keep all store,
And byrnen ye planeland thaim before.
Thane sall thai pass away in haist
Wenn that thai find na thing but waist.
With wykes and waykings of the nyght // wyke: wake
And mekill noyis maid on hytht, // mekill: big, large
Thaime sall ye turnen with gret affrai, // affray: fright, alarm
As thai ware chassit with swerd away.
This is the counsall and intent
Of gud King Robert’s testiment.
That was how the Crimean Tartars defeated the Russian invasions in 1687 and 1689 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_campaigns_of_1687_and_1689). The Russians have been making the kind of mistakes which you don't need Clausewitz to recognize, you just need a King's Mirror and some folk poetry. "Don't surround yourself with flatterers who say only what they think you want to hear" is autocrat 101, "hope for the best but plan for the worst" is just as fundamental.
-
The war rattles on - pretty hard to tell exactly what's happening in the east, except that it's not happening very fast.
There are some rumours that Russia may soon formally declare war: technically and bizarrely, Russia hasn't done this because it wanted to keep its "special operation" nonsense front up. Declaring war would in legal terms mean the Kremlin can start conscripting to replenish its manpower.
Also, Russia is now in a spat with Israel, a country it nominally didn't have awful relations with, after the Russian foreign minister repeated the libel that Hitler was part-Jewish, and then when Israel's prime and foreign ministers reacted angrily the Russian foreign ministry released a staggeringly anti-Semitic historical-revisionist statement. How To Make Friends And Influence People: Lavrov Edition seems to continue to go badly...
-
There are people compiling daily maps of territorial control in proper resolution (eg. https://nitter.net/Nrg8000 (https://nitter.net/Nrg8000)) and continually updated lists of lost and captured vehicles from open-source intelligence (eg. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html). Its pretty clear that the Ukrainians are pushing back the Russians from Kharkiv, the Russians are making small advances east of Kharkiv but losing equipment fast. There are still no signs that they have dramatically increased the size of their forces in Ukraine, while Ukraine is training several hundred thousand volunteers and reservists and arms are flooding in from the west and south.
After the first week this has been Stellungskrieg not Bewegungskrieg, so its governed by the relative ability of the two sides to reinforce their own troops and destroy the enemy. As I explained in a recent essay (https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/04/30/objectives-in-a-war-on-the-eurasian-steppes/), its been hard to see how Russia could win a war like that since it became clear in March that the Russian military is not better than its opponents. For all the hot air about drones and precision munitions and the design of Soviet armoured fighting vehicles, you can understand this war just fine with Xenophon, Maurice, an atlas, and a good economic history of either World War (plus one A4 sheet of paper with statistics on the countries and armed forces).
A historian of the Eastern Roman Empire is literally going through Emperor Leo's book on generalship from the 10th century and pointing out that the Russians are doing things which Leo says will bring defeat https://nitter.eu/chrysoboullon/status/1513182013825634306#m (https://nitter.eu/chrysoboullon/status/1513182013825634306#m)
-
very interesting Hoover Institute discussion video on Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ09BqDkfWI
a couple of former US 3-star generals on the panel giving interesting commentary
-
I am seeing contradictory claims from Ukrainian officials about when Ukraine will counterattack east of Kharkiv: one source says now, another says in June. A lot probably depends on what weapons and vehicles they get and how fast they can train people to use them. And of course Ukraine has already counter-attacked around Kharkiv to push the Russians out of artillery range of the city centre.
I'm not sure what is happening around Kherson in the south-west, I think the Ukrainians have pushed forward a bit but the rest of the southern front is quiet.
My understanding is that unless Moscow declares war, the current crop of conscripts will be able to return to civil life soon. And the closer that deadline comes, the harder it is to force conscripts to sign on as contractors by promising to make the rest of their time in service hell.
-
The canadian political magazine Maclean's has an interview with a Canadian-Ukrainian (https://www.macleans.ca/longforms/a-soldiers-story-from-canada-to-ukraine/) who went from the Canadian Army Reserve, to signing on to play professional soccer in Ukraine, to the International Legion, to the Territorial Defense
He had the impression that the Ukrainian government saw the International Legion more as something to use in propaganda ("we have x volunteers from y countries helping us against the Russian fascists") than in combat. He felt that the training was very basic and seemed designed not to weed anyone out.
I hadn’t been at the Yavoriv base long, though, when I realized the International Legion wasn’t all it was hyped up to be. A lot of people had taken up President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for help, but that didn’t translate into a capable fighting force. Some of the guys lacked the mental discipline to be soldiers. There would be a drill, for instance, and they would take their time putting on their shoes and getting dressed. At a boot camp for Canadian reserves, they would have been punished for that.
They weren’t receiving the kind of training—the yelling and breaking people down—that scares away people who lack the mental toughness to operate in a war zone. This training seemed designed to give them just enough basic skill that commanders could throw them into the fight. We did some physical training and some offensive and defensive tactical manoeuvres, and that was about it. Most of the volunteers seemed to think they were there on some kind of adventure vacation. I was skeptical they would ever be ready.
Gwynne Dyer is past his prime, but he does have the interesting observation that post-Soviet Russia is still run by former Communist officials (https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-hard-to-predict-what-russia-will-become-without-putin). So its hard to tell which parts of their troubles are inherent in the Russian state, and which parts are specific Communist dysfunctions. The oligarchs are not exactly savoury, and Kamil Galeev is suspicious of Russian 'opposition leaders' and emigrants with lots of money.
-
Its been hard to follow the Russia-Ukraine war since fighting focused on the eastern front. Now that most of the fighting is artillery exchanges and attacks on Ukrainian fortifications, not so many photos and videos come in to the public domain to let us test UA and RU statements. I am skeptical of Ukrainian claims about how many of their soldiers are dying or how much more artillery the Russians have given that its in their interest to look like they need help. Three general observations:
- Russia is engaging in WW I style offensives against prepared positions and can't cut off a 30 km wide salient. Nathan Russer has stopped providing daily maps because the lines hardly move. 'Success' in operations like this is inflicting more damage than you suffer and I don't know who is doing better in that respect.
- Ukraine has mobilized its population, Russia still relies on volunteers and peacetime levels of conscription. Among other things, Russian soldiers have many procedural ways to avoid the war as long as they are under peacetime law.
- Ukraine is receiving a flood of arms and supplies, Russia is isolated and had an economy which heavily depended upon imported goods
So just like in March, Ukraine's long-term prospects are much better than Russia's. The next important event will probably be a big Ukrainian offensive in August or September. If I had to guess I would predict it will be in the south where Russian forces are spread thin, farther from their supplies, and have not entrenched for eight years.
Edit: the other significant event would be action by non-belligerent powers to allow Ukraine to export grain from Odessa before people who need it starve
Edit: on 7 July, Russian forces announced an operational pause to rest and recuperate. So Russia now states that it is unable to continue its last offensive in Ukraine https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-7
Edit: also, for the past several months shell-dumps in occupied Ukraine (https://kyivindependent.com/national/1234), Belarus, and Russia have been exploding. A lot of Russians and Donbas 'volunteers' will have died in those blasts, and equipment will have been destroyed. So its hard to tell who is losing soldiers and equipment faster, just that Ukraine is almost certainly getting new equipment and recruits faster.
-
The new chain that replaced McDonalds in Russia has run out of fries due to a potato shortage, reportedly, which doesn't suggest wonders for how Russia's wartime economy is doing.
I think you're probably right that a counteroffensive towards Kherson is most likely, though they could try to push a wedge along the northeastern border from Kharkiv with the aim of cutting off and collapsing the morale of the Russian armies that have been pushing through the Donbas. Either way, I think there's probably a sense of urgency for the Ukrainians, since there's probably a reasonable medium term fear of EU/US support weakening in the medium term due to the economic pain it's causing.
-
I know, that i must not write in this topic, but i want to say one thing. Because of difficult world situation, "russian" became like "enemy" for many people. I am russian\half-ukrainian. And after this war, i started to be deleted from many my friends in Discord and other platforms. I was deleted from several channels because of it. Because of nothing.
And i don`t know how to be now. I don`t want to be like enemy for many my western friends and for friends, who are from Europe and USA. I am more "western" guy, and always was. I respect Britain and respect european way to life. I respect Queen Elizabeth. And will do it. But i am not the enemy, really
-
I'm sorry, that's tough. :/ I know quite a few Russian friends who are against the war (or who are somewhat justifiably too nervous to say either way). I do think people have to have some balance in how they see Russia: there is no plausible solution to current crises that doesn't involve a large Russian state still existing. Even if big chunks of non-ethnically-Russian areas split off, the core European state is far from tiny. So we have to nurture the idea that Russia can be better than it is right now, not just assume that everyone and everything about Russia is irredeemable, in my view.
I think the cautious side of my brain on this does say that Russia, like many countries in the slow process of losing their Empires, has a lot to unlearn about how most Russians (even more liberal/urban ones) tend to see the world and the countries around them. Even the Russian opposition are fairly chauvinist about the country's ethnic minority groups: there's a lot of change that's needed. But that change has to come from Russians who want a more outward-looking, freer country, and I know a good number of such people are out there.
Anyhow, sorry things have been rough for you around this: do know that you're always welcome here.
-
, sorry things have been rough for you around this: do know that you're always welcome here.
Yeah, thank you, Jubal. But the situation is really hard. I don`t know how to be now. I don`t want to be a pariah for other people, because i have russian blood (50%). I hope, people from Discord will understand the truth in future.
-
Hi Bagatur,
I am not good at talking about these things. One of the utterly predictable results of Putin's war has been a wave of nationalism and xenophobia and binary thinking. There has not been a lot of help for the Russians who fled to Georgia or Turkey or Kazakhstan and found that their credit cards did not work any more. Many of the Russians who are dying are just poor boys from rural districts whose parents did not have money or connections to keep them out of the army, and Russians in Russia have to make hard choices. There are too many soft people making hard talk on social media who will never face any consequences for their talk.
I am analyzing the war as a war because that is an area of my expertise. I can't moralize any better than anyone else, and I can't comment on the background to the war any better than anyone who reads newspapers.
...
Aside from attacking Kherson, I think the Ukrainian army may well strike south between the Dniepr and the Don to try and liberate the areas which have very little Russian military presence and threaten or break the land route from the Don to Crimea. I think there are rivers between Kharkiv and the first railroad in Russian-occupied territory, and crossing a river against someone with artillery, tanks, and aircraft is hard.
-
Here is one take on the (Russian language) booklet by Pavel Filatyev, a former Russian paratrooper who was sent into Ukraine from Crimea and left the military and then the country https://nitter.net/ChrisO_wiki/status/1560022545356791810#m
Kyiv Independent has a story about a section of the International Legion which seems to be run by a Polish gangster https://kyivindependent.com/investigations/suicide-missions-abuse-physical-threats-international-legion-fighters-speak-out-against-leaderships-misconduct
We will see when the Ukrainians try a major ground offensive. But even on these days when there is nothing meaningful to report, a lot of people are dying and a lot of homes are being ruined.
-
One good point I have seen is that since 1939, the formula for a successful ground offensive begins "get air superiority." By spotting and striking targets deep behind the lines, the attacker pins the defenders in place, overwhelms some of them, and breaks through. But in the Russo-Ukrainian War, neither side has air superiority: the Ukrainians don't have enough planes and the Russians have trouble using theirs. That is one reason why so much of this war proceeds at a World War I pace, and why the Ukrainians were so desperate for weapons to counter Russian artillery (artillery is the cheap, short-ranged way to get the same effect).
-
Hm, yes, that's a fair point.
I saw quite a lot of Ukrainians online being upset at the postive reception of Filatyev's account, I think on the grounds that largely it was attacking the Russian state's incompetence in prosecuting the war, not the moral or legal basis thereof, and there is a difference between "this was wrong because we're too incompetent to achieve it" and "this was wrong because Ukraine didn't deserve to be invaded".
-
On the point about the air superiority war, this is possibly one of the most important developments so far
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1564576972419829764
The ability to rig up the US 'HARM' missiles onto Ukranian Mig-29s in a 'Wild Weasel' configuration.
The Russian doctrine makes massive use of ground-based anti-air defences to prevent enemy air superiority (even more important since the Russian air force itself has been so poor).
The Ukranians had no answer to that... until now. With those HARM missiles, the Russians now have to be very, very careful about turning on their air defence radar.
On a side note, I love the US unofficial 'Wild Weasel' motto - 'YGBSM'.
Short for 'You Gotta Be Sh!ttin Me' - apparently exclaimed by one of the earliest Wild Weasel pilots when it was explained to him that his mission would be flying around deliberately trying to provoke enemy radar into locking onto his plane ;D
-
As someone whose weapons knowledge somewhat peters out after about 1700 if it even gets beyond the middle ages, how does that work? Do they use drones or planes or something in tandem and rely on these missile systems to confuse the Russian radar and make it harder to hit the actual manned aircraft? Or is there something smarter going on?
-
Basically, it becomes a giant game of cat-and-mouse.
The US expends a massive amount of effort on the 'Wild Weasel' or 'SEAD - Suppression of Enemy Air Defences' doctrine.
When they do it, it involves stealth aircraft, massive amounts of jamming and signals interference, both from their long range AWACs style aircraft and 'escort' jammers flying alongside the bombers. Along with a huge range of anti-missile countermeasures like chaff/flares. But of course, these countermeasures and jamming aren't used until *AFTER* the enemy radar have been provoked into activating and locking on.
And the ground-based defences often have to adapt with their own heavy use of decoys, flicking radar on and off to confuse the HARM missiles etc. To which the US then responds by having secondary stealth squadrons 'sneak up' on the air defences when they are hyper focused on a main threat.
How are the Ukrainians doing it with their far more limited resources and non-stealth Mig-29s? I have no idea. I'm pretty sure they'll be doing it very close to their own territory probably at a range where they have plenty of reaction time. Not like the US who operate these missions deep into the heart of enemy air defences.
And yeah, 'Wild Weasel' pilots are considered to have almost lunatic levels of bravery. Hence the 'YGBSM' motto ;D
-
Yes, that does seem like a job that I would rather was done by someone else, all round! Sort of interesting that "power of weapon" is almost superseded by this kind of battlefield information warfare where really trying to scramble and flood their information systems is the primary task and where the arms race is more than in delivering the actual hits.
-
Yep, the information/electronic warfare space is absolutely critical.
"What Air Defence Doing?" has become an internet meme used to taunt Russians about their inability to stop Ukrainian precision strikes behind their lines despite their massive number of anti-air and anti-missile systems.
And the other interesting thing thats emerged in the last few days is the Ukrainian use of wooden decoy HIMARs systems. These things are apparently cruise missile magnets, the Russians are so desperate to destroy them.
It also partially explains how the Russians have so far claimed to have destroyed many more HIMARs systems than Ukraine have been given!
It would also not surprise me one bit if the West was providing extensive targeting assistance for all the high-precision weapons they've supplied.
-
One of the big challenges of mechanized warfare since 1940 is that it has too many 'moving parts.' When infantry companies started to bristle with machine guns and mortars and rifle grenades and submachine guns by 1917, that was not such a big deal, because commanders could think "we send Bravo company to attack that position" and let the grunts work out the details. But commanders now have to manage so many systems on land and air, and if they let any one slide a lot of people can get killed and a lot of irreplaceable equipment can be destroyed (General Sir Rupert Smith remembers that when his armoured division was ordered to the Gulf in 1991, a long list of figures in the government and the crown came to him to privately ask "and we are getting them back right? We can't afford to replace them, you have every working tank engine we could find and Treasury is talking about a peace dividend.") In the middle ages, just being able to use two types of troops together could win battles.
Its easy to make fun of Russian forces for publishing photos of the wrong thing and getting bombed or missiled, but there was the incident a few years ago where a jogging app was leaking where US servicemembers go for runs (which is often around the perimeter of an installation) and the US commander in Afghanistan famously thought that a shared Gmail account was a good way to communicate with his secret lover. If NATO forces fought people with air forces and heavy weapons made after 1990, they would probably make some of the same screwups.
I think that flight trackers show massive numbers of NATO sorties along the borders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and the data they collect is going somewhere.
-
Politico reports that Russia may be facing a severe microchip shortage:
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hunts-western-parts-to-run-its-war-machines/
But not clear how much they might be able to circumvent that via intermediaries like China.
-
Also reports that they are replenishing ammo stocks from North Korea.
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-is-buying-artillery-ammunition-nkorea-report-2022-09-06/
Their main weakness though, and an area where counterintuitively Ukraine actually have a large advantage, is manpower. Ukraine have at best estimates 500,000-750,000 available, the bottleneck for Ukraine is training and equipment.
Russia, on the other hand, still have a large equipment advantage but are struggling to mobilize enough troops.
This also explains a lot about why Ukraine are going for the slow, grinding approach in Kherson. They've created an area North-West of the Dnipro River where they have a huge strategic and logistical advantage, and now their approach seems to be to turn this area into a meat-grinder.
I'm surprised at the number of people who seem to think Ukraine should be pushing Russia out of Kherson faster. If you have established an area where you have such a strong strategic advantage, and your enemy is struggling with troop numbers, then a brutal war of attrition in this area is exactly the right strategy.
-
I'm surprised at the number of people who seem to think Ukraine should be pushing Russia out of Kherson faster.
I suspect that as much as anything that's two groups: one, a group of people who have swallowed the most optimistic UKR propaganda and don't understand that the Russian army, battered as it is, is still quite large and not in such meltdown that they will be walked over with ease. And then a second group of people who are thinking about the strategic but not the operational or tactical level of the war, who are thinking about the need for Ukraine to show ROI to its western backers but not necessarily thinking about the battlefiels consequences of pushing too fast.
In a different area of all this that I hadn't known about before, I was reading that Ukraine's government is pushing a lot of labour law deregulation (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-labour-law-wrecks-workers-rights/), probably hoping to attract foreign investment, but that's the sort of thing that might slow EU accession down because countries like Austria will probably not want places with very very deregulated working rights fully added to the Single Market given the disparities this would create.
-
I'm surprised at the number of people who seem to think Ukraine should be pushing Russia out of Kherson faster. If you have established an area where you have such a strong strategic advantage, and your enemy is struggling with troop numbers, then a brutal war of attrition in this area is exactly the right strategy.
Social media lends itself to emotions and groupthink. In fact, its worse than that, because if you don't keep coming out with hot takes you can get dropped by the feeds. So people who have one or two good insights, like Trent Telenko, get pushed to keep forming and sharing opinions which are not backed by years of study and experience.
I never saw the people who were sure that Ukraine would be defeated in three days, but they may have overcompensated in the other direction.
I think that many people's mental model of war is either a counterinsurgency or a NATO member against a much smaller, poorer state. They are not prepared for something like the Ethiopian Civil War which goes on for years.
Edit: One reason why I don't like 'armchair quarterbacking' is that its easy to think of alternative approaches when you don't have the lives of thousands of soldiers, tens of thousands of civilians, and one of your country's largest cities depending on them. Carrying them out is always the hard part.
-
The other thing I found very curious is that Ukraine telegraphed their Kherson offensive weeks in advance, allowing the Russians to reinforce the area.
Why would they do that!?
Well, what if their goal all along was to lure Russians into this meat-grinder of an area NW of the Dnipro River where Ukraine have such an advantage... and then cut off their logistics and bleed their manpower?
Its definitely one of the issues with this 'social media' led analysis, where there has been an obsession with drawing pretty colors on maps. In this sanitized view of war, it seems that the goal of actually killing as many enemy troops as possible has been too easy to forget.
-
Its definitely one of the issues with this 'social media' led analysis, where there has been an obsession with drawing pretty colors on maps. In this sanitized view of war, it seems that the goal of actually killing as many enemy troops as possible has been too easy to forget.
Tracking territory wasn't a bad way of thinking about the war for the first three months or so, until the Russian retreat from Kyiv and the fall of Mariupol. But then things slowed down and the Ukrainians stopped sharing so many photos and videos because more Russian losses ended up on their side of the lines.
The old German model of Bewegungskrieg and Stellungskrieg is not perfect but its something which journalists could learn in a weekend if they wanted to.
There are lots of clips of Ukrainian airstrikes, dead people, and destroyed vehicles on social media. The Ukrainians seem not to like showing dead soldiers, but not everyone is so respectful.
There seem to be two Ukrainian offensives, one west of the Dniepr and another around Izium in the north-east. Edit: at least this phase of the fighting has moved away from the big cities, so its easier for people to get away when the shells and rockets start to land.
-
There are lots of clips of Ukrainian airstrikes, dead people, and destroyed vehicles on social media. The Ukrainians seem not to like showing dead soldiers, but not everyone is so respectful.
There seem to be two Ukrainian offensives, one west of the Dniepr and another around Izium in the north-east. Edit: at least this phase of the fighting has moved away from the big cities, so its easier for people to get away when the shells and rockets start to land.
Neither side likes to talk about their own losses, and estimates of enemy losses are always questionable, but in pure manpower terms (its unpleasant I know), it looks like the Russia is really struggling to replace their losses far more than Ukraine.
And yeah, this is the bit I find fascinating - the Kherson offensive was very highly telegraphed and gave the Russians ample time to react and reinforce, but this new Kharkiv counterattack was kept very quiet and seems to have achieved a high level of surprise. The main supply line from the Russian border via Izium/Kupyansk is now under serious threat.
The small Ozerne attack was also very revealing - it seemed to be a Ukrainian probe that, when they advanced, they met near-zero resistance! This in a place that was supposed to be an area of Russian strength.
So it seems Ukraine have a dual strategy right now - highly telegraphed meat-grinder in Kherson/Dnipro river area, suck in huge numbers of Russian troops into an area of strategic/logistical disadvantage, then take advantage of the depletion of Russian lines elsewhere to launch lightning-fast strikes on defensive gaps and critical supply routes.
Edit: I've just looked at the rail map, and WOW. Kupyansk is pretty much the rail hub for supplying the entire north-eastern Russian frontline, and a decent chunk of the Donbas too. It looks like Russia have been taken totally by surprise here.
-
I was seeing a very tragic Twitter thread - don't know how accurate of course - about the story of a Nenets man fighting in the Russian army. It seems like they'd be doing even worse for manpower if it wasn't for the fact that minority groups are so utterly driven into the ground by a mix of corruption and environmental devastation that it's a choice between enlistment and starvation. One might also observe that this doesn't seem a very good way to get particularly motivated troops.
-
I think Kamil Galeev said that the only parts of Russia with growing populations are minority regions in the Caucasus and Siberia. The ethnic Russian population is shrinking (and many of them live in Peter or Moscow where the government is scared to conscript soldiers because protests in either city would be hard to handle). Galeev writes like a prophet not a scientist but I am pretty sure he would get basic statistics right.
The Ukrainian Commander in Chief has published an article on the strategic situation and plans for 2023 https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3566404-prospects-for-running-a-military-campaign-in-2023-ukraines-perspective.html I used to hope that the Russian invasion would collapse in spring, but it does seem likely that it will take until at least 2023 to force Russia back to the lines of 24 February and maybe longer in Crimea and the Donbas.
-
Yes, I'm never totally sure what to think of Galeev's work, though I do read it.
Meanwhile in the story of Ukraine's domestic politics, the UN is pushing it to overhaul its disability support systems (https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-62813049) to something more humane. Things like that can affect huge numbers of people but one rarely sees or thinks about them outside one's own country.
-
Reports are that the Russian army has fully collapsed in the Izyum area and the remnants have retreated. Remarkably fast shift in the lines.
-
Yep, this looks pretty bad for the Russians now.
On the one hand, the Kherson meat-grinder continues to chew through Russian depleted manpower at an unsustainable rate.
On the other hand, it looks like Ukraine is finally reaching a critical mass of NATO-trained and equipped troops with enough mobility and coordination to execute lightning-fast strikes, and they are going through Russias poorly trained conscripts east of Kharkiv like a hot knife through butter.
What is a conscript with a rifle, helmet and a week of training supposed to do against programmable artillery shells that can hit a 2m target from 40km away!?
And how badly must Russia be suffering from manpower shortages if it has such poor troops guarding such critical supply lines?
-
Reports are that the Russian army has fully collapsed in the Izyum area and the remnants have retreated. Remarkably fast shift in the lines.
I agree, the collapse of Russian positions in Kharkiv Oblast is stunning (although absolutely typical for a war in the Eurasian steppes). The kit-watchers say that whole classes of donated vehicles have not yet been seen in combat, so the Ukrainians probably still have uncommitted reserves.
The carelessness of Russian commanders with their troops' lives is also absolutely typical, and absolutely counterproductive after the demographic transition.
One future issue is that a number of witnesses seem to think that the non-Tartar Crimeans were reasonably happy becoming part of Russia. Donetsk and Luchansk have been too brutalized and slaughtered for the survivors to feel much any more, but if the Ukrainians do regain Crimea, they may find a lot of people who don't feel like they are being liberated.
-
Ok, found this fascinating passage from John Keegans 'Face of Battle' (related to WWII-style combat)
"There is no such thing as 'getting used to combat'... Each moment of combat imposes a strain so great that men will break down in direct relation to the intensity and duration of their exposure... psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare... Most men were ineffective after 180 or even 140 days. The general consensus was that a man reached his peak of effectiveness in the first 90 days of combat, after that his efficiency began to fall off, and that he became steadily less valuable thereafter until he was completely useless... The number of men on duty after 200 to 240 days of combat was small and their value to their units negligible."
Russias manpower shortage almost certainly means they have been unable to rotate their troops out of combat to recover, whereas Ukraine has had far more capacity to do so.
And here we are, after almost exactly 200 days of this war special military operation, and it seems that Russian morale is pretty close to breaking point.
-
My understanding was that in the 20th century there was a rule of thumb that an army needed 6 to 12 months to create new large combat units. So between August 2022 and next February the Ukrainians will be adding more fully trained units with donated weapons, while Russia tries to scrounge up men and repair Soviet weapons and vehicles. At some point this year or next year the invasion will collapse and then the Ukrainians will focus on the Donbas and Crimea.
-
Russia has now declared "partial mobilisation" which seems to in practice mean "total mobilisation for poor people and ethnic minorities". Can't see that being a good way to get motivated troops who won't surrender.
It does strike me that Russia's modern strategy, essentially apathetic authoritarianism, is historically unusual and possibly a specific post-Soviet thing. Rather than firing up the Imperial core (Russians in Moscow/St Petersburg/core cities), the system specifically relies on them not really caring about the government, in order to avoid criticism of the regime. Most historical states would have taken a far more brutal approach to resistance and simply tried to directly legitimise the appropriations of the elite, whilst modern Russia has never really tried to shove them in people's faces (which arguably dates back to making the Soviet case for imperial legitimacy, and also may stem from a general fear of popular revolution and unrest in the mindset of modern Russian elites where those in other countries would try to tough it out). In Putin's Russia there has been, I think, some sense that building a hyper-neo-Imperial ideology would be dangerous and hard to control, the Communist ideological case is no longer in play, so there's nothing much there except the stability of utter inertia. You can't build an empire that the Imperial core doesn't see the use of and isn't prepared to die for, and Putin seems to be finding that out the hard way.
-
One symptom is that the ethnic Russian population is rapidly shrinking while the minorities are expanding. In a traditional empire, it would be the reverse: people in the centre get extra calories and servants from the periphery, so they raise more children, and minorities try to assimilate to get privileges.
My understanding is that Russia no longer has any of the systems in place to turn previous classes of conscripts into armies. They don't have empty barracks or spare uniforms or skeletons of military units ready to fill out. The people who could train and organize their new armies are fertilizing sunflowers. They are already using tanks from the 1960s and rifles and machine guns from the 1890s. And a steppes winter is coming. This is self-destructive ignorant stupidity.
The Ethiopian government tries this a year or two ago and had some success, but they actually trusted some of their people and they were facing rebels with a lot of former soldiers in their ranks not a middle-income state. And the message was "come defend the capital from the Tigray invaders" not "go into a foreign land and fight our little brothers."
Edit: just to give an example, if you don't have night-vision equipment and training to use it, Special Forces will come and kill you in the night. I can't imagine that someone who had bad training 20 years ago will be able to make Soviet air defense systems deal with drones and HIMARS. If they had started recruiting their new armies in March like Ukraine, they might have had something useful.
-
In a traditional empire, it would be the reverse: people in the centre get extra calories and servants from the periphery, so they raise more children, and minorities try to assimilate to get privileges.
I'm not sure how universally true this is? Generally I'd expect that a central Imperial population with increasing living standards might lead to a drop in births because more children survive to adulthood and the utility of having children for labour purposes is lower. And it varies how assimilation works: assimilation may often be desirable for outside groups, but as this stretches resources for the central population and deprives the Imperial state of cheaper auxiliary manpower there may be significant countervailing pressures against that happening.
-
Offhand, its true for the Achaemenid Empire and the Roman empire. Philip of Macedon tried to implement it but then his heir got hasty.
James C. Scott has several books on this in Highland Southeast Asia in recent times. States settle people from the metropolis in environmentally unsuitable areas to drown the indigenous populations and their hard-to-govern ways of life.
Edit: Because it might not be clear, when we talk about "raising" children we mean that Babylonans, Romans, and especially Greeks normally abandoned infants they could not feed (https://www.bookandsword.com/2021/12/04/child-abandonment-in-greek-and-roman-egypt/) (for the Babylonians see here (https://www.bookandsword.com/2020/05/30/where-did-ancient-slaves-come-from/)). They might die of exposure, be eaten by wild animals, or be enslaved. A key constraint on the number of children a family could bring to adulthood was the cost of enough food and clothing that they had a good chance of surviving childhood diseases. From the patriarch's perspective, the decision was how many children to raise (women probably had their own thoughts but they did not write our sources).
Edit edit: the Indo-European expansion and the Germanization of the Western Roman Empire are two other good examples where the new bosses did not need a state to breed and assimilate themselves into a majority in a few hundred years.
Edit edit edit: the only counter-examples I can think of are where the burden of military service prevents families from reproducing themselves (such as probably the Neo-Assyrian empire and possibly the later Roman republic). But post-Soviet Russia very empathetically does not require a heavy burden of military or civil service from the ethnic Russian population, it robs them of money but is frightened to conscript too many of them (before this war Russia was trying to transition to a completely contract military and end conscription).
-
Looking at the demographics of this.
Russias birth rate plunged in the late 1980s and didn't pick up again until around 2010. This means there is a SERIOUS shortage of males of 'effective' military age (18-35) in Russia.
Sending them with minimal training and decrepit equipment into a battle against NATO weaponry is likely to be a slaughter. Even if they win with sheer weight of numbers, the casualty count will be horrifying.
If they are rushed into battle in logistic-depleted areas such as NW of the Dnipro river, Ukraine continue to hammer their supply lines and a harsh winter kicks in, the weather itself could kill off significant numbers of them.
The long-term demographic (and hence economic/cultural etc) impact of this on Russia has the potential to be massive.
-
All what happens now - is REAL madness. Its a total ahniliation.
Friends, thank you all here for support the truth!
-
Russia has, as expected, announced it will annex Zaporizhizhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk, on the basis of its fake referendums there.
-
Seeing videos of Russian camps being captured - the primitive equipment, squalor and lack of basic discipline is just astonishing.
Plastic sheets for tents, some troops wearing civvy clothes like trainers or what look like spray-painted bicycle helmets, faeces unburied, no defensive holes or trenches, alcohol and even drug paraphernalia scattered around.
This might be almost funny now, but as winter sets in, this chaos will become deadly.
Especially if Ukraine keep up the intensity of the logistical interdiction (18 additional HIMARS incoming, perfect for that job).
I keep seeing reports suggesting that winter will favour Russia as it will hinder mobility. I disagree very strongly with this. With such poor training and logistics, and assuming the West ensures Ukraine has all the winter kit it needs, these Russian conscripts are going to have a hellishly difficult time even surviving the elements, let alone surviving contact with NATO weaponry.
-
The current Schwerpunkt in the north-east seems to be a town called Lyman which is currently in Russian hands but almost surrounded by Ukrainian troops. It fell to Russia on 27 May per Wikipedia.
My understanding is that Putin's generals pulled a Herman Goering and stripped their training facilities of equipment and personnel for the front. And they got rid of their system for turning former conscripts back into military units in the 1990s. If I understand right, Russian basic training is mostly for the senior recruits to terrorize and rob the junior ones, and most training happens inside units (former general Mark Hertling / WaPo (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/putin-recruits-flee-russia/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=wp_opinions&utm_medium=social)).
I've seen a claim that Axis forces in North Africa did not bother to bury their waste, and that this was one of their logistic problems. The guy in the hospital with dysentry still needs food and medicine.
A lot of Russian bunkers so far look pretty flimsy (probably meant to stop shell fragments and light mortar bombs not direct hits from something heavy). I don't know how practical it is to build deep bunkers in northern Ukraine during the rasputitsa, even if you have tools and training (can you dig deep enough into the clay soil that they don't flood?). Flimsy bunkers will be cold and wet soon.
A lot of Russians are going to die because of Putin's pride.
Edit: Ukrainian forces have been showing off HIMARS projectiles loaded with tungsten-steel balls rather than one big charge of high explosives or hundreds of cluster munitions https://nitter.ca/UAWeapons/status/1575843498217144321#m I'm not sure whether they airburst like a shrapnel shell, but I suspect so, the US has money for miniature radar sets (or just use Harry Shrapnel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Shrapnel)'s original timed fuse!).
-
Edit: Ukrainian forces have been showing off HIMARS projectiles loaded with tungsten-steel balls rather than one big charge of high explosives or hundreds of cluster munitions https://nitter.ca/UAWeapons/status/1575843498217144321#m I'm not sure whether they airburst like a shrapnel shell, but I suspect so, the US has money for miniature radar sets (or just use Harry Shrapnel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Shrapnel)'s original timed fuse!).
Yes. Those things are NASTY. Enemy troops and soft targets get torn to shreds.
Test video from Lockheed Martin showing their capabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5h7BkCj5rI
Again, these things are accurate to within a couple of metres from 40+ miles away. What the hell is an untrained conscript with ancient equipment supposed to do against these?
On a slightly different note, an interesting interview with a captured Russian solider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l2FgTr4fUw
-
Ukraine will not be conscripting a new class of soldiers this fall, although it will keep the current conscripts in service https://kyivindependent.com/uncategorized/zelensky-cancels-autumn-conscription-postpones-demobilization That says a lot about what impact they think the Russian mobilization will have for the next six months. (Yes, if they had more kit they might raise more units, but if they were short of soldiers they would keep raising them).
Russia continues its terror strikes against gatherings of civilians rather than saving its missiles for the Ukrainian army.
The Russian army is fighting hard and has plenty of brave people but their leaders put them in a very bad situation.
Edit: Perun the vlogger has an essay on Ukraine's shortage of heavy equipment (armoured vehicles, tube artillery) at the start of August and how captures and donations had not tripled Ukraine's heavy equipment to match its tripled army strength https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=cVx3Nlifo4Q He mentions the same thing I noticed earlier that without air superiority its hard for Ukraine to mass large forces for counterattacks without getting bombed and shelled until they scatter.
-
Ukraine has reportedly captured the railway junction city of Lyman after surrounding it and cutting off the Russian garrison.
-
Ukraine has reportedly captured the railway junction city of Lyman after surrounding it and cutting off the Russian garrison.
There have been a lot of contradictory stories out of Lyman but we will see how many Russians were able to withdraw and what they could bring with them.
Per the Guardian, Ramzan Kadyrov the podestà* of Chechnia is publicly calling for the Russians to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
* "strongman" sounds better in the original Italian doesn't it? Just like the Russian "national community" in Putin's latest speech is a Volksgemeinschaft in the original German.
-
Hm, the medieval podestà was usually a foreigner rather than a native (precisely to avoid them having a pre-existing bias between factions within a city) - so Kadyrov doesn't quite fit the bill normally referred to by that term, on account of being an actual Chechen. I can't really think of a modern equivalent to that particular practice.
-
The Ukrainians are pushing towards Kreminna (the next road / rail junction after Lyman) and along the west / right bank of the Dniepr towards Kherson. Somewhere in Donetsk too. Apparently Putinist Telegram is a mix of silence, panic, and rumours about high-tech BTUs, "new tactics that the enemy was not ready for," (https://nitter.ca/wartranslated/status/1576570973830402053#m) and how spirit can overcome superior weapons.
Part 2 on strongmen coming when I have energy.
-
Elon Musk has reportedly weighed in suggesting Ukraine should come to terms with Russia including neutrality and returning Crimea. Twitter folks have observed that it's not clear whether the bit he empathises with Russia over is having a lot of very expensive vehicles embarrassingly break down when they weren't meant to, or having a recent major takeover bid fail very dramatically.
More seriously: reports are that a Ukrainian armour column has broken through Russian lines northeast of Kherson, so recapturing land there is still happening, though the Russians do seem to be putting up some resistance, we're not getting the speed of the Kharkiv rout at this point (possibly Russia has better troops in place in the south). The aforementioned strongman, Kadyrov, has apparently committed to send several of his children, including ones under any reasonable age for combat, to the front lines. It isn't really clear what the logic here is.
-
The southern region is made of open fields and plains, whilst the northern region is heavily forested. Apparently this is a large part of why Ukraine has had more success in the north, as their infantry can move under cover and undetected, whereas around Kherson it is very difficult to hide troop movements so any counter-offensive is bound to be more of a gruelling push.
-
Makes sense - though I guess when a line breaks on open plains, it may be harder to roll it back to another spot? Having the Dnipro behind the Russians I guess is a large natural obstacle though, and they'll be dug into the towns.
-
The southern region is made of open fields and plains, whilst the northern region is heavily forested. Apparently this is a large part of why Ukraine has had more success in the north, as their infantry can move under cover and undetected, whereas around Kherson it is very difficult to hide troop movements so any counter-offensive is bound to be more of a gruelling push.
Kherson is also where Russia moved a lot of their best troops in response to Ukraines highly telegraphed announcement that it would be the focus of their attacks, leaving east of Kharkiv outside Izyum/Lyman defended by the dregs.
In addition, the Ukraine army is still a weird mish-mash of poorly trained 'territorial defence' units, Soviet-era troops and highly mobile NATO-trained/equipped units. It seems Ukraine were able to form new units for the Kharkiv counterattack consisting mainly of these NATO-style units, and they met feeble resistance except in the large towns of Izyum/Lyman, which they simply bypassed and surrounded.
The big advantage Ukraine have in Kherson is their almost total severing of the Dnipro river crossings, leaving Russian troops there starved of supplies. I would guess this is now starting to bite, especially with autumn/winter weather kicking in.
And if the Russians do try to withdraw from Kherson, that river will become a nightmare, especially for heavy equipment.
-
Ahh I see. Iiirc there were reports of quite a few explosions in Russian munition stores/supply centres in Crimea, do we know if these are acts of saboteurs already living in the area or strikes by the Ukrainian military?
-
I think some of the Territorial Defense are pretty mobile, but they have mostly civilian vehicles, sometimes with mounted weapons to make them 'technicals'. Ukraine would like more Infantry Fighting Vehicles so its infantry can move more safely in environments with artillery or machine gun fire, but tanks and IFVs are the two categories which the chancellor of Germany has refused to send. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/09/fact-sheet-on-german-military-aid-to.html
Don't know why people keep giving narcissists with social media accounts attention.
Ahh I see. Iiirc there were reports of quite a few explosions in Russian munition stores/supply centres in Crimea, do we know if these are acts of saboteurs already living in the area or strikes by the Ukrainian military?
I think that Ukraine has been quiet about how it is causing things in Crimea to go boom and Russia insists its just aircraft accidents and misplaced smoking. I would expect there are Ukrainian special operations troops in Crimea or at least on the mainland opposite.
-
I didn't mean to sound negative about the territorial defence guys btw, they and the 'old-school' regular army were absolutely essential in blunting the initial Russian blitz. Their defensive actions (eg around Bakhmut, fighting off constant assaults for 200+ days) have been nothing short of heroic.
By 'mobility' I'm not just talking about the speed of the vehicles. I'm talking about having the integrated logistics, comms/coordination and speed of decision making to perform high-tempo combined-arms attacks over multiple days or even weeks. This is where the NATO training and equipment gives a serious advantage over the Russians.
The Russian command structure simply hasn't been able to keep up with the sheer tempo of the recent Ukraine counterattacks. Hence Russian units constantly being unreinforced, surrounded and cut off.
-
Sure, "three SUVs full of volunteers speed through a gap in the Russian lines and drive around looking for convoys to shoot up" is a different kind of mobility than "three brigades systematically envelop a town."
I think a big part of the Russian problem has been a lack of troops. Even if their commanders were clever and had a way to communicate with everyone, there is only so much you can do when your last reserves are dead in the fields outside of Bakhmut or on fire in a train station in Luhansk.
We have not been hearing so much about Russian communication problems as we heard in spring but they must still be an issue.
-
I think a big part of the Russian problem has been a lack of troops. Even if their commanders were clever and had a way to communicate with everyone, there is only so much you can do when your last reserves are dead in the fields outside of Bakhmut or on fire in a train station in Luhansk.
Sure, but that doesn't explain things like the Russian retreats from Izyum/Lyman. In both cases, the slow Russian decision making ended up with panicked routs rather than controlled withdrawals.
In Izyum, they ended donating massive quantities of captured equipment to Ukraine.
And in Lyman, by the time they had made the decision to retreat, Ukraine had artillery fire control over the entire 30km road from Lyman to Kremmina which was the only Russian retreat path. The videos from that road are of utter carnage.
-
There are claims that Putin has issued "not one step back" orders. That might be why Russian forces stayed in Lyman until the only way out was driving a 'highway of death.'
It is amazing that Russians are still abandoning so much equipment without blowing it up or setting it on fire or melting key parts. Armies have lots of tools to break things, that is kind of their job!
Of course the Russian officers are going to blame everything on Putin and his advisors, and Putin and his advisors are going to blame everything on the fighting soldiers and eevil NATO Polish African-American mercenaries. And in 50 years historians will be writing very serious books about how the Russian army can not have been as incompetent as people at the time said.
-
Of course the Russian officers are going to blame everything on Putin and his advisors, and Putin and his advisors are going to blame everything on the fighting soldiers and eevil NATO Polish African-American mercenaries. And in 50 years historians will be writing very serious books about how the Russian army can not have been as incompetent as people at the time said.
Actually, some of the most interesting anecdotes I've seen about Soviet-style decision making are from the Ukrainian side, since they are the ones currently in the process of adapting from Soviet-style to NATO-style command structures.
I saw one very interesting interview with a grizzled old graybeard Ukrainian tanker (I'll see if I can find it) talking about exactly this issue.
How the move to the NATO structure of highly trained NCOs in the frontline tanks, with the junior officers further back coordinating from drone footage etc was initially dismissed by the veteran Soviet-era soldiers as officers being too 'cowardly', but now even the 'old-timers' are total converts.
Edit: Its not just about 'incompetent' leadership either. It sounds like Russian officers are drowning in bureaucracy and can't break wind without permission from their superiors. Even pro-Russia Telegram channels have similar complaints to 'free leaders from bureaucrats'
-
Its hard because everyone sees different things on social media and much of it is someone's propaganda (which does not mean its false, but the Ukranians are not sharing intercepted phone calls where someone says "we massacred a Ukrainian attack today, some of their shells hit a school before counterbattery took them out, we have plenty of ammo"). But there have been a lot of clips of Russian and proxy forces moving in combat like a gang of strangers at their first LARP battle, and they keep making decisions like sending all those troops and equipment at Kyiv then withdrawing them or attacking fixed positions in the Donbas from the front again and again.
Edit: back in March many people believed that many Russian tanks lacked a full crew, which might be one reason why they did not react very fast or had trouble communicating, moving, and shooting at the same time. And shortages of troops lead to things like that second lieutenant killed while commanding a battalion, or the sailors captured at the front lines.
That Perun vlogger pointed out that since September Ukrainian press releases focus on the best equipped, best-trained troops leading the attack and not territorial defense with Kalashnikovs and antitank weapons riding a pickup truck along the Belarusian border.
There also seem to be tensions between the Russian military and the Donbas militias who have even worse kit and even less of a choice to be fighting.
People close to NATO armies usually complain about bureaucracy and a culture of ass-covering. Some of that would probably go away if they were ever in a conventional war against anyone with an air force which lasted more than a few weeks.
-
There are rumours that Russia is sending columns of equipment from Melitopol on the south front west towards the Dniepr. The only crossing of the Dniepr in Russian hands which will support vehicles is supposed to be a damaged dam at Nova Kakhova, so sending even more equipment across the river does not seem like it would help.
Maybe the question "command and control breakdown vs. lack of reserves and impossible commands from Moscow?" is academic, since there is always some way to move people and equipment around to cause the other guy trouble.
-
The irony is that, unlike east of Kharkiv, the Russians in Kherson appear to be withdrawing in relatively good order (probably because Russia sent many of its best troops here).
However, unlike east of Kharkiv, the Russians in Kherson are rapidly running out of areas they can withdraw to, because of the severed Dnipro crossings.
Up until now, Ukraine has only been able to hit those crossings with expensive long-range munitions eg HIMARS rockets. If those crossings come within easy howitzer range, Ukraine can basically keep them under bombardment 24/7.
Rapidly approaching winter is a very, very bad time to have your supply lines cut. And yet withdrawing across the river means many of Russias best units which were deployed to Kherson could end up losing most of their equipment. Decisions, decisions...
Maybe the question "command and control breakdown vs. lack of reserves and impossible commands from Moscow?" is academic, since there is always some way to move people and equipment around to cause the other guy trouble.
I'd be more inclined to consider it an academic question because it is not mutually exclusive. 'All of the above' is the answer I would tick for the overall Russian campaign.
-
At least the fighting in Kherson Oblast is mostly in open countryside so it does not smash up as much as fighting in urban areas.
Mobile warfare will be harder on the mobiks than just sitting in a trench with a machine gun or an antitank weapon or unloading trucks in the same warehouse every day.
Now we see if Ukraine has another division-sized reserve to throw at Zaporozhia Oblast or Donetsk.
-
Well, the Vasco da Gama bridge across the mouth of Portugal's Tagus River may have just regained its status as Europe's longest bridge, on account of a large hole suddenly appearing in the one across the Kerch straits that connect the Crimea with Russia.
-
If I understand correctly, the Kerch Strait bridge is the only rail connection from Russia to the southern front (https://nitter.it/noclador/status/1572389892054831104#m). The railway parallel to the front is in mortar range of Ukrainian troops near Donetsk city, so no trains can pass that point. So as soon as the railway part of the bridge finishes collapsing (and burning out a train of fuel tankers on it will have done damage) the whole Southern Front has no more fuel, no more shells, and no more spare parts in the middle of winter.
A better military than the Russians would have found a way to get a second railroad working, but fortunately they did not. Edit: a state of 150 million people, fighting a war to transform the global order, given six months and a start in its prewar territory should be able to build a 50 mile stretch of railroad!
One of the problems with the Afghanistan War is that Afghanistan has no railways, so all NATO supplies had to be trucked in from Pakistan or flown in from even further. That is expensive (and meant that NATO could never punish Pakistan for letting its intelligence services support the Taliban and Al-Quaida).
-
On the court front, one Ian Bremmer claims that the narcissist wannabe owner of birdsite claimed to have been given his peace proposal in a direct conversation with Vladimir Putin https://nitter.ca/joshtpm/status/1580000350626799616#m https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-knows-kremlins-red-lines-spoke-putin-ukraine-bremmer-1750950
While Russia made Sauruman's choice and learned Saruman's lesson (you can subvert, or you can invade, but its hard to do both) Russian talking points still have a wide reach in right-wing and pseudo-leftist Anglo circles due to a kind of inertia.
-
Has anyone seen much battleground stuff lately? I've mostly been seeing economic warfare reports/suggestions Putin is mostly going to try and hammer Ukraine's energy infrastructure all winter. There's a lot of talk of a further Ukrainian refugee wave into my part of Europe, and I hope governments are making the financial calculations necessary to bring them in.
The problem for Putin in this strategy presumably is that the winter will also be hammering the Russian Army, and probably more so than their better supplied Ukrainian counterparts.
-
Has anyone seen much battleground stuff lately? I've mostly been seeing economic warfare reports/suggestions Putin is mostly going to try and hammer Ukraine's energy infrastructure all winter. There's a lot of talk of a further Ukrainian refugee wave into my part of Europe, and I hope governments are making the financial calculations necessary to bring them in.
The problem for Putin in this strategy presumably is that the winter will also be hammering the Russian Army, and probably more so than their better supplied Ukrainian counterparts.
Nitter is down so I don't have access to birdsite. Its the usual Wagner Group + mobik attack on Bakhmut and Ukrainian propaganda videos emphasizing that many mobiks lack gloves and tarps so are freezing to death in the cold and the wet (https://nitter.net/i/status/1596260785545973760), with the new intensive Russian air attacks on power and transmission sites. I think its confirmed that the Ukrainians have landed special forces on a peninsula east of the Dniepr where they can spot for long-ranged attacks. Trench warfare during the Rasputitsa is not fun, videos are going around of Ukrainian fighting positions full of water.
I don't know when Russia will run out of cruise missiles but probably before spring. Allegedly they have been caught adapting missiles from their Strategic Rocket Force to deliver conventional warheads.
I imagine that sometime in December the ground will have frozen hard enough, and enough heavy equipment will have repositioned from Kherson to east of the Dniepr, that Ukraine launches another big attack either in the north-east to outflank the defenses in the Donbas, or south to put the airbases and train stations in Crimea in HIMARS range. Unless they break through, that will probably be like the Kherson offensive: not a lot of photos and videos which give an overall sense of what is happening just taking village after village and propaganda videos of drone strikes and destroyed vehicles.
-
Oh, another thing I saw recently : there was a talk at the Future and Reality of Games (FROG) conference about the use of game images in Wagner Group etc propaganda on Russian media, which was given by a dissident scholar hiding in Montenegro. It was grimly interesting seeing some of the use of imagery - masks from Hotline Miami used to cover the identities of Wagner Group members (the game is apparently very popular in Russia, and the undertone of putting on the masks to do murder rampages is... disconcerting).
-
Oh, another thing I saw recently : there was a talk at the Future and Reality of Games (FROG) conference about the use of game images in Wagner Group etc propaganda on Russian media, which was given by a dissident scholar hiding in Montenegro. It was grimly interesting seeing some of the use of imagery - masks from Hotline Miami used to cover the identities of Wagner Group members (the game is apparently very popular in Russia, and the undertone of putting on the masks to do murder rampages is... disconcerting).
I think I linked on my blog to an article about an infantryman in the Donbas last winter (https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/03/15/the-power-of-fiction/) who spent his free time playing Call of Duty (or similar). As a medievalist, you can probably see how this is exactly like Conquistadors reading lots of romances.
-
LindyBeige has an interview with a Brit who returned from the International Legion piped (https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4) He survived the attack on the Legion base near the Polish border. At around 45 minutes he describes how the smallarms for a company went missing.
One thing he says is that many veterans of NATO militaries had never learned basic 19th/20th century field skills like finding kindling and building a fire when its cold and wet. And some of those veterans quit after a few days against someone with arty and an airforce. Lt. Col. Nicholas Moran is pontificating about how a corps of Americans could sweep the Russians out of Ukraine in three weeks and while they probably could, a big part of it would be (1) get air superiority with that massive budget. Creating a war of movement against someone with artillery and aircraft is hard. (Moran served in the 2003 conquest of Iraq, but the Americans had so many more resources than the Iraqis that they could make it work; nobody today has a reliable way to spot and shoot down small drones even if lots of militaries are developing defenses)
-
deleted
-
Did not know about the followup talk about kit! It reminds me about my gripe about the reenactment event at Plataea in 2022: one organizer is hardcore for camping, but I was seeing zero research on all the things you need to sort out to live in a field for a week without getting heatstroke or bug bites or diarrhea. At a reenactment the other guy is not trying to kill you like in a war, but the Sun and the dreaded GI are! And most reenactors don't go on multi-week hikes and canoe trips in northern Ontario for fun. My health was not up to attending so I don't know how it worked out.
Any direct US/NATO intervention in Ukraine would most likely involve US/NATO doing what it does best - annihilating conventional forces from afar with overwhelming firepower/accuracy against critical/high-value targets - while relying on the Ukrainian army to finish the job on the ground.
It seems like you are repeating my point that step 1 for Anglo forces in the 1991 and 2003 Iraq wars was gaining total air superiority, and that created the conditions for the ground forces to do spectacular things? If either side in the Russo-Ukrainian war had air superiority they would be doing some impressive things too, but its hard to do those things when whenever you get a few thousand guys together they are spotted and attacked from the air. The US or UK armies could absolutely do even more in the same situation because they have so much more of everything and are better at using it, but even then small drones would make some things hard.
Didn't British forces in Iraq end up pinned in Basra airport and Basra Palace at the pleasure of Muqtada al-Sadr?
-
deleted
-
On the subject of small drones, there are already battlefield solutions emerging which are cheap and logistically simple. Needs must and all that.
I particularly liked this one
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1589638201085657088
Isn't that just a typical 20th century AA setup with 2 or 4 machine guns or 20-40 mm autocannons mounted side by side? I thought that the big problem was spotting the drones in the first place since their sound, visible, heat, and radar signatures are relatively small. Isn't another problem that small-calibre AA has a short range, so even if you can stop drones hovering and dropping grenades on you all night, you may not prevent then from spotting you from a distance and directing artillery at you?
-
deleted
-
Isn't that just a typical 20th century AA setup with 2 or 4 machine guns or 20-40 mm autocannons mounted side by side? I thought that the big problem was spotting the drones in the first place since their sound, visible, heat, and radar signatures are relatively small. Isn't another problem that small-calibre AA has a short range, so even if you can stop drones hovering and dropping grenades on you all night, you may not prevent then from spotting you from a distance and directing artillery at you?
Actually, thats not quite true. The problem is not detecting and shooting down drones - have a read of this.
https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/survivability_of_uavs_on_the_battlefield_in_ukraine-5007.html
It looks like that site is summarizing an Economist article which is summarizing https://static.rusi.org/359-SR-Ukraine-Preliminary-Lessons-Feb-July-2022-web-final.pdf I notice that the Economist quotes the claim that the Russians were firing 10 times as many shells as the Ukrainians in the Donbas which seems to be a Ukrainian claim from when they were begging for HIMARS and tube artillery. And its a good idea in general to ignore people's claims about the enemy's strength and losses.
There is a big problem that anti-aircraft missiles were priced to kill manned fighters, but isn't there also a problem that older RADAR systems were designed to detect things massing in tons not kilos and with lengths of 5 to 15 metres not 50 to 150 cm? And the same for other sensors, its just easier to spot a giant aircraft with huge jet engines than a little quadcopter.
Edit: and if a brigade of tanks is driving along a road in artillery range of the bad guys, and a drone spots them and transmits their location, that is bad news even if the drone is shot down 5 seconds later!
-
This British perspective on countering unmanned aerial vehicles in the RUSI booklet is interesting:
Countering UAS (unmanned aerial systems, British lingo for UAVs) has proven no less important across all domains. For land forces, tactical sub-units must first have a means of detecting the presence of hostile UAS. Frontages must be covered by the means of defeating enemy UAS. Defeating UAS does not mean kinetically destroying them. It simply means denying the UAS the ability to achieve its mission. This could be done through the dazzling of sensors, or denial of navigation or control. The most efficient protection against UAS is EW (electronic warfare) and ensuring that electronic attack and electronic protection is available at all echelons.
There is, nevertheless, a need for kinetic defeat of some kinds of UAS, especially those penetrating operational depth to conduct target acquisition or loitering munitions. It is highly inefficient to have dedicated CUAS batteries in addition to air-defence batteries. Nevertheless, the munitions that air and missile defence batteries employ do not make CUAS missions economical. The answer must be the provision of intermediate munitions that can draw on the common air picture and guidance available to air-defence units but without the cost associated with munitions that must catch and defeat more complex targets. Point defence for critical sites is also an enduring requirement given the ability for long-range UAS to fly below the radar horizon on complex pre-programmed routes and thereby reach static targets in operational depth.
I would have thought a few 7.62 mm machine guns were more cost-effective than a complex jammer (and things like that attract anti-radiation missiles don't they? And you should be able to program these to fly home if they lose contact with control or whatever the Russian equivalent of GPS is - GLONASS?) but the warfare I understand is with spears and bows.
The other scary thing is that a Ukrainian company of 100-150 guys and gals often has to defend 3 km of front because if they get closer together, precision munitions start dropping on their heads. I don't know if that is a section here, a section there or what. The fact that eastern Ukraine is pretty flat, so one machine gun or rocket launcher can cover a lot of that front, must help.
-
This BBC piece from different analysts said pretty much what I'd expect - some analysts think Ukraine will win on the battlefield in 2023, others think the conflict will last longer & until one side blinks on the economic & war support side.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63987113
-
It does seem that the mobiks, plus the Rasputitsa, slowed the collapse of Russian positions east of the Dnieper. And like I said, in Stellungskrieg its hard to know which side is gaining in relative strength and which side is declining, because nobody reports their own reinforcements and losses accurately and nobody knows the other guy's. The guys and gals in the trenches can get a sense "they are shelling us more / less than last week" but sometimes that is because they are firing off their stockpiles before they withdraw, or saving ammunition and moving their artillery for the big offensive next week.
It would be interesting to know what the Ukrainians were thinking when they chose not to call up a class of recruits. Are they struggling to train the ones they already have to the level they want? Or do they think putting more bodies on the front lines would just give the Russians more targets when the current thinly manned lines can hold out?
Edit: the winter hard-ground season is just starting in the south, and it has two months to go. So really nobody knows when either side will launch a new offensive.
-
Had to edit the thread title to bring another year into the picture.
Also, besides the sad news of the deaths of the Ukrainian Interior ministers in a helicopter crash, there's also the recent news that Germany thinks it's managed to achieve energy independence from Russia according to the right-liberal leader & finance minster Lindner:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64312400
This may embolden German leaders to support Ukraine without worrying as much about domestic pressure.
-
Perun has a theory of how offensives work on the very low density battlefield in most parts of Ukraine with vast numbers of drones and guided munitions: secretly gather your forces, throw a few companies or a battalion's worth of troops against one of the areas where one company is holding 3 km of front, then scatter or entrench before too many explody things start falling out the sky
https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=UGZi-F3tz-o&t=2595
Edit: I am starting to think that the Ukrainian position on recruits is "its not 1915 and we don't have a massive fertile peasant population, to win this war we want a small well-equipped force that can attack and not lose too many people doing it." Supposedly the defenders of Bakhmut are mostly Territorial Defense militia, so the rest of the army is in the rear doing something. And supposedly the International Legion stopped accepting volunteers without combat experience (not just military experience?)
-
Yes, it very much looks like Ukrainian war doctrines are converging with NATO ones, in essence: smaller, mobile, flexible forces with good training and kit and officers who get a relative amount of battlefield freedom.
And it also looks like Ukraine will finally get some western tanks, as well, after long delays from Germany.
-
I expanded my earlier comments on why its hard to understand this phase of the war here (https://www.bookandsword.com/2023/02/25/the-epistemology-of-stellungskrieg-and-bewegungskrieg/).
I don't see any good way to judge the two sides' relative rates of gain and expenditure of vehicles or ammunition, but I think its pretty clear that the Ukrainian forces have plenty of troops (no more conscription, rejecting most foreign volunteers), that the Russians are short of them (rushing conscripts into combat, sending naval crews into ground combat, recruiting from prisons, press ganging the Donbas), and that Ukraine is getting increasingly effective equipment while the Russians are falling back on older and older equipment. About the only area they are improving is drones and Iran and North Korea are not high-tech industrial powerhouses. You can debate who will run out of shells or AFVs first but I think the personnel situation is clear.
Russia has done a lot of damage to the Ukrainian power grid but not shut it down and so many Ukrainian arms come from outside the country.
Some apologists for Russian failures seem to take the absence of the Russian air force for granted, when we have 30 years of wars in Iraq, former Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria to show how a power with a capable air force uses it against a mid-sized country with Soviet air defense equipment. If Russia had air superiority over the front lines, this would be a very different war, but instead they mostly keep their aircraft on their side of the lines and just send drones, rockets, and missiles across. Small drones are cheap but they carry kilos not tons of munitions!
Edit: Oberst Markus Reisner of the Austrian Army has been impressed by Russian ability to disengage troops from Kyiv and Kherson and redeploy them to other fronts. https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=EnVMJGrNqAY One reason this war is hard to follow is that the forces on each side are so varied, so you can always point to someone on your side who is doing well and has nice kit and someone on their side who is fumbling around with grandpa's rifle.
-
News of today seems to be the Wagner group all but alleging that the army higher ups are stitching them up to scapegoat them for war failures: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64859780
I do wonder if the end of the Russian war effort could be a very dramatic implosion rather than a grinding negotiated peace.
-
Perun also wonders if the endless bloody attacks on Bakhmut are Wagner's attempt to win a conspicuous victory and get more support within the oligarchy. Their current configuration is better at bite-and-hold offensives than breakthroughs: lots of infantry and artillery, fewer armoured vehicles or aircraft.
The Russian Ministry of Defense is also trying to take control of recruitment in prisons from Wagner. And miscellaneous actors such as Gazprom are being granted the right to raise their own security forces (technically, its illegal to form a private military company in Russia: Wagner is a "management consulting firm")
Because sometimes people complain to get more resources, and sometimes they hide their difficulties, its hard to tell who is barely holding on and who is doing OK but wants more weapons. I'm suspicious of the people who are sure that the war is stalemated too although it could happen. Things would be a lot easier if Germany had just handed over a thousand or so Marders and 500 Leopard tanks last fall from their parks of mothballed vehicles.
-
What's the reasoning behind setting up private/semi-private security forces? I get that Wagner had been useful for influencing foreign wars without officially using Russian troops, but what's the benefit of setting up private armies? Does this indicate that Putin wants political actors who can provide some kind of check to the official military, or that he's unable to prevent them forming these armies? Are they somehow useful in a way the army aren't?
-
Perun has a few talks about PMCs and Wagner https://piped.mha.fi/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=hx5mTslkUBs
In their early stage they seem to have been another way for Prigozhin to make money, for Putin to balance the Ministry of Defense, and for the Russian state to unofficially intervene in other countries. But since the start of the war they ballooned from a few hundred or a few thousand men with light weapons and small vehicles to tens of thousands with tanks and sophisticated aircraft. Much of that increase is convicts serving six-month terms, so its not sustainable. But it still added to the Ministry of Defense's limited ability to take in, equip, and train recruits.
Previously Putin got rid of most local security forces and replaced them with Rosguardia (so a governor in Siberia can't have his own guards any more, they come from the federal government and if Putin has a problem with someone they won't protect him). Maybe he thinks that PMCs are safer because they are technically illegal. It still seems like he is not living in the same world I am living in, so its hard to interpret his thinking.
-
Yeah, I think there's a difference to be considered between Wagner and other private military groups here.
Why Wagner? I think mainly because they're too big to fail - the Russians needed them because they had combat-hardened ground troops at the start, now they've ballooned in size and Putin can't risk cutting them loose, they're serious political players in Russia. Prigozhin would probably happily stab Putin in the back if he could become president and seems to be positioning to do a "stabbed in the back" mythos where the corrupt generals failed to give the brave Wagner company weapons and the ability to win, so that if/when everything goes even more to armadillo and the war is lost he can claim only he was really trying to win for Russia and appeal to the Imperialist-hardliners and tell the Russian citizens that their sacrifices should not have been in vain (which is always a comforting thing to believe when someone is selling it to you).
So given Wagner is becoming a problem, why let other companies start recruiting? My guesses would be something like -
- It counterbalances Wagner and indeed also the army: anyone thinking of turning an army back around against Putin has more roadblocks to deal with if, say, other companies run by Putin cronies may be waiting with guns.
- The legality issue means they can be cut loose more easily if any of them go rogue than is true of the army proper.
- There's probably demand for it from Putin's cronies: the worry of a civil war if things go south must be on people's minds and they don't want to risk being steamrollered. Putin may be buying support by allowing this to happen.
- Deniability in war situations and better press. If Ukraine bombs a military generator system run by the army, that's one thing. But what if it's a "civilian" generator operated by armed Gazprom troops that just happens to be sometimes responding to military demand? Much easier to generate support that way.
- I wonder if there's any dodging import restrictions involved here? A country or institution could nominally sanction and refuse to sell microchips to the Russian military and Wagner but still sell them to "civilian Russian companies" under a certain level of deniability. I think most western countries wouldn't sell to Russia regardless, but it's the kind of thing I could see appealing to the Chinese way of doing business (to the extent that I understand it, which honestly I really don't).
-
Meanwhile a fair amount of Iranian ammunition has been seen in Ukrainian hands, and there are debates whether this is all arms for Yemen or Lebanon intercepted by NATO + Israeli forces, or whether someone in Iran is selling arms to someone who passes them on to Ukraine. Ukraine Weapons Tracker leans towards the second theory but its basically a judgement call https://nitter.net/UAWeapons/status/1631388286248689680#m
-
Russians are being told that the British are eating squirrels in order to be able to afford the Ukraine war effort, which is the sort of take that if we weren't talking about a massive brutal war with enormous geopolitical repercussions would be delightfully quirky.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/russian-propagandist-britain-squirrels-olga-skabeeva/
Meanwhile a fair amount of Iranian ammunition has been seen in Iranian hands
You mean Ukrainian. I think?
-
Meanwhile a fair amount of Iranian ammunition has been seen in Iranian hands
You mean Ukrainian. I think?
Yes, typo fixed.
I'm told that Israel is providing substantial military aid and information to Ukraine in private without denouncing the Russian government in public. And Russian propaganda videos can show T-90s rolling off the assembly line, but not what parts had to be substituted because of sanctions (or which they can only get by evading sanctions). So we can play fantasy football if we want, but we really don't know how fast either side is generating and losing weapons and troops.
It also seemed that last year, some public statements by NATO officials that Ukraine was too ambitious might have been part of the attempt to deceive the Russians into sending troops to Kherson before the Ukrainians attacked east of Kharkiv. Hard to interpret!
Edit: A Russian outfit at https://nofuture.press/klub-24/ (link is dead to me) supposedly (https://nitter.net/ChrisO_wiki/status/1634677247448686592?cursor=EwAAAPAEHBkWgsC-9YaTxa8tJQISFQQAAA#r) reported that a group of Russian conscripts from Volgograd were sent to Kherson with no ammunition in September/October, left in a remote trench under bombardment, then ordered to board trucks full of munitions and evacuate. The trucks promptly came under indirect fire killing many of the Russians. There does seem to be lots of evidence that mobiks were thrown into the front lines with a few hours of training.
And there are lots of stories of tensions between the Russian military and the LNR/DNR militias (even though in theory Donetsk and Luhansk are part of the Russia now).
Edit: Illia Ponomarenko who should know is indicating that the situation for the defenders of Bakhmut is very rough (https://nitter.it/IAPonomarenko/status/1634472741326802944#m) as of 11 March.
-
Italian veteran Thomas Theiner posted on how armies in the model of the US and British armies in 1944 breach defensive lines
https://nitter.it/noclador/status/1634644361643261953#m
Did you notice how many specialized parts have to move in unison? Or how these days the defenders can start dropping mines out of artillery shells onto the cleared channels from tens of kilometers away? And the Ukrainian army massively expanded a year ago and has taken heavy casualties among its most capable combat-arms units. That is why operations like Desert Storm or the first two years of WW II are so rare: one army needs to have very good training and lots of the right kit to smash through defensive lines and break an army in a few weeks with a few dead. Like most things that seem effortless, they come out of many years of preparation.
His 14 brigades plus follow-up troops is what, 7 divisions? That is also IIRC twice the size of the Polish army (and does not count the troops holding the line and watching the Belarussian border). And doing something with more people and machines is always harder.
I'm not trying to predict what the next big Ukrainian offensive would look like, but I am saying that a lot of things seem easy when you are just talking. I am not sure which NATO members other than the USA have 14 brigades although most of them have people who could plan an offensive like this on paper.
-
Yeah I don't see how the big spring offensive would actually be successful. Every frontline seems to be well fortified or protected by natural barriers, unless the saboteur/guerrilla forces remaining in occupied territory are somehow able to cause a major distraction I really don't expect to see any big breakthrough, and I imagine that's a very unlikely scenario too.
But I also don't see why Ukraine and the US keep promoting the big spring offensive if they don't have something planned, and I don't know much about warfare.
-
And even the commentators with extensive military experience and research into recent wars have never been in this particular war. I don't know how the Ukrainians are keeping such an assortment of vehicles working.
I think the thread is good at showing why rich mechanized armies have so many specialized vehicles and how they are trained to defeat defensive lines with mines, anti-tank obstacles, and bunkers. The next big Ukrainian attack might or might not look like that.
-
The Tank Museum, Bovington has a not bad 23 minute video on armoured ground warfare https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=DR4rNAYAdIk Like most pop culture it focuses on the ground troops who are at the most risk (and do things which are easiest to imagine) at the expense of artillery, air, and C3I.
It seems like a lot of combatants are now using nets, wire mesh, or bars to stop kamikaze drones from hitting their vehicles and detonating against the thin top armour. There are some videos of this working, a light drone has a pretty big wingspan and not a lot of mass! In the first few months of the war, Russian forces did not seem to be using any kind of camoflage, I did not see any videos of drones spotting Russian tanks under a camoflage net or artillery hitting a tent park under a net interwoven with branches.
Nathan Russer who made the excellent maps of the first stages of the war is not impressed with the maps of control in Bakhmut which he sees journalists and the ISW using.
-
So, small civil war going on now.
My initial read is that Prigozhin is trapped and working out of desperation more than strategy: he doesn't have the armour or planes to take on the military, who were already rattling sabres about taking Wagner under direct control. I'd imagine that the most likely scenario is that the military goes in hard to take him out in Rostov, his forces melt and he runs - a bad loss of Russian manpower and pulling their troops out of place, but a bit of a squib long term and with the mercenary leader defeated the MoD could move ahead with integrating what's left of Wagner into the conventional forces.
I think the main things that would change my assessment would be if chunks of the regular military or other senior figures in Russia back Prigozhin, but IMO they won't do unless he starts winning. Russia's army, as much as it's bad for wars, is as Brett Deveraux keeps reminding us probably better structured for resisting coups. I'd also change my view if Wagner heavily defeated the Russian army, or if Ukraine inflicted the kinds of routs on the regulars in the coming days that it'd get harder to oppose Wagner internally because the army were busy fleeing across the Donbas.
Anyone else got a view?
-
So, small civil war going on now.
My initial read is that Prigozhin is trapped and working out of desperation more than strategy: he doesn't have the armour or planes to take on the military, who were already rattling sabres about taking Wagner under direct control. I'd imagine that the most likely scenario is that the military goes in hard to take him out in Rostov, his forces melt and he runs - a bad loss of Russian manpower and pulling their troops out of place, but a bit of a squib long term and with the mercenary leader defeated the MoD could move ahead with integrating what's left of Wagner into the conventional forces.
I think the main things that would change my assessment would be if chunks of the regular military or other senior figures in Russia back Prigozhin, but IMO they won't do unless he starts winning. Russia's army, as much as it's bad for wars, is as Brett Deveraux keeps reminding us probably better structured for resisting coups. I'd also change my view if Wagner heavily defeated the Russian army, or if Ukraine inflicted the kinds of routs on the regulars in the coming days that it'd get harder to oppose Wagner internally because the army were busy fleeing across the Donbas.
Anyone else got a view?
I agree that the Russian army (at least the bit remaining in Russia, most of the competent units are in Ukraine) is better structured for 'resisting coups'... at least those consisting of civilian mobs.
Some of those Rosgvardiya 'population suppression' units were sent into Ukraine, and they were sent packing in short order by the Ukrainian army.
And those are no civilian mobs marching up the highway to Moscow. They are probably the single most battle-hardened, ruthless and unpleasant unit in the entire Russian armed forces. Certainly the only unit to make any kind of forward progress against Ukraine in the last 12 months.
Yes, you can argue it was using crude human wave tactics, but even that shows an astonishing will to bleed to achieve an objective... a will that has never been tested in many of the Russian units that will face them.
Add Wagners reputation for dealing with enemies and dissenters with box-cutters, sledgehammers etc, plus a large number of ex-prisoners who I'm sure would love to get their hands on the 'police' for a bit of light revenge... I wouldn't want to be facing them, thats for sure.
I have no idea what Prigozhins ultimate goal here is - top job, or just more power in the existing circle?
But to me, I would not write off Wagner at this point. For a historical analogy, they look disturbingly like some kind of Praetorian Guard - battle-hardened and personally loyal to a single man... everything a budding warlord needs.
-
Yeah, watching over the course of the day the lack of rapidity in Moscow's response has surprised me. Prigozhin does have some problems - most obviously, lack of allies and relatively low troop numbers. Nobody outside Russia actually wants him to win, though lots of people might want him to weaken the regime: and I've not seen any e.g. regional governors or similar declaring support for him either. I was interested at how fast Kadyrov declared for Putin: I'd expected him to keep his powder rather more dry on this on. But the way Wagner seem to be advancing without significant pushback does suggest that he might actually take Moscow pretty quickly, and I don't know what happens then in terms of wider civil war/government collapse.
I also think that Prigozhin kind of has to be going for dictatorship/presidency or at least ruling from behind such an office. He's undermined Putin's rationale for the war so badly now that he's in a bit of a dominate-or-die position I think. He might be trying to leave room for a power-behind-the-throne position but if he wins and Putin survives, it seems unlikely that Putin will be really calling the shots any more.
-
The reason the strongman's personal guards usually keep loyal in this situation is that if they let the rebels in, their comfortable lives are over. Not only have they failed to protect the man who gave them their bread, but the rebels all want comfortable lives close to their leader, and the obvious way to do that is to toss the old bodyguards out and put the rebels in. We will never know what would have happened if Prigozhin had continued but I would not bet on him and Putin both being alive and free in 2025.
Remember that its not "the Russian army" but a series of concentric circles of force with the army the biggest but lowest in status and others existing to intimidate and abuse it so it can't threaten the regime. These include state forces, private military companies, and gangsters with connections.
As I have said, even though the fronts are frozen the Russian regime's long-term prospects do not look good. A lot more military and economic power is supporting Ukraine than is supporting Russia and while foreign aid for Ukraine might decrease, its hard to see where more support for Russia would come from except China. I think that view from 40,000 feet is more helpful than trying to understand personal politics in a dictatorship whose language you don't speak.
-
I'm a little surprised Prigozhin didn't try and keep pushing: I wonder if his situation must have been (in his military judgement) actually a lot worse than the international media seemed to think. In that if you're accepting terms of "disband and go into exile" and the person whose court you're going into exile at is Alexander Lukashenko, this possibly suggests you don't have a lot of other friends. I feel like my initial read of the day might not have been bad, honestly: that Prigozhin was feeling the noose tightening with threats to shut down Wagner and absorb it into the army, and was throwing the dice to try and secure his power base before it was going to be taken from him anyway. He seems to have failed at that.
Also, I'd put money on a bunch of people thinking pretty hard about how to assassinate him in Belarus, with or without Lukashenko's assent. After all, Belarus is not a bad place to be sitting if you're Prigozhin, you suspect that the Russian government will dissolve in the next three years anyway, and you still think you could walk in and claim that you were the unjustly felled patriot who can now restore order. I don't know that that'd work - Prigozhin has shown the political acumen of a cucumber so far, whatever his abilities in producing ruthless military forces - but I can imagine it being part of his thought process.
I agree of course with dubsartur's point that the 40,000 feet view is probably more informative than any of my rambles on this. But speculation among friends is interesting regardless!
-
Humh, maybe that is what is wrong with the pundit / corporate social media model? It takes chatting among friends and presents it to a big audience as something more important than shooting the breeze?
I don't follow breaking news, if Prigozhin is going to exile in Belarus that seems an odd choice. I suppose the Caucasus would be too close to Kadyrov and Central Asia is too far from Moscow (and Lukashenko is short of military power so maybe he would have trouble just shooting Prigozhin for Putin).
It is delicious to watch terrible people fighting terrible people.
-
It looks like Lukashenko brokered the deal, which I think is the core answer to "why Belarus". I don't think any of the other states around Russia really have enough skin in the game to want to broker such a deal (except perhaps the government in Georgia, but they couldn't do it because they can't be publicly involved in Russian-sphere politics for local reasons).
And yeah, I think there's something to the idea that part of the punditry problem is taking general-purpose interested people and publishing their thinkythinks and chatter and treating it as considered expertise, and that's definitely a worse problem with microblogging systems which amplify such chatter and shove it in front of journalists very fast. And then this is doubly tricky when a lot of hearsay is involved in the base information, especially where journalists don't have the linguistic skills for verification (tons of people will cite "someone said this on pro-X telegram channels in Russia" and that's not a very scientific gauge of opinion but it's the sort of nugget it's easy to get excited over if you feel you need to keep up to the minute).
-
It looks like Lukashenko brokered the deal, which I think is the core answer to "why Belarus". I don't think any of the other states around Russia really have enough skin in the game to want to broker such a deal (except perhaps the government in Georgia, but they couldn't do it because they can't be publicly involved in Russian-sphere politics for local reasons).
And yeah, I think there's something to the idea that part of the punditry problem is taking general-purpose interested people and publishing their thinkythinks and chatter and treating it as considered expertise, and that's definitely a worse problem with microblogging systems which amplify such chatter and shove it in front of journalists very fast. And then this is doubly tricky when a lot of hearsay is involved in the base information, especially where journalists don't have the linguistic skills for verification (tons of people will cite "someone said this on pro-X telegram channels in Russia" and that's not a very scientific gauge of opinion but it's the sort of nugget it's easy to get excited over if you feel you need to keep up to the minute).
I got very skeptical of Russo-Ukrainian War twitter in late 2022 as new facts became scarce and it shifted from analyst mode to speculation and propaganda. At least Kyiv Independent is Ukrainian https://kyivindependent.com/prigozhin-says-wagner-will-stop-march-on-moscow/
People read confidence and articulateness as truthiness, so if you want to have a good information system, you have to limit who can speak with confidence for a large audience. If people come away from a pundit thinking they know something about the subject, but actually the pundit was bullarmadilloting, that is very bad because they are no longer likely to admit that they are ignorant!
-
I'm a little surprised Prigozhin didn't try and keep pushing: I wonder if his situation must have been (in his military judgement) actually a lot worse than the international media seemed to think. In that if you're accepting terms of "disband and go into exile" and the person whose court you're going into exile at is Alexander Lukashenko, this possibly suggests you don't have a lot of other friends. I feel like my initial read of the day might not have been bad, honestly: that Prigozhin was feeling the noose tightening with threats to shut down Wagner and absorb it into the army, and was throwing the dice to try and secure his power base before it was going to be taken from him anyway. He seems to have failed at that.
Yeah, I found the 'top job' ambition to be a little far-fetched, but at the same time, occupying friendly cities and shooting down friendly helicoptors as a negotiating tactic also seemed pretty far-fetched!
I wonder how much of his 'pet army' he'll be allowed to keep now. When it comes to people who could use a battle-hardened personal bodyguard, Lukashenko must be pretty high on the list.
-
I wonder if Lukashenko deciding Prigozhin is useful might be his best defence against assassination, but we'll see. Even if Putin doesn't want to bump the man off, surely Shoigu does (and whilst Shoigu has proven to be an amazingly poor minister of war, he got there by being very good at Russian court politics and I would be shocked if he doesn't have the means to attempt to kill Prigozhin).
you have to limit who can speak with confidence for a large audience
It's also "who and on what topic" - I should for example be allowed to speak on medieval Caucasus history if that ever makes the news, but that doesn't make me e.g. an "Eastern Europe History Expert" who could be asked about the prehistory of the current internal divisions in Russia (although I could probably give a more cogent answer than some people who are commentating - but I still shouldn't be asked to!)
-
I wonder if Lukashenko deciding Prigozhin is useful might be his best defence against assassination, but we'll see. Even if Putin doesn't want to bump the man off, surely Shoigu does (and whilst Shoigu has proven to be an amazingly poor minister of war, he got there by being very good at Russian court politics and I would be shocked if he doesn't have the means to attempt to kill Prigozhin).
you have to limit who can speak with confidence for a large audience
It's also "who and on what topic" - I should for example be allowed to speak on medieval Caucasus history if that ever makes the news, but that doesn't make me e.g. an "Eastern Europe History Expert" who could be asked about the prehistory of the current internal divisions in Russia (although I could probably give a more cogent answer than some people who are commentating - but I still shouldn't be asked to!)
Yeah, that was implied.
Journalists have a very hard problem when a topic becomes news and nobody in their news org knows honest, articulate domain experts. I thought it was easier to pick out useful commentators in spring 2022 because so much was happening and you could see whose analysis was in accord with the facts, but a lot of those people kept talking after new information became scarce (and of course some people fell back on ego-protection rather than admit that their model of Russian foreign policy, military capacity, etc. had been dead wrong).
As we saw in my comments on the numbers of doctors trained in Canada, I am not immune to forgetting where I got information or getting it from sources who seem knowledgeable, so I consume as little punditry, live news, and speculation as possible.
We will see if the rumours that Putin fled Moscow by air when Prigozhin was 200 km away are true.
-
Prigozhin still nowhere to be seen, Shoigu being very visible today.
Courtier 1, Military man 0, it seems.
Probably given the rapid resolution it won't bring a huge amount of change on the front lines, I guess, though I may be wrong.
-
It can't have done any good for the morale of the Russian military or for Wagner-MoD relations. Now that Wagner have actually killed Ministry of Defense troops and shot down aircraft I have trouble imagining Wagner being effectively integrated into the regular military.
While this has been happening the Ukrainians have established a bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper near the ruins of the Antinovski Bridge. On the weekend I saw figures of 100 men and three tanks (https://nitter.it/wartranslated/status/1673072292929187840#m) from Russian sources. The Ukrainians would obviously like to be able to get behind the Russian fortifications in the formerly flooded area where the breaking of the dam washed away bunkers, minefields, emplaced weapons, and so on. The other strategy which people are speculating about is sending the Freedom of Russian Legion around the north end of the Russian lines, which would avoid Ukrainian troops entering Russia on camera. I don't know if they are big enough for that but clearly once you get away from the front lines Russia has very little armed force available.
Ukrainian propaganda likes photos and videos of Ukrainian patrols crossing the border and taking down Russian signs or taking selfies. That seems to be OK with the USA, like all the mysterious fires, explosions, and drone attacks within Russia which might or might not be Ukrainian special forces who can say.
Edit: its worth remembering that researchers can't agree why Bush II invaded Iraq in 2003. That is in a flawed democracy where many participants have left memoirs and there was a lot of discussion in public. Figuring out what happened between a dictator and a gangster is likely to take longer!
-
I see a claim that Ukraine has resumed conscription although the government states that they wish an all-volunteer force (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-plans-move-professional-army-after-war-ends-pm-2023-07-06/) after the war.
The rando social media account @SmartUACat@twitter.com has a story with verisimilitude about training with NATO forces in Afghanistan (but remember, rando social media account!) https://nitter.net/SmartUACat/status/1679223826398212096#m
There is some typical military disorganization and overplanning: combat veterans get assigned to a Reconaissance 101 course and its hard to adjust the curriculum, there is lots of hurry up and wait and it takes some asking around to find ways to productively fill the rest of the days. There are some more substantive disconnects: the Ukrainian military conducts combat operations with all-digital tools (I hear they have lots of paperwork on paper) whereas the training course wants to make sure everyone can use paper maps and radios, drones are not as ubiquitous in training as they are in combat, and the section on spotting for artillery assumes you have unlimited firepower and a few targets whereas the Ukrainian military has more potential targets than weapons to hit them so needs to choose carefully which fires to direct against which targets.
Soldiers like to gripe, training gets scaled down for all kinds of reasons (complex military exercises are expensive and use up the same things that are needed in combat), and I hear about a lot of scouting on foot in UA (sometimes it can be useful to launch a drone somewhere that the other guy does not expect hostile drones). And like I said, the Ukrainian military seems to still have a giant pen-and-ink bureaucracy alongside all the tablets and smartphones. But I am not sure that anyone has a proven solution to this kind of fighting, just the rules of thumb "get air superiority if you can" and "avoid industrial positional warfare if you can."
A contact who was formerly an infantryman in the Territorial Army in the UK says that even a decade or two ago it was really hard to keep moving supplies up to the fighting troops and move the dead and wounded back if the other guys had half decent equipment. Industrial warfare consumes material fast and the other guy would always prefer to take it out before it is used in combat.
Many people on social media seem to fall into 'NATO troops the best' or 'Ukrainian army the best' and I think both are oversimplistic. I don't think any military is really prepared for a war like this (the big NATO militaries could go wild for a few weeks or months until they ran out of troops and equipment), and every army has lots of stupid because armies have to take Joe and Jane Average and put them in really difficult conditions.
-
Yeah, I think the NATO thing is more that it's not clear that there's a non-nuclear war that NATO couldn't win (at least in terms of defeating any symmetrical/state opposition) well before it ran out of munitions. I don't think that's a question of preparedness so much as scale and the immense relative spending the US puts into its forces? Russia has failed to get air superiority which feels like a very key failure in modern war doctrine... and I agree it seems probably that nobody has really got the prep for a long, conventional war where air superiority is very lacking. I think Brett Deveraux recently noted that possibly most militaries in the world simply lack combat experience, too.
-
Its hard to say because the old Russian army was used up in 2022. Before that happened, doing something less stupid than they did, they might have lasted long enough to use up European NATO's supplies of vehicles and munitions and trained soldiers.
Today it looks like eg. Poland or France could march on Moscow and not face much resistance. Most of the Kaliningrad garrison is supposed to have been sent back to contiguous Russia.
Russian air defense networks are supposed to be really good although again they have used up a lot of munitions and vehicles and radars and trained operators and it seems like the Russian air force can't carry out combat operations of more than 4 aircraft which would be a problem against any major NATO military.
The equipment that has been provided to Ukraine and the commandment not to invade internationally recognized Russian territory does force them to do things the hard way by smashing the Russian forces in Ukraine rather than looping through Russian territory or taking control of the air over the occupied territories. Nobody who had a choice would attack those Russian fortified lines from the front (and Russia can mass its forces in them because it knows that some places are off limits).
Edit: the Canadaland podcast has an article on freedom of the press in Ukraine during the war (as in the UK during both wars, or the USA during WW I, its not great) https://www.canadaland.com/ukraine-press-freedom-anton-skyba/
Edit: Jeremy Morris doubts Kamil Galeev's claim that ethnic minorities in Russia are disproportionately likely to be conscripted and killed on the ground that "from a poor rural region far from Moscow with many non-russian Russians" is not the same as "ethnic minority" https://postsocialism.org/2023/04/14/why-tim-snyder-is-wrong/
-
Some politico reporting on the Ukraine grain issues, which I feel like are going to be a very major issue - generally the coming winter could be horrible in Europe given the mix of war and climate catastrophes pushing food prices sky-high.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/ukraine-grain-harvest-00107212
-
Some politico reporting on the Ukraine grain issues, which I feel like are going to be a very major issue - generally the coming winter could be horrible in Europe given the mix of war and climate catastrophes pushing food prices sky-high.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/ukraine-grain-harvest-00107212
One thing I don't understand about US and Canadian central bank policy is that they seem to assume that inflation is caused by people borrowing money to bid more and obtain scarce goods, but it seems like the loss of labour due to COVID, fossil fuels due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and forest and farm products due to extreme weather are also factors! (And zoning problems for housing: if its illegal to build more housing on the same block, or it takes 100 hours of labour over 5 years to get permission to build anything else, housing prices will rise as the local population rises).
Just raising interest rates discourages people from borrowing money to buy things, but it does not put Russian natural gas back on the market, or stop vineyards from being scorched and forests burned, or bring millions of people back to life and health.
Given how weak the Russian military is, it seems plausible that eg. Turkey will call Russia's bluff. Really not sure why Erdogan sent the Azov POWs back to Ukraine.
-
Russia's been bombing the armadillo out of Ukraine's ports and grain stores apparently, I guess that makes the question of naval safety kind of irrelevant.
-
I would be surprised if they can burn it all or destroy all the port infrastructure and bulk shipping is so much more efficient then land transport and especially motor vehicle transport (Canada ships its grain to ports by train). The recent attack on Odessa is said to have destroyed 60 kt (https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/russia-bombards-odessa-and-other-southern-ukraine-port-cities-for-3rd-night-since-end-of-grain-deal-1.6486908) but 33 mt were shipped under the grain deal (https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/ukrainian-grain-exports-explained/). So they would have to repeat that attack 1000 times to destroy one year of Ukraine's grain exports (realistically there is some point before that where all the grain silos near the ports are broken, but still).
I agree with Politico that loss of fertilizers, the seizure of labour and land, and destruction from fighting and occupation are likely to reduce Ukraine's production of grain.
Edit: I see a claim that the Ukrainian military can't train above company level (~150 guys) within Ukraine's borders for fear of air attack. .
Edit: and here is another description of a peculiar kind of assault which is carried out at platoon strength (~30 guys) lead by a section-sized assault group (~10 guys) because anything bigger gets shelled and airstruck to death but the other guy also has to spread out so ten guys suddenly arriving at their position can be bad news https://kyivindependent.com/its-a-lottery-how-ukraines-assault-brigade-counterattacks-near-bakhmut/ Ukrainian propaganda includes clips of single IVFs driving up to Ukrainian positions, dismounting their infantry, and being blown up so some Russian counterattacks are very small too.
-
Kyiv Independent has a piece on the raids across the Dnipro. I see figures of up to 40 Ukrainian troops. https://kyivindependent.com/ukrainian-troops-regularly-cross-dnipro-river-probing-russian-defenses-in-kherson-oblast/ The Ukrainians have also stated to The Times that in December 2022 they almost ordered the evacuation of Kyiv due to attacks on heat and electrical systems. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-bombers-us-patriot-surface-to-air-missiles-ukraine-dh6x8vcgn (paywalled)
Edit: one of the weird things about this war is that on one hand its utterly inhumane (you are most likely to die when some drone signals back that there are hostiles at this latitude and longitude and an artillery piece 15 km away opens fire for a few minutes then changes targets) and on the other hand the units that carry out many combat operations are tiny and human-sized.
Edit: some people claim to have seen recent photos of Ukrainian artillery next to mountains of empty shell casings. They fired vast numbers of shells to defend Kyiv in the first 30 days of the war and I doubt they were repositioning after every few shots. So excited claims such as that drones make fixed artillery positions obsolete and guns have to shoot a few times then move before bad stuff starts landing on them may not be true. It also suggests that the situation may be more complicated than "endless supply of low-tech Russian artillery versus a few high-tech NATO systems operated by Ukrainians."
Edit: UA has confirmed that they have resumed conscription with the usual result that people are paying bribes to be excluded https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/11/zelenskiy-sacks-all-military-recruitment-heads-over-frontline-bribes-scandal-ukraine
Edit: another article on the NATO training provide to Ukrainian troops and the trouble adapting it to a positional war against opponents with sometimes-superior firepower and superior airpower https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-training-nato-west-military/
This Chieftain talk has a summary of a talk by Ukrainian officers on anti-drone defenses (starts around 19 minutes in). They seem to have started using lots of MGs and autocannons sometimes aided by searchlights! Those might be easier to get cleared to talk about than the electronic methods which the UK MoD report alluded to. https://piped.garudalinux.org/watch?v=iFs6LG0TEyU
We can just hope that as both sides acquire and lose troops and equipment, the relative strengths are tilting towards Ukraine.
-
I was interested, in a grim way, in the news about how Russia is pushing its Ukraine propaganda into school textbooks (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66450520). It's hardly unexpected that they will justify it that way, but the precise mechanisms and arguments they're going for are interesting and quite 21st century. It's not so long ago in historical terms that even somewhat more democratic major powers could proclaim victory through strength as their rationale for things in one way or another. Now even Russia, one of the most obviously fascist medium to large powers, has to fall back on portraying itself as a reluctant invader and ultimately a wounded, put upon party. I get that Russia do that line for the international media, but that they're doing it in school textbooks too rather than a more flatly jingoistic account of matters kind of interests me.
Also apparently Domino's Pizza is leaving Russia. I think that sort of thing has low immediate impact - pizza restaurants can keep going under another name and be bought up - but the longer the war goes on, the longer the lack of investment must surely start biting in the bits of the Russian economy that aren't oil. Which are bits that Russia can usually ignore because the tax revenue mostly comes from the oil... but everyone else needs to eat at some point.
-
I was interested, in a grim way, in the news about how Russia is pushing its Ukraine propaganda into school textbooks (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66450520). It's hardly unexpected that they will justify it that way, but the precise mechanisms and arguments they're going for are interesting and quite 21st century. It's not so long ago in historical terms that even somewhat more democratic major powers could proclaim victory through strength as their rationale for things in one way or another. Now even Russia, one of the most obviously fascist medium to large powers, has to fall back on portraying itself as a reluctant invader and ultimately a wounded, put upon party. I get that Russia do that line for the international media, but that they're doing it in school textbooks too rather than a more flatly jingoistic account of matters kind of interests me.
Its another way in which the Putin regime is using old Nazi propaganda strategies ("we are defending Europe against the Bolshevik hordes who are pressing west ... don't listen to the Jewish Bolsheviks and their Anglo-Saxon puppets about why they are pressing west.")
I saw a claim that Prigozhin was in Africa on Monday or Tuesday before he was reported to be in an aircraft which exploded in Russia on Wednesday. If only Igor Girkin had been on board too.
-
Honestly, the main thing to come out of the whole Prigozhin affair is that Prigozhin had about the same level of grand strategic nous as the average toddler, and that may be unfair to some toddlers.
I think the downside to this is that it makes military disloyalty to Putin less likely: it definitely feels like a position-securing moment for the regime (at least for now).
-
This is why a prince needs to study the chronicles so he remembers what happened to Roger de Flor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Company#Byzantine_betrayal_and_Catalan_revenge) or why Julius Caesar stayed in the provinces with his army after his consulship in 59 BCE.
There will be celebrations in Syria tonight.
Edit: Ukrainian military intelligence say they convinced a MI-8 helicopter pilot to land his helicopter on Ukrainian territory, the rest of the crew were killed resisting arrest https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news-budanov-rozpoviv-jak-vdalosya-vymanyty-pilota-mi-8/32561846.html https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2023/08/23/7416758/
Edit: and a sobering statement from someone at Come Back Alive: "if we don't make enough progress this year and run out of troops, vehicles, and especially ammunition, we will come back in fall 2024 or spring 2025 when ammunition production in the EU has increased and finish the job" https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/08/23/the-one-most-important-thing-for-ukraines-counteroffensive/
-
It does feel like eastern Ukraine could end up becoming a wildly costly long term frozen conflict that no side feels it can afford to accept defeat from. Even if Ukraine were to gain better air power etc, clearing defended minefields is a slow job.
-
The shooting part of this war could sure continue into 2025-2027 although I don't know if "frozen conflict" is the right term. The Ukrainians can't let Russian forces just sit in all the occupied territories building up for another go like they did from 2014 to 2022.
This may end with Russia controlling some of 2014-Ukraine but I think both sides have a lot of fight in them.
-
Yeah, you're right, frozen conflict was a clumsy wording. Stalemate, I guess? Not sure what the right term is for "everyone is still shooting but nobody is winning".
-
Meanwhile someone has added a gambit to the long debate about what to do with 24 Sussex Drive, the no-longer-inhabitable official residence of the Prime Minister of Canada: do we want to armour the roof with steel plate against drone attacks? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/24-sussex-prime-minister-trudeau-ottawa-1.6949710 (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/24-sussex-prime-minister-trudeau-ottawa-1.6949710) (Assassination is extremely rare in Canadian politics since the murder of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-assassination-of-thomas-darcy-mcgee-feature) in 1868 or the attack on Ujjal Dosanjh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ujjal_Dosanjh) by Sikh separatists in 1985)
Edit: The fact that the Russian government has funded the Fratri d'Italia (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/russia-link-italy-giorgia-meloni-election-campaign/amp/), UKIP (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/31/nigel-farage-relationship-russian-media-scrutiny), AfD (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-secret-messages-document-moscow-contacts-with-staffer-of-far-right-afd-a-0040e526-39d7-4f22-8bc1-6772bc2d840a), the FPÖ in Austria (https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2022/04/austria-is-russias-tunnel-into-the-heart-of-europe), and Marie le Pen (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-russian-bank-gave-marine-le-pens-party-a-loan-then-weird-things-began-happening/2018/12/27/960c7906-d320-11e8-a275-81c671a50422_story.html) has done less damage to them than I would have expected. Ditto for Trump's financial connection to shady 'businessmen' from the non-Russian parts of the former USSR. Meloni in Italy is certainly showing that a little money does not guarantee that someone will play along when you do something shocking.
-
A source I don't know has a translated summary of an interview with an Ukrainian officer who says that his unit was turned into a different kind of unit twice (intelligence to assault to mechanized infantry) https://militaryland.net/news/offensive-through-the-eyes-of-a-soldier/ A lot of training outside of Ukraine has been very abbreviated eg. a five-week course which is half or a third of most countries' basic training before they start to teaching a specific military trade. The author of this post seems kind of Azov-friendly (https://militaryland.net/news/active-units-of-azov/) and there is a back-and-forth in the comments about what he left out from the original Ukrainian.
If they really convinced themselves that they just needed to show up with fancy kit and the enemy would not fight, that is a classic blunder.