Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022-3

[dubsartur]

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 citing Committee of Soldiers' Mothers (Russia) via the Daily Beast (USA).

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.

[dubsartur]

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

[Pentagathus]

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.

[Jubal]

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 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.

[Pentagathus]

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.

[psyanojim]

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.

[dubsartur]

I am seeing claims that the neo-Nazi 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!

[dubsartur]

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.

[Pentagathus]

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.

[psyanojim]

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...

[Pentagathus]

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.

[Jubal]

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?

[dubsartur]

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

[Jubal]

Really? I last got a Kyiv Independent update six minutes ago in their Telegram group.

[dubsartur]

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.