Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022-3

[Jubal]

Reports are that the Russian army has fully collapsed in the Izyum area and the remnants have retreated. Remarkably fast shift in the lines.

[psyanojim]

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?

[dubsartur]

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.

[psyanojim]

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.

[dubsartur]

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.

[Jubal]

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.

[dubsartur]

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.

[Jubal]

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.

[dubsartur]

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 (for the Babylonians see here).  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).

[psyanojim]

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.

[BagaturKhan]

All what happens now - is REAL madness. Its a total ahniliation.
Friends, thank you all here for support the truth!

[Jubal]

Russia has, as expected, announced it will annex Zaporizhizhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk, on the basis of its fake referendums there.

[psyanojim]

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.

[dubsartur]

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).

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's original timed fuse!).

[psyanojim]

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'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