Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, Feb 26, 2022
iswresearch.org
iswresearch.org
Bellingcat reports that the orders are to take Kyiv by Monday regardless the losses if Ukraine can hold out for longer they might just be in the clear.
It’s also clear now that the Ukraine is getting direct intelligence from NATO especially from the global hawk drones and the sigint/elint aircraft it’s been flying their ability to avoid Russian offenses, hit key targets and to mount effective counter attack seem to indicate they do have map cheats enabled.
The training they got from NATO forces seem to be paying off in spades too.
Russia seem to be closer and closer to the point where their only winning condition is a Grozny scenario and if that happens then there is no chance that NATO would stand by.
Conventional warfare with limited civilian casualties would be tolerated leveling cities wouldn’t this isn’t Syria.
The EU and NATO knows that even if Russia takes Ukraine they won’t be able to hold it it might take another decade but it eventually would be free again even without major insurgency.
Puppet regimes don’t hold and Ukrainians have been far more interconnected with the EU especially through Poland than say Belarus.
And from I see, the Ukrainians will probably force them to do that, if they want to take it.
Javelins would probably not be that effective if the tanks enter the city but other anti tank weapons like the NLAW are. Also barricades could have them bogged down. But still if the numbers of 500 tanks in Kyiv are true and the Russians are under orders not to retreat under any circumstances holding the city might be difficult.
If Russia takes Kyiv even if they don’t kill Zelenskyy they’ll have a bargaining chip to play in the negotiations that would surly have to happen sometime next week if they don’t they don’t have anything.
Right now Russia is running out of win conditions or even a way to get out of this situation at all and that is the most dangerous part.
If they have nothing to bargain with they can’t come to the negotiating table to get the sanctions removed and they will not issue an unconstitutional surrender under any circumstances other than if there to be a regime change in Russia.
Even if they make no progress from this point onwards, their main bargaining chip would be withdrawing from western and central Ukraine.
Could that be the way this all ends? Maybe the FSB will serve Putin a cup of its world-famous Polonium tea.
also kyiv is built from very long and very wide streets (i was born there). if you have enough javelins/nlaw, it will be not too different from shooting range in urban environment
Javelin or any ATGM with DFA doesn’t like power lines.
Line of sight can also be a problem.
IR seekers are more difficult to use due to interference from other IR sources.
Wire guided missiles don’t like urban environments either fences, power lines etc.
Wireless guided missiles actually do get interference from WiFi.
Then you have the tactical issues.
Fear of collateral damage, fewer firing positions which make your actions more predicable etc, and due to the nature of the urban environment you have much fewer enemy vehicles exposed at any time.
It’s not that ATGMs become totally useless it’s just that they aren’t nearly as useful as on an open battlefield.
and it seems fairly open. If I was a tank driver I wouldn't count on a couple of power lines saving me from missiles.
If that happens we are facing the very real possibility of escalation to some kind of nuclear war per Russia’s doctrine.
If we do not save Ukraine due to our own fear, then that’s the effective precedence Putin will have just set. Russian conquering Ukraine is an _escalation_ from NATO perspective.
They can’t risk it especially considering they can’t control the skies over central and eastern Ukraine.
Russia hasn’t been able to stop Israel from controlling the skies over Syria either and despite the fact that there is probably a major political component there (Russia doesn’t want Iran to establish themselves in Syria either since it would diminish Syrian dependence on Russia) there is also a very much practical component to it too.
Israel can knock Russia out of Syria even if it can’t do it without any losses it can do it without major losses and other than a symbolic attack most likely a Russian sub sinking Israeli naval assets or attacking Israeli gas platforms in the med Russia cannot wage a conventional war on Israel due to the distance and the vulnerability of their logistics chain.
The situation in Ukraine isn’t that different Russia knows that it only can operate there as long as NATO allows it too and know it probably knows that better than ever.
If we to assume that Russia does not want a nuclear armageddon then we can assume that they would respect which ever red lines NATO has telegraphed to them in private.
Post-war (if it concludes favorably for Ukraine), Putin can still create pain for Ukraine (and Europe) by cutting off gas supplies. He can still do much to hold back Ukraine economically and politically. If we want to score one for democracy, then we would do well not to 1. "win the fight" and 2. get triumphant. If there is a positive resolution for Ukraine in terms of military outcome, the leaders over nonetheless need look for an endgame.
If you stop pumping gas through the pipeline, you have several options: abandon the field (not reversible, I think), pump it to the atmosphere, burn it, store it in gas form, store it in liquid form. Russia lacks the infrastructure for the last two options.
People are claiming it's a victory when Russia hasn't totally taken over within 72 hours, but is that really any kind of victory?
Their plan in general seems unnecessary complex and risky. They are burning through VDV at a fearful rate.. why in the hell did they try all of those unsupported helicopter landings? It all seem like Market Garden all the way to Kyiv.
Southern axis are a problem. Order needs to be given for a breakout of the forces holding line of control in the east. Of course we have no idea what reserves and where Ukraine has. Hopefully they did not keep too much too close east and there is a strategic reserve being held somewhere west of Dniepr
Why do you believe that? I am just assuming that many Ukraine troop concentrations visible from satellites has been bombed (vehicles, tents ...) without anything indicating that.
The videos available seems very onesided. I.e. Ukrainian civilian or soldiers' videos of victories. It is probably hard to tell much from the videos on the overall progress of the invasion, except where there are fights.
there is also enough of videos of ukranian equipment blown up.
another point, russia doesn't really have much precise ammo for ground attacks. and there is no signs of carpet bombing in cases where ukranian tanks are blown
Of course it's "on the cusp of encircling Kyiv" - it's less distance than the average US drive to WalMart.
I doubt it. I checked the distance from the center of Kyiv to the closest Belarus border and it was around 55 miles. The actual distance is probably higher because I'm taking the distance over the lake/river that's north of Kyiv. Meanwhile...
>For most people in the United States, a Wal-Mart is literally just down the road. The median distance to a Wal-Mart in the United States is 4.2 miles
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2006/thomas-j-holmes-...
1.) Kyiv is 50mi from the border, Baghdad is 200mi.
2.) Iraq was a numerically far superior force to the coalition, with >500,000 active soldiers and >1.3 million total. Clearing out that many people simply takes time.
3) The coalition moved slowly and largely neutralized resistance along their way, they didn't skip settlements or cities. Russia is trying deep strikes and bypassing/avoiding many of the larger cities/settlements. And those places are not necessarily under any kind of coherent siege at this point either.
4) Coalition losses in the entire war, where they were again, fighting a numerically far superior force, were tiny. ~200 killed. Estimates of Russian losses so far are 10x+ that and with a lot of lost equipment.
I'm not suggesting I think the Ukrainian position is great or that they're poised to win other than via long insurgency, just that I don't think the comparison works.
The quick two week land grab by Iraq that turned into an 8-year slog that they got nothing out of?
Yeah, I can see that.
War is a nasty virus on brain for people away from all this. It is a privileged take but mental faculties are overloaded with the emotional language being used. A TV station was showing how to make Molotov cocktails to non-Ukrainian audience. Is that helpful at all?
So much thoughts on this invasion. Have seen maybe 4 conflicts (Kargil, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine); numerous military mobilizations and small scale strikes between sworn enemy nations. It is just bile churning to see the whole events play down with no accountability.
What sort of lies are they spreading out of curiosity?
cordial behaviour of Russian soldiers There are no massed artillery barragesThere's one famous video of an APC going over a car, and it's not clear, but some people have mentioned that it was an Ukranian APC (in any case, the crash looked like a mistake). I don't know whose APC it was, but without having deep knowledge it's really hard to tell just from the footage.
Also, for the record, there are many videos of american tanks rolling over iraqi cars, even one particularly notable video where they were doing it on purpose as a punishment.
Empty cars, you mean.
you should tell it to ukranians in general, they seems not to share your sentiment. or to my wife's family and friends who sleep in shelters in kharkiv. or to old neighbors of my wife who discovered leftover smerch stuck in ground between buildings.
i guess they should they wake up and realize that this is actually russian spring comes to free them from occupation by neo-nazi benderovzis that are chaired by jew president?
In the end it is still an occupation, they are brutal there’s no disputing it. Degree of brutality was my point, I have seen how Armies behave and Russian way of capturing towns is brutal which they have yet not displayed in Ukraine.
Yes, we are.
> Infrastructure is intact, electricity and internet is working.
Yes, the concept of operations is a quick decapitation (“Demilitarization”, “Denazification”, or “Decommunisation”, depending on Putin’s mood at the moment) strike followed by installing a productive puppet regime.
> There is no vibe of an occupation.
That’s because they haven’t gotten to the occupation point, they are still trying to achieve initial control.
> There seem to be no embedded journalism from Russians.
As if all the information being canned, centralized propaganda, that doesn't require any contact with the real facts on the ground is a good thing?
> If US was directly invoked, 10 fact checking orgs would have propped by now and started warning on game videos being spread.
Numerous fact checkers have done that.
> At the end it is still an invasion and Ukrainians will be killed and come under an occupation, but US is more ruthless with its occupations.
That is rather premature.
As you mentioned, civil services are all operational, there are no drone strikes based on questionable intel, artillery strikes are focused and kept on the minimum.
On the other side, we see Ukraine giving weapons and instructing citizens on how to fight, which can only become a disaster.
Just so i'll understand, mobilization of citizens (i believe all countries have laws like this) in order to fight invading force and arming them is a disaster ? Could you please expand a bit on more appropriate approach that should be taken instead ?
They're effectively camouflaging soldiers as civilians, don't you see a problem with that? How can invading force make a distinction between a civilian and a soldier?
And speaking of Iraq, Biden's "minor incursions" [1] comment before the invasion reminds of US ambassador's 'it's not our business' [2] input to Saddam Hussein before he attacked Kuwait.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/20/1074466148/biden-russia-ukrai...
"[Biden]: I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do."
[2]: https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE5/apri...
"Journalist 1 - You encouraged this aggression - his invasion. What were you thinking?
"U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait."
The latest figure reported by Ukraine was they have killed 3500 Russians already. So allowing for a few hours of losses, about 20x.
[0] Similar report https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FFMmXu6eWYAMOSUB.jpg
Also we see Russians ask for unconditional talks, which wouldn't be happening if they felt they had a good chance.
I think, as I have hinted to before, that Russians would be wise to break a leg instead of going down to Ukraine.
Same for Russian factory workers, store workers and railway workers: if one can delay/prevent young ones from being sent down to the righteously furious Ukrainians, that might save many lives.
My understanding was that this number was their claim for total casualties (meaning mostly WIA). And that this got lazily cut-and-pasted all over the place to mean KIA.
What else are they going to claim? That everything's fucked and there's no realistic hope of even a partial victory?
Regardless of whether or not the war goes well or poorly, the news will be positive, right up until the end. If it turns out to be the latter, everybody who spent the past few weeks listening to it will be struck with one hell of a cog-dissonance hangover.
I am cautiously optimistic for Ukraine based on early reports. But I am also aware of the history of war propaganda.
The front pages of US and UK newspapers during the Battle of France, for example, were filled with headlines talking about French successes in repelling the Hun. Anyone paying attention to the details, however, could see that the successes were constantly occurring closer and closer to Paris.
If Russia wins, there is going to be (as you said) a lot of cognitive dissonance among those whose worldviews are entirely shaped by Reddit headlines and Twitter takes. I'd hope that having their worldviews shattered so abruptly and violently would cause such people to reexamine all of their preconceptions, but given how previous such cases (notably Brexit and Trump's election) mostly caused them to double down rather than seriously self reflect, I am not hopeful.
Because man, a lot of people still don't believe that has happened.
This is also why normally-classified intelligence was leaked by the US goverment.
Historically when something like this happened, it was always hard to understand who really started a violent confrontation. In this case, the US has been successful at showing that the invasion was pre-meditated.
By this I mean the West's addiction to immediate gratification. If Putin hasn't conquered every last inch of Ukraine within 72 hours then he has "failed" according to Western media.
To some degree I don't blame them. In Iraq for example, the war tempo was intentional rapid. The US decided that maneuver warfare[1] would be the doctrine to use and it worked out okay only because they largely dealt with demoralized forces - but in areas where they encountered a willing opposition, it crushed the tempo.
Then, less than a year after "victory" they had terrible battles lasting months where the US lost and public sentiment flipped[2].
I keep two things in mind: in war, the first casualty is the truth.
The second: that it was only a year between "freedom fries" (because the French did not want to help invade Iraq) and "no blood for oil". What will US sentiment be a year from now when the crushing energy and food prices caused by this have worked their way through the system and the Democrats and their media go into the elections with full weaponized Russia-paranoia all over again?
When China is now even stronger because the West weaponized the financial system against an enemy that didn't warrant it?
When China leapfrogs the West even further because they benefited from the sanctions while not having deal with any material suffering?
Could Putin maybe have had an iota of a point about the enlargement of NATO suffocating Russia and backing them into a corner?[3]
Is there perhaps a shred of truth to the claim that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine - some even trained by the West - even if its understood that this is just an excuse?[4]
These are questions that will inevitably be visited, but not today.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO
[4] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/far-right-extremists-in-ukraini...
Gee, I wonder where we learned it from...
"NBC CAUGHT Spreading Literal Nazi, Deep State Propaganda | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar"
Not a fringe or right-wing source, especially considering their position among Spotify political podcasts.
Iraq had a much larger military in 2003 than Ukraine does now, the US wasn't able to come at it from all sides, and was doing it from the far side of the globe, with a smaller force than Russia deployed in and around Ukraine. And Baghdad is 350 miles from Kuwait, Kyiv 70 miles from Belarus.
So, yeah, Russia is expected to be way ahead of the Iraq War schedule.
> People are claiming it's a victory when Russia hasn't totally taken over within 72 hours, but is that really any kind of victory?
Yes, when the decapitation portion was expected to be much shorter, with Russia’s problems expected to be more guerrilla-ish resistance after the lightning-fast takeover that the massive paper imbalance of forces suggested, it is, especially when there is evidence of serious logistical and morale problems contributing, which will also make the phase after a takeover harder than they would otherwise be expected.
Kazakhstan rebuffing Russia’s request for additional troops, and a number of previously relatively pro-Russia governments not aligning the way Putin might have hoped also is a complication (Hungary, one of the more pro-Russian EU/NATO governments, coming down hard against Russia on this is particularly significant, and the pro-NATO swing in Swedish public opinion is a hard backfire on Putin’s attempt to capitalize on the invasion with further threats.)
While it is still very bad for Ukraine, this has the early signs of a massive debacle for Russia.
I am positive that those threats are also purely for internal consumption. There's no possible way where this invasion would not result in Sweeden joining NATO. (Other than a complete and total Russian defeat, that revealed it to be a paper tiger, and no real threat to anyone. That's not quite the outcome we're seeing, though.)
Rewriting this for clarity sake:
It is absolutely that this invasion would result in Sweden joining NATO.
Some in the Kremlin might have expected the takeover to be as swift as the Taliban taking back Afghanistan with little to no resistance, before other countries can agree upon any sanctions or reaction. If that were the case, I think sanctions from the west would have been much tamer, due to the war already being over and less political pressure from their own constituencies. E.g. German government needed at ton of public outcry first, before they changed their mind.
Also the longer it takes, the more Putin has to deal with opposition in their own ranks and populace.
I think Russia probably can succeed in occupying significant parts of Ukraine, but I think the idea that it will ever succeed in occupying the entire country is much more dubious – especially the westernmost regions, such as Lviv. Far Western Ukraine is the culturally most dissimilar from Russia – being dominated by Ukrainian speakers and with relatively few Russian speakers; having an Eastern Catholic rather than Orthodox majority, and with most of its Orthodox population belonging to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) rather than the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP); a lengthy history of rule by Poland and Austria – all of which makes it a hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism whose population are among the most likely to give sustained resistance to any attempted Russian occupation or rule by a Russian puppet government. Added to that, it is geographically protected by its borders with NATO member states (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania), which prevents Russia from encircling it, and gives it guaranteed supply lines; and Russia must be wary of fighting near those borders, given the risk that NATO might be drawn into the conflict. Moldova to the south also provides some protection – although Russia could conceivably invade Moldova as well (and indeed already de facto occupies the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria), doing so may risk overextension, and given the deep cultural and linguistic links between Romanians and Moldavians, risks drawing Romania (and hence NATO) into the conflict.
I really don't think Russia has fully thought this through. It is conceivable the war may end with a split of Ukraine in two, one internationally recognised but with significantly diminished territory, the other a Russian puppet regime only recognised by Russia and its close allies. It is conceivable the war may end with Russia annexing further large chunks of Ukraine, especially the South and the East and maybe even significant parts of Central Ukraine. It seems very unlikely it will end with Russia, or a pro-Russian regime, controlling the whole of Ukraine.
NATO receives no benefit by standing by and letting Ukraine fall. The next fight would be on NATO soil, against a battle hardened, victory spirited aggressor. Oh, and he would know for a fact his nuclear threat worked like a charm.
Now is the time to stop Russia’s aggression once and for all, nuclear threat or not. Putin has never gotten less crazy. There is zero reason to assume a Ukrainian victory would pacify him. We will win handily against any future conflict. But why choose a harder victory tomorrow with one less ally, when we could have lasting victory today?
If he is rational or not I do not know but there can be a great deal of difference between what he wants to do and what he can do because of resources and capability.
The nuclear threat only takes you so far since it’s understood as a last resort response. Even an irrational actor realizes the minute he unleashes nukes he…and everyone else loses.
Ukraine and the west have an incentive to share news about the war, about civilian and russian casualties. Russia has no incentive at all to share such news before they have a definitve symbol of victory (e.g. a surrender signed by Zelenskyy).
This means it could be that the news we are getting are quite overly optimistic (although I personally hope the Ukraine is really doing as well as it seems).
Russia is bungling forward, but it’s gaining ground.
That this is not some abstract far away war for us?
Sounds like you're stretching a bit, in particular with the last point:
Ultimately it has enough forces to overwhelm the Ukrainians on every front.
Russia has a 'tradition' of stating what seems a 'small victorious war', aiming to boost popularity and support for the government, and then blundering badly - Russian-Japanese war (1905), Russian-Finland war (1940), Afghanistan invasion (1980), two Chechnya wars (1994, 1999). So far, Ukraine 'special operation' seems to be a one more addition to this ignominious list.
Unless Putin has decided that 2022 would be the last year of record of the Gregorian calendar at least for a while he isn’t going to bring on the apocalypse.
As horrible as this conflict is it’s pretty much the death knell of Russia as a superpower and probably for good.
It almost lost in Georgia in 08 which brought it a lot of army reforms and its performance in Syria has emboldened them to think that they can play in the big leagues again but it seems that they aren’t able to perform on the modern battlefield at all.
I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief.
I almost want that once this conflict is over for the pentagon to release a statement in jest that it officially downgrades Russia from near peer to junk like the credit agencies did.
Honest question because I don't know: Does Putin listen at all to public opinion, or to the sentiment of his military.
Stalin was probably the most powerful man on Earth during his lifetime, but even he didn't always get his way in the Politburo. Sometimes Stalin was on the losing side of a debate. But win or lose, the Soviet leadership emphasized speaking with a unified voice regardless of whether one had supported or opposed the outcome.
Is there a Politburo for Putin? Is there a group of people around him who can influence him and, sometimes, change his mind?
If he is completely deranged and wants to start a nuclear war he could’ve done so without sacrificing so many Russian troops.
He can sit in his bunker and order a nuclear strike and even if most forces would disregard that order it only takes one launch to bring on the end of the world as we know it.
He knows he is running out of time and he wanted a new Russian empire to be his legacy but I don’t think turning Europe and North America into glass is on his todo list.
At least I hope not.
Quite a lot of people said he seemed like he was going to, for quite a few weeks in advance, though they were trying to dissuade him, just counting people in the US government, NATO, etc.
> The president of Ukraine said like two days before hand that it was unlikely.
He said that the West needed to move forward the sanctions threatened for after an invasion to before, and that Russian behavior depended on immediate, united Western action.
The US media played up the part you refer to and downplayed the I assume our friends will heed my clearly-correct and urgent advice context, because they had a narrative they were selling of “Biden Admin sees imminent invasion, but the Admin is paranoid and everyone else, even the people who would be attacked, disagrees”.
[0] https://fakty.com.ua/ua/ukraine/20220220-reznikov-meta-kreml...
Some had very strong hunches. But that's not the same as "knowing".
I'd been concerned about the buildup for a year, but was practically certain once the abrupt demands to NATO and Alperovitch's analysis came out 3 whole months ago:
It's not so much that he "wants to" start a nuclear war.
The concern is whether he may end up doing that anyway -- if the moment arrives when he is sufficiently cornered and feels he has nothing more to lose.
Not in the Pentagon, but I'm still very worried about their capabilities on the cyber front.
I doubt anyone in the pentagon was woried about Russia becoming an near peer in conventional arms. The US economy is 14 times the size of the Russian economy. The US spends about $800 billion on its military each year, the Russians spend about $60 billion.
The fear of near peer came from their reforms following 2008 where they decided to modernize their army especially their infantry adopt modern combined arms and maneuver warfare and basically mimic the US individual squad battlefield doctrine.
They shifted on paper form a conscripted army to a professional one and have revamp their NCO core.
And their relative success in Syria did make it seem like they were making a lot of progress now it’s clear that what ever progress they have made was either all a smoke screen or limited to such a small number of units that it doesn’t make an impact on the battlefield.
This war has shown that even what the west feared the most the so called elite airborne troops which were always a key part of Russias military doctrine aren’t effective at all at taking and holding military objectives.
Russian armor seems to also be extremely vulnerable to western ATGMs so the fear of Russian APS systems has also now proven to be completely unfounded and Arena/Afganit seems to either be non existent in the field or utterly and completely useless especially when compared to western battle proven APS systems like Trophy/Windbreaker which have seen great success against Russian modern ATGMs.
Basically they aren’t even a paper tiger at this point they are a wet tissue.
We have now hard indisputable proof that they aren’t capable of anything more than leveling cities from 100 miles away which they won’t be able to do due to NATOs total air superiority or bringing a nuclear annihilation which hopefully they aren’t mad enough to do.
Did anyone publish, prior to the invasion, a timeline of how they expected it to go that had Russia far ahead of where they are on day three? If so, can you link it? If not, how do we know they are behind schedule?
They are behind schedule they couldn’t maintain objectives they captured and are still fighting over the same cities.
They have given up on many objectives in south Ukraine and failed to secure a land bridge to Crimea.
They have already given up on taking many primary objectives and are now bypassing them and pretty much concentrating nearly everything on Kyiv.
The Pentagon, UK MoD and plenty of other entities have been publishing daily analysis.
The fact that they lost so many assets and haven’t been able to establish air superiority (despite Ukraine having pretty much no Airforce and very limited AA) is a also clear indication of their current capabilities also.
And I find it laughable to claim that they are limiting offenses on civilian targets when they are using MLRS and cluster munitions on cities and have been since the war began.
What assets have they lost and what are reasonable expectations for losses? The kind of stuff I'm seeing here seems like half an analysis. "Russia has done X" okay, but what should we be expecting? How do we know if X is good or bad? I just haven't seen it. How much was this expected to cost Russia?
If the war ends with Ukraine ceding some land but staying independent and anti-Putin, then that might be a loss for Ukraine but it would also be a loss for Russia as the strategic outcome would be worse than the pre-war global status quo, as we're seeing a more unified and militarized Europe (Germany just anounced literally doubling its military budget), Finland+Sweden likely joining NATO. I.e. Russia winning a battle in this way doesn't seem to lead to Russia winning the strategic war.
WP says "Most sources conclude that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland", acknowledging that some don't. And also offers the following tasty tidbit:
"Commander Meretskov announced publicly that the Finnish campaign would take two weeks at the most. Soviet soldiers had even been warned not to cross the border into Sweden by mistake."
If you know of an analysis that (cogently) suggests otherwise, feel free to share it with us.
Also various reforms happened after the Winter War that readied the Red Army for the soon coming invasion of the USSR.
There were military, and possibly political, blunders by the Soviet Union in the beginning of the Winter War, but the result was a successful one for them.
If we look at history, it's closer to Iran-Iraq wars.
Saddam pulled a historical grudge out of the ass, wrapped it in bizarre, artificial semi-religious ideology, and tried to draw an image of "people's war" with propaganda.
Then he started the war with people who 1) actually have a real historical grudge, 2) are real religious warriors, and crack good at that, 3) were much better at "people warring" than him, forcing him to retreat in complete ignomy after poking the beehive, which later causes an existential crisis within his regime.
Heck, I would say Putinism is the closest thing to Baathism. Random nonsense from communism, religion, and fascism glued together, and called an "ideology," which then not even its own members can understand, or explain.
A caught saboteur https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1497580425086128132
Russian troops surrender to a local old guy in a village: https://twitter.com/kirillpartizan/status/149731758867369984...
Somebody run away the convoy so fast that shoes were left behind https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1497591153645993994
Locals throwing Molotov’s coctails on passing Russian vehicles: https://twitter.com/MarQs__/status/1497572226643554304
Looks like there is a lack of fuel + food.
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-troops-belarus-exercises-ukr...
Clearly nobody actually thinks about it that way. They are professionals and they carry out their legal orders, given to them by a properly constituted government, to the best of their ability.
Yes, even if the orders are to conduct criminal was of aggression. Because at this stage of human history, the rules based international order is a hopeful fantasy.
While later proven to be false, accusations of WMD, and the insinuation they could be used against the US and/or Europe, were widely believed and likely highly motivating to the average American GI in 2003.
I know men and women who enthusiastically signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq who had little prior intention to join the military.
If you go back and review press interviews with donald rumsfeld at the time you can see that even he could not provide evidence which convinced the journalists. Regardless, the media did their patriotic dtuy and reported them as fact.
Check out the news clip of Rumsfelds "unknown unknowns". A journalist asks: "That is all very interesting but is there any evidence, because that would elevate our bind faith in to something actually reasonable and fact based?" Rumsfeld had nothing to offer.
Were they widely believed? I know I was told they were widely believed, but I never saw polls that confirmed that. Colin Powell was literally laughed at for claiming there were WMDs when addressing the UN and the UN inspectors were very clear there were none.
They were largely debunked in realtime. The western media (I believe the Guardian specifically) published the receipts on the artillery balloon filling vehicles that Britain sold Iraq that the US/UK were trying to pass of as vehicles of mysterious origin that had to be mobile WMD labs before Powell’s presentation to the UNSC. At which meeting, other US allegations were debunked by UN inspectors. Heck, the British government memos about the way intelligence was being shaped to sell the war were leaked before the war the started.
The American/British public went along with the war because of racist hysteria whipped up after 9/11, not any evidence that was uncontroversial at the time but later debunked.
It's often sold as intelligence or media failure or clever executive deception that brought the public and lawmakers along and was later seen through, but that's largely B.S. The lies were documented in fairly stark terms before the war for the public and lawmakers, and they chose to go to war anyway because they didn't care about the facts. But narrowly focusing the blame on the media and the Bush Administration/Blair government lets everyone else absolve themselves.
It's important to understand the simple fact that a majority of Americans at the time believed the war was just[1], and that the government spent many months justifying and readying the nation and its soldiers for war. This is an important factor that helps explain the high morale of American troops at the start of the war.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S....
At least not a majority of elected Democrats.
Isn't that a contradiction?
A war of aggression is about international law, and is commonly not considered something that determines if an order is legal in any military.
One of the massive mistakes in US foreign policy after September 2001 was to effectively re-legitimise old-school military power, occupating countries "just because we can", without even a shadow of UN mandate. It makes it very hard to rhetorically argue against others doing the same now.
Iran was invaded by Saddam. Why didn't we support them if Saddam was so bad? That is a rhetorical question which really needs no response because the response is: the badness of Saddam has no bearing on the question. That is very obvious in this case, but not obvious when we are seeking self-serving justifications for our own wars.
You should research a bit what life in Iraq was like prior to GW1 under Saddam's leadership. Most - in fact, nearly all - ME leaders are 'tyrants' according to Western standards but some are rewarded with arms and some are struck down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein...
> The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown, but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991
In 1988 the US Navy entered the war on the Iraqi side.
And I think we have different definitions of "welcome"
Petraeus mentions it in this recent article and everything I've found supports what he said:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/da...
> Ukraine is not only bigger but some 50 percent more populous than Iraq, and the Iraqi population included many millions—Kurds, Christians, Yezidis, Shabak, and many of the Shia—who broadly supported the coalition forces throughout our time there. Only a minority of the Iraqi population comprised or supported the Sunni extremists and insurgents and Iranian-supported Shia militia. Though they did, to be sure, prove to be very formidable enemies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/10...
> "Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."
> "But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from. ... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein—the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797722034/what-young-iraqis-w...
One interesting example here is in the 80's people could say "South Korea might be a brutal military dictatorship, but it is doing well economically, and therefore that justifies the Korean war"
Which is interesting of course, because in the 1960's, when North Korea was ahead economically, I'm sure North Koreans had the same post-hoc justification.
And if you look in to how US support for the Ba'ath party was justified... Strikingly similar but with the added dimension of US security interests vis a vis maintaining or restoring the Iranian dictatorship.
That all that brings us full circle to whether the Iranian revolution is justified by having got rid of a regime at similarly torturous as Saddam's.
Edit: but I will add that an insurgent is somebody who is fighting against a legitimately constituted government, which did not exist in Iraq, so technically they are resisters.
But at the time you speak of, there was a concerted disinformation scheme which led many people, likely including troops and certainly including the US Congress, to believe that Iraq was becoming a nuclear threat led by a power-hungry man. Troops probably believed they were fighting for the freedom and safety of the world.
That is a huge topic which I cannot hope to explain (or mostly understand). If you look at the shift in US political ideology in the last 5-10 years, particularly during the Trump era (which still continues), it is clear that some masterful manipulation scheme has been operating effectively.
It is clearly possible to groom a significant percentage of a population to believe in absolute lies. This happened in the US after 9/11 (and surely in previous periods); but it was never so effective as it has been lately. The war in Iraq was easy to justify to Americans, even without WMD lies. Hussein was a very bad man by our standards. That alone, of course, does not justify invasion. So other threats must be illustrated, legitimate or not.
But to the point of understanding, you have to realize that people (particularly older ones?) get their information from very few sources; and they communicate with the same few people. It is much easier to sell disinformation and have them repeat it amongst themselves than for younger, more internet-active people.
So yes, the new era is worse than the old Bush era where Rumsfeld was a circus clown feeding us bullshit, but behind the scenes the institutions basically functioned properly. Because in that world that we have left behind now, we still had wars of aggression, we still had robber barons, but the institutions had a veneer of legitimacy which the public, and the people in the institutions believed in enough that you had countervailing political forces that could protect you from the worst excesses. But that past was a mirage, because during that time, the leaders were draining out that trust like siphoning gas out of your tank (eg. in the Iraq war, NAFTA, on and on..), and they were trading it for political power and dollars.
Now the tank is empty, and US institutions are extremely vulnerable to collapse. And I think that Trump was just the last drop of gas escaping.
The fact that he believes those idiotic things while having a seemingly very reasonable belief system around the goals and functions of the institutions he serves, and what his role is in them, is something I find quite darkly comical. Actually I think his sincerity makes his one-off performances laugh-out-loud funny.
Watching the Errol Morris documentary with him is tragic and comic at the same time. I mean, take for instance his view on the Vietnam war. He goes from a very touching and thoughtful personal recollection of the evacuation to Saigon to telling us that his reflection over the entire decades-long US involvement in a conflict that murdered 4 million people as being "some things work out, some things don't." And this appears to be after quite a lot of prompting. It is profound, and inane in equal measure. Hannah Arendt would be slack-jawed.
I presume you mean chemical threat? Let's not forget that Saddam seems to have done his best to encourage that belief, and actually had a verified history of gassing the Kurds. As someone who was opposed to the Iraq war at the time, I'm still not sure history has fully weighed in on that particular (mis)adventure... the Kurds certainly are entitled to their strong endorsement.
Also a key factor here that most Americans don’t get greeting cards from Iraqis over Easter you’ll be hard pressed to find a single Ukrainian or Russian family that doesn’t have relatives across the border.
An analogy to this situation would be if the US decided to invade Canada tomorrow it would be much harder to explain to the troops or to motivate them.
I think the truth lies somewhere between these two interpretations.
1.American soldiers are hired professionals, paid well to do a job. Most of the Russians are conscripts which are treated like shit and don’t want to be there.
2.US media had hyped up hatred towards Saddam for months. Soldiers got lots of hate training before being deployed . They got trained to dehumanize and hate Iraqis. This was very effective but backfired because it led to trigger happy soldiers shooting and blowing up way too many civilians, thus undermining the war effort.
3. Iraq is a far away country Americans cannot relate to or empathized with. Ukraine is a country many Russians are strongly linked to with family, culture and language. This is like the US attacking Canada. How do you think that would go? Americans would hesitate a lot more to shoot Canadians than Iraqis.
I personally believe that the US military is an outlier in terms of it's professionalism, but it's not completely and uniformly professional, there are lots of people coerced in to joining to avoid jail time and what not. Many standards were lowered to increase recruitment during Iraq war. Recruitment targets disadvantaged communities, etc. But I tend to think that there are other forces countering ill-discipline such as training, esprit de corps, "fighting for the guy next to you." I don't know about the disposition of the Russian military but am skeptical of the notion that it's a rag tag bunch of drunks and fuckups :) I guess time will tell.
As for the excessive violence in Iraq. A lot of the excesses came directly from the top. Shock and awe was apparently a fireworks display with no military rationale. It was violence purely for entertainment value and how it would look on TV. It doesn't seem comparable to the Russian approach which, while everything they do is a war crime, they still need to be conscious of all the international scrutiny they face. I don't think they would be able to start levelling neighbourhoods from the air while boasting about how it would terrorize the population without facing severe condemnation from all sides. Shock and awe was condemned by all sides, but the US seemed completely immune to it and carried on regardless. By all accounts, the distrust built up by the acts of terrorism turned Iraqis quickly against the invasion and made the occupation much more costly than it would have been otherwise (of course, other factors contributed hugely, eg. the corruption and incompetence of the CPA, etc.).
While I agree on the race and culture thing, it's also hard to ignore the fact that a large US political movement is committed to wiping out or overpowering roughly half of their own population based on their political beliefs. The events of January 6 should really have opened up peoples eyes to this. We are quite capable of dehumanizing people of the same race. We've been doing it for as far back as the fossil record goes.
Edit: fixed grammar/brainfarts.
this is very incorrect description, there is nothing like that in that episode. Local guy (why old?) is saying he will not allow Russians to come close to his house because he is afraid of shelling from Ukrainian artillery.
Been that way for a while. Have you seen the state of the reddit frontpage? 100% astroturf for the past 3+ years. Just try and participate and watch your comment sit at +1 while the bots all upvote each other and ignore you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/t1h7k4/ukra...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakeMyCoffin/comments/t1gq38/mmc_af...
I hope the crippling sanctions will not cause putin to do something drastic but rather force the oligarchs hand to depose him and stop the assault.
this is strictly putin being putin.
edit also, a lot of the oligarch money is invested heavily in overseas banks that would and are being targeted by the sanctions. being a billionaire is not much if you can't access your money
I would say Elon falls in this category too.
They want to show a secure pro fossil fuel position and attract the international industry. The US became the leading world power 100% because of our industrial utilization and becoming the center of refinement for fossil fuels.
All of the "green propaganda" has been effective and even though there is not even remotely a variable alternative to meet the world's energy needs the US is voluntarily reducing it's number one power asset and Moscow needs to cement their position now before the US can recover.
Look at Germany, the largest EU economy and their hesitancy to go forward with sanctions. They need Russian fuel, as does the entire EU and in a few years these actions will be overlooked in the face of solid and stable supply. All Russia needs is to create enough Ukrainian turmoil to install a subservient regime that doesn't interfere with fossil fuel projects.
Ukraine is a poor country. Like Russia, like Belarus.
The pipeline was supposed to be deadlined completely after nord stream 2.
Ukraine does have a few resources, but the most it has is grain. That could be a thing, but I doubt it.
But NS2 hit the brakes last year. Biden probably wanted something for it, like returning the Donbass. Hence Putin going "fuck it, I'll get the old one then".
That timeline and explanation makes more sense than a smart 69yo mafia boss, at the peak of his powers, just throwing it all away over some ideological bullshit.
I think the point of having a serf like population is to allow having a growing military with the elites of the society making the decisions. It goes for ALL countries.
because those are all internal conflicts that don't involve nuclear superpowers next to other parties that would trigger a NATO retaliatory strike and likely world war iii.
I would imagine democratic countries do tell their soldiers what they are fighting against and where otherwise thats a strategic failure.
I truly dislike the way America promotes enlisting like some cool Activision game (the ads are truly jarring from the outside looking in), but the difference is no less black and white.
mandatory conscription vs a decision and desire to join? is that really not clear?
I worry that he'll use increasingly vicious attacks on population centers, bombings, as an offset to cover up the ineptitude. He can't afford the loss of face, the show of weakness, that the present circumstances represent. His military is weak, poorly organized, incapable of pinpoint strategy, and he'll make up for it by brute force (which will get a lot of civilians killed).
The US and Europe so far are pulling together (with Germany finally coming around more), so Ukraine appears that they'll have a supply of weapons to fight an occupation. The Ukrainians will hate any pro-Russian regime that gets installed and will topple it; the Ukrainian army will not align with Russia. It's hard to see a glorious winning outcome for Putin from here.
I had zero doubts this invasion was going to happen for at least like, 2 months, possibly more. It’s been reported that a surprisingly large amount of people & even governments truly thought it wasn’t going to happen.
I am now truly worried that Putin is going to completely fucking raze Kyiv to the ground after being made to look like a complete & utter fool with his military’s lackluster performance.
I really, really hope I’m wrong.
FWIW, I have had the same concern as you. I don’t really know enough about Putin’s mental state to know whether the concern is valid. I think he would be much more likely to use chemical weapons rather than nuclear.
What??? This assumes every opinion comes down to a coin flip. This is clearly not the case. Some people are better predictors for things that don't have guaranteed probability of outcomes.
Yeah, I fear this is precisely the danger when dealing with narcissists like Putin. Sadly the idea of deploying effective political strategies to neutralize these dangers appears to be anathema in the west as we begin to mirror Putin with nonsensical, hypocritical and sanctimonious high-horsing.
Politicians who wanted to keep BLM politics out of sport are now proposing full-scale ping-pong boycotts. Anti-BDS people are now refusing to drink vodka. Israelis in occupied Palestine are protesting against military occupations. British politicians who are in an alliance with the DUP are now against military interventions to "defend" separatists. Hawks have become doves and spread their beautiful wings to take flight. It's like part of the world has turned it's principles upside down overnight as soon as they see a chance to kick Russia in the shins.
From the Russian perspective, this must look comical, and I'm sure it all plays handily in to their propaganda: "They are liars and hypocrites and everything they say is stupid, cynical and part of a power-play to disadvantage the legitimate aspirations of Russian people". Retch.
If you care about the threat of nuclear weapons, you need to realise that you aren't going to disarm foreign powers who have them through force without unacceptable risk that you cause the scenario you claim to want to avoid.
So the obvious solution is something like if the NPT were to actually be implemented as a good-faith vehicle of global nuclear disarmament. But in order to do that, you are then committed to dealing peacefully with everyone and resolving conflict within the framework of a trustworthy rules-based system. ie. A prerequisite would be acting in a way that leads to building trust in international law and order.
Currently no nuclear state is doing that. And it's hard to imagine any leader or party coming to office running on a platform that proposes it. We have all observed the absolute glee we feel when we act out our own aggressive fantasies (too numerous to mention), and the mirroring (and equally corrosive) sanctimonious pleasure we gain from condemning the aggressions of others and responding in unproductive ways which almost guarantee escalations, if not in the actual conflicts, then in the feelings which engender those conflicts (ie. "they are all against me", "this is unfair", "they never act in good-faith", "they are hypocrites", "there are no rules, only power relations", because "to the extent that there are rules, why should they apply to me, when they don't apply to them", etc).
The best we have been able to achieve, so far, in deterring the aggression of opposing powers is either to: 1. Destroy them so thoroughly that they never reconstitute (eg. Carthage) 2. Destroy them so thoroughly that it takes decades for them to reconstitute (eg. Germany after WW1) 3. Delay/frustrate them with limited conflict or sabre-rattling alone (eg. USA/Taiwan 1996, Ukraine/Russia 2014, etc.)
Nuclear weapons just means that the extermination strategy is off the table. But it doesn't look like the avoidance/posturing/bullshit strategy is going to suddenly start working.
If someone asked me to find the hidden Russian saboteur in the room, I'm absolutely checking the guy squatting in an Adidas parka first.
And not very effectively, as the video indicates.
It's why I disagree with various claims of Putin's "genius". I think these sort of stratagems are an instinctive part of the nature of narcissistic personalities.
> This is like a drunk ex bursting into your apartment, smashing furniture and demanding that you stop seeing that new boyfriend.
...who you are not, in fact, seeing because they’ve said that, while they are interested, they won't get involved while you have so many unsettled issues with the ex.
It seems likely, similarly to the US Civil war. How much does that affect their resolve and is that playing out in the (reportedly) poor performance so far?
This is actually pro-Russian position today. Both maidans happened to “disprove” this. And now a direct invasion. You don’t imagine how much hate is now on Ukrainian side
This is much more of a factor than what you even say. A significant portion of troops are not interested in killing the enemy. Especially true of conscripts, some conscript platoons were near 100% incapable of shooting at the enemy that the enemy could slaughter them all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall
He discovered that either people wont stick their head out of the hole and instead shoot at tree tops. Hoping to scare them off? Or they simply never shot their rifle even once. People certainly criticize this, but I criticize the critics. This guy is 100% right and a large part why conscription doesnt work.
That changes up with general mobilization, if people are defending their own country like vietnam... it's just that much worse because those people are trying to repel invaders. They will shoot the invaders. Their lives have been interrupted and the interrupters must be killed.
So when non-special forces troops actually enter the cities and come up against general mobilization. Russians will take huge losses because those troops will not shoot back directly at the enemy.
I also have a theory, the huge list of allies of ukraine have special forces deployed in proxy war. We will never know the truth obviously. Russian troops who think they are fighting civilians are coming up against some of the best of the best in the world. Russia can't even tell the troops they might be coming up against other special forces. It would be tremendously demoralizing.
* based on a bunch of videos of captured solders and general communication between russian and ukranian sides on internet in last couple of days
Propaganda is scarily powerful. These videos you see are real, their mental breakdowns are real.
Given that exporting arms is a huge source of revenue for the government, I would have assumed they would have relatively modern inventory. But the cobbler's children have no shoes, I guess.
This reeks of delusional leadership. They saw numbers on a page, and spent decades bragging about rusting inventory. Meanwhile, the West has actually rotated through three generations of inventory and have prepared for the opponent they thought they were getting
Russia doesn't have modern manufacturing capabilities and personal to operate it. Most of stuff that is made it's "one off samples". As anecdote, they discovered only today that flagship russian cpu elbrus that supposed to be used by military/government is actually made in taiwan and than relabled in russia. Yesterday TSMC announced that they stop manufacturing it.
Russia did buy from AMD old line from German factory a bunch of years ago, but it's still doesn't really working properly(iirc)
Even Iraqi Baghdad took a month to fall to a massively superior US force all those years ago.
This will be a protracted and bloody afair and with modern social media we'll get to see every gruesome moment.
Also Kyiv is kinda big city. Encircling and occupying it's two very different things
The Ukrainian troops are defending their homes. They are up against a wall, so this is a matter of survival. The Russian troops are fighting for something that likely many of them care nothing about. They are being made to risk their lives (and fight their cousins, so to speak). Not only may they have issues with fighting other similar folks, but they certainly don't _need_ to be risking their lives.
They also seem to completely lack modern blue force tracking which is why they still have to rely on recognition stripes it wouldn’t surprise me if the Russians destroyed as much of their own armor as they did Ukrainian.
And most importantly they seem to be completely inept at performing SAED something that the US and some of its allies especially Israel seem to have nearly perfected at least when it comes to Russian/Soviet AA.
But you are also very much right about the morale problem.
This is a surreal exchange between a Ukrainian and Russian soldiers it feels like a scene from a Cohen Brothers movie
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-tank...
Also they were probably told not to treat the local population as hostile and even if they weren’t it’s usually not the default disposition of people soldiers or not.
These guys have no fucking idea where they are or where they are headed or what their mission actually is and they probably can’t even call anyone up the chain of command to get new orders and they don’t seem to even want to do that.
Seems like it really depends on what men are behind the guns. Such is war I guess.
It also is very much dependent on the situation these soldiers are stranded and under no threat.
If they were mounting a checkpoint which was coming under attack they probably would treat incoming vehicles very differently.
You're correct though, the fog of war is thick, and it's hard to tell for certain.
I hate to use reddit as a source, but here is a group of civilians encountering a roadblock, being shot at, and then managing to escape. This video is not as graphic as the others.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1605y/people_gett...
Although I can't say for certain if this recent, but it seems to fit. If someone could for certain debunk this, I'm all ears, but this same location (red truck and cars blocking road) shows up later in other twitter videos with a destroyed Ukrainian convoy and dead civilians.
Does this abandoned convoy blocked by jack-knived trucks not have Ukrainian "golden block"[0] camo on some vehicles? Could be stolen I guess? None of the typical glyphs of Russian forces though, unless I missed them while scanning the video.
Mind you the passengers speculate some of it is Russian gear. I'm just saying it's possible they were attempting some sort of retreat. This is the same road where civilians were being fired upon. I don't think Ukrainian forces would be shooting at civilians on blocked roads if they had blocked them in this instance.
0. https://img.112.international/original/2019/02/27/280961.jpg
Everyone I know in russia declares virtually 0% support for this invasion. You can only hope that this is begining of the end for Putin.
However one should be carefull drawing conclusions about total ineptitude of the Russian military - in a different confrontation, for instance defending Crimea, these issues might not apply.
considering that that excuse has been practiced at least since 2014, and that the soldiers have smartphones to post selfies, and after watching several of those POW videos with their canned responses, i'm convinced that it is just a trained excuse to get better treatment from Ukrainians when caught.
Even any technical aspects aside. I grew up on a USSR Navy base, and we always knew who goes to fight where. And the military convoys always naturally interact with locals on their route, soldiers talk to the locals, exchange fuel for vodka/cigarettes, children come to get onto/into tanks in exchange for some small favors/goodies/etc.
And to the commenter below: nobody dismantled road signs on the Russian side on the roads to Ukraine :)
Btw, on Ukrainian TV - they are in much better mood today giving their military successes and corresponding Russian failures, i mean they weren't panicked or anything like that yesterday, just seriously somber, it is just today they are really having the blast - they today addressed that overall Russian people habit of playing a powerless victim of circumstances : "Next time you'd think twice about whom to choose President."
(Other quotes from Ukrainian TV today - "We Christened Russia, and we're going to give it the last rites.", "To see Kiev and die. Looks like you're insisting on doing it in that your own peculiar way - well, be my guest.")
And to another commenter below:
>conscripts calling families telling that they are forced to sign contracts (in military operation can participate only contractors)
so, they forced you to signed contract because that is the only way you can participate in military operation and are sending you on "exercises" with full battle ready hardware somewhere close to Ukraine when there is escalation in the air/news. Days later you're driving through Ukrainian villages with clear orders to shoot on Ukrainian tanks and soldiers first and like have no idea where you are and why you're there :)
Most cellphone footage seems to be from the rear lines it wouldn’t surprise me if front line troops don’t have cellphones due to opsec or can’t keep them charged or afford roaming and it seems that Russian soldiers don’t supplement their kit with offline civilian GPS units.
There were also posts of the target marking kits that Russians use and they all seem to be commercial off the shelf laser beacons and reflectors.
The Russian army looks more and more like it’s being supplied through Aliexpress.
>And to the commenter below: nobody dismantled road signs on the Russian side on the roads to Ukraine
Yeah, sure. It's like when you need to get to bakersfiled but the last road sign its arrow pointing to general direction of california in utah.
Surely militaties don't allow their frontline troops to have phones? That would enable Ukranian side to track and count troops and use that information for artillery strikes?
I mean, you don't have a balanced or unbiased sample. You sound like the people who are like "No person I know supported Trump."
> in a different confrontation, for instance defending Crimea
I'm pretty sure you meant "continuing to occupy Crimea"
Well we can't exactly conduct a democratic referendum to find out, can we?
There a lot of datapoint that indicate this is the case, the russian commanders being in shock when they learnt abotu the task and their concern for desertions, etc. Ofcourse I could be totally wrong, we are all couch generals here
China has to be seeing this and eyeing some of that sweet Russian border territory for the future.
Most of Russia's income is from oil and gas. And the profits from oil and gas are received by a very small few people. Those people probably do not pay a lot of taxes.
Therefore, it can be assumed that the Russian military and related systems are not well funded. Russia has for decades had a brute-force approach to military - simpler, less efficient systems which are more robust and which can be field serviced.
If numbers found on the internet can be believed chuckle, in 2017 Russia spent 66 billion USD-equivalent on its military. The US spent $646 billion. Now maybe the US is much less efficient, with grifter middlemen contractors, but still... 10x the expenditures.
As for China, they want the energy and mineral resources from Russia. They are treading carefully to appear supportive of Russia while not alienating the rest of the world (their major trading partners).
The Russian economy is about $1.7tn and the US one is about $29tn. Yup, you read those figures right.
For comparison, the USSR had 286 million people in 1989 to the US 248 million.
And their GDPs were $1.7tn for Soviets (yep, same amount after 30 years of inflation, plus the Soviet one was most likely inflated...) and US about $6tn.
Russia is the world's biggest banana republic. More like oil sheikdom, actually.
I think within 5 (maybe 10) years we will see a regime change in Russia and a big shift in policy.
They fell, like the rest of us, but they, Ukraine and Belarus did... nothing. Or installed dictators.
Meanwhile 90% of the former Warsaw Pact recovered by 2005 or so and now is at historical economic peaks, see places like Poland.
https://twitter.com/CorpsmanUP1898/status/149687929406015078...
Hostility due to hate has to pre-exist or has to be built over time.
Nationalism aside they are as close to being one people at this point as you can get, you’ll find it very hard to find a Ukrainian family without Russian relatives and vise versa due to the legacy of the USSR.
Basically if a bunch of marines would be deployed and told to take Toronto would get stuck on the way they’ll probably opt to head to the nearest tim hortons too.
And unless they come in guns blazing I don’t think the local population would try to feed them through a wood chipper…
They are continuing bombing the Kiyv dam.
From the interviews of people on the street in Russia before the invasion I think it's quite literally fighting actual cousins and aunt,uncles, grandparents. Russian people interviewed remarked that they many Russians have close relatives in Ukraine.
What an absolute disgrace that we fight each other over BS orders. So many lives, especially of young people, lost for what?
I have long thought Putin to be a mean but smart individual, but even if Russia eventually accomplishes the conquest of Ukraine, this looks like a blunder on his part, not only a moral error (although certainly also that).
Crimea is a good strategic resource, but Russia already has over 1000 km of Black Sea coastline...
A few things that contribute to Russian goals here:
A. "paypack" for the overthrow of the long standing pro Russian Ukrainian government in 2013. Putin would like the status quo returned to 2012 - weak buffer state reliant on Russia (Belarus 2.0)
B. historical significance of Ukraine joining the old western cold war army (nato) would be devastating. Russia may have calculated this is the last chance to stop that or at least delay it for a generation
C. finish the 2014 war. Get the land bridge to Crimea and unify the Russian speaking west and south western Ukrainian regions (imho this is goal number 1 since it give massive economic and political benefits.)
There's probably loads of other goals, but they are the first to come to mind.
Note: I'm not agreeing with any of them, just pointing out they are likely there and we would probably be aware of them.
Well in Putin's own words, it seems obvious and clear. Ukraine's government are Nazis who are committing genocide over Russians in the new republics as Ukraine invaded the republics to reclaim the land.
“As I said in my previous address, one cannot look at what is happening there without compassion. It was simply impossible to endure all this. It was necessary to stop this nightmare immediately – the genocide against the millions of people living there, who rely only on Russia, hope only on us. It was these aspirations, feelings, pain of people that were for us the main motive for deciding to recognise the people’s republics of Donbas.”
“What I think is important to emphasise further. In order to achieve their own goals, the leading NATO countries support extreme nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine in everything, who, in turn, will never forgive the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents for their free choice – reunification with Russia.”
While all this nazi crap is absurd. We can also discount the possibility that Putin has been misled. He's ex-KGB. They were actively trained to be able to avoid exactly that. Instead this is obvious propaganda. The president of ukraine is jewish and target #1. Obviously not a nazi, this was more to mislead the russian duma and russian people.
>What an absolute disgrace that we fight each other over BS orders. So many lives, especially of young people, lost for what?
We have to figure out the 'they didnt go into iraq for wmds, they went there for oil'. It's all pure speculation. Go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Ukraine and throw a dart. Whatever you hit, that's it.
There is this: https://venturebeat.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-supplies-90-perce...
If you have been following... there's about a trillion $ of investment in new chip fabs. Everyone in the world is rushing to build chip fabs. Russia taking this neon production could give them the edge they need... To what end?
The thing for me? there's nothing in ukraine that makes it good there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon#Production It can basically be done anywhere.
And what's even the point? Russia has basically been excluded from ever making any value from this.
Now that you say that... if my memory is good(its not) midwest usa started doing this. I recall it being in reference to the automotive industry.
And madman though Putin may seem to be, he knows NATO isn't an offensive organization.
Sure, like the defensive bombing of Libya by NATO.
I think he may legit see it that way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOkl2XgZlw0
And I'm going to judge Putin by his own words. He says he's threatened by NATO on his borders? Then he shouldn't have 70% of his military on the border of Ukraine. It leaves him wide open to an invasion from NATO members Estonia and Latvia.
Ukraine also has a corruption problem.
I think NATO will keep Ukraine on the cusp for 20 years like they did with Romania, before they allow them to join.
So like the western-backed Euromaidan basically (without Victoria Nuland handing out cookies in Maidan square).
Ukrainians are the only ones who have the moral right to choose what they will be aligned with. Perhaps you can coach them or bribe them with trade (or lack of trade), but a violent invasion is absolutely not like that, it's not even comparable to what happened during Euromaidan.
Putin's Russia right now is less than 150 million people. The rest of the former Soviet states have about as much together. If he conquers Ukraine, then most of them will decide it's time to get back to the "Federation", if they know what's good for them (the exception would be the three Baltic states which are NATO members).
If Putin's gambit works out, he reconstitutes the Soviet Union (itself the reconstitution of the Tsarist Empire), and makes a country of close to 300 million people. For you and me the population is not a very relevant number, but for him it's the number of potential soldiers that he can use to bully Europe.
And number of consumers. Want a big economy? You need a big population.
The narrator argues that it's largely about fossil fuels.
At a very high level, Putin wants to maintain a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. Russia doesn't have the resources to occupy and/or annex Ukraine, at least not in the long term. Putin must know that. He can't hope to install a stable puppet government, because Ukrainians would overthrow the puppet in a revolution. He must know that as well.
Maybe Putin wants to cripple Ukraine permanently. Take Odesa, and Ukraine loses access to the sea. Take control of enough territory that it doesn't matter what NATO and the EU will do with the remaining Ukraine.
Or maybe Putin has become an idealist instead of the pragmatist he was. Maybe his actions are now guided by beliefs rather than expected consequences. If Putin believes that the former glory of Russia must be restored by any means necessary, he may drive Russia into ruin by pursuing that.
People saying this is mostly about NATO expansion are missing the real issue. NATO aspirations are symptom not the cause of the dispute. If a country is in NATO it limits the means Russia has to coerce them. ie: it takes military intervention off the table since they would not be picking a fight with only one country but the alliance.
If you will skim through article, it's kinda becomes more clear. Opinion expressed there with regards to Ukraine are shared by many Russians, based on what I observed.
1) Russia. Russian power is waning, and at the same time Ukraine-NATO integration is approaching the point of irreversibility. Russia sees the potential for a NATO armed Ukraine with US tropps, missiles, and possibly nukes 5 minutes from Moscow as an unacceptable security risk. From the Russian perspective the window to stop Ukraine is closing, and they have to act before NATO armaments has made Ukraine is too strong, and Russia is too weak.
2) NATO. NATO and the US would like to have the additional leverage over Russia provided by bases in Ukraine in the long term. Each additional country in NATO adds to it's strength, and removes a potential threat in the future. NATO wont give Ukraine full membership today, because it does not have full control of it's territory and widespread corruption within Ukraine. NATO, is willing to provide a slow path to membership because it is a Win-win situation. If Russia doesn't act, NATO slowly gets more leverage over Russia (NATO win). If Russia invades Ukraine, Russian forces, economy, and relations are damaged (another NATO win).
3) Ukraine. Essentially stuck in the middle, with no good options. They can grow closer to Russia or the EU, and each has downsides. Russia is a waning power and offers less economically. EU is more prosperous but they must join a military alliance against Russia. If they ever get full NATO membership, the Russian threat is greatly reduced, but NATO application is an extremely long process during which the threat is greatly increased.
a) The old one of Empires - Russia controls Ukraine, Belarus etc. It's threatened by Ukraine moving to the west.
b) The current one where countries are independent democracies with governments chosen by the people.
Putin's been reading too many history books about a) The west has to go with b) - we can't really say to the Ukranians you'll never be able to join the EU/nato in spite of your people wanting to because you are property of the Russian empire. Putin needs to get with the times really.
Everyone is cheering this nonsensical war on the side lines. Civilians are being encouraged to throw molotovs at Russian invaders and automatic weaponry is being issued indiscriminately. Every country is giving Ukraine weaponry and keeps buying Russian energy.
Both sides have no way back, nobody is going to stop anyone. Ukrainians are extremely proud and suicidal (just look their anthem - "Ukraine hasn't perished YET"). The war will rage on and it will the biggest humanitarian crisis our generation has seen..
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_W...
On the mid to long-term: The US has now consolidated its power in the EU and effectively severed Russia from Europe/the West. China can now take in Russia.
Edit: This just my quick assessment, I could be wrong. The war is still on going and I hope it ends quick.
With no troops coming to the aid of Ukraine, the Russians have the luxury of time.
There are no troops coming to Ukraine, but arms are streaming across the Polish border from NATO countries.
Not to mention lots of Ukraine citizens rapidly training as militias as we speak.
The longer Putin waits, the more weapons Ukraine will have.
I don't understand why the Western governments are openly anouncing their supply of weapons to Ukraine. Why not just do it stealthily?
Javelins in particular are quite distinctive when used in the field.
If they do it publicly, they avoid that and send a strong message that they're supporting Ukraine. Win-win.
I fear though that the authoritarian state doesn't have the capacity to rationally analyze the prognosis and cut their sunk costs (both economic and political).
US is specifically avoiding anything that would cause economic distress to Americans, this is in the President’s speech, and it is because the party will decisively lose politically later this year if there is more distress.
Big win for US intelligence for sure!
Messing with the fossil fuel markets is definitely what is required, amongst other things.
And the person you replied to oversimplified the outcome as well
To a large extent, even if they lose, they win (eg. as the article says, Ukraine may need to withdraw from defensive lines in the east to defend Kiev, in which case Russia could make a land-grab there). There will be contingencies for all sorts of different definitions of "win".
And in another sense, even if they win, they lose, because in fighting as best they can, they expend capital and expose all their weaknesses to view. And even if they achieve absolutely maximal war aims, like capturing the entire country, they are likely to find themselves in a situation that they are pretty unprepared for. I think states go to war hoping to achieve the maximal goals, but most prepared to achieve some subset of them before time, money, political support runs out.
If this actually turns into a failure, even if he's successful but it takes too long or costs too much, an era of world history will have clicked over, and the narrative of Russia as a boogey man, or as a peer adversary, will be over.
Nobody wants to use nuclear weapons, but nobody wants to go toe-to-toe with a nuclear state either.
There's a nuclear "exchange", maybe it's one way, that doesn't involve my country. Why would I want to get my country involved in that exchange? That seems to go from utterly terrible tragedy that is almost as bad as can be imagined to so, so much worse for so many more people. In fact it takes it to every bit as bad as possible. Given that reality, how much deterrent are they unless it's mutually assured destruction?
"Is this something for which the only option is to end current human civilization?" Nasty things to think about.
And the last time Putin went to war with Ukraine saw similar issues with many troops deserting.
Putin might have generalized too much from prior wars.
Russian forces continue to refrain from using their likely full spectrum of air and missile capabilities. The Ukrainian air force also remains active. Russian operations will likely steadily wear down Ukrainian air capabilities as well eventually taking the Ukrainian air force out of the fight. Russia has sufficient conventional military power to reinforce each of its current axes of advance and overpower conventional Ukrainian forces defending them.
It's too soon to call it, Ukraine obviously has most of the western world behind it, and Russia is still holding back its higher tier forces. An occupation and insurgency/counter-insurgency would be a disaster for both countries. Hopefully Putin realizes the juice is not worth the squeeze quickly and pulls back.
I think they are much more likely to view their failures as humiliations and betrayals and make new commitments to redeeming themselves through acts of aggression which enable them to redefine themselves in a positive light.
I mean, when Clinton sailed the USS Independence carrier group through the strait of Taiwan causing china to stand down her military in 1996, what was the Chinese response?
But the US elections are over now, so what does Bill Clinton care? :)
But if he did that, they'd call him a "pussy" and he wouldn't be re-elected. Not to mention, it's much more difficult and complex than just "getting your missile out for the ladies."
It's hard to ignore that this type of short-termism is the typical "borrowing from the future" philosophy that got us to where we are with climate change, nuclear proliferation, financial collapse, and the breakdown of the global order.
Edit: in a way discussing this is probably academic, since we will either change the way we approach these problems, or there won't be any "we" left to do anything at all. Here's Tom with the weather :)
People seem to think that the fact that the Russian army is disorganized and slow is a problem. It's not - Putin doesn't care about the body count provided he comes away with a victory.
If Ukraine is to win this war, the battle for air supremacy and a constant supply of anti-tank armour is much more important. If they can stop Russian armour using a combination of airpower and anti-tank weapons then they have a chance.
I think both of these things have a critical dependence on Ukraine being able to show the ability to resist Russian advances. If they continue that, then Western support of arm shipments is likely to increase. Significantly, both the Germans and Dutch have started sending anti-tank weapons in the last 2 days.
The rearguard units would likelly be even more soft, and incomplete, and they don't want to advance knowing it.
This, Not Ukraine, or China, or NATO is probably the worse nightmare for him now.
I was thinking about it today, conclusion is that there are proxy operators in the theatre. Ukraine hasn't been left alone military wise. Russia is also fighting how many other special forces of undeclared countries? Probably all of them?
Russia thinks they are fighting against mom and dads, which they are, but they are also fighting against special forces who are probably wrecking the russian troops. They cant even account for this neither. To do so would destroy troop morale, add significant fear, and add tremendous time to the invasion.
Considering this, the probability of even being successful in their plan to take ukraine is near 0. Sanctions and isolation will cripple them before they can overcome this massive degree of proxy war.
russia is going to hurt so badly.
I have seen this, roughly 20,000 strong. But they have been specfically instructed to only shoot at nazis. That general ukrainian troops aren't allies, but they are not allowed to kill them.
I think this goes against everything we know about modern warfare. I'd bet money (1) Zelenskyy is being actively supported/coached by the CIA or MI6 (his PR/propaganda game has been absolutely on point), (2) there are covert-ops teams in Ukraine that are assisting the rag-tag paramilitary and civilian groups with advanced urban warfare tactics (e.g. demolishing bridges, improvised armaments, etc.), and (3) the Kremlin is correct that NATO/US UAVs are relaying detailed Russian troop/ship movements back to Ukranian leadership.
Is Zelenskyy receiving foreign intelligence from NATO? That wouldn't surprise me.
Is NATO (or separately the US) flying drones over Ukraine for intelligence gathering? That's a step further, but it doesn't seem impossible.
Are there US/British/etc. nationals in Ukraine, doing their own protective sabotage/engaging directly with the enemy? I find this very difficult to believe, for the reasons stated in the previous comment.
"Modern warfare" means a whole bunch of things, including that Ukrainian soldiers don't need months of training to operate the push-button munitions that NATO has dumped on them. NATO has dozens of options to exhaust before doing something as risky as directly inserting foreign soldiers into a war they're not involved in on paper.
Why do you think black ops in Ukraine is beyond the pale (technically even intelligence support kind of drags NATO into this)? I agree with you that they are probably instructed to not directly engage with the Russians, but sabotage and training doesn't really seem that far fetched to me, although..
> including that Ukrainian soldiers don't need months of training to operate the push-button munitions that NATO has dumped on them
..this is actually a great point. With Javelins and NLAWs that just about anyone in this thread could use against tanks and helis effectively, maybe they don't need any on-ground assistance.
But it's all just speculation on my part! That's what HN does best, after all.
Oh man is it ever. Dont know who exactly, but ya no doubt getting coached.
>2) there are covert-ops teams in Ukraine that are assisting the rag-tag paramilitary and civilian groups with advanced urban warfare tactics (e.g. demolishing bridges, improvised armaments, etc.), a
I suspect language barriers would prevent much work together here.
What I have been seeing, there are tons of videos of 'aftermaths' where russians took tons of losses but nothing else. I would expect the spec ops took out the russians and just moved on. They are largely speaking just looking at intel and intercepting ground troops.
>(3) the Kremlin is correct that NATO/US UAVs are relaying detailed Russian troop/ship movements back to Ukranian leadership.
You can confirm this yourself on various ADSB tracking maps. Dont forget geo spy sattelites. The russian troops are tracked in real time. They are sitting ducks who haven't even seen true resistance yet.
Absolutely pure speculation.
We never know what the navy seals or the green berets or the french dragoons, etc etc are doing. Everyone has many divisions of specops. Seal team 6 were the ones who very illegally operated within pakistan to kill osama bin laden.
In fact, Pakistan became a belligerent(siding with russia) in the Ukraine conflict probably due to large part of the publicity of the killing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Und...
Now im not interested debating the legality here. Im just pointing out, they operate wherever the hell they please. I would bet any amount of money specops of all major countries are in ukraine right now. Not 100% of the allies of ukraine and certainly not 0%.
I'd also bet there are constant very high res spy sattelites mapping every step of every russian soldier. You can actively see the global hawks operating. You can actively see the awacs in the air.
NATO response force is active and at the border. Those dude are going to be damn near if not as well trained as specops.
Like, being realistic, Russia already lost the war and they dont realize it.
The thing that got me thinking about this. Spetsnaz blue berets airdropped into that international airport, they took it. Spetsnaz are legit and well trained... and they were routed within the day? I dont believe it. I do believe it when I consider specops from across the world came in and wrecked their face.
Private for hire mercenary groups though who knows
Maybe, however, it’s more likely that Russia’s military is less competently run than previously thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if intel was being shared with Ukraine and weapons definitely are being shared.
There is info that the troops didnt think they were invading. They were either thinking they were protecting against nazi troops or were just training.
This makes sense, if you're planning an invasion, the troops cant be told. They would be security threats.
But at the same time, that lack of knowledge will make them ill prepared at the beginning. But their morale after these massive losses will suffer.
The thing is about proxy spec ops. It's practically 100% they are there but russian troops cant be told. Imagine you're already taking losses, then you get told the world's spec ops are there. You'd shit your pants. You're figthing against farmers and navy seals? You would have to treat every fight like you are fighting navy seals. That would make anyone rout instantly.
Also applies to tech industry - big lesson for management that cannot work with people who disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan#Politics_and_econ...
And that core argument was that he had no choice and that this a survival rather than an aggression move. At the moment, the struggles his army demonstrates, centered on lack of resources, lack of superiority on intelligence etc. are struggles related to capabilities where any of his advantages deteriorate with time. So he is attacking now, while there still is time. The alternative would be to wait 1 year and have Ukraine a member of Nato and a formidable enemy knocking on his door at any time? Doubt it, but it is his storyline to oligarchs. I hope this does not give Putin an argument but it goes to prove that I am at best a bad strategist, only coming up with explanations ex-post and he could be a mediocre strategist, but I sincerely doubt it given his history and his experience out of running a proxy war in Ukraine for 8 years.
The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan did not help either and is the only thing that would explain timing from my perspective. He knows/feels that US is pulling back in preparation for something, but whether that something is the explicitly stated Asia race against China or an easy win against Russia cannot be assessed. If it was the latter he played right into it. I would think it was worth to him waiting for next US elections, regardless the outcome, as US are hitting some known fault lines in their political discourse, EU could grow more dependent on energy front in the meantime etc.