Russia’s Possible Invasion of Ukraine
csis.org
csis.org
> Every Kremlin ruler knows that one of the quickest ways to end a Russian dynasty or regime is to lose a war.
> In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud.
> The key to thwarting Russian ambitions is to prevent Moscow from having a quick victory and to raise the economic, political, and military costs by imposing economic sanctions, ensuring political isolation from the West, and raising the prospect of a prolonged insurgency that grinds away the Russian military. In this war, Russia might have the watches, but the West and Ukraine may have the time.
I didn't imagine the spring being the best defence against the east.
None of these factors are at play here.
Summer and even Winter generally saw numerous offensives by contrast.
During the first year, in October 41, Barbarossa and operation Typhoon (Battle of Moscow) stopped temporarily in part due to the rasputitsa, and only resumed when the ground froze in early November (incidentally giving time for the Soviets to reorganize the extremely weakened front protecting Moscow).
The soviet Winter offensives mostly stopped around the Spring rasputitsa, Case Blue and other initial battles only started only in late April 42. and after Stalingrad, the Soviet reconquest of the South during the 42/43 Winter stopped again around Spring 43, with offensive operation only restarting in July 43 (Battle of Kursk).
There are of course many other factors explaining these pauses (offensive strength exhausted, over-extended supply lines, etc), but rasputitsa was definitely a factor.
> In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud.
must actually be:
> In October, Rasputitsa turns mud into firm ground.
Romanov dynasty had many wars before being toppled.
That's why they're being annihilated. Moving your forces on roads is something you do after you've secured an area, not before.
For example, if Putin occupies and holds Donbas and Odessa, what's the likelihood of Ukrainian forces mounting a counter attack and reclaiming said territory? This puts the onus of invasion onto the Ukrainians, which are more configured for resistance in the first place.
The result could be another "soft annex" similar to Crimea.
The Russian commandants were so sure about their chances that they didn't wait for air superiority.
Or, they didn't want to be seen as an invader but a liberator and as we know that failed terribly.
Totally ignoring (or not even receiving) the intelligence reports about the buildup that happened since then.
In any case, it's a surprising display of incompetence on so many levels. Possibly enough that in the end Putin's regime will fall without making Ukraine or the world a wasteland.
Another example is this video of Putin's "heated exchange" with his chief spy [1]. The point of releasing that clip is to demonstrate that "The weak, meek, and confused oppose the ongoing liberation on independent nations". Viewers would not see themselves reflected in the speaker, and that distances them from his ideas. Yet there is a strong protagonist in that clip.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2022/feb/22/speak-pl...
Which reminds me of an old joke:
The judge opened the courtroom proceedings: "Mr. Mouse, as I understand it, you're petitioning the court for a divorce from your wife because she is insane. Is that correct?
Mickey sighed: "No, your Honor, what I'm saying is that she's f*in' Goofy!"
Putin knows very well what's happening, he has been planning this war for a very long time. He made sure the EU received less gas than agreed last summer, so their reserves are insufficient. Leaked plans show he is aiming to attack Moldova next.
I wonder if it wouldn't help for the West to guarantee political asylum for Russian deserters, maybe even with a new identity for them. But I don't know if this is practically achievable, at least not without extensive vetting and not as long as they are PoWs. Has this ever been attempted?
The decision is pretty obvious for most.
That will to fight matters more than the sophistication of their weapons. Weapons without the will to fight just go right into the enemy’s hands as you surrender. In a sense, soft power then is the vastly more important power.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Russians to read the ideological room. The details of this operation seems predicated on Russian misunderstanding of who they were dealing with. An entire generation has grown up living with the background threat of Russian aggression and this point has really been driven home sine 2014. Expecting the people and leaders of Ukraine to not be mentally prepared for that comes across like the nation state version of the feds showing up on the doorstep of a bunch of apocalypse preaching crazies expecting an easy win and then being baffled that their victims prefer to die together.
Or something might happen and Ukraine might just roll over. Nobody knows yet. Time will tell.
The first wave of soldiers from Russia was kids with normal walkie talkies unencrypted communication thinking they are doing a normal manouver and suddenly realising they are at war.
Do you sneak away at the front? The opposition is hunting infiltrators, will they ask questions or shoot first? Do you sneak out behind the front? Your own side is likely to dispense quick "justice" and report you as KIA if you're caught (less trouble). How do you get to a border with a Western country? Do you stay in Ukraine and wait for things to settle down before making your move? That's a bet that you won't find yourself in a Russian-occupied zone. And so on.
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/kyiv-offers-over-40k...
I think there's a far simpler explanation; genocide. Putin has been throwing Chechen conscripts into this meatgrinder at a pace which shows he has zero issues whatsoever with any level of casualties. The losses are a feature, not a bug. This is Russia, not Iran. They have reserves of over 10 million troops to call on, and the worlds largest inventory of military equipment. He knows he can just throw bodies at this and avoid losing the expensive aircraft and pilots he will need for his coming showdown with NATO.
I’m sure Ukraine appreciates all the weapons Russia is donating to them, though.
Russia has unlimited food and fuel. And their capture of Ukraine will only solidify that. Soldiers and tanks are cheap. Su-57's and pilots are not.
>You wouldn’t think logistics would be a problem just 100 or 200 miles away from your own de facto borders, but here we are.
This is week 1 of an invasion that is going to last for years. Moving that kind of tonnage just physically takes time no matter what.
Some Ukrainian bureaucrat with a sense of humor has done their part to declare the acquisition of Russian tanks and equipment is not a taxable event: https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/804441.html
I think the proper word is scrapeyard. The equipment does not work.
Yes there are many Chechens in Ukraine and you are right that they basically want to get rid of them but there are also many Russians. The regime simply does not care for the lives of people.
https://youtu.be/-pBh7bOvcBQ?t=247
We are officially in a clown timeline.
I don't think so.
I'm seeing estimates of 120-150k Russian troops deployed in Ukraine from sources like the Ukrainian government and the Pentagon. Outside of Russian propaganda, the estimates range from 10-12k range for Chechen fighters. The 10k number came from Chechen leadership. These numbers don't support the notion that Chechens are doing the bulk of the fighting or dying in Ukraine.
Moreover, the only reports of engagement with Chechen forces are in regard to the elimination of a special forces unit tasked with assassinating Zelensky. Russians are using the image of Chechens as fierce, brutal, battle-hardened fighters in an attempt to demoralize Ukrainians. If Chechens were doing a significant share of the fighting it would all over the news. Ukraine would capitalize on this as well to rally the populace against the "Putin's vicious Chechen mercenaries".
There's a 10:1 ratio of logistical units to front line fighters for any modern military. The Chechen units are 100% light infantry.
>> they didn't wait for air superiority
Are we sure they didn't? Otherwise how do you explain the 40 mile long convoy not being attacked by air?
It's possible the convoy is protected but that the Russians can't or don't want to deploy more aircrafts for other operations.
It's also possible that the Ukrainians don't want to attack the convoy but the support this convoy needs to get. That's a powerful tactic if you can cut off the supply chain for such a massive number of vehicles.
Note: I'm no military expert (is there a handy acronym for that?) :-)
“ Weather: An invasion that begins in January or February would have the advantage of frozen ground to support the cross-country movement of a large mechanized force. It would also mean operating in conditions of freezing cold and limited visibility. January is usually the coldest and snowiest month of the year in Ukraine, averaging 8.5 hours of daylight during the month and increasing to 10 hours by February.8 This would put a premium on night fighting capabilities to keep an advance moving forward. Should fighting continue into March, mechanized forces would have to deal with the infamous Rasputitsa, or thaw.”
Russia knows it. Ukraine knows it. The Ottomans back in the 1400s knew it.
Just because some other profession is a black box relative to your knowledge base doesn't mean every detail is one that anyone who begins obtaining knowledge of the field will not instantly pick up. Remember this next time someone on the internet tries to pass themself off as a professional roofer because they know not to peel the plastic off the bottom of the shingle (it literally says not to on it).
The ‘surprising’ part in my end comes from being jaded with how shallow so much media is today. It was refreshing to see details like this written down because it’s simultaneously obvious and true, and it lends credence to their analysis.
A think tank can be there to manufacture support for an ideological position, but it can also be used to do actual thinking.
A typical Western "military analyst" these days often comes with a law degree, MBA, or even a financial guy, sometimes with few years of service, or a stint in Westpoint, clinging for a claim of being "serious subject matter expert," and making money off that.
As I said few times over this week, a lot of them don't even know the difference in between a tank, and an APC, so bad it is really.
And Western politicians listen to them...
The latter kind is of course the origin of the whole concept, but one can't help feeling that the overwhelming majority nowadays is the former.
This is what happens when politicians go straight deny military professionals eminence over military strategy just to make a point.
Many people saw through the phony pretenses for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I'm not sure why so much of HN pretends otherwise. I guess they believe that if they were duped, and they're super smart, then surely everyone else must have been duped as well. This couldn't be further from the truth. There were many people calling these wars BS from the start.
Again, this isn't true. You just made it up.
Of course, that didn't happen. The war continued for almost 20 more years. 10 million people still isn't a meaningful-enough protest size to kill the military-industrial complex. The funny thing that's even more to my point: it wasn't the U.S. that held the largest of the protests. The average U.S. citizen does not know, or does not care.
That's a key point. It does go to show that the Russians expected this to be a very short affair. I wonder if they have any real contingency plans for when that thaw sets in.
The Pentagon [is reporting](https://news.yahoo.com/russian-troops-surrendering-sabotagin...) some units are self-sabotaging their machinery to avoid fighting.
It would be nice to know how many incidents they have observed.
"And here folks is our three liter tank. We like to call it like that because it needs three liters — just to start up."
Why? Because it has a 90hp motor. That just exists to crank the _actual_ main motor at 1000hp+
That day I learned that tanks are veeeeery thirsty beasts.
Finally, a worthy opponent for the average American car :)
Also known as a "Pony" motor. Other heavy equipment such as large Caterpillar D series bulldozers often have these just to start the prime mover.
Also a lot of these machines probably have hellish MPG, as low as 4-10 MPG, even the trucks.
Russia’s truck logistic support, which would be crucial in an invasion of Eastern Europe, is limited by the number of trucks and range of operations. It is possible to calculate how far trucks can operate using simple beer math. Assuming the existing road network can support 45 mph speeds, a single truck can make three trips a day at up to a 45-mile range: One hours to load, one hour to drive to the supported unit, one hours to unload, and another hour to return to base. Repeating this cycle three times equals 12 hours total. The rest of the day is dedicated to truck maintenance, meals, refueling, weapons cleaning, and sleeping. Increase the distance to 90 miles, and the truck can make two trips daily. At 180 miles, the same truck is down to one trip a day. These assumptions won’t work in rough terrain or where there is limited/damaged infrastructure. If an army has just enough trucks to sustain itself at a 45-mile distance, then at 90 miles, the throughput will be 33 percent lower. At 180 miles, it will be down by 66 percent. The further you push from supply dumps, the fewer supplies you can replace in a single day.
The resupply line from Belarus to the outskirts of Kyiv is more than 100 miles and over "back roads" - definitely not highway roads.
2) "Driving to Paris" during the cold war was a different time and a different place. And they never attempted it, so you cannot assume it would have been a success.
Their routes into Ukraine in the north and east do not appear to have rail lines for logistics. Note that they have had more success in the south where they likely have a better logistics supply line (more roads, probably better roads, closer to "friendly" territory).
I've also seen rumblings that the Russian units weren't adequately supplied before setting out, they had been eating through their rations and burning fuel for heat as they sat along the border prior and weren't properly restocked before heading out.
The plan is/was always to control the roads and the air by then.
Even when conditions are "good" moving an army overland is absurdly less efficient than using infrastructure hence why you only ever see it for initial attack thrusts.
It's not just ordinary squishy ground, the area between Belarus and Kyiv is the Pripyat marshes!
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
>NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES
Interesting thought, this goes way beyond Europe and Russia.
The War on Error has made the West completely oblivious to the number of very big elephants in the room while politicians were playing the War on Error as if it was some kind of CounterStrike game, and then wasted time on refugee crisis, Trump, Brexit, and various other piss contests.
(Of course, Putin's invasion of Ukraine is its own variety of stupid, but not quite the same one.)
Herodotus (https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2707/pg2707.txt)
Instead, the enemy is what it always was, corruption and violent subpopulations. Every democracy that falls, goes through both of those.
On the autocracies side, it looks like they also are as they always were: blind by subservience. About every single time one of them is tested, the ruler doesn't know up from down and the population don't know (or don't want to know) what to follow.
Or external threats. Eastern Europe was battling with both the enemies you mentioned, but then the Soviets came and sealed the deal for almost 50 years.
We get a new war with the same objectives a century later.
Right now the only thing from that list it will provide is natural resources. Industrial capacity and cities are being destroyed. Good luck making an army of conscripts from Ukraine that you expect to fight the west (although russia's way of doing things would be to send them east to fight China).
Since about 1995.
William J. Burns, you probably remember him from somewhere, back then about this mess:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2022-02-10/html/CRE...
And again, who let and why did it happen?
Still, if the Ukrainians wouldn't have shown tremendous defense capabilities, the West probably wouldn't have shown such a swift reaction.
You could use this exact statement to justify what Russia is doing right now, if NATO is the bully. And if we look at recent history, we definitely know that NATO behaves as a bully when things don't go the way they planned.
If you refer to the fact that sovereign countries applied for NATO membership and got accepted, you have to tell how that is bullying.
If Ukraine were part of NATO, it's unlikely that it got attacked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_War_in_Afgha...
The Afghanistan missions were conducted due to UN resolutions.
How can you distinguish a coalition army of Brits, Italians and Americans from a NATO army of Brits, Italians and Americans?
It's the patch, isn't it? The rest is the same.
The forces of a NATO member are NATO forces. Or do you think if Russia would attack polish forces it wouldn't be considered as an attack on NATO forces?
NATO was involved in both the initial campaign against Afghanistan in response to an attack on a NATO member and later support operations in support of the new (and now defunct) Afghan government, but neither was inconsistent with its defensive character.
For future reference, the proper whataboutism here is Yugoslavia and Libya, nor Iraq and Afghanistan. If you are going to play the game, at least know what you are talking about.
Iraqis and Afghans certainly did not notice the difference that they were not attacked by a joint NATO army of British, Italians, Americans etc. but only by an army of the willing made up of British, Italians and Americans.
If the US had been able to declare an alliance, it would have been under the NATO umbrella.
I doubt that during the Cold War a distinction would have been made between a Warsaw Pact army of Poles, Romanians and Russians and a coalition army of Poles, Romanians and Russians.
They did, and it wasn't.
But to think we can translate that knowledge to anything, like say geopolitics, is laughable.
If I see written here one more time that civilians being bombed, and small Ukrainian military victories, are just PsyOps campaigns manufactured by the West, I don't be reading any more non-tech comments here on HN.
> In this war, Russia might have the watches, but the West and Ukraine may have the time.
Profound and true
That phrase or variations thereof dates to the soviet afghan war and is a general reference to the futility of trying to beat an insurgency of people who are sufficiently dedicated to their cause.
I'll see if I can find the OG source but search engines only seem to want to turn up more recent references to the US occupation thereof (it's hard to find unimportant niche things that predate the internet).
So far that statement is proving to be wrong. Perhaps they overestimated the effectiveness of the Russian military or underestimated the resolve of the Ukranian people.
There is strong evidence for that. A ‘reporter’ at RIA Russian media accidentally uploaded a preprepared article saying Ukraine had been returned to Russian rule and tried to delete it. [1]
Here's some commentary about what that means from a guy I have really come to respect. [2]
[1] https://mil.in.ua/en/news/brave-new-world-of-putin-an-articl...
Yes, it's state-owned media. That doesn't mean everything they write comes directly from mouths of the top officials. It just means it's generally biased towards the state.
Kremlin propaganda... I mean the US did (publicly at least)suspend military aid to Ukranian militias over their overt neonazi and white supremacist ties¹(these militias were then simply subsumed into the National Guard). Furthermore, the American military has even published a publicly available analysis of such forces in Ukraine², confirming their existence.
[1] wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
[2] ctc.usma.edu/the-nexus-between-far-right-extremists-in-the-united-states-and-ukraine/
Furthermore, see jacobinmags article for more comprehensive analysis of these sources³.
[3] jacobinmag.com/2022/01/cia-neo-nazi-training-ukraine-russia-putin-biden-nato
None of the sources I've used here are in any way "Russian", they are all by Western sources. If quoting the American military's own reports is spreading "Kremlin propaganda", well then I can't help you.
If you think there is no weight to the neonazi presence in Ukraine, you've clearly fell for western propaganda, which the linked article gives itself away as being.
So what is your point?
> However, the mobilization of far-right groups in Ukraine does not extend to political success; in the 2019 parliamentary elections, they received little over two percent of the vote.
[0]: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-azov-...
However, the mobilization of far-right groups in Ukraine does not extend to political success;There’s also some irony in dismissing this article as propaganda when all you’ve pointed out is that it, offhandedly I might say, called the situation Kremlin propaganda. Especially it since consists mostly predictions, an enormous amount of which have become true.
Not that I condone war, or the invasion, but going off the cuff here: If we take the context of what Russia has said, and to facts on the ground, the 2 largest Russian military operations are currently surrounding Kharkiv and Mariupol, which have shown to be 2 of the largest bases for the neo-nazi and far-right militia recruitment in Ukraine.
> There’s also some irony in dismissing this article as propaganda when all you’ve pointed out is that it, offhandedly I might say, called the situation Kremlin propaganda. Especially it since consists mostly predictions, an enormous amount of which have become true.
I don't doubt the validity of the article's predictions. I doubted the articles dismissal of the neo-nazi and far right presence as being "Kremlin propaganda". When I hear this line, it automatically makes me believe the writer is either ignorant, or intentionally spreading propaganda, as this kind of dismissal does not coincide with reality. I'm just trying to inform people, because I see this narrative constantly, and it's worth fighting back against.
What are you talking about? Kharkiv and Mariupol are 95% russian speaking population. Before the Donbas events, these were very pro-russian cities, after Donabas the population learned what Russia is. The same amount of neo-nazis tehy can find in Minsk or St. Petersberg, may as well bomb these.
Regarding Kharkiv and Mariupol I won't discuss further as you clearly are more motivated by rhetoric, than talking about actual facts.
About rethoric vs facts. Is Kharhiv not predominant russian speaking population? In 2010 elections Kharkiv voted 70% for Yanukovych, very pro-russian candidate (wanted to unite Ukraine with Russia which resulted in hime being booted in the end). Today Kharkiv is resisting russian invasion for 7th day, surrounded 40km from russain border, is all this resitance by american trained neo-nazis?
You are repeatedly conflating these two things, which leads to poor logic and conclusions.
And I could go on and on.
EDIT: In the official history of the Bundeswehr, neither the 3. Reich and the Wehrmacht nor the GDR does exist. Which is such a wasted opportunity to teach soldiers about the risk of serving oppressive regimes, facilitating genocide and not standing up for democracy. Anecdotally, I once passed their Officer Candidate Assessment center. In the welcome speech, an Air Force Major directly said something along the lines of "people with Antifa stickers on their bags can just drop out right away. You are not welcome". I kept my mouth shut, I did drop out after successfully passing due to other reasons, but it struck me as strange that, of all the armed forces, anti-fascists should be welcome in the German ones.
Uhm, no?
> Which is such a wasted opportunity to teach soldiers about the risk of serving oppressive regimes, facilitating genocide and not standing up for democracy.
Also wrong. In the Bundeswehr soliders are allowed to disobey direct orders if it directly is in conflict with once conscience. See https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundesverwaltungsgericht... (German)
Just how they think wars cannot happen anywhere in the world and now they have been revealed to be and admitted white supremacists themselves on TV is just beyond me.
I'd say they are competing to be a true neo-Nazi.
[0] https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1497974245737050120
However (and that's a big however) majority of Ukranians are not neonazis. And their political leadership is certainly not neonazis with Zelensky being a Jew. That kinda puts the 'ol Soviet playbook about "liberating people from neonazis" that's being used by Putin in a weird light. Maybe he's going to liberate USA next, because you know, KKK?