What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped
reuters.com
reuters.com
Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way...
It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local resistance.
I speculate that Russian airforce weaponry is not generally high-precision, and the order to avoid targeting civilians implies restraint on use of indiscriminate bombing. Again, we've seen counterexamples which could be explained by all of the above reasons, plus the possibility of friendly fire from failed Ukrainian air defences.
I can only imagine that the "pro-civilian" policy is part of a plan to eventually install a pro-Russia government that has some semblance of consent from the people.
But I cannot fathom how they expect that suzerainty to operate in the face of mass popular resistance.
Did they really launch this invasion on the assumption that the people of Ukraine would just roll over and accept foreign rule?
Their options seem to be (a) beat a hasty retreat; (b) impose a bloody total subjugation of the population; (c) face a decades-long insurgency that will bleed them dry.
We need to find a variant of (a) that allows Putin to save face, because his default will be (b).
[1] https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/putin-urges-ukraine-military-to-o...
Years ago, I was also suprised to hear people in Crimea celebrating post-Russian take over. This topic was never covered (at least I had seen no mention) in American media during the Crimean invasion.
Yep there is substance in some Russian points
- Ukraine is, somewhat, artificial as a country (bear with me)
- In Crimea a lot of people celebrated the takeover. The referendum was rigged but there was a tangible popular support
- In Donbass some people are not really fans of the Ukrainian government. I know people from Donetsk that prefer the Russians
- People in Donbass suffered from continuous shelling from Ukrainian forces (I don't want to emphasize the "Nazi" affiliation of the Azov brigade because it's a propaganda point but yes, there have been incidents and civilians suffered). Donbass reminds me of Hamas controlled Gaza Strip and I can see both sides
- Yes EU and the US pushed for bringing Ukraine into the West and funded their people there
- There is definitely a very high level of corruption in Ukraine, especially in the political echelon. Some EU-friendly policies have been obtained by corruption
That said I agree with most of the criticism of Putin's regime too. And of course invading a country that is becoming more democratic precisely because they want to defend themselves from you is a crime.
And Ukraine is a bit artificial (not 100% artificial but it's not a country with an established culture and identity) but it's exactly those events, like this war, that make it more and more real. The Ukrainian identity is becoming stronger and stronger hour by hour.
And yes, many in Eastern Ukraine considered themselves more Russian than Ukrainian. No more: https://on.ft.com/35jWHzB
Edit: works with Yandex translate
We must define "efforts" or "avoid" very differently. At the very start of the invasion, there was a video of Russian tanks deliberately trying to run over civilian cars.
Oh, it's a Ukrainian tank. Pfft, it was in a accident, let's not talk about it.
That's why I don't read/watch news, especially nowadays.
i can't even remember where i read that now so take it with a grain of salt
Putin wants the sanctions to be over. His next move will be to create devastation in Ukraine and hold civilians as hostages for the lifting of the sanctions.
In anycase, Russia will controll South of Ukraine, link up with Transnistria and even if they don't take Kyiev and don't force Kyiev into peace negociations, the will secure such a strong position that absolute control won't matter
But why "modern tyranny"? Wars like that are not a novelty... or is it about taking civilians as hostages?
I'd say he's going to invade Moldova in the next few days (once Odessa is taken) and make a big show of how easily they took it to restore morale, and very soon after they're going to plunge in Ukraine's back and make a big push for Kyiev.
I think they might abandon installing a puppet government, but in that case they will bring devastation to Ukraine and keep the whole Black Sea coast, and just let Ucraine fester.
Yes there is a degree of restraint because they are trying to take the country over, they cannot burn it to the ground, but they don’t really seem to care about civilians and keep committing war crimes, just now they directly bombed near a hotel and train station, people trying to flee the country.
Saying they are ‘pro-civillian’ seems far fetched and doesn’t seem to match the facts
The British government is leading a 38-nation referral of Russia to the ICC to probe war crimes and a direct quote from the British Government foreign secretary just now reads: “Putin’s military machine is targeting civilians indiscriminately and tearing through towns across Ukraine"
All that excuses nothing.
/s/Azov Battalion/Ukrainian National Guard/
Would be nice if Europe and the US would seize Putin and associates' accounts and donate them to Ukraine.
I agree with this. Ukraine already has sustained tremendous damage, and of course it will get much worse before this ends. Take everything possible from Russia and give it over to Ukraine to help rebuild. Assuming they win. God I hope they win.
IMHO, RF should give Cuban and other territories, confiscated by USSR, back to Ukraine as compensation for 8 years of war and massive destruction of Ukrainian cities.
Russia has made a strategic decision to avoid heavy bombers due to the high likelihood of civilian casualties.
Some platoon commander launched a rocket barrage for whatever reason. Command discipline isn’t perfect, especially among new recruits, so individual deviations are to be expected.
Because we look in different places. TikTok and FB posts are isolated incidents and don't offer meaningful statistics. I'm sure if I want to see dead Ukrainians I can find that on Russian media sites. None of it is meaningful to the big picture. We really can't see the big picture numbers.
NATO used cluster bombs in the 1990s bombing of Serbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C5%A1_cluster_bombing. If it is a war crime now, it was a war crime then, where are the prosecutions of those responsible? It has been 20 years and I don't see anyone being held accountable.
I think we are now seeing a clearer picture of what happens when there is a conflict in an urban area. In the past we got to see a video from a plane guiding a bomb to the building from above (Iraq wars) and assumed it was an isolated military installation. Then we saw news footage of residential buildings in various states of destruction and just never associated that with the above video of bombs dropping on buildings. If you drop bombs near residential area, there will be destruction in that residential area. Look at what truck bomb did in Oklahoma City bombing - that was one makeshift (but large) bomb that detonated outside a building and according to Wikipedia "The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars".
Maybe this war will finally get people to see how destructive and wasteful they are but somehow I doubt it.
Now? Have you heard of Stalingrad?
We have to understand this before we can cope with what is happening? Asking a bit much, in my opinion.
And have you perhaps heard: Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
THERE IS NO VICTORY FOR REGULAR PEOPLE IN THESE CONFLICTS. THEY LOST EVERYTHING.
It seems to be impossible to explain to most people that war is bad for them and the only people who "win" are the politicians and their rich sponsors. I will count myself lucky if I manage to die before we get into a nuclear war.
I've just read that the explosion near Kiev's train station (if that's what you're talking about) was due to a Russian missile that got intercepted by Ukrainian defense.
It would make zero sense for Russians to be using their weapons against anything non-military at this point given that, if reports are true, there's still plenty of Ukrainian military resistance to be dealt with.
This is my take as well.
The obvious contrast is their handling of Kiev versus how they utterly flattened Grozny.
It's clear to me that in the early days Russia was hoping for a quick and decisive win. They'd decapitate the government, install a puppet regime, and then hope the public would roll over.
That hasn't happened and we're now entering a much more bloody phase of indiscriminate bombing/shelling of the civilian population.
The Russian Army didn't initially flatten Grozny with artillery either. It was only after a failed assault that they switched to methodical urban destruction.
Which is why racheting up sanctions and worse ASAP is important...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80...
I have this info from one of the journalist who were close to Belarus border in the beginning of the invasion. First he wrote article about how hopeless situation is because he rode a few hours to Kiev before seeing first defense. But after two days all the attacks on Kiev stopped so it probably was smart strategy to make supply lines too long to defend them. Even on Monday he reported that only shelling he saw was from Ukrainian army.
Iirc Ukraine had a government that was subordinate to Russia as recently as 2014. Belarus is still a Russian puppet. The Transnistria region of Moldova to Ukraine's south is largely welcoming of Russian military control.
Doesn't seem too outlandish for them to assume that to me.
Imagine if the Iraq or Afghanistan insurgencies had had access to an endless supply of top-of-the-line weapons, orders of magnitude more funding, and 'safe zones' where they could operate without the US attacking them... as far as I can tell, Russia is all but guaranteed a bloody and expensive quagmire until they withdraw.
It seems like Putin went on tilt. It's hard to fathom any rational justification for this.
Having the Ukrainian legitimate government agree to surrender to save Kiev (or “just” Khariv) from such a fate isn't completely impossible to imagine. And giving infantry weapons isn't going to be enough to stop Putin from doing so if he wanted. I don't know how many FОАВ[1] the Russian air force has at its disposal, but Javelin aren't gonna help against that…
And after this hypothetical surrender from the Ukrainian government, setting up a bloody dictatorship with a special police arresting, torturing and executing whoever is suspected to belong to the insurgency, relying on pro-russian locals to provide intelligence is not an impossible feat unfortunately…
Exactly, like the the capital of your country for instance. Noting that I'm not talking about defeating an insurgency with it, just overthrow the legitimate government and put a pro-russian dictatorship in charge. Exterminating the insurgents would then be the job of the local dictator. Obviously it's not guaranteed, but torture, kidnapping, and assassination have proven an effective mean of counter-insurgency… In real life the bad guy sometimes win…
That being said, that doesn't mean I approve US invasion of Irak in any way (because I do not), it just feels you're comparing Pearl Harbor with Stalingrad… (Ok, not literally, because there is a two orders of magnitude difference between Pearl Harbor and Stalingrad, but you get the idea).
That's a fair statement. Depleted Uranium is a gift that keeps on giving.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3...
https://www.nuclear-risks.org/en/hibakusha-worldwide/falluja...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_populat...
Yet, “in terms of city leveling” Fallujah and Grozny are not comparable. That's it.
Their stated objective in Ukraine is not to take Kyiv, let's hope it's true.
And the sanctions Russia is under will be nothing like the ones that will be heaped on top.
Europe is highly sensitive about local conflicts, especially after what happened to Srebrenica. Grozny didn't really count since it was:
a) an internal war
b) at the end of Europe
If Putin flattens a major European city (for Europe any city above ~2m or so is major), the outrage in Europe will be huge. Even bigger than it is now.
And even if it were, no NATO member will set foot in Ukraine while this war and the following insurgency are happening.
What will happen is, depending on how hard Putin pushes, the reaction will be just as strong. More attacks targeting civilians? More weapons sent to Ukraine. Harder sanctions, with actual teeth. I wouldn't be shocked if by next winter 60%+ of the gas supply for Western Europe will be covered from other vendors, more or less bankrupting Russia (a huge percentage of Russian exports are raw materials, primarily oil and gas).
you will be shocked to discover that Russia is going to fuel China's economy instead [1]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-28/gazprom-p...
Ukraine is not in NATO. And I'm afraid if NATO and EU have to choose between a direct military confrontation of nuclear-capable powers and a genocide of 40-million-and-dwidling Ukrainian population, they'd choose the latter as long as Putin keeps this contained in Ukraine.
Would it turn Russia into Greater North Korea? Absolutely. Would it cause outrage and grave concern? You bet. Would it make NATO to move in and stop it? Unlikely at the moment.
But in Europe that outrage will also be from a place of fear: maybe Russia will do it to you, too. So it will be longer lasting and a more intense and probably a truer feeling. Not fake outrage.
If the mission changes to kill as many civilians as possible, the army is going to have an even worse morale problem and the international community will come up with a creative solution like giving part of Poland to Ukraine, giving Ukrainian citizenship to anyone within that part of Poland and then launching attacks with all the military resources that just happen to now be in Ukraine.
> If the mission changes to kill as many civilians as possible, the army is going to have an even worse morale problem
I agree. This is indeed one of the biggest challenge the Russian army will face if they decide to do so.
> the international community will come up with a creative solution like giving part of Poland to Ukraine, giving Ukrainian citizenship to anyone within that part of Poland and then launching attacks with all the military resources that just happen to now be in Ukraine.
This is hilarious, I love it. Never gonna happen, but I love the creativity here. This is “thinking out of the box”.
[EDIT] Further caveat that it'd have to be before substantial Russian ground forces reach that part of the country. This is still a low-likelihood scenario, but certainly far more likely than declaring part of Poland to be in Ukraine (?!)
starting to see videos of explosives being lobbed at unarmed people. These do not seem like crowd-control munitions: https://twitter.com/aldin_ww/status/1499059624250646538
On a more historic note, it took the Soviets a couple of days before they ran over people with tanks during the January Events in Vilnius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)#Tim... note how they also claimed it was acting against a "nationalist" (equivalent to "nazi" in the USSR) government.
Say Ukraine survives or becomes an Afghanistan-like insurgency power. But now they are rife with guns, warlords, and no national institution or government to organize everything....
Nature abhors vacuums. Especially if those vacuums are easy to fill.
What do you think will happen if Russia backs down?
Ukraine already borders 4 EU members (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland).
At least destabilizing Ukraine is necessary to prevent near-term, rapid decline for the Russian Federation. Ukraine's energy production potential and proximity to Europe make them a likely serious competitor, at a time when renewables are already putting pressure on petrostates like Russia.
Russia made Ukrainian resources in the East difficult to exploit with their fomenting or fabricating a persistent rebellion out that way, and seized most of Ukraine's substantial resources in the Black Sea when they took Crimea outright—but Crimea's dependent on Ukrainian fresh water, which has quite literally dried up for obvious reasons, and Russia's having a hell of a time (that is, spending huge amounts of money to limited effect) supporting Crimea without holding some of the mainland.
This is part of a series of actions aimed at creating short- and mid-term economic stability for Russia, while also improving their strategic situation. I would guess that an acceptable, if not perfect, outcome for them would be bringing the Eastern ~1/3 to 1/2 of Ukraine under Russian control, and it looks like they may yet manage to play their hand to effect such a partition, despite their bizarrely-inept invasion.
It does appear that they've blundered, overall, and not just though military fuck-ups—the sanctions are likely causing a ton of pain, NATO and the EU are more united against them than they've been in a long time and are re-arming (as in Germany), and they managed to bump energy independence way up the priority list for the EU. However, there are good reasons for them to (have tried to) do what they're doing.
I don't know if you're fully aware of what effect the sanctions are having or going to have on Russia, but anything resembling economic stability is absolutely NOT it.
Russia will face a humanitarian crisis, perhaps almost as severe as Ukraine itself, especially in its poorer regions, with anything resembling a tech industry evaporating nearly overnight, and massive unemployment following.
These effects will not dissipate in the short or mid-term.
At least I don't see them being resolved unless they massively pivot to selling petro-chemicals to China instead.
It can only be because they think that it's essential to strike now; they think that if they leave it, terminal decline is inevitable.
This is a military operation that's been planned for years; by 'now', I mean 'this decade'. I imagine they saw the European gas crisis as an opportunity, and one that would slip away quickly if they didn't seize it. That's why it's happened this spring.
That long column: that's mostly logistics for the planned long siege of Kiev. I think those guys have barely begun.
You can't just lob a hundred dollar word out like that! I spent several moments trying to figure out what your typo was before allowing the possibility that you didn't have one.
a relationship in which one state or other polity controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy
"sovereign, ruler," 1807, from French suzerain (14c., Old French suserain), noun use of adjective meaning "sovereign but not supreme,"
Sovereign but not supreme is a good way to remember it, it’s like a baby name of ‘supreme’ :)
For example, in early 20th (late 19th?) century, the UK recognized the suzerainty of China over Tibet.
It basically meant “British India’s borders end at the Tibetan border, and we won’t do business with anyone in the Tibetan side of the border without running it by the Chinese first.”
Then in the early 21st Century the UK recognized the sovereignty of China over Tibet in exchange for Chinese money to some international orgs.
But all that happened was the British position became more precise.
It’s a compromise word to recognize the reality in the ground, while kicking diplomatic issues down the road.
Parts of the modern day Indian/China border are referred to as the “line of actual control.”
I'm reasonably sure we were taught about suzerainty ("suzeranitate" in Romanian) during high school history lessons.
This is a 19th century war with 21st century weapons. It's from the bad old days when various European states built empires - the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the British Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Imperial State of Germany. For most of the 18th and 19th century, and up to WWI, there were wars around the fringes of those empires. Not hugely destructive ones, because nobody had enough firepower.
Putin seems to want to go back to that era. Not, as some people think, to the USSR era. Read that accidentally posted Russian victory press release.[1]
It's a good time to look at 19th century European history and the runup to WWI. What's happening is all too similar.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
And we hope that it doesn’t turn into a 20th century war with 21st century weapons.
Very little of the weapons involved are actually 21st century. Most are 20th century.
This word was new to me, but looking it up I wanted to say "Yes" but have since changed to "no". Definition:
Suzerainty (American accent: soo-zer-en-tee) happens when a country X has its own government but cannot act independently because of a more powerful country Y. This more powerful country Y is called the suzerain and can usually control the foreign relations of X (how X interacts with other countries).
When it comes to foreign policy in the US, it is mostly handled at the federal level. States are more likely to strike deals with foreign companies than foreign governments. OTOH the federal government is not equivalent to a distinct country and is made up of representatives from the states.
One thing I don't like about the US system is that all our representatives spend a huge amount of time in Washington D.C., away from the people they "represent". And then the lobbyists have a single destination to convince a lot of people to support their stuff. It might be better if they all stayed in their home states and handled congressing electronically on zoom or something.
Lobbyists can easily create big zoom meetings that still get everyone virtually in one spot.
What dictionary is your source of truth? I've been using Webster [1] but I feel like there's probably a better option.
;)
Dr Who - The Androids of Tara
Princess Strella (Mary Tamm), nor Romana(also Mary Tamm), would ever willingly pledge their suzerainty to Count Grendel of Gracht(Peter Jeffrey), which is why he tried to set up a shotgun wedding.
DOCTOR: Romana?
ZADEK: That's the Princess Strella.
(Grendel moves behind her.)
STRELLA: (deadpan) I, Princess Strella, descendant of the Royal Kings of Tara, Mistress of the domains of Thorvald, Mortgarde and Freya, do humbly offer my loyalty to the King and do hereby recognise his SUZERAINTY over me and all whom I command.
(Strella kneels. The Doctor grabs the sceptre and runs down the steps.)
DOCTOR: No!
(Everyone gasps as he hits Strella over the head with the sceptre!)
That doesn't explain this, though:
> Vastly outmatched by Russia's military, in terms of raw numbers and firepower, Ukraine's own air force is still flying and its air defenses are still deemed to be viable - a fact that is baffling military experts.
> After the opening salvos of the war on Feb. 24, analysts expected the Russian military to try to immediately destroy Ukraine's air force and air defenses.
> That would have been "the logical and widely anticipated next step, as seen in almost every military conflict since 1938," wrote the RUSI think-tank in London, in an article called "The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force."
> Instead, Ukrainian air force fighter jets are still carrying out low-level, defensive counter-air and ground-attack sorties. Russia is still flying through contested airspace.
...
> Did they really launch this invasion on the assumption that the people of Ukraine would just roll over and accept foreign rule?
It seems like it. I've seen videos of captured Russians where they claimed they were lied to and told the Ukrainians would welcome them. IIRC, their invasion of Crimea wasn't met with much resistance, and maybe they assumed it would be the same this time.
Also, if they'd been faster they might have had more success. I've seen reports that the Russian military has been acting in risk-averse ways that gave the Ukrainians time to organize more effective resistance.
It's unclear to me how much of that time Ukraine used to prepare. If they did, they didn't telegraph it.
What I read was the Russian amphibious landing in the south was done 30-40 miles away from the target city (or kilometers, can't remember the unit). Apparently they wanted the space to get organized. However that meant the city had extra time to prepare after the actual invasion started.
Everything from land forces, to the navy, to the air force, to the intelligence, to the propaganda unit is performing poorly.
And the West has exhibited superior intelligence and PR by all means. The Ukrainian army is much better trained and organized than expected (probably some Western help in their training, or just the psychological hardening caused by the conflict from 2014), and the population is 100% hostile to the invasion.
The Emperor Putler has no clothes.
Any victories for Ukrainian forces may be short lived, as Russia seems to be using this opportunity to guage hot and cold zones.
[0] http://www.iswresearch.org/2022/03/russian-offensive-campaig...
Is the above an inaccurate perception?
Surely they asked for cechen, mercenary, bielorusian and even Kazhatanian troops just to join the 85% of non commited troops, because it makes perfect sense to bring troops from thousands and thousands of km instead of using your non-commited troops that you have already staged.
They did not commit all, and russia doctrine is recon by fire and they don't give a fuck about their conscripts lives, but what you see is what Russia got.
They didn't switch to demolish cities because they are evil.
They ran out of precision munitions and the ukrainian had their asses handed to them so they switched to siege warfare.
You are seeing the true face of the russian army, subpar by all standards, but enough for the butcher in Kremlin.
We can't ignore the 50+ years of lies about various conflicts around the world and the coups/ assassinations where the public was purposely misled. This isn't new and ridiculing the observation is unproductive. Ignore history at your own peril.
I will say, Russia has probably increased their forces at this point but it may not be as much as claimed by the DOD.
Other than explaining away russian embarrasment of the way things are going.
they do not. Their policy is not pro-civilian at all. These are facts that you can see on the streets, no fog of war here. They are are bombing residential areas for DAYS without stopping. And I know, my best friends are in Kyiv and Kharkiv how.
Also there was a missile strike on the railway in Kyiv where people are evacuated. Civilian people.
Not sure why you think they are pro-civilian even on some level.
It is, when you compare it with syria or chechnya.
Recognize the annexation of Crimea and promise immediate sanctions rollbacks the moment the last Russian troop leaves Ukraine (other than Donbas and Luhansk, that ship has sailed).
Russia keeps the money pit dear to the hearts of many Russians and doesn't become a Chinese vassal state. Ukraine ends the bloodshed and saves their sovereignty for the cost of what they have already lost.
There will be sticking points, for sure, notably around Putin himself, reparations, and yes, the status of DPR and LPR, but I hold out hope that they don't forestall a potential deal.
I can't see the Russian leadership backing down from their stated goals. That means they have to subdue Ukraine, and probably Finland, Estonia and Poland too. If they don't win in at least Ukraine, then they have lost badly, and their economy is destroyed.
I don't think they'll settle now for a piece of Crimea or a piece of Donbas. The entire story is that the whole of Ukraine is a bogus state.
That would be a hell of an escalation. Emphasis on hell. Estonia and Poland are NATO members, which means WW3. And attacking Finland, though not yet a NATO member, would probably invite the largest response from Europe in memory. World war indeed.
Customarily, it's been called a "World War" when both sides have participants from multiple nations. As far as I'm aware, Russia's only ally would be Belarus, which looks to me like a Russian province in all but name.
"WWIII" is a term that also refers to Global Thermonuclear War; if that's what you meant, then I apologise for being pedantic.
[Edit] No attack on Poland or the Baltic states is possible without first subduing Ukraine; so I don't think that's at all imminent. But I wouldn't be surprised if Russia pops a tactical nuke or two in Ukraine, then all bets will be off.
You don't change any of the context that led Russia to invade in the first place. You leave intact an aggressor who has repeatedly and consistently expanded. You gave them Crimea and hoped that would appease them. You tolerated their aggressions in eastern Ukraine. Now you will just give them Donbas and Luhansk and hope once again to appease them?
That strategy might be better accepted if the world hadn't seen 1938-1939.
This tactic worked well for 8 years in the case of Ukraine and was heavily (really heavily) promoted by François Hollande and Angela Merkel.
IMHO, it's good to stick to a tactic with proven track record. The main idea is to feed the monster with virgins. Give them Crimea, then Donbas, then Belarus, then South Ukraine, then Eastern Ukraine, then Central Ukraine, then Western Ukraine, then Georgia, then Finland, etc., etc., etc. With a few years between each scarification, this can keep the monster satiated for a long time, so it will be a problem of your children, while you keep a comfortable style of life. For bang per $, this is the cheapest and safest option for most Europeans and Americans.
There is no "and then" with NATO member sovereign territory.
Ukraine is only being invaded by Russia because it isn't a NATO member.
Russia was willing to invade Ukraine, for some land. Russia isn't willing to invade 28 European countries + US + Canada, for some land.
Where did you even get this idea? Russia is the largest country in the entire world, encompassing 1/8th of the inhabitable land on Earth ALONE. Why would they get in a fight with the entire world to get a few more hundred squared kilometers of dirt? That doesn't make the remotest sense.
An empty, derelict Ukraine would serve nearly as well as a puppet state for this purpose.
1. It's worth reading some geography and history. Russia has been invaded a lot, and has a justifiable fear of invasion. Sure, the West might not want to invade now, but who can predict what the situation will be in 2070 or 2170?
2. Putin also wants to maintain the viability of Russia's warm-water port at Sevastopol. The Crimean peninsula was formerly supplied with water by a canal from Ukraine, but that was blocked after Russia annexed Crimea, and Crimea is now desperately short of water. And there is the small matter of major unexploited gas fields in the Black Sea between Crimea and (the rest of) Ukraine...
One of the first thing the Russians did was unblock that canal that Ukraine cemented. That plus them sending cannon fodder to the nord and what seems like better troops south + east starts to feel like this whole war is more about a resource grab than to "prevent invasion from the west". I could maybe understand one madman feeling like he wants to rebuild the past USSR glory but if it's all about the money that can be made from oil/gas then it's clear it's not just him driving this.
It’s all about controlling the media.
> Their options seems to be (a) beat a hasty retreat; (b) impose a bloody total subjugation of the population; (c) face a decades-long insurgency that will bleed them dry.
> We need to find a variant of (a) that allows Putin to save face, because his default will be (b).
This is precisely the conclusion I've come to.
I think the only (a) is give him some territory. That seems unlikely. Perhaps retake all of Crimea and then give him part of it?
I'm really worried about (b). I have 3 friends/coworkers there.
This doesn't explain Russia's lack of air superiority as well as the hypothesis proposed by the paper on which this article is based [1]: a lack of precision munitions, the risk of Ground Force SAMs causing friendly fire due to bad coordination between the branches and a lack of pilot training leading to those planes not being battle ready.
[1] https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...
They're hitting a lot of hospitals and civilian infrastructure. As per their typical operating procedures, c.f. Syria.
That doesn't apply to apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. The shelling is very intense in multiple cities.
So yes, most Russians aren't directly firing on people in the street, but in larger cities they're destroying their homes and local infrastructure.
Look Im pro Ukraine. Out of interest I joined a bunch of Telegram groups that are “pro Russian” to see how both sides see the conflict. There is a lot of information you’re missing out on if you just look at mainstream news. Like the school thing. Maybe I’m being redpilled. It was a weird eye opening experience for me.
Edit: here it is https://www.reddit.com/r/warinukraine/comments/t52e62/ukrain...
There’s also another video of a school attack aftermath. Dead Ukrainian solders in the school. Looks like it was close quarter combat.
As a way of self-preservation. USSR lost 13K people in 10 years of Afghanistan war. Russia has already lost 6K in 7 days of Ukraine war. Ukrainians are fighting in whatever way they can and tearing Russians a new one. Among the first questions they ask Russian POWs is "Did you shoot?"
>I speculate that Russian airforce weaponry is not generally high-precision,
Russia is running out of high precision weapons, and this one of the reason of them starting to use older non high precision weapons and thus corresponding rise in civilian hits (with the other reason being is that they have already stricken most of the military targets, and the Ukrainians resistance not only didn't decrease, instead it grew tremendously, and so Russians are moving onto non-military targets like civil government offices, TV station, etc).
> Again, we've seen counterexamples which could be explained by all of the above reasons, plus the possibility of friendly fire from failed Ukrainian air defences
stay strong, don't fall for Putin's propaganda.
Wrt. the original article - Russia doesn't have much of new hardware which it has been showcasing over the last years. Most of Russian hardware like planes and armor are somewhat modernized old USSR hardware, and even that mostly is not working due to lacking parts, bad technical service, etc. Now spread this over large territory as you can't leave airforce say in Far East naked. So whatever Russia could have mustered without severe impact to its overall military capability over the whole territory was barely enough only for the originally planned Blitzkrieg, and the Blitzkrieg has utterly failed.
maybe the plan is: d) cut ukraine in half, let a weaker and beaten 'neutral' western Ukraine be the new NATO buffer, and eastern Ukraine is annexed?
I don't think it's that simple.
Sure, conscripts were told to expect a welcome in streets lined with natives waving Russian flags. Maybe some in high command even thought that was a possibility. But they have backup plans; we've seen only the first click of the ratchet. Escalate, pause; escalate, pause. This happened in Chechnya too.
Putin didn't invent this approach. And Putin didn't invent the idea that Ukraine is not a separate state, but a part of Russia.
He's written history books, I gather; I might be interested in reading one, but I suspect they're hard to get hold of just now.
Russia formed when Oleg from Novgorod killed Ascold and Dir (rulers of Kyїv) in 852AD, captured Kyїv, then called it as «mother of (new) Russian cities».
When Moscow tsar Petro I captured original Russia (now Ukraine), he appended «tsar of all Russia» to his tittle. Then Catherine II renamed Moscow kingdom to Russian Empire.
So, in short, RF is Russian, not Russia.
Russia probably wants eastern Ukraine (and let's admit it, Donbass and Donetsk are not Ukrainian anymore since 8 years), but has no interest in occupying the western part, only in ensuring it stays neutral geopolitically.
People talking about Russia planning to invade Finland or other countries next are completely delusional. Russia is a small economy and has no chance of winning an open conflict with NATO. You may not like Putin but he's definitely not suicidal.
Two world wars were fought over this issue of just rolling tanks into people's backyards and then staking claim to the land. The sole purpose of these agreements, to which Russia is a signatory (and a founding member of the U.N.) is to prevent exactly what they are doing. It's bad enough the response to Russia's 2009 invasion of Georgia and 2014 invasion of Ukraine came with tepid responses - but it's not OK to just roll over and change borders as an exchange for stopping aggressive war. It would be rewarding that behavior.
The sanctions on Russia should persist as long as Russia occupies Ukraine. This is what they've previously agreed to.
Donbass and Donetsk are not Ukraine since 8 years, in fact Ukraine bombed and harassed them for years, killing civilians and destroying residential areas, without managing to pull them back. Ukraine is permanently split in 2, like it or not. The west can hide their head under the sand for 8 more years, the situation won't change.
> The sanctions on Russia should persist as long as Russia occupies Ukraine. This is what they've previously agreed to.
That's probably what Russia hopes, as the sanctions are going to cause devastating economical damage in Europe. Russia can just turn to China and other Eurasia countries to sell gas and oil, we don't have alternatives. Without Russia's gas, both Germany and Italy will suffer heavy consequences, dragging Europe with them.
We haven't even seen the sanctions Russia will apply on us. We're not going to like it, trust me. And I have NO intention f sacrificing myself because Biden or the european burocrats (who never gave a single fuck about me) ask for it.
I seriously hope this situation will cause a break up between Europe and the USA. It's time for an Eurasia era.
He literally went on a 45 minute rant about how Ukraine isn't a country right before this started.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system
a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen...
I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them was scurrying around the 'suburban' areas of Kiev. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the early missile hits on residential buildings were something like this that failed to lock on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile
Ukraine has a lot of Buks, it has a handful of these too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system
on paper those are better than the Buk but Ukraine doesn't have so many and I think the Buk is a "cheap and cheerful" convivial weapon like the AK-47 that does great when exported.
(Both the Buk and S-300 are a lot like the US Patriot missile system in that they are comprised of a number of mobile units such as command posts, radar, missile launchers, etc. The Buk however has a configuration where the radar and missile launcher are colocated on the same vehicle and I'd guess that configuration works really well under rough conditions with less trained crews.)
That or Russian missile attacks.
A case of the height map not being updated correctly in the computer's memory? The Russians seem to be sloppy all over the place, so it wouldn't surprise me.
All this lightens my mood, since it's obvious the Russians wouldn't last two months against NATO forces.
To borrow his twitter bio as an introduction
> PhD student @warstudies (Department of War Studies at Kings College). Senior Fellow @FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute). Previously @USMC (US Marine Corp), @ColumbiaSIPA (Columbia School of International and Public Affairs), @CentreAST (Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies), and @AlfaFellowship. Focused on Russian defense policy.
To imply that they're just pulling in random people is flat out wrong. This is a person who has been studying Russia from a military standpoint for many years.
And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent. There's an active war. If history has taught us anything, psyops is as sure as death, in war.
That explains the anonymous officials not agreeing with this stance. That doesn't explain the non-government experts not agreeing that this is the reason though. They don't have any special knowledge and wouldn't be telling the Russians anything they didn't already know.
> And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent
There's probably a degree of this, but from what I've seen it also seems to be legitimately the case that they are somewhat incompetent.
Besides which, the Russian's letting that psyop succeed, would itself be direct evidence of incompetence.
Inside Russia or China, psyops is muting whoever says something you don't like, and deciding on and disseminating the message of the day.
Outside of Russia or China, that looks very different, with everyone opining on your message whenever they feel like it, in addition to virality being a huge component of message reach. That's a very different skillset to navigate successfully.
Given their unencrypted radio communication they have done a fair effort to support that idea themselves.
For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption.
Of course it would. Otherwise:
* the enemy could analyse your strategy and tactics and predict your approach; and worse:
* the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch
There's no excuse for unencrypted military communications. One would think the Russians would have learned their lesson from freaking Tannenberg a century ago, but it seems not.
Encryption won't encrypt the shell going through the wall, which could just as easily be analyzed with the constellation of spy satellites focused on the region.
> the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch
This would be uncoded communications that would put them at a disadvantage. If that did happen, then yes it would be incompetence. Is there any evidence that this is happening? I find it unlikely that they would believe any voice coming over the line, considering what you're saying is an "attack vector" that has been present and known for, literally, the last 131 years.
Do you have anything that supports this very negative view of the intelligence of the average Russian soldier/commander?
it was not a critique of intelligence, if anything it was a critique pointing out the failure of high-level RU military planners. what kind of competent general staff lets [at least some] of their battalion-and-below radio comms go out into open frequencies that are easily listened to, transmitted on and also easily jammed by consumer-grade cheap chinese radios?
that is madness. it is incompetent.
(edit: for grammar)
One that is part of a military that has old radio equipment (maybe from competently allocating funding to something more important), so they have no other choice. I'm sorry, but that doesn't require incompetence. Incompetence would be if they let it unexpectedly impact their invasion. Competence for an invasion doesn't require encryption (see Crimea). An encrypted radio channel makes things easier, but it may not be required for the invasion of Ukraine, which is the context here.
The definition of competence: the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
The purpose of this war isn't to unlock all achievements with a high score, it's to take Ukraine. They're still progressively taking Ukraine, and they've only sent in 1/3 of the forces from the border (last numbers I saw).
Yes it's madness.
It's not a strong possibility, it's a 100% guarantee.
Aside from big, trivially disproven announcements ("This side now controls such and such city"), you're not going to see an accurate picture of literally anything in this conflict until months, if not years after the fact, when historians will pour over, and fit together first-hand accounts and records.
In the meantime, parts of the picture may be accurate, but nobody here has any idea which parts are true, which are propaganda, or what particular purpose that propaganda serves.
Definitely. You're not going to hear about the encounters where the Russians smoke the Ukrainians and they have serious loss of life/equipment or don't come back at all.
Not that there's not a lot of organic sentiment around the world, but Ukraine seems to have a very good PR corps pushing news of their victories and memes about the situation. And unlike a lot of these attempts, they aren't "how do you do fellow kids" type shit where it's super obvious.
Exhibit A: the Ghost of Kiev. Regardless of whether he exists or not, he's a great case study in propaganda.
FTA: the issue is that Russia made a huge show of force at the start of the invasion but has apparently held back from actually using much of it (by air or ground). This war could have been over the day it started if Russia had used maximal force, and the conservative approach their actually using maximizes risks and casualties.
And that's what has the experts confused: they can't figure out why Russia is going with this strategy, given the overwhelming technological and numerical superiority of the invasion force and their apparent willingness to accept casualties as the cost of conquering Ukraine.
It doesn't appear to be cost, because the invasion has "cost" Russia hundreds of billions.
It doesn't appear to be casualties/morale, because Russia has suffered 500+ casualties in 3 days (its worst losses since Afghanistan), and is still invading.
It doesn't appear to be doctrine, because their actions don't match what is known of Russian ground or air doctrine.
And so experts are trying to figure out what calculus went into Russia's invasion planning (assuming there was a coherent strategy going in, which is not a given in the post-Trump world).
Russia eventually wants to bombard Kiev with heavy weapons like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9A52-4_Tornado
which can use ammunition at an absolutely insane rate. It takes time to move this stuff into place and more time to take the ammunition in, set up resupply paths, etc.
So Russia attacks Kiev with a small force with light weapons, some Spetsnaz, mostly to keep the fight away from the main body of the force which will strike hard when it is ready.
I'd you assume this is true, what they are doing make complete sense.
They are.
You are just listening to the wrong articulation of their intentions.
> They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine,
They have said multiple times that they do want Ukraine, view it's separation from Russia as a crime against Russia and Russians committed by those in the past with control over Russia in the form of the Soviet Union, and Russian state media even released than silently deleted a premature victory announcement for the current invasion declaring the establishment of a new union state of all the Russias (Russia [Great Russia], Ukraine [Little Russia]< and Belarus.)
Now, that's not what they emphasize to the international community, but they have been saying it.
Do you have more information about this?
> A Russian state-run news agency prematurely published an article that said Russia has taken back Ukraine.
> "Ukraine has returned to Russia," said the article, which ran on RIA Novosti and has since been taken down. "The West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe."
That's very reasonable.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071766987/u-s-russia-dicuss-...
> Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emerged from the nearly eight hours of talks and declared, "There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine." He went on to say, "There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario."
That was, quite clearly, a lie, as they'd already massed 100,000 troops near Ukraine.
It seems that whether this succeeds or fails it'll actually increase their land borders with NATO.
That simply doesn’t compute.
Your selection of what to believe as the honest truth is pretty telling.
Denazification of the jewish russian speaking president.
Lawrow: Ukraine wants to aquire nukes and russia must prevent this. Propably trolling.
Half hearted false flags operations: Bombed car where the suspect was arrested the day before. Bombed out building with months old trees in it....
The aforementioned NATO ambitions of ukraine. ukraine was denied membership 14 years ago and things look even more impossible now with the territorial conflict about the crimea. Paradoxically russia is making ukraines medium term NATO membership more likely by solving the crimea conflict.
Russia wants to unite all Rus and everything else is just a smokescreen. Putin has given some rather 19th century speeches to that effect and there was this article that was published and then quickly taken down in some state owned newspaper (i think) https://thefrontierpost.com/the-new-world-order/ Pretty scary stuff.
Because there was a much greater absence of incoherent strategies by political and military leaders in the world prior to Trump being president of one specific country? No real fan of the man but the need to cram in a Trump-hate reference for nearly any context sometimes becomes absurd.
Though you are right in that there are huge similarities between the two campaigns: in both cases, it appears that the executive leader ignored the advice of his military advisors to launch disastrous military campaigns that actually ended up hindering the non-military objectives behind those campaigns.
What? Putin managed to force his vastly overwhelming forces on small countries with small and badly equipped armies like Chechnya, Syria, Georgia. And we don't know how much does he really do.
Hitler presided over, and even helped with the planning of, one of the most brilliant campaigns against overwhelming forces ( the invasion of Benelux and France). His army had tremendous luck, the French were thoroughly incompetent and prepared for all the wrong things, but still, it was a massive military success which was at least partly due to Hitler. That's how he got it in his head he's a brilliant strategist, which really went to his head after the initial Soviet counterattack ( when his orders were successful), and the rest is history.
But that aside, my original comment, despite having been downvoted, doesn't seem at all off base: Why in the world even bother to mention Trump except out of pure kneejerk emotional need in the context of unsound military leadership on the world stage. Poor invasion planning certainly existed long before he became president of the U.S. and the current disaster essentially has nothing to do with him or his lack/presence of military leadership skills.
But I'm not sure how it maps to observable absense of air force. Prolonging the conflict will obviously cause more civilian deaths and suffering.
Conservative western intelligence estimates actually have this number at over 2000 this morning (3/1) [0]. They are losing whole battalions by the day, and the real nasty urban warfare hasn't even begun. It's an absolute bloodbath that would never even conceivably be tolerated for a moment by any other modern military on earth.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/politics/russia-ukrain...
Because this isn't the intended strategy, but rather then resultant strategy.
Modern Russia seems to suffer from the same weaknesses as the USSR: garbage-in, garbage-out. If you staff an entire bureaucracy (including your military command structure) with Yes-Men, you get "Yes" responses.
When the question is "Are we prepared for the invasion?"
When the question is "Will we be able to supply our ground forces?"
When the question is "Will we be able to achieve air superiority rapidly?"
And because that's how hierarchies work, you believe the "Yes" you hear. And make your strategic plans on the basis of it being true.
Consequently, Russia appears to have built an entire invasion plan on a not-insignificant number of lies about their own forces, as communicated by their own mid-level leadership.
Imho, that explains things pretty simply and fully.
But the reason for the "confusion" (the "stumped" in the title) is that Russia has not historically operated this way under Putin (though it did operate this way under his predecessor). Basically, nothing is happening the way it has happened before (under Putin), and this appears to be a "new normal" (under Putin).
To start with, the yes-men problem means significant bad news is often buried not dealt with. It also results in the people who are the best at bs'ing and political manuevering being the ones who rise in the ranks. Your officer corps ends up being filled with people who did not optimize for military competency. Indeed General Shogyu, the Russian Minister of Defense, actually doesn't have a military background.
The corruption comes in with logisitical support. With significant levels of corruption you'll find that the amount of parts, munitions, fuel are not what you thought they were. Then you'll also probably have problems with the condition of the stuff you do have.
All of those things damage morale, competency, readiness, you name it. So when you actually have to go to war, you might find drastic shortfalls in battlefield performance.
Putin assumed all of Ukraine would roll over like Crimea. He has underestimated the people of Ukraine.
He attacked in winter assuming it would be over in two days. Now his already-low-morale forces face winter. I don't care if they are equipped and Russian and "used to war". This won't be WWI where you can build bunkers and hide in there. If you occupy a house, the local populace will email someone and you'll be a target of portable missile infantry.
He doesn't seem to have a plan B.
In theory, with good arms supply from the West (which is RIGHT OVER THE BORDER, this isn't Afghanistan that is 5000 miles away), the Ukrainian populace will get progressively better armed, more experienced (this is probably resulting in the training of a million or more Ukrainians to be effective soldiers), and more motivated.
If I were the US/NATO, I would be training and equipping as many Ukrainians as want it, and there should be millions of willing soldiers. This is the opportunity to produce a very dangerous military power right across the border from Russia. You get to breathe down the neck of the Belarus puppet strongman. And it might destroy Putin's regime by weakening him.
Putin also seems to have underestimated how much Ukraine hates him personally. I know no Ukrainians, but I suspect they are sick and tired of him threatening him and are spoiling for a fight.
The danger to Putin is that the US could equip and train and season a millions-strong Ukrainian army that sees a very unmotivated Russian army, repulses them, and then counter invades Russia. Now that is unlikely given nuclear deterrent and the like, but it is within the realm of possibility, especially if elements of Russia's army hint they are amenable to regime change and will refuse to nuke.
I doubt it's personal. Russia has dominated Ukraine over the centuries. Stories of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis in WWII are true enough; but at the time, Ukraine was ruled by Russia, which only a decade previously had imposed a famine on Ukraine that killed millions. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators.
Have you seen what they have done to Mariupol and Kharkiv the last few days? Maybe this was the original plan, but with that botched there seems to be no consideration for damage to civilians.
Several reasons might also be simultaneously true. Some simple examples: Russia might be testing NATO. Russia might not want to escalate in certain ways. There have been many countries whose leaders want to minimize the numbers they kill, while still killing many people. Russia might not want to reveal otherwise unknown capabilities. They might be preparing their air to strike elsewhere, possibly unrelated to Ukraine. There might be a revolt inside Russia's military. And so forth. But, what's likely? Maybe they just don't want to kill everyone or create dissent.
Potentially hostile assets require matching defensive stationing, even if they aren't doing anything aggressive. Fighters in Murmansk / Severomorsk aren't in Ukraine.
"Fleet in being" works for air forces too.
Putin called it a "special operation." Use of the term "war" in reference to this action has been banned in Russia. This secret war aspect may have had practical effects on command and control. It is possible that by not declaring this more than a limited special action, Putin's deployment options are actually limited.
Pretty crazy to think about.
"The Norden [used] an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb's impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects."
The odd man out, if you will, is inertial nav, which has more in common with dead reckoning.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3865/this-is-likely-wh...
Ironically, the last one I touched was a piece of donated Russian equipment, intended for spacecraft use, with no manual.
I suspect that the engineers you know are more computer science "engineers" than people who went through a traditional engineering core.
The ABET mechanical and electrical engineering curricula combined would give you all the skills a team needed (perhaps with the aid of a physicist and chemist or two) to build this system.
That we have dissolved the word "engineer" to mean "ad salesman at scale" doesn't mean the traditional engineers aren't out there.
I'm not sure I've seen a calculus course that skipped those (granted, it's been more than a decade since I looked at calculus courses). They certainly seem to still be within the remit of the FE - ECE exam.
But even so, my calc for engineering classes suffered from basically the same problems of focus. It was frequently hard to tell what was really important vs what was an interesting sidetrack I would never use again. Which is why I distinctly remember a number of my engineering classes having week long math refreshers as the first week of class for things like Laplace transforms/etc or a math refresher TA lead study groups the prof would strongly suggest people attend at the beginning if they couldn't solve some basic math problems written on the board the first day of class. Where I went, the first week or so was add/drop and many of the professors would toss in a "prereq" quiz to scare people into dropping who weren't strong enough in the prereqs as another method. And being an engineering class grades weren't "given". For some classes it was well known that there were going to be a lot of C's and D's because the prof wasn't going to dumb down his material if you couldn't keep up because they were believers in normal distributions (and I remember a physics professor who would show the distribution for tests/etc) and that A's really meant you were excelling.
We've strongly disincentivized gaining mid-level expertise on hard engineering.
One thing I realised as a graduate student designing RF PCBs and digital circuits was that the debugger for reality sucks. It's really frustrating to be faced with a problem where you just can't get "more information by recompiling with debug flags" and can't easily (or reversibly!) change the system to make it easier to understand. Totally different skillset, and requires a different method of thinking (frankly, at times, with a lot more thought).
The Trident 2 submarine missile has a gyroscope in it that costs almost as much as the nuclear warhead because it is so resistant to drift that it can be spun up and locked on in port and maintain its position when the submarine is at sea.
If you tried INS with a smart phone or wiimote the errors in velocity estimation will build up quickly and you'll get terrible drift.
In the case of the spatial computing hoop though you know the hoop never gets far away from the user so you can damp the D.C. component of the velocity, work in coordinates relative the user's center of gravity and never notice any drift in the x or y coordinates. (I don't like damping the vertical so much but I think I can live with it.)
nah fam, we've got it so much easier. You should kick up your feet and enjoy it, or you'll drive yourself crazy.
The story of Radar on the ground is well known, but the story of systems like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2S_(radar) (so named apparently because it was a smell that no one had discovered before) is not so well known.
Similarly a lot of these British efforts were more at risk to their own commanders that the Germans at the beginning, because the engineers were having to go through utterly ridiculous hoops to justify basic physics to their superiors. Sometimes their scientific superiors...
https://youtu.be/GJCF-Ufapu8 is a very very good documentary about this kind of thing. Made before the scientists were dead, so lots of gossip.
Randall and Boot should be known by more people, but magnetrons are not as awesome as the nuclear bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war
The Russian military is organized around a land defense of their homeland since they don't have the natural barriers the U.S. has (e.g. they last got invaded in 1941, we last got invaded in 1812.)
You might think they'd invest in fixed SAM systems but mobile SAM systems are so more survivable in a war because the radar for a SAM is highly visible. You really want to hide those systems in terrain and ambush planes going by.
Systems like that are most effective when they operate in a networked mode together with AWACS airplanes like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_A-50
which use a "look down" pulse doppler radar which can see cruise missiles, UAVs and other low-flying threats. This is a great complement to the radar on a Patriot missile battery which is optimized to ballistic missile threats. Russia's latest S-500 system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-500_missile_system
has crazy long range, it competes with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...
as an anti missile missile system but also it can (try to) take out a distant AWACS airplane with a direct shot.
The Russians DO NOT want an enemy to have air superiority over them anywhere.
At the very least the Patriot SAM should be redesigned to allow for vertical launching to allow shooting in all directions. If you point Patriot one way and you get ambushed from behind you're basically caught with your pants down.
At the very least you'd need four Patriot missile launchers pointing in all directions to prevent this scenario.
I find this puzzling since Greece, also a NATO member, also purchased Russian S-300 systems but weren't penalized for it.
Turkey bought S-400. Greece got S-300. Different systems.There are a myriad of versions of the S-300, from the original SA-10 introduced in the late 70's to the newest MPU version.
In my opinion it is because the American way of fighting a war doesn’t need it. Let say there is a troublesome country who would want to fly airplanes to shoot at American troops. The war plans against such a threat would start with two steps: 1st supress their air defences. 2nd gain full air dominance.
Supression of air defences is a polite way to say that they pulverize anything which can shoot US airplanes from the ground or even detect US airplanes using a radar.
Gaining full air dominance is a polite way to say that they aim to pulverize all enemy airplanes, runways, taxiways, fueling equipment and maintenance infrastructure.
If that is your method of operation why would you need mobile, survivable air defenses. People who routinely plan on destroying clouds (the source of rain) don’t need an umbrella.
AEGIS is an integrated, networked system; multiple sensors on multiple platforms (including AWACS) collaborate to detect and hit targets.
There was an AEGIS-equipped ship either in the Black Sea, or trying to get in through the Bosphorus (now closed to naval traffic). The presence of AEGIS ships in the Black Sea would be enough to explain the non-appearance of the Russian airforce.
It's called "controls engineering", and there are plenty of talented people in the field. But you are correct that people who sought a career in websites and cellphones have never heard of it.
(edit: s/cellphones/cellphone apps/)
The Russian Buks also seem to be having a bad time against the Bayraktars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baykar_Bayraktar_TB2#/media/Fi...
look at the shape of the tail, that thing doesn't have a single right angle to send radio waves straight back at the radar.
Why? Small radar signature?
Buks are ideal for taking down a big jet aircraft flying at 10000+ ft.
I had a quick chuckle at that. It reminds me of an old joke: a bullet has your name on it, a hand grenade is addressed "to whom it may concern", and a mortar shell is posted general delivery.
The Stinger is deadly against helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in a close air support role. It also is good for sniping at aircraft that are taking off and landing.
Against high altitude bombers and fighter aircraft though it does nothing. With modern precision weapons an aircraft like the B-52 can fly high and have individual munitions be targeted with GPS or laser so it can cause a lot of hurt to ground troops and be out of reach of the Stinger.
Starting in WW2 and moving forward each side took a very different evolutionary path in terms of air power and air defense. The west relied far more on combat air craft for air defense because that's what worked on the western front. The soviets had a very different experience in the war and had to fight while being under constant attack from German airpower through most of the war. So they focused on giving their army its own air defense capability.
Fast forward 80 years and western militaries will have a few SAM systems like the larger patriot and the Stringer MANPADS but will primarily rely on fighters to clear the skies. While the Russians have a SAM for every situation and a much smaller tactical air force. The west has also since Vietnam spent a lot of effort on defeating Soviet style SAM systems with improved SEAD tactics and equipment whereas it was never a concern for the Russians because there isn't much in the way of SAMs to suppress.
For those reasons you end up with the ironic twist of Russian SAMs being especially effective against Russian aircraft because they didn't prepare to counter their own systems. They DO have anti-radiation missiles and strike aircraft but not as many as the west and their doctrine is not nearly as well practiced.
And since there are only so many carriers, naval aviation also can't be assumed.
Consequently, SAMs are prioritized, compared to the army or air force.
Because if not, they're launching from Okinawa or Guam.
And they don't show up instantly hundreds of miles from there, at the ship's location.
The other reason is if things go south and the US/EU decides Putin is bluffing on the nukes, they'll for sure wish they had it because NATO aircraft would color the sky gray.
Is there something particular about the camouflage on those buks?
Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...are then promptly destroyed by irregular Ukrainian forces often with improvised weapons.
Seemingly trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas.
Lack of attempts to destroy strategic infrastructure at the beginning - e.g. TV/broadcast, communications, bridges, rail, etc - using cruise missiles or whatever.
Unclear objectives - are they really trying to actually take Kiev or just force Ukraine into submission?
Effective use of an air-force is pointless without dealing with the above issues and more.
>Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas.
This was our strategy in Iraq -- highly mobile warfare. Marines sprinting ahead in humvees without armor. it created massive confusion and misunderstanding on where our thrust was - i think it tied up enemy resources outside of Baghdad or something. But in the long run, not capturing enemies or pacifying the areas in-between caused a lot of heartburn later; let alone the looting and lawlessness from leaving power vacuums everywhere. (humanitarian fail)
Some massive differences were air superiority, night vision, and disruption of enemy coordination. They could call-in airstrikes anytime there was a threat of armor or mortar fire. Generation Kill is a really good series showing this (it seemed like madness until i watched "The Pacific").
These young enlisted conscripts are nothing but cannon fodder with their superiors hoping they can get off a shot or two before they're killed.
Pilots, being officers, are another matter entirely. I remember this Kamov Ka-40 helicopter had the ability to blow off its blades to enable the pilot to bail out with an ejection seat. There's nothing remotely like it in the U.S. arsenal.
If that's the case, industry mostly in the east would serve much better untouched, same for rest of infrastructure. Why destroy & rebuild when you get it for free and can start draining the country immediately. Bear in mind Russia has huge demographic problems just around the corner, and smart people were running away in droves long before this.
All this - truly, hardcore naive. In whole eastern Europe currently busy with refugees efforts, and whole nations would rather risk death than be once again enslaved by them, the memories are still rather fresh.
That Russia's foreign actions are (rightfully in this and many other cases) hated as much as Hitler wasn't something leadership could grok in any way. They keep peddling these bigger Russia tales while calling in 10,000 muslim killers from Chechnya on what they claim brotherly slavic nation. You can't fail more morally in the eyes of other slavs.
I can't be objective in this topic due to coming from this oppressed region, and tyrant evil persona like Putin doesn't deserve it. Yes there are many, less powerful people like him. I would love to see them be disposed of, stripped away from wealth and power for good. Till now it was a pipe dream, same as watching some narco-baron enjoying his wealth while slowly killing everybody. Now there is at least hope that things may change, and maybe even permanently, at least a bit. And hope is a powerful thing.
Also, assuming any of the responsible thought about this beforehand at all (which IS an assumption), they probably expected further economic sanctions of SOME sort from invading. Rebuilding costs money. Rebuilding things like high-tech fighter aircraft costs truly ridiculous amounts of money. There were plenty of reasons they would have hoped to be able to do this all on a modest budget.
Indeed NATO certainly expected Ukrainians to just surrender.
Which is probably why they didn't get a no-fly-zone, strategic ambiguity, or other things like that from the US and friends.
The west isnt going to sacrifice itself to save kyiv.
It's not clear we would have risked nuclear war by selling discounted cruise missiles to Ukraine.
But the Ukrainians might have used them prematurely, or surrendered without a fighting chance.
Or the US could have just deployed 50k troops to Poland and said "we might interfer in Ukraine". Then Putin might never have invaded.
Instead the US said, they would not interfere.
NATO expected (and AFAICT, still expects) Ukraine to be defeated if Putin attacked and wasn't dissuaded by the resulting sanctions from pressing the attack. I don't think they were expected to just surrender.
Chechens themselves had the same tragedy in Grozny. I don't believe these puppet soldiers have the sympathy of the vast majority of muslim people.
While there are many problems like treatment of african students, comments on TV channels mentioning "civilized" part of the world, and not having the public outcry for middle-eastern people(or welcoming arms for refugees), and the topic you mentioned. Anyone I talked to in Turkey supports the struggle of Ukrainian people.
Another interesting point is that Russia seems to be recruiting a lot from the Turkic people inside Russia. So Turkish drones are also hitting them. But that doesn't seem to change public opinion.
Overall, unfortunately, the Turkish people became geopolitical experts because of all the mess and tragedy around Turkey (Note to reader: Check the map if you don't know Turkey's neighbors). One visible metric is twitter conflict/OSINT account number in Turkish. Most people have a balanced view, but stopping aggression and civilian casualties comes first.
Another interesting point is that there are sanctions on some Turkish industries, based on secondary concerns and some lobbying. But, Turkey singlehandedly supported Europe's energy security/ general security(Azerbaijan, Libya, Syrian refugees), balanced Russia(Syria, Libya), supported Ukraine's defense industry long before anyone else.
I hope it stops as soon as possible.
So, bearing mind that I'm just shitposting on the Internet and have no military expertise, I do think that they had a strategy; based on the automated release of articles 4 days after the start of the invasion which declared that Putin had provided the "final solution to the Ukrainian problem", they really expected it to be over in four days.
Bear in mind that:
1. Ukraine has different groups with different mother tongues, like Switzerland or Belgium. The east has a lot of people who grow up speaking Russian as their home language. 2. They landed paratroops at key airports across Ukraine on day 1. 3. Ukraine government has claimed they've found significant numbers of special forces disguised as Ukrainians on the first few fays. 4. The large body of conventional forces invading on day one.
I would guess - completely "guy on the Internet" mind you - that what the strategy was is that the paratroops would get a beachhead and destroy the air force, that they and the special forces would hunt down and murder or capture all the key Ukrainian millitary and government officials in the first few days.
Meanwhile the conventional forces in the east would be "greeted as liberators", to borrow an American phrase, by Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who would provide food and fuel. Reinforcements would be flown into captured airfields. Chechen terror units would be used against serious resisters.
By the fourth day, Ukrainian resistance would be a disorganised shambles of cut-off government units, show trials of any captured members of the Ukrainian government could start so they could tell a little story about how the Jewish Ukrainian president was actually a baby-eating Nazi, and Putin could laugh off any attempts to complain as meaningless.
The paratroops were captured or killed, the Ukrainian air force kept flying or escaped to friendly countries (and are now returning), the alleged special forces got nowhere near the Ukrainian government, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been telling Russian troops to go away. The Chechen terror units appear to have been killed en masse.
I think they started to believe their own lies. Like a feedback loop from Putin to below, and then the same things going up again. Putin gets advised in a world created by his own lies.
They list three possible explanations:
* Too few precision-guided munitions (PGMs)
* Risk of friendly fire from surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) due to poor coordination
* Lack of experienced Russian pilots
This one is so hard for me to imagine, given Russia's long history of aerospace pride and massive military budget. The article attributes it to limited flying time compared to US/UK pilots and unfamiliarity with their latest and most advanced jets. Truly hard to comprehend how a military like Russia's could be suffering from lack of training despite a multi-year lead-up to a massive invasion.
This is exactly the metric. Unlike their other assets, planes are expensive to replace and pilots take a long time to train.
Russia needs to maintain their air assets in order to defend themselves in case they get challenged that way. And they have tons of warm bodies and old hardware to throw at the situation.
Another perspective is that Russian air assets are very vulnerable to MANPADS style air-defense systems. Ukraine has received a ton of these systems from the west and are able to engage targets up to about 3 miles out. They're also vulnerable to the S300 systems the Ukrainians inherited, although its not clear how many of those remain.
France and Germany aren't far behind - 52.8 billion and 52.7 billion respectively. I believe Germany recently pledged to raise it's military spending to 100 billion (a lot of flashy headlines but couldn't find details), so soon it will far outspend Russia.
Germany will have greater personnel cost, yes. In other areas, Russia will have a greater cost burden. For example, they don’t share defense resources with other nations (I.e. no. NATO equivalent).
The person you’re replying to is simply stating that Germany’s higher personnel cost does not nullify the effectiveness of relative strength of the German military versus the Russians.
Not to 100 billion, by 100 billion. Euros that is.
https://www-tagesschau-de.translate.goog/inland/innenpolitik...
Not when you pay for corruption :)
Can you imagine US or western Europe soldiers doing something similar en masse?
And its not just that - heavy drinking, fuck-it attitude, and suddenly called to invade the nation who was supposed to be their closest brothers?
They are sort of potemkin village kind of army. Few exceptional units (Spetsnaz), few cool technologies ie anti aircraft missiles, literally maybe 10 new Armata tanks (they found out they can't manufacture them en masse). So you see 40-50 years old tanks which Javelin can fry easily, and even clueless civilian can fire them after 30 minutes of training. You see soldiers abandoning vehicles since they have higher survability on foot. You see tank crew coming to Ukrainian police station to ask where is gas station (I call it clever way to surrender).
I think its actually very dangerous for Russia as a state right now. Showing this much weakness might motivate some neighbors. Especially China, they could run through the country all the way to Barents sea without breaking a sweat.
Well, it's not as if the US military industrial complex has nothing of that?
I think the problem isn't corruption alone, but the combination of corruption and all the corrupt trying hard to put their own eggs elsewhere than Russia's basket. Working with a corrupt authoritarian leader can be profitable, but you really want to have a plan B for when SHtF.
US corrupt elites have the luxury problem that if their wealth and power isn't secure in the US, it probably isn't very secure anywhere else either. So they have to take just a little care not shit where they eat (too much), and maybe sponsor a few museums and stuff, robber baron style.
A good (extremely depressing) film to watch is "Leviathan" (2014).
I agree there's probably less of the "money just unaccounted for" type of corruption in the US (though it does happen, especially in connection with wars and intelligence agencies), and certainly less petty bribes. But that may just be a symptom of more organized corruption, so that it isn't necessary to let to many lower instances have a cut. In short, there may be more legal ways to divert public trust to private gain, so that the petty sort is just pointlessly risky.
Except Hong Kong (and the "expansion" of the South China Sea).
To which I say: Russia has ~half of the world's nuclear arsenal. (The US has ~half, the rest of the nuclear states are mere footnotes by # of nukes, relying on the fact that no one really needs more than about a dozen).
If this is the state of their conventional military, it raises questions about the state of their nuclear deterrent.
In any case, if China wanted Siberian resources, fomenting a breakaway region would be cleaner than invading.
A scary fucking thought. i.e. some of them will stay in silos, but others will be partially airworthy.
>In any case, if China wanted Siberian resources, fomenting a breakaway region would be cleaner than invading.
This would result in a nuclear exchange.
Possibly. But the exchange would occur on Russian soil. China is more than capable of covertly supporting separatists. Hell, it might not even have to. Just prime the pump and then let the West take over.
The thing is though, is there any reason to believe the PLA would be in a much different shape? The last wars the Chinese fought in were decades ago, and the performance was pretty poor. So we don't have any real world idea of how that army would perform - it could suffer from poor morale, stupid tactics, lack of coordination, no logistics, or it could be superbly trained with great equipment.
Outside of cities, where alternatives to air strikes are viable, you can still see a lot of russian helicopter and artillery action.
Those need targeting. And the article mentions a lack of targeting pods. (UkrAF is largely functional because the initial volley missed many air fields, planes and radar systems.)
This increasingly looks like the Russian military procured shiny, expensive kit from cronies and then neglected to equip them.
Are Ukranians really still flying? If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no? Russians driving vehicles bumper to bumper shows VERY strong confidence that they own the sky, so things might not be as rosy for Ukraine as they seem.
Not necessarily. That's likely to be a target-rich, but well-defended area. As long as it's not moving - especially given rumors of fuel troubles - there may be better things for the Ukranian air force to tackle, like helicopters moving troops around.
Again, there are probably far more urgent targets for the Ukrainian Air Force than a convoy that hasn't moved in days.
I wouldn't be surprised if the convoy had the equivalent of a 1000 US Stinger AA missiles or more. It's not with strafing if there's too high a chance the jet would get shot down.
As a layman, I'm guessing the only things worth the risk might be some operation that could potentially trap the convoy (e.g. between two knocked-out bridges).
It's a sign of weakness, not strength.
Killing aggressors is often used as an excuse for the aggressors to be more aggressive and Russia's army is large enough to replace that convoy a few times over without much of a sweat. Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated).
It's also a morale killer; a lot of Russians have Ukrainian relatives. A lot of the captured combatants are very young and seem confused about why they're there (yes, could just be propaganda).
Ukraine just wants them to go home. The Ukrainian people don't really have a conflict with the Russian people.
It definitely isn't "completely fabricated":
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely internal matter for the Ukrainians to deal with however they see fit, and provides zero justification for Russia's invasion.
But by lying and claiming it's a lie you're going to make anyone who looks into the truth behind the matter more likely to become sympathetic to the Russian version of events.
It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump. There is no foundation in fact all American's are but there are small groups he as the President supported who were Nazi's. This is a plain lie to serve their propaganda.
Were any far-right groups formally integrated into the US military, federal law enforcement, or anything else like that during Trump's presidency? That's the difference here, the Azov battalion was a private militia that was made an actual part of the Ukrainian military.
Sincerely from the bottom of my heart I suggest every American to de-escalate because most certainly its not fun to live in a society when things have to be solved by violence between countrymen and Putin has done cleanical job.
Oh and also if the US government started banning other languages then english.
None of this justifies Russian imperialism, but I think we get too caught up in war and can often brush the crimes of the side we agree with under the rug.
https://twitter.com/ng_ukraine/status/1497924614865002497
That does not justify any invasion, but there's also no need to go on the other extreme and turn into azov apologia.
Also, consider: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-stops-short-bannin...
And: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-january-6-military...
As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in service of fighting fascism and misinformation. Perhaps some propaganda strategists assumed that 'fighting nazis' was an acceptable parallel to how the United States claims it is defending freedom/democracy whenever it intervenes in some other country. It obviously didn't work.
It isn't talking about the Azov battalion or anything; that's an uncalled-for steelmanning because everyone is free associating things they read about in the news.
My granma told me what was happening in Khmelnik (West Ukraine) at times of German occupation.
50% of the city was Jewish. And almost zero left in first few months. And that was done primarily by locals from UPA - not Germans. You can hide from a German but cannot hide from your neighbor.
UPA and Stepan Bandera[1] is a hero of Ukraine now - it is a street in Kiev named after him. Despite the fact that Poland and Russia condemn him as a war criminal - for massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.
And now Ukrainian refugees are coming to Poland... That will not be that easy ... Liberal values are quite thin as practice shows.
I am quite surprised that nice Jew guy mr. Zelensky didn't do anything about it. Probably because he is not who rule there.
> As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in service of fighting fascism...
Nah, this is targeted at Russians. I think that as a westerner you underestimate the power of the myth of Russians saving the world from fascism. This is the very core of their identity. You can find some interesting details here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497306746330697738.html
Personal experience: I grew up during cold war in one of east-european satelites of the Soviet union. That myth was probably weaker here than in the Soviet union itself, yet it felt ever-present; kind of representation of the mythical struggle of good versus evil. When me and my friends were playing "soldiers" as kids, we were always Russians shooting at fascists. And I remember loving books for kids where some Russian paratrooper befriends local boy and together fight fascism... This was during the latest stages of the communist regime, when almost everyone here hated communists and especially Russians. The idealized memory of their heroic struggle against fascism was the only positive thing that survived in the minds of people.
Obviously, no mention of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact etc. in history books.
Twice is coincidence...
Of course, being able to capture land doesn't mean they can occupy it.
They've screwed so much of this operation thus far, but I bet you that good chunks of that column consist of Tunguskas and Tors, and the Ukrainians know it.
Maybe not, but there are definitely those in service, one damaged and abandoned, one disabled and one captured.
That Russia sent in such a rich sitting duck target and it's not being attacked suggests they have air superiority and we're getting bad information.
Obviously the first thing that pops to mind when you hear “air superiority” and “40 mile convoy of enemy tanks” is “bomb that convoy to dust”. The second thing that should pop is “ambush”. Losing 5 aircraft to surface to air missiles to take out 5 tanks would be a poor tradeoff.
Doubtless bombing the convoy is something Ukraine has considered. Also doubtless they are aware that the convoy isn’t guaranteed to be a parade of sitting ducks.
Maybe they didn't bomb the convoy, but just the supply, like they did before.
Once those soldiers go searching for food, the Ukrainians can take some extra tanks for their army ;).
President Putin has authorized the use of overwhelming force to evict the occupiers and avenge our fallen servicemen. President-in-Exile <insert expendable criminal> leads the official people's government from Belarus and blah...blah..."
There is nothing at all that has stopped the military from attacking such an obvious target, but it would hurt Ukraine's plea as a victim seeking peace from the RUS citizens and provide truthiness to Putin's internal propaganda.
Better to let this encirclement occur, the thaw hits, RUS armor stuck with harrassed supply lines and the hell of urban combat against a determined populace. Meanwhile, your western flank is feeding advanced weaponry into the remaining UKR units and your economy has imploded.
Take all the corruption, assumptions RUS had, etc. and it all still looks like a scenario from some HS history class to help teach about Caesar or Stalingrad.
>Airstrikes would not go entirely uncontested. Russia’s air force lacks experience in suppressing or destroying enemy air defenses, and it rarely uses missiles that are designed to destroy radar. As a result, Ukraine’s meager air defenses could still pose a challenge. But Ukrainian air defenses are in short supply, and they would be unlikely to provide effective cover for most of the country’s ground troops. They would be quickly overwhelmed.
>The opening air campaign would probably be short. Unlike Western militaries, which concentrate firepower in their air forces, Russia puts the bulk of its firepower in its ground forces, so it would quickly proceed to a ground campaign.
However, the US military has the finest logistic operations in the world.
Also, there is no substitute for fighting an actual enemy. Part of the reason the US (especial Air Force and Naval Aviation) is so good is that they have actually been fighting. From Libya(Reagan), Gulf War I, Serbia, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, Libya (Obama), the US has been fighting quite a bit.
Whenever you are actually fighting an enemy, there is a learning curve. The big question is whether the sanctions and international isolation combined with the Ukrainian resistance will force Russia to back down, before they navigate that.
I say this as a medium-big supporter of the US military.
But one important element of dollar stability is that carrier group shows up on the doorstep of those getting out of line and shows them errors of their ways. Thus there is a constant need for some pretext to deploy military somewhere.
Securing oil fields and the Persian Gulf is more than money and oil, it’s about securing trade via maritime traffic in the gulf for liberal capitalist democracies worldwide.
And keeping oil access secure is about pure security but also keeping prices low to not disrupt economies.
At least that’s how I understand it.
Projects the power that the military will show up.
Yeah, we would all like the narrative to be Russian army not working.
But it's also possible that they are just working slowly. And certainly possible that Putin would rather loose conscripts than risk airplanes.
(Honestly, I just hope the madness stops before more people are hurt -- ideally with the Russians going home)
Just saw a video where they blew the leg off a civilian that was just standing in the road to block their advance.
You had a CBS* commentator straight up saying this is different than Middle East wars since Kyiv is a " civilized city".
That said, I think much of Russia's restraint is due to their end goal. Ukraine's Russian backed president was outted in a coup back in 2014. The new pro West leadership decided to go dancing with John McCain.
This entire conflict could of been avoided if we didn't keep trying to expand NATO. I know I'm not enlisting if the Russians invade Poland tomorrow, but the existence of NATO implies I am.
It's not hard to imagine if Haiti had a US backed leader, who was removed in a coup and then replaced with a pro Russia / pro China president. Now imagine China and Russia announcing plans for various military bases on Haiti. The Russians could finally have a warm water port.
In no universe would America accept Haiti having a right to its own foreign policy. We don't want anyone else playing in our backyard. To be clear, this doesn't justify a stronger country imposing it's will upon a weaker one.
This is worth a read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
* CBS not CNN
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm
Like I said, I'm not enlisting if the Russians invade Poland. If individual American citizens want to a join a Polish foreign legion, that's fine. Maybe the State Department can create a list of approved foreign legions American citizen can join.
Then your free to sign up on your own accord.
Or are you saying that you just don't believe in NATO, you would like the US not to have mutual defense alliances at all, and the expansion of NATO is completely irrelevant to your feelings about NATO?
Poland and Hungary have done autocratic things I don't agree with, but their governments seem to come much closer to following the will of the people then they would if they were again inside Russia's sphere of influence, and I think bringing them inside NATO was good for them.
I'm not sure whether it was a good maneuver strategically, but I'm also not sure it wasn't.
I'm not enlisting for anything short of America actually getting invaded. During the Vietnam War anyone with a bit of money could get deferments. Those are what I call smart men. I feel absolutely no obligation to die in a foreign conflict.
Providing logistic and selling arms is more than fine, but getting directly involved is a completely different matter.
CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata, actually.
> It's not hard to imagine if Haiti had a US backed leader, who was removed in a coup and then replaced with a pro Russia / pro China president. Now imagine China and Russia announcing plans for various military bases on Haiti. The Russians could finally have a warm water port.
> In no universe would America accept Haiti having a right to its own foreign policy.
Uh, you know this actually happened in a different Caribbean island state and, while there was a bit of a dispute about nuclear weapons that resulted in both alliances pulling them back from each others borders in a quid pro quo, and a variety of covert and sponsored-third-party actions, the US never committed it's military to an all out assault to displace the Soviet-backed regime, which still exists and is still closely associated with Russia even after the fall of the USSR, a geopolitical alignment outlasting the notional ideological one.
What nuclear weapons were being placed in Ukraine? Russia's only argument is that "someday maybe, perhaps, it could possibly happen".
Ukraine is not the formerly-Soviet-backed and still Russia-friendly Caribbean island state being referenced in the piece you quote.
Other than the unfortunate Haitians, who have suffered enough already, it is hard to imagine why a vaguely democratic decision by Haiti to become a Russian ally would meet with more than a collective yawn unless Russia planned to station intermediate range nuclear missiles there or something. Russia has plenty of allies in the area already.
The idea that the U.S. wouldn't "let" Haiti or Cuba or Venezuela have their own foreign policy is ridiculous. It does and they do.
Edit: Just to make it clear, I actually do not believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is due to the expansion of Nato (and even if it was it would be completely unjustified) it is due to Putin's megalomania. That doesn't mean we should forget that the US has been extremely aggressive about protecting their interests even by force and by violating international law. There is a reason why they are the country which has been involved in the most wars since WWII
The only way your hypothetical analogy would make sense is if Russia/China spent decades trying to improve economic relationships with the US, and the US took advantage of those overtures while maintaining an aggressive military posture. At that point, I think most of the world we be sympathetic with installing a pro Russia/China regime in Haiti.
This is really not a good take. Ukrainians didn't overthrow their government because of NATO expansion. They overthrew their government because it was a corrupt pile of shit that didn't credibly represent their interests. And make no mistake, Putin has always seen Ukraine as in integral and inseparable part of Russian culture. He was never going to allow them to govern themselves, NATO expansion or not.
Um... Cuba?
When was eastern Ukraine (ethnic Russians) going to be voting on leaving Ukraine?
Anyone wondering how Putin got into power may want to research how the New York bankers and Clintons tried to install Boris Berezovsky in Russia.
I also am not sure that war would be avoided if NATO didn't expand. Putin and Russia have made statements that suggest a desire to grow their influence over former USSR countries, and those countries resisted by joining NATO or ousting Russian backed leadership.
Syrian cities were civilized, too.
A nations per capita income has nothing to do with how it's people deserve to be treated.
This is probably the absolute only thing where I think Russia is being unfairly characterized. We'll see though as more intel comes in and if they start unloading on the cities. Possibly holding them to a high standard now, will keep them in check as they get more frustrated.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-molo...
Keep in mind that media reports and reports from the Ukrainian military are designed to minimize losses and boost morale.
I've seen quite a few videos of Ukrainian planes destroyed on the tarmac and there isn't evidence for a significant Ukrainian air presence anymore.
We don't need to bust moral after 8 years of war. It's not possible to bust something 8 years straight. My FB is full of «killed by Russian», «lost in fight», etc.
You spoke at behalf of Ukrainians, but you have zero information from Ukraine. If you have facts, then list them, please.
@oryxspioenkop has the most reliable confirmed info on losses, as long as you can stand his love for Bayraktars.
The US should put up a billion dollars for the program to get it started. Land the jets in NATO territory.
Let's put troop loyalty to the test and see if we can't drain some of their best hardware.
We're not allowed to attack Russia directly so let's plunder them. Our leaders are not being nearly creative enough in this situation.
The deal fell apart, however.
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/is-poland-sending-fighter-...
If a Polish pilot flies it to Ukraine, Russia will consider that an act of war, and possibly start bombarding Poland. If Ukrainian pilot comes to Poland and takes off from a Polish airport then again: that is an act of war.
The only possibility to deliver them without joining the war against Russia seems to be to disassemble those MIGs and send them by train/truck.
https://news.yahoo.com/no-eu-countries-aren-t-233404478.html
Also, that one jet that flew from Romania was flying BACK, because it already belonged to Ukraine, just had an emergency landing in Romania for some unknown reason: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44514/su-27-returning-...
EDIT: the fact that the jet was Ukrainian gives Romania plausible deniability - they can always say that the pilot wanted to fight, and took the jet against their will :)
Just have to tow them with horses and tractors. ;)
Skeptical that would be effective for two reasons:
1. Pilots that have family back home probably won't be eager to take the offer
2. Russia has shown no qualms about targeted assassinations in foreign lands.
> 1. Pilots that have family back home probably won't be eager to take the offer
Russia has not been known to do North-Korea-style family executions (so far)
> 2. Russia has shown no qualms about targeted assassinations in foreign lands.
Russia might be too weak after all this is over to still have these capabilities.
Time will tell!
I was corrected that nobody seems to buy Russia's offerings, and those that were made are basically for show and not in mass production.
I also realized that air superiority, as in expensive jets attacking from distance and altitude, might not matter if the enemy has cheap effective drones.
If the drone loss rate and replacement is cheaper than the flight hours cost of the ultraexpensive fighter jet, and if they can throw 100 drones at a battlefield and the best you can do is shoot down 10 of them with your ultraexpensive fighter jets... uhoh. Even if you "own" the skies, you don't have ground-air superiority.
Yes you can bomb static targets with impunity, but your ground forces are essentially unsupported, and if the enemy is infantry with portable missiles and drones with missiles... uhoh.
Putin didn't realize that his military was hollowed-out when he made the call to invade, and thus everyone scrambled to fill in the gaps of their units with conscripts. That's why we're seeing an unusually high number of captured Russian forces who appear to have nearly no military training or experience. We've seen bizarre tactics that make no sense - tanks being abandoned, APCs driving with no support, etc.
It stands to reason that if we're asking "Where's the Russian Air Force?", the answer is that it may never have existed in the size we thought. IMO this is a more logical answer than trying to figure out some 3D chess strategy of why Russia wouldn't their planes during the largest invasion since WWII.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11092614/putin-army-threat
For ground troops, you may very well be right - they have been heavily relying on private military corps for a while now.
When I watched HBO's excellent Chernobyl that was one of the recurring themes. Everybody is lying to their superiors and nobody wants to hear bad news and they suffer because if it. I assumed that was probably exaggerated for the sake of drama but maybe it was actually understated?
Communist countries were full of blatant incompetence, lying about what actually happens, mismanagement, stealing and strategic deliberate incompetence.
Just look at state of economy of communist block and why USSR failed.
Of course the resulting system is pretty brittle to shocks.
By contrast, a functioning dictatorship means a single madman can pretty much decide to destroy humanity at any point.
"Why Russia will lose this war?
Much of the "realist" discourse is about accepting Putin's victory, cuz it's guaranteed. But how do we know it is?
I'll argue that analysts 1) overrate Russian army 2) underrate Ukrainian one 3) misunderstand Russian strategy & political goals" Kamil Galeev
It's not that hard to figure out. Putin is saving his planes for something big. Direct conflict with NATO being the most likely (and of course scariest) answer.
This does not necessarily mean that he wants or intends to fight NATO, just that he sees it as a strong enough possibility that he's willing to incur heavy losses in the short term in order to conserve his strength.
[1] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/28/the-kremlins-pro...
America has demonstrated since WW2 that anyone who's not American (and even many who are but are only the wrong side or have the wrong color - e.g. ) is 100% expendable - F- the Geneva Conventions or any other international agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki
This has been true from Korea to Vietnam to any conflict in the Middle East or Latin America. Our doctrine is "kill everyone and let God or the Devil sort them out" so it's not surprising that this seems bizarre to us and/or our government.
Well, given the deplorable state of their ground units, I wouldn't rule it out.
To strengthen this assumption here's a canned article which was likely meant to be published had things gone according to plan, but pulled, since they hadn't.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
RIA is a state owned news agency.
Why precisely they thought they'd meet no serious opposition in their attempted airdrop near Kyiv is anyone's guess. Mine is that Putin started believing his own tales about Nazis taking Ukraine hostage, assuming the populace is dying to be liberated from them.
Things crumbled once this met a different reality on the ground, and now they're trying to raise the stakes, and have become desperate enough to begin indiscriminately shelling population centres, Kharkiv most notably.
There's a ton of reporting right now easy to miss important while trying to drink from the firehose.
I first saw it when a friend sent me a link to this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Tom_deWaal/status/1498310064117059585
- How do people meet you at the liberated territories?
- Well. Smiles. Flowers. Tears of happiness…
Funny how westerners are surprised by this. Not telling the grunts what they are going into has been Russian modus operandi since forever... Just like throwing bodies at the problem, sending conscripts from Central Asia first (throwing actual Russians into the meat grinder might prove unpopular), rampant looting (including of the most absurd stuff like toilets in Georgia 2008), etc, etc.
Somehow most of the pundits and analysts have been blindsided by this stuff, even though it's common knowledge in Eastern Europe.
Isn't that what everybody thought?
Didn't NATO also think that? Isn't that why the US and friends categorically refused boots on the ground, no-fly-zones or even just strategic ambiguity?
Or maybe, things are just slow, because they are slow..
2008, Georgia. Russian Air Force loses at least 9 aircraft. Georgian minuscule airforce remained grounded. The losses are considered catastrophic inside Russian military command, and overall performance of Air Force was appraised as the worst among branches of military forces.
In 2010s there's a string of assassinations happen in Ukraine and Bulgaria. Different people are targeted, from ex-military to weapon mogul Gebrev. What connects them? They all were part of the weapon sales chain that provided Georgia with anti-air defences. Bizarrely, Russian state media is openly accusing some of the victims in doing exactly this: selling anti-air weapons to Georgia.
Clearly, a vendetta is taking place. Killing those people wouldn't do anything positive for whatever future Russia was planning. And since the story starts with military campaign and ends with undercover hits, it must be Putin behind this, as he's the only person in command of both military and special forces committing the murders.
Syria. Russian Air Force enters the fray. But unlike Assad's they are flying their ground attack planes pretty high, way above range of manpads that are responsible for thinning out Syrian Air Force. Clearly, avoidance is put above target precision. Later, a single Russian aircraft is downed by Turkish defence. The relations between countries are soured, but only for a while.
What can we conclude? For whatever reason Putin hates losses in air force. Specifically, in military planes (it seems Russian helicopters aren't enjoying that privilege). I can't presume what this reason might be. But Putin's actions over the last 15 years seem to fit the narrative.
I mean whatever their situation is, I'm pretty sure they still can assassinate defecting pilots. And I'm pretty sure the pilots know.
1. Russian Military Leadership is unwilling to risk their best equipment / personnel
This is a pretty radical war in that, yes, Ukraine is overmatched in almost every way, but they also have been provided some of the most advanced and modern anti air and anti tank weaponry by NATO countries. And it may not even be clear to Russia exactly what they have been provided.
2. Dissent Among Ranks
While we probably won’t know, at least not any time soon. Some of the reported incompetence of the Russian war effort seems too great to be true. I would not be suprised if there was some intentional stalling in the hope that Putin comes to reason.
3. Morale is Low
The Russian military waited a long time at the border. Were sent in, purportedly, without really knowing why or to what end, and then asked to kill people who they see as basically their own countrymen. Hard to fight when you don’t know what for, to what end, and geez, kind of seems like we are the bad guys here.
This war is going to test even the most nationalistic of the Russian military. I don’t know how much longer this can go on without a military coup.
Wouldn't you want to disclose the hell out of your extremely effective anti-aircraft weapons so you don't have to use them as much? Obviously not the positioning or numbers but just that you have them...
Nor if you’re worried about a wider conflict - perhaps also involving Asia – & want both maximal degradation of Russian capabilities, & “mystery” advantages for as long as possible.
Surprise is a force multiplier, but a new capability is only a surprise for a short period.
And a simplistic model assuming the Ukrainian allies are optimally pursuing “prevention” as their goal insufficient to explain all mysteries.
If the EU had been clearer about how intense sanctions would be, & how firm they considered the ‘red line’ limiting conflict to the regions Russian-allied forces already claimed, maybe the whole invasion could have been deterred!
They weren’t so clear & firm, either because they were hiding the strength of their resolve, or the resolve only materialized late. The latter is currently the official story, but such things often only become known, if ever, years or decades later. People still debate whether Spain sunk the Maine in 1898, or FDR ignored or minimized advance warnings of Pearl Harbor to shepherd the US into WW2 in 1941.
There’s also a gigantic phase change in strategy between when you believe an aggression is deterrable, & when you think it inevitable. If deterrence is an option, sure, show strength – but be aware the potential aggressor may detect any bluffs, or discount real strength as a bluff. But as soon as you decide war is inevitable, you may instead want to hide strengths, for a more decisive military response later.
If the US/NATO concluded an invasion was inevitable 1 month, 6 months, or even years ago, there was plenty of time to secretly deploy “just in case” novel weapons & tactics - even while Ukraine’s leadership, especially, was publicly signaling “no war expected” & avoiding any overt mobilization.
Also, the risk of deploying secret weapons into a state with significant corruption would have been much too high.
The US was shouting from the rooftops that they expected an attack, in a manner putting real credibility at risk. While laypeople, & left footsoldiers, may have completely discounted the possibility, Germany & others in NATO are close enough allies they'd have seen more of the tangible reasons why the US was saying that.
Note that feigned surprise can also be a conscious tactic, to help shepherd-along any alliance stragglers, or domestic opinion. Or, excuse inaction. "No one could have known", say the official mouthpieces for those who ignored the alarms from those who did know. "We are blameless!"
Further, if there was actual confidence in policymakers that an attack was unlikely, & that Putin was deterrable, then pre-announcing the severity of the response would have been very cheap! You won't have to do it, in the expected case. And pre-announcing makes the expected case even more likely.
The risk of coordinating with a leaky/corrupt regime isn't necessarily disqualifyng. There may be portions of the Ukraine government/military in which there was very high trust - such as close contacts in special forces, & those who have repeatedly proven themselves in the last ~8y of lower-grade hostilities. Or, people whose comms have been completely pierced – so NATO knows exactly how much corruption, or mixed-loyalties, they'll express.
Weaponry could also have been pre-positioned just outside Ukraine, or kept in the custody/knowledge of trusted contractors or deniably pre-positioned special forces. I hope you don't think Russians, like the saboteur groups repeatedly confronted in Ukrainian cities, are the only forces who can pretend to be someone else when it suits them!
As another example, no one outside of the home airbase support teams know who's really flying a fighter jet, unless enemies shoot it down & recover the pilot. I hope Ukraine has some world-class fighter pilots! But with lives and practically priceless (in the short term) military hardware at stake, if an even 10% better pilot is ready & willing from an allied counry, I suspect Ukraine can grant them a uniform & citizenship instantly. (It's been surprising how many NATO countries have said it's OK for their private citizens to go fight in Ukraine.)
It's much more likely that many politicians were genuinely surprised by the invasion. They ignored the Eastern Europeans, as always, who were just being paranoid about Russia, as always. People tend to ignore problems that are hard to deal with, especially when solving them seems costly, until they can ignore them no longer.
That stronger pre-invasion deterrence wasn't popular in "domestic public opinion" is all that it takes, for the private discussions between the national-security establishments & top rulers to go roughly:
PRE-WAR SANCTION HAWKS (eg: US): "They're gonna invade all Ukraine, here's how we know, precommitting to all the tough measures you'd surely do if that happens might deter it."
PRE-WAR SANCTION DOVES (eg: DE): "Well, really-specific toughness up front isn't popular with our voters, & we're still hoping for that tiny chance Putin's just saber-rattling, despite your evidence. So, if what you say materializes, we'd be able to be tougher than Putin expects. But we can't signal that beforehand, no matter the benefits."
Voila. They've hidden their true level of commitment to retaliate economically, under the eventuality we find ourselves in – no fancy multilateral secret plans required.
The flip in Germany, especially, was dizzying, wasn't it? Do you think the whole package was improvised in the preceding few days? Or that it was assembled from preexisting "break in case of fire" emergency plans, at the very top, that lower-ranking party-members & coalition partners simply didn't need-to-know? I'm saying the latter.
One example of something that wasn't prepackaged or prepared in any way: There are reports that only Lindner and Scholz knew about the 100bn EUR fund beforehand, the rest were surprised.
One is the Russian choice of overall military tactics, which is derived from their political goals. While we can’t know exactly what it is, we can assume that Russia plans to impose some sort of political settlement on Ukraine (could be anything from puppet government to partition to annexation). Whatever this settlement is, Russia needs more than Zelenskyy’s (or some Quisling’s) signature on the dotted line: Russia very much needs at least the grudging acquiescence of the Ukrainian military, state apparatus, and general public. Without this acquiescence, Russia will be tied down indefinitely in counterinsurgency and “state building” with an unsustainable cost in manpower, money, and probably blood. To prevent this outcome, Russia initially tried to bypass most cities and focus on rapidly taking Kyiv and Kharkiv with minimal destruction. Hence the (initial) minimal aerial bombing and the various failed tactics such as yeeting paratroopers into airfields with no backup and sending light vehicles on Leroy Jenkins thunder runs into Kyiv and Kharkiv. Needless to say this plan did not succeed. So now Russia has a choice: ratchet up the destruction and try to grind Ukrainian defenses down, or fold and get out to avoid the long-term quagmire, which might eventually endanger Putin’s political survival at home. Problem is, folding would be a major show of weakness for Putin, which could also endanger his political survival at home. So far, we are beginning to see an intensification of shelling of cities, indicating that he is not folding. If this continues, Ukraine should expect to see more bombing from the Russian Air Force (coupled with more shelling from artillery).
The second factor seems to be the prevalence of portable air-defense systems (MANPADs, such as Stinger missiles) in the Ukrainian military. These systems are much harder to find and eliminate than larger anti-air weapons like the Buk or S-300, to say nothing of fixed-location air defense systems. MANPADs are also cheap—much much cheaper than military aircraft. So it becomes an expensive proposition to use aircraft at low altitude for missions like ground support. With MANPADs continuing to flow to Ukraine from friendly governments, this factor does not appear likely to change any time soon. So while Ukraine may see more high-altitude bombing as Putin intensifies the destruction, the Russian Air Force might remain leery of conducting some types of aerial operations.
As a very young man, my first experience with war that I can remember was my parents watching the reports on the Vietnam war. They were pretty glued to their TVs and unlike the wars before that one, there was video every day and updates every day. They felt they really "understood" what was going on because they were so very well informed. They had seen it with their own eyes after all!
However later, much later, after the war was over and more and more information about the prosecution of the war came out, it became abundantly clear that what they had "seen" was carefully managed by outside forces to convey certain "truths" which were in fact simply narratives drawn from helpful facts with unhelpful facts omitted.
There was of course other news coverage, in China (assumed to be all "propaganda") in Vietnam (presumed to be slanted toward their wants and needs), and so it was widely held by the adults that my parents socialized with (Air Force types) that the US coverage was "best, and most reliable." It was also impossible to get on the spot translations of the other stories so it could take days or weeks before you even got to read the "other side" and by then it was often overtaken by events.
This war is very different. Different even than the recent middle eastern wars of the late 20th and early 21st century. If you were an American you could be forgiven, if you watched the news, for forgetting that the US was even in a war, much less the driving force behind it. This war has an overload of information, from Twitter, to Facebook, to Tik-tok, and of course various media outlets all around the world. It fundamentally changes how one perceives and understands what is going on. While in previous wars the crafting of a narrative was the side hustle of the folks responsible for communications, in this war it is a huge part of the offensive. This "information war" which works to frame the war in a way that is useful to the framer.
Not surprisingly, it isn't nearly so easy to tell only one side of any story. I find this Reuter's story a good example of that. Who are they talking to? What experts are "stumped"? Why is the story they tell important or not important to their intended audience?
The more I read the more I recognize that nobody knows what is "really" going on. Some Russians are deserting but no concept of how many or how fast, Ukraine is winning skirmishes, but again big ones? little ones? How does it inform us on where this is going next? I don't think anyone knows.
Ukraine doesn't use its air power wisely, because I'd think that 60km long convoy would be a juicy target, ripe for the picking. The Russians probably have Buks and S-400 SAMs lined up all over the place to protect the convoy.
Could the potential fallout from high losses in this demographic lead to risk averse deployment of these assets?
Why is a Ukrain NATO membership a risk for Russia, there is no change that in Europe NATO would attack Russia, as European NATO members would not allow it.
That is except if Russia expects to be in a war against NATO in the not to long future. (Not necessary start the war though).
This behaviour could also fit into this argument, i.e. losing a lot by being trying not to lose the important parts to much.
Through it could also be:
- Political games including high Generals of the Russian Air Force rejecting getting fully involved in the war.
- Putin being paranoid and believing that if they send major Air Force troops to Ukrain then some 3rd party will use this to invade Russia/destroy major parts of Russians Air Force.
- Putin hoping to get an excuse to wage war against NATO and therefore is holding back the Air Force to launch a attack against other forces.
- Russia being in a much worse economical state then believed, not affording to fly the full Air Force.
- Something having subtle damaged huge parts of their Air Force (and is kept secret). Like e.g. there being a problem with some of the materials used to build them, or with their guidance system, or similar.
- Russia is falling apart (on a high command level) Putin has lost most power, including command over the Air Force, this is a last desperate attempt to regain power.
EDIT: Maybe this post is a bit too much taping into conspiracy theory territory.
This would be the most delusional thing anyone has ever hoped for. If Putin is that far gone, we’re all doomed
The "non-news" of Russia Air Force not showing up was not naturally getting coverage in the news, and now DoD figures are making public statements in order to point it out, raise awareness, and poke Putin in the side. Meanwhile, every delay in action from the Russian Air Force weighs heavily in favor of Ukraine.
In this way, major adversaries to Russia that are unable to get directly involved for fear of escalation are still able to place their hands on the scales via more indirect means. Even though there is not official treaty requiring Russian adversaries to intervene, it is often still in their best national defense interests to limit Russia's expansionist tendencies in whatever way they can.
It is all a continuation of major world powers fighting wars by proxy; the dominant pattern of war-fighting after nuclear proliferation became a thing.
In the alternative reality, where Ukraine promises tomorrow not to join NATO (ever), the Russian targets for this war may be considered achieved, and everyone could simply go home, probably throwing in a couple billions deal for Ukraine recovery. This would be the best outcome for everyone. But this will not happen tomorrow.
If this won't happen at all, the Russians can always wreck Ukraine later, and this is where their air force may play part.
In short, I think the Russians are showing some restraint, for now, to make sure the quick outcome still can happen.
I think the goal was annexation. The demands put out right now are intentionally unreasonable, but even if they were met, it would not stop the fighting.
The annexation argument came after the fact.
So it's not really about NATO, per se.
If Ukrain joins NATO Russia would not be able to hold onto Crimea and could become a Petrol state.
With renewables replacing part of the Gas energy demand long term (10/15y) this could mean that Ukrain could replace all Gas imports previously done from Russia. At the same time a modern and well-working Ukrain could influence Russia (as a unintended side-effect) in a destabilizing way (anti-authoritarian Government movements).
So if my info is correct a stable NATO Ukrain could, in a decade or so, lead to a situation where Russia is making very little money, no longer being able to afford much military besides for self-defense usage. That there is also a shrinking populating constantly reducing the amount of "potential soldiers" isn't helping. Neither is helping that a lot of middle tier and upper middle tier Russians have left Russia in the last many years (I think, not 100% sure), this reduces the chance for economical growth through new businesses.
If all of this is true (I'm not sure) then Putin might believe that they have to either take over or majorly destabilize Ukrain if Russia like it's currently is want to continue to exists. (This doesn't mean it would disappear, but it would need to change likely at the cost of the current oligarchs.)
(And I don't get into the argument of whether Russia should have a say in Ukraine's future — you and I may completely agree that it shouldn't, but Russia clearly thinks otherwise.)
No one wants to lose their life going against someone so ruthless knowing they could lose their life... or their loved ones.
So, taking down putin from within is a plausible event.
I would like to have the other versions where the air force is simply saving it's might for later, playing the long game, kept in reserve, etc... Rather that. Assuming they're bad.
Or maybe someone in the air force is not fully cooperating with the war effort ? Is there someone in charge that might want to keep a chance to take over negociations with clean hands after Putin is gone ?
I know, Occam's razor and everything ; but the "Russian army, baaaad" theory sounds more far fetched.
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/hypersonic-missile-what-meani...
To be alarmist, it looks like this is for all the marbles. The Russians think they can win a world war. The reason they are hardly using their Air Force is they are holding it in reserve for the rest of the campaign to reestablish the Soviet Union.
Once they take control of an stabilize the Ukraine, hopefully not like they completely pulverized Chechnya, despite brutal islamist insurgency, they are going to do the rest of Eastern Europe.
All you guys are saying the insurgency will win, but now the Russians have a whole new generation of counterinsurgency tech that they proved on the ground in Syria. It's going to be very ugly.
What's worse is the rest of the world needs Russia's food, fertilizer and energy exports. There will be severe hardship throughout the world without all of that while the war is ongoing.
If Russia performs a blitzkrieg like attack they would level Ukraine to the ground or destroy major infrastructure. Russia would have to pay to rebuild everything with a pissed off international community. That would cost a hell of a lot more than what they would gain. I don't see why they are surprised, after you realize Russia/Putin isn't trying to destroy, just conquer.
It appears like Russia just wants to take over the land, make it a puppet state, and benefit from its resources. Even the damage to civilian buildings look more of a scare tactic to get Ukrainians to surrender than to win by destruction. Countless sources have said that Russia didn't expect the pushback.
This whole thing is because Ukrainians have shown amazing resistance. If you look at military battles: Battle of Thermopylae. Battle of Thermopylae explains the advantages/current success of Ukrainians, hopefully with a better outcome <3.
The unknown is how Putin is going to save face after all of this.
It will quickly make the option of negotiating a treaty and taking any small face saving win as a symbolic success look far more attractive than appearing impotent and incompetent and unable to even control a nation directly on its own borders.
If so, their plan just completely blew up now with their destroyed economy and wasting a lot more of their planned resources to capture only the first step… And Putin don't want to admit/face defeat so is trying to win the Ukraine even with the fact that he already lost.
It all is so insane, it is freaking hard to understand these maniacs…
Slava Ukraini!
Perhaps Russia assumes that dominating the skies with more aircraft than Ukraine would force an international call for a no-fly zone. This would drag other countries into the conflict because the mandate would have to be enforced.
This is not an accurate representation, see:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31t5on/did_t...
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-forces-target-russian-airfi...
use google translate to browse those ru domains : ria lenta gazeta
Also this was published on 26th and purged https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
On the other side their economy is crumbling. They are in conflict with everybody. On 4th there is supposed to be joint session of parliament and there are assumption that will be announced either mobilization or martial law/state of war/something.
but kremlin is outside of rage of ukraine weapons and it has very heavy air defense systems
The fact that he's that scared of COVID shatters the tough guy persona. The fact that he was seemingly ok with these pictures going public shows that he has no sense of how silly and bad this looks.
[1] https://nz.news.yahoo.com/photos-putin-keeps-his-distance-du...
Ukraine is a different beast. Its a country with a regular army that has spent the last 8 years undergoing a rapid modernization process for said army. They have 44 million people, and lots of western support.
Navy doing navy things? aka floating there threatening civilians.
Army is in terrible disarray losing tons of equipment to mud. Losing even more equipment to combat. Their MREs expired 7 years ago. Their army sure is looking pathetic.
Is this Putin's last hurrah?
I think his life expectancy has gone down as of about a week ago.
On paper they are still billionaires because the stock exchange was shutdown. I really don't know how much power they have exactly. I doubt they have any sort of assassination capability. Nor do I expect them to exercise this.
Ultimately this is about defunding their war. Their ability to sustain this war has a very short lifetime now. They are now excluded from the global community. The Russian people are headed into poverty.
We get to just sit back and let that happen.
"That would have been "the logical and widely anticipated next step, as seen in almost every military conflict since 1938," wrote the RUSI think-tank in London"
The US may just as well have dropped 10 more nukes and it wouldn't have changed anything. The Japanese didn't care whether it took a 1.000 bombs to destroy a city or a single one. Even more so, since they didn't know anything about the radioactive fallout and long-term effects. To them, it was just a bigger bomb.
It's noted that it's not clear how much the atomic bombings influenced the decision to surrender, versus the near-simultaneous declaration of war by the USSR on Japan. Furthermore, by the time Japan surrendered, it was clear that Japan had already thoroughly lost. Recall that similar bombing campaigns against the UK (Battle of Britain) and Germany utter failed to bring those nations any closer to surrender.
In any case, compared to the actual theorists like Giulio Douhet who were, before World War II, arguing that attacking cities would cause the will of the nations to collapse before they fully mobilized, the actual results fell far short of the theorists.
My understanding is that communications between Hirohito and Stalin indicate that Japan was attempting to begin negotiation of a total surrender after Midway and that Truman's diary eludes to this moment. The main argument I've seen to contradict this is that they don't believe Japan wasn't actually going to accept a full surrender at this point.
1) They do not believe they can, so are not trying.
2) They believe they could, but are choosing not to.
3) They tried, but, for some reason that's not currently clear and isn't evident in battlefield losses, failed. (this is probably the least likely and also the most grave—it suggests severe problems with their command structure)
Whichever's the case, it's a real head-scratcher and is the main reason this isn't going how most folks thought it would.
This is what my money is on.
Sending ground forces in without establishing air superiority is ludicrous, for reasons that we are seeing now. I guess we have a good idea where the military coup will originate.
With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine, or ways to get out of Ukraine should things go south. Russia has few stealth aircraft. In the 1991 gulf war, 60's era Soviet SA-2 missiles were able to defend Baghdad against non-stealth aircraft despite weeks of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses(SEAD) strikes.
A MIG-29 costs ~20 million dollars new.
Europe only contacts the western border. Russian aircraft can approach from the north (Russia and Belarus), south (Black Sea) and east (Russia).
That being said however stealth aircraft are not cheap to maintain at all.
In reality it appears that Russia had a big problem with "ghost units" and rapidly tried to fill their invasion force with conscripts in the weeks before the invasion began. It's why we're seeing so many ill-equipped soldiers and awful tactics where tanks/APCs are driving solo through fields.
My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically.
e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of reporters bemoaning that this is happening to "blue eyed, blond haired" people or in the "civilized world." There is a different standard for what sort of casualties are considered acceptable.
Just because a talking head or two makes those claims does not mean it is all of the sudden the truth. If Russia was worried about the looks of white civilian casualties, they wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. By the way, how many news reporters didn't make the claim that people only care about this because blue eyed/blonde haired people are involved?
Maybe Westerners care more about the Ukrainian situation because Ukraine was by and large a peaceful, lawful country until the war started. Do you think the western response would have been a little different if there was a pre-existing civil war in Ukraine, and Russia stepped in to try to turn the tide for one of the factions?
Also do tell what was the existing civil war in Iraq?
The guardian had an article about some of the comments made by journalist and politicians and there is no other way then to say they are racist.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/civili...
If Westerners only care about blonde hair blue eyed people, why did no one care about the Ukrainian war before 2 weeks ago?
Your link has, I think, 4 people who make a claim about why the West cares about the war. Is there a reason you put so much weight on those 4 people, but not on the thousands of other journalists covering the situation who aren't making those claims? Did you know a single one of those people before hearing their coverage of the war?
I assume that Russia doesn't want the same result in a neighbouring country.
In terms of numbers according to the Wikipedia article they have about 650 air planes and ~300 helicopter's.
Thats a solid fighting force for a relatively small country.
Russia as lots of tools - missiles and such that are good at destroying buildings.
The problems in that Putin understands that the cities in Ukraine have value. He is trying to take them over with minimal destruction to the buildings at least right now. That way he could move his people with with out needed to rebuild.
It sure seems like Putin expected them to capitulate quickly and become largely docile before the occupying Russian soldiers while a new government is installed. Not much else explains their approach thus far other than that (their supply provisioning was clearly built for a very short conflict).
If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach, they'll hemorrhage with any typical occupation and will have to leave, and any new system they attempt to install and leave behind will be toppled rapidly (the Russians will have to keep sending forces in).
> If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach
Ukrainians are used to living in a democracy though, so it may not be easy/possible.
> bring in a lot Russian citizens to live in those cities and begin a full, forced transformation, while you violently try to strip away Ukrainian culture
That's what they did back in the 1930s in East Ukraine. They had to starve out/relocate the locals to make room for the "colonists". But doing this in the 21st century? I shudder to think how this would go down. And if they don't do this, anyone who comes over to settle will be met with extreme hostility.
I believe Putin lives in the past when it comes to understanding Ukraine and Ukrainians. It looks like he might actually believe (have believed?) his own propaganda.
I do not think the question is wether or not Ukraine will fall to the Russian state. But if the Russian economy and current government will stay viable through the duration of the war.
Global sanctions applied correctly could cause a refugee crises in Russia population ~144 million. In short, Russian people need their basic needs met. Just like any human. They will go where that can happen more easily if their own country can not provide. 57,792 kilometres of Russian boarder length is ripe for exit.
“border”, and the vast majority of that is coastline, and the vast majority of the coastline is Arctic coastline, which is very much not ripe for exit.
the question is how many of them are operational.
So they expected a lot of infrastructure will be available for them to take over. As we know, this didn't happen and now they have to destroy it. Honestly this is not good for Ukrainians as they will now suffer for real.
I found this site provides somewhat better analysis of situation, as well as The Hill and Breaking Points for example.