If that is the case, why would officials and experts be "stumped"? This seems like the obvious explanation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
I'd you assume this is true, what they are doing make complete sense.
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.
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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.