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It would be wild if that delay was what turned this war from a route into a quagmire for Russia by delaying them into the thaw season. They already appear to be having issues with mud, and weather forecasts in Kyiv appear to be mostly above freezing for the rest of the week.

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Not only that. More importantly, standing there for weeks made all subsequent explanations and provocations completely unbelievable. The troops tired and demotivated. Provisions (if they had any) depleted. And Ukrainians better prepared.

Frozen ground could have made it easier to move around but on the other hand, troops are generally much more miserable when it is cold outside. Don't think that just because they are Russians they don't get cold.

From what I am seeing Russian soldiers do not seem to be prepared well for cold. It seems they thought they will only go for some military maneuvers and then back home, not into full scale winter war.

And another thing I am seeing is that they seem to be trying to find pretext to abandon their equipment. Those tanks stuck in mud -- there are ways to extract them. Russians regularly train in muddy conditions so I can't imagine they are surprised by conditions in March.

When would be a good time for an invasion? Not when the snow thaws. Ok. How about when its ice cold? That option sounds even harder, though I guess the vehicles don't get stuck as badly. How about waiting until summer? That sounds like a more conventional military strategy, though I don't know enough Ukrainian geography to tell if its a sound option. Is there ever a "good" time for an invasion? If so, why did Putin jump the gun? If not, the current situation was inevitable in some form or other.

In the heart of winter the whole country is a road, right now it is very narrow strips that are easily passable and it is getting worse by the day.

That applies to UA armor too.

Way harder to do hit and runs on road columns when you can't fall back to where ever but have to follow roads your self.

Defender advantage is substantial in situations like that. Moving targets are a lot harder than stationary ones. Ukraine armor is concentrated around the main cities instead of strung out in long vulnerable stationary lines.

Ukraine also has javelins and other shoulder fired anti tank weapons

Anything you hit with those is pure luck.

Source: experience.

Edit: I was thinking of what we had in the Army, which was definitely not guided.

> Anything you hit with those is pure luck.

I've never seen a Javelin miss in my entire life. They've got like 5,000 recorded successful engagements.

> Source: experience.

Are you firing them before they've got a chance to get the sensor down to temperature?

Er, no. Javelin is guided. They are videos of them doing some really amazing long-range shots.

For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY

> For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY

I guess you posted that for the compiled footage, but Lord do I hate voice synthesized narration.

From my armchair, it seems totally practical to hit-and-run attack the convoy on foot using fire-and-forget Javelins from 1.5-2 miles away. If the terrain is impassible to vehicles, the attacker can just shoot from the top of a hill and run away down the other side (maybe without even being seen).

That's interesting. I didn't even notice that! I suppose I found the footage sufficiently compelling to distract me.

Might the javelin fail to hit the tank, by accidentally homing in on one of the trucks next to it instead?

From what I've read, they have too few javelins already

You lock the missile on a target while aiming it. The seeker will remain locked to exactly that target until it hits. Only way it's hitting a neighbouring truck instead is if that's what you aimed at when you pressed fire.

Ok. I suppose this works also if the tank moves -- but if it gets out of sight, let's say a truck drives in front of the tank, then might the javelin miss?

Or is the javelin so high up in the air, so it could typically see the tank anyway?

Yes, in principle, obstructions could make it miss. But also yes, Javelins fly lofted arc trajectories, unless you take the shot a half a second before the target is obstructed, the missile will almost certainly be able to maintain lock even if something obstructs your view of the target.

Also, it strikes me that there are only 1000 tanks in the force. It seems like such a small number contrasted against 100,000 soldiers. That seems like a tractable number of tanks to destroy.

54 down, still a ways to go:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Note that that is a lower bound.

1000 tanks are quite a lot. I think future wars will feature less of them aside from power projection. But for occupations they are pretty vulnerable targets despite their armor.

Tabks are hard to use unless the terrain is ideal. Maybe great for driving across dry countryside and lifht rubble and mowing down infantry, but not for occupying a city you don't want to flatten.

Saint Javelin never misses.

In close quarters and urban environments, I would think that it would be hard to miss

I too sucked at CoD.

We aren't talking about RPG-7 here, but ATGM (which, as the name imply, are guided missiles).

Part of the supposed strategy also involved hitting Ukraine when Europe is reliant upon Russian gas for heating. I was a bit surprised how late into winter they invaded given this goal.

My understanding is that Europe has several months of gas reserves. Even if Russia cut it off completely, the real pain would come next winter rather than immediately.

Where do you store that much gas?

Pressurized tanks, I assume.

Not really:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage

Thanks. Funny thing is I even knew that at one point, but had forgotten. At least I included "I assume" in my comment rather than stating my faulty assumption as fact!

Underground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage

This blows my mind! I knew you couldn't possibly store so much in tanks, but the idea to pump it into the ground is really insane.

I'd say late in winter could be really good for that strategy, depending on the weather. Doesn't explain this fully tho, more the opposite, so probably other factors played a larger role.

I read a few days ago that Germany's gas reserves were at 31% and they were basically just being helped by the good weather. A colder winter would've made it a much bigger problem. And Germany had very recently decided to basically go cold turkey on nuclear, which means using more gas plants. Now they're thinking of extending the life span of nuclear a bit. Not that a gas furnace can heat with electricity though, so not sure how much that will help.

Would probably be enough for the next winter as well, so not reason to panic. Then you still have the expensive option to heat with electricity or the cheap one to heat with wood. Warm water would probably be the largest problem, but that is far away.

I don't think it's a question of being expensive, but more like completely impossible. One good thing is that heating in Germany usually is via radiators that are water fed and the water is heated "centrally". Even in single family homes. Apartment blocks have different options. Some are central (basement heater feeding the radiators) but also some apartments have a gas heater in every apartment individually feeding just that apartment's radiators and gas is distributed throughout the apartment block.

If you had to replace every single gas heating system that would be both very expensive and without having any actual data I would gather that you wouldn't be able to retrofit all of Germany with that in time. Wood I would gather is gonna be even worse. While I can see how a single family home would convert (lots of folks have replaced their gar furnace with a wood pellet heater w/ auto-feeders), how would that work for apartment buildings with individual gas heaters in the apartments? These are all concrete buildings where it'd be quite the feat to replace the gas distribution with central water distribution for radiators. And those gas heaters do not take a lot of space and are used even in tiny apartments. Where do you store wood pellets in that situation?

Of course there are exceptions where heat is provided remotely already by a "Heizkraftwerk" (e.g. fed from industrial cooling systems or garbage burners).

Travel across anything not paved during spring break up is near impossible.

I don’t think it’s break up, I think it’s resistance, they are getting stalled in the cities.

Ukraine has paved highways moving tanks isn’t an issue, except that the highways run through cities.

The problem is fundamentally that for every soldier and civilian they kill they are creating 5 to 10 freedom fighters. The more people are killed the greater the resistance. The less likely they can hold the country without reprisals from the people. If they have to resort to barbarism to subdue the people then the sanctions will never end.

Putin needs to establish a govt quickly that doesn’t have to resort to atrocities to govern. If he fails to do that he loses the greater overall war.

I don't know how accomplishable that really is at this point - it's looking like Russian troop cohesion is insanely low[1] and Putin may just need to withdraw forces to keep the domestic situation under wraps. I'm pretty sure if Putin started peace talks he'd be ousted at this point, so he just has to sorta pray that western powers don't stall out the annexation - otherwise I think he's pretty hooped domestically.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/01/russia-lo...

There's still plenty of room for them to convert this apparent impending loss into a partial success by gaining control of the territory they care most about, which is (likely) the South (to relieve Crimea's currently tenuous & expensive situation) and South East (to take full control of the fossil fuel resources there and bridge their territory over to Crimea), which also happen to be the areas they're having the most success in, judging by the various maps of territory they're semi-successfully occupying.

personally i always thought the greater invasion was so that he had something to deal away to get the sanctions lifted.

> I'm pretty sure if Putin started peace talks

Didn't this happen two days ago?

It's not peace talks. It is something like "agree to our demands, otherwise we keep bombing". It's trying to get the outcome they want without further military action. And a takeover by any means is not a peaceful action.

> It's trying to get the outcome they want without further military action.

That's peace talks. The end of military action is peace.

I get what you are saying. But referring to it as "Peace Talks" is misleading. There is no goodwill or altruism here. It is purely another military strategy. If the outcome is occupation, that is not peace.

> If the outcome is occupation, that is not peace.

This is not a definition of "peace" that you share with the Anglophone community in general. Are the United States and Japan currently at war?

The US is not currently occupying Japan, but they did at some point. The US and Japan are currently in an alliance. Japan's constitution requires a self-defense force, so they don't have a normal military. That was imposed by the US after WWII.

Please don't deflect.

Let me ask you: do you think it would be just to have Russia occupy Ukraine? Do you think countries have a right to self determination and sovereignty?

Russia was signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, basically agreeing to acknowledge and help protect Ukraine's borders.

I wonder why you support occupation.

What comes after can also be occupation, oppression, labor camps, executions, dictatorship. Is that "peace" you say?

Yes, of course. There's a difference between "peace" and "heaven". Who's saying peace is the absence of anything that is subjectively bad?

I think it's obvious what he should do if he's smart. Focus troops in the southeast. Destroy the Azov Regiment. Take their uniforms, patch, flags, make a big show of it on all media. Claim mission accomplished. "We de-Nazified Ukraine!" Set up a base on the Azov, withdraw other forces to 2014 borders. Commit $x billion in rebuilding aid and payments to families in Ukraine, once sanctions are lifted and currency exchange returns to Feb 25th levels so they can afford it. Prosecute a few token scapegoats domestically for war crimes (anyone for whom the evidence would make it politically impossible not to).

Ukraine will never trust them. But it's enough to take the pressure off, and enough for him to remain in power.

It does seem like if he's just invaded donbas he could have gotten away with it.

Having watched the previous fall of the soviet union eventually enough people in moscow get pissed off and there is a regime change, although I suspect putin has control of the apparatus and security forces. So, we might just see a Russia civil war.

One thing that I've never seen discussed is the notion that the incident to break the 75-year "not nuking anybody" streak the world has been on could well be a civil war in a nuclear state, in which the side in control of the notional military apparatus sees no other way our of losing.

Luckily, people like Eric Swalwell - the Congressman who proposed using nuclear weapons against Americans who resist gun confiscation - are few and far between.

... In a tweet, that was pretty clearly a troll[1]. It's important to clarify that he never seriously proposed the measure.

1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eric-swalwell-gun-owners-n...

Of course he didn't "propose" it. There is nothing to propose until the war starts.

Europe's dependence on Russian gas is a gun to their head that only exists in winter. It took some deliberation to get Germany to accept strong sanctions. That might not have happened a month ago.

Weather: An invasion that begins in January or February would have the advantage of frozen ground to support the cross-country movement of a large mechanized force. It would also mean operating in conditions of freezing cold and limited visibility. January is usually the coldest and snowiest month of the year in Ukraine, averaging 8.5 hours of daylight during the month and increasing to 10 hours by February.8 This would put a premium on night fighting capabilities to keep an advance moving forward. Should fighting continue into March, mechanized forces would have to deal with the infamous Rasputitsa, or thaw. In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud. Winter weather is also less than optimal for reliable close air support operations. From: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukra...

Cities are large targets, and given the disregard for civilian casualties (indeed the specific targeting of schools and hospitals which are generally large facilities) would seem to reduce the problems of poor visibility.

I don't think tanks normally want to drive straight through buildings, so I think visibility might still be an issue in cities.

I always wondered why attacking in winter would ever be a good idea in any case. You want to have clear supply lines which certainly work better in friendly weather.

Best invasion is a cancelled invasion of course...

Above freezing? Read some news this morning that lots of snow is expected across eastern Ukraine. Maybe the weather shifted..

Both can be true. Temps don't need to be below freezing for lots of snow to fall.

Eastern Ukraine is also not where Kyiv is, or where the swamp I wouldn't want to drive a tank across outside of winter [0] is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsk_Marshes

Fwiw I've seen a lot of pictures of tanks and other heavy vehicles stranded in muddy fields (presumably wheat or sunflower).

In addition to what you say: A snow cover will act as insulation and prevent ground frost from penetrating deep compared to bare ground (something small winter-active mammal can attest to).

Can confirm, with much grumbling to boot…

Yep, snow happens when the temperature at the cloud layer is low enough. Ground temp can be higher and the snow will still make it to the ground. Might melt immediately, or if it's snowing enough it could form an insulating layer that keeps snow on the ground a bit longer.

Honestly, snow and air temperature have a bit of a counterintuitive relationship. It can also be too cold to snow, so a lot of really cold places are actually really dry and get very little precipitation because of that.

And what is worse, if the ground is starting to thaw from below, if you get a foot or two of snow on top, it insulates the ground from the freezing air, and the ground temps will drive upward from below, turn the soil into a muddy mess. The same happens with rivers. A frozen river, with a heavy snowfall, will quickly thaw from below.

I forgot that thank you

If there’s a lot of snow and temps at the ground are above zero, it’s a worse situation for the Russian barbarians.

It will become even more wet and muddy.

I think people who don't get snow can't really picture how bad it gets. It does depend on the terrain, but coming from central Canada, a bit of snow on a thawed ground is ridiculous. Wet earth is bad enough. Totally frozen is ideal if you're equipped for snow/ice travel, but variable conditions are pretty untenable. That said, I've never been driving around in military equipment, so I figure that's gotta help a bit.

Dairy farmhand outside Buffalo NY in the early 1970s. Snow over the top of recently thawed ground was the worst. Particularly if there was still a frozen layer three or four inches down. Rendered tractors unusable.

If you don’t mind, let’s please refrain from name-calling, including and especially against nationalities and ethnicities.

Barbaric thugs and bandits all. Many such cases.

Murdering human beings in an illegal war of aggression is pretty barbaric to me.

They're Russian nationals acting like barbarians. I don't see the problem sorry.

So would you say it is just like how the jewish barbarians are taking land in the middle East, or the black barbarians are shooting and robbing each other for personal gain in cities in the USA?

There's many differences between russian barbarians, and Israeli forces:

- Israel has a rich history of Palestinian attacks with many Jewish *civilian* casualties, whereas the russian aggression is unprovoked.

- Israeli forces are better prepared and better treated by its country than the russian cannon fodder with e.g. outdated food rations or poorly armored vehicles, though I don't know if that's what bamboozled meant as well.

- I could be wrong, but while not being emotionally prejudiced towards/against Palestine, Israel, Russia and Ukraine prior to the conflicts, in a heuristic sense, just estimating the severity of breaking human rights, russian forces seem to have far worse standards than Israeli forces. Likewise with Ukraine vs Palestine. In case of Ukrainians we see refugees and children hiding in bunkers and being dragged out of them by russian forces. In case of Palestine...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers_b...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Your comparison to black people is even less justified, to the point where I won't even comment on it.

You are splitting hairs and focusing on the wrong thing.

Even if everything you say is true, it is inherently wrong as well as unproductive to refer to ethnic/religious groups as "barbarians" based on the actions of some portion of that groups behaviour. It essentialises the group even though there are countless Russians who dont support this behaviour and therefore aren't "barbarians".

Behaviour can certainly be barbaric and referred to as such (I would have had no problem if the original comment said "the invasion of the Ukraine by Russians is barbaric" as an example), but referring to entire nations/ethnic groups/religions as barbarians based on a portion of that group's behaviour is deeply dehumanising and one of the most toxic ways to engage in these sorts of discussions with very negative outcomes for both sides by denying other people their humanity.

Can you name a single time in history ever where framing conflict in such a manner has led to anything positive? Because I certainly can't and there are PLENTY of examples of it being done. However much some people may relish the opportunity to finally have an "enemy" they can dehumanise and hate, it is always ethically wrong as well as being counter-productive to do so no matter how good it might feel to some people.

Splitting hairs - absolutely not, provoked and unprovoked aggression is a very significant difference.

Focusing on the wrong thing - it seems so. Bamboozled used the word "barbaric" to precise which russians he describes. He didn't use the word to insult all Russians. Have you ever heard the term "Nazi Germany"? Do you think, that people using this term intend to insult Germany? I find that ridiculous in a semantic way, that's just not how words work. Look at 2nd Bamboozled's comment and at Michaelmrose comment.

> (I would have had no problem if the original comment said "the invasion of the Ukraine by Russians is barbaric" as an example)

So you have no problem with what Bamboozled meant, only with how he phrased it. That's splitting hairs.

You are in essence saying that if Russians conquer the whole of Ukraine and put all Ukrainians in a few pockets, Russians are the rightful owners of the place and Ukrainian fighting back after the fact is unprovoked aggression, if enough decades pass without Russia losing control of Ukraine?

Am I really saying that? That's surely not what I meant, but it's interesting to know my words could be understood in such a dramatically different way to my intentions.

Sorry for the confusion, maybe I even answered to the wrong comment? I was answering to a comment that somehow justified the situation in Israel while at the same time saying Russian invasion is unacceptable. If it was not your comment and you did not make these claims (too lazy to check further up now) move on.

I just made a direct analogy point to point between Israel's actions and Russia's actions. I do not really believe they can be viewed in a different light, in particular Israel in a more favorable light, which I believe is something you (whoever I wanted to answer to) deduced in your comment. You can put one on one points between the Russian invasion and the Israeli colonization of Palestine, and the only real difference is that in Israel the victims were not white people.

I know some people who say "Jews are doing exactly the same thing in Palestine as Hitler did". I find it outright ridiculous. In general if someone compares war conflicts "one on one", he just shows off how little he knows about those conflicts - every war conflict is too complex to be called exactly the same as any other. It's like saying Venus is Earth. Yea, to someone with almost exactly zero knowledge on astronomy.

What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is very close to what Hitler did to Jews. The only difference is that they don't kill civilians in camps - camps do exist, the civilians are just killed through normal military operations. It is ironic that Jews, who suffered so much from the fascist regime, ended up straight showing up from all over the world to Palestine and claiming it as theirs, pushing most of the existing population out of the land and confining the others in specified areas - oh, and aggression towards the colonizers? It's called terrorism now, won't you know. And since some decades have passed, let bygones be bygones - the state of Israel has gained legitimacy through holding the land long enough.

Let's not forget Israel still bombs civilians and children.

How is THAT more justifiable than what Russia is doing, I wonder. Invade foreign land you have no business invading? Check. Drive much of the population away in the process? Check. Confine the invaded populace in specified areas based on race? Russians have not done that yet in Ukraine, I acknowledge that. The first difference in the two conflicts that matters. Kill whoever resists? Check. Routinely bomb civilians? Check.

Does any other detail matter to not condemn the one and condemn the other? What could Russia learn from the Israeli case to make its invasion and occupation equally justifiable?

So then what is wrong with me saying "barbaric Israelis" taking land in the West bank or "barbaric blacks" shooting each other in cities? There is no difference here, I never said I was describing all Israelis or black either, just the ones who engage in this behaviour.

What bamboozled said was:

> If there’s a lot of snow and temps at the ground are above zero, it’s a worse situation for the Russian barbarians.

Scroll up and you can see for yourself.

> There is no difference here

"Scroll up and you can see for yourself" my previous comment where I argued the difference.

I honestly don't know if Israeli forces should be called barbaric. It is a narration common enough that it motivated me to investigate - where I quickly discovered many facts speaking in favor of the Israel. Again, I don't support what Israel is doing, but the initial fire of my outrage got quickly quenched by facts. As soon as it turned out to be quite an intricate conflict, I humbly switched my interests on the basis of being too stupid to judge either side.

Meanwhile in case of russian invasion, I just see nothing in defense of the invader. The moral aspect of the conflict is ridiculously asymmetric - like in a Disney movie. On one side there's a small country, with its president risking life in Kiev, on another a Goliath country run by a coward hiding in a bunker, shamelessly lying to his citizens, with the world almost unanimously condemning his war crimes.

So, to sum it up, without defending Israeli forces in Palestine, I see a huge difference between them and the russian barbarism in Ukraine. I don't know if the former is barbaric, but the latter is as barbaric as it gets.

Well I was arguing against the use of the phrase "russian barbarians". If we agree that was wrong, then we agree here.

It does sadden me to see how little has been learnt from post-9/11 where muslims or even people wearing turbans were subject to increased demonisation and abuse while everyone applauded.

Individuals should not be targetted and demonising groups based on ethnicity with comments of "Russian barbarians" is a big way this type of thing starts.

Anyway, plenty of people seem hellbent on reserving their "right" to demonise whole ethnic groups when the opportunity arises so going to leave it here. Thank you for the discussion in any case although the outcome very much saddens me.

> If we agree that was wrong, then we agree here.

I feel like I'm talking with a wall. No, we don't agree, we disagree. I've put some effort to formulate specific arguments and I didn't see a response to them.

To say that a plural form describes individuals is outright ridiculous and reminds me of a comment I've seen on Reddit once:

> The individual voice does matter if it's expressed by a large enough group

https://www.reddit.com/r/cynicalbritofficial/comments/63w0qq...

> To say that a plural form describes individuals is outright ridiculous and reminds me of a comment I've seen on Reddit once:

So then what is your problem with the term "Israeli Barbarians" or would it be better if I used the phrase "Israeli Occupiers"? And I presume you also have no issue with "Black savages" or "Black barbarians"? And I'm guessing you also have no problem with "Muslim barbarians" either?

Because remember, it is "ridiculous" to say the plural form describes individuals. So there is no coherent logical standard that makes "Russian barbarians" okay but not those other examples. In these types of cases you need to think about what the norm you are establishing will mean when it is turned against you, and it won't be pretty.

> I feel like I'm talking with a wall.

You repeat questions I already answered.

https://twitter.com/DemocratMama/status/1499227978537988101

A Russian barbarian calling his mom.

I read it as the "barbarian russian military", not as "ethnic russians are barbarians". I think calling the ivading military barbarian is ok

To be fair just because Russian is a nationality AND a ethnicity doesn't mean that every critical statement about the one is a racial slur. There are people of Russian ethnicity all over the world. I hope most assign blame to the Russian nation and few are foolish enough to think that their own countrymen are to blame based on where their grandfathers lived.

You got confused with Hitler's troop. Russians are well verse in this kind of weather. The current troops incursion are mostly conscript based. Subsequent one would be the crack team. Hitler sent his crack troop in first and got wipe out. If you want to understand how this war will play out, read up Hitler's Eastern Front Battles against the improvement in Grozy and recently Russians in Syria. Ratnik troops havnt been deployed yet at least from what I am allow to know from western media.

> The current troops incursion are mostly conscript based

Not sure if it is disinformation, but the Russians announced that there are no conscripts in this war. Time will tell, but maybe the Western media/intel got it wrong?

Then who are the soldiers surrendering who claim to be french teachers, janitors, etc. who were forced into going?

Contract soldiers who are trying to pretend that they aren't, to get a better deal as a POW?

There is a lot of disinformation, but there is also this [1]:

> Russian law prohibits conscripts from being sent to the front unless they choose to sign a contract and become career soldiers. Currently, compulsory service in the Russian army is one year, including four months of basic training. In reality, says Olga Larkina, chair of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, soldiers are either forced to sign a contract against their will, or their military IDs are confiscated, and they are signed to a contract without their knowledge. In recent days, her organization has received dozens of pleas for assistance about this from parents of draftees.

[1] https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium.HIGHLIGHT...

Do you think Putin cares about Russian law (or any law at all)

That's basically what I quoted.

Many of these soldiers are 18-20 year old kids.

In Vietnam, most the US soldiers were 18-20 year old kids. The draft ended shortly before I turned 18, but I had older friends that were drafted and sent off to fight. No one I knew died, but a couple returned with life altering injuries, a couple others returned with what we now call PTSD, but back then they were just referred to as 'losers', and 'weak'.

The physics of mud apply to everyone

Lots of snow and mild sub-zero temperatures do not mean that land freezes. It's upper crust may freeze, but that is no match for anything weighting a ton or more.

It's been less than a week and they already have a couple major cities taken and the capital surrounded.

I don't understand the narrative that Russia is in any way "losing" here. Taking over a country in the span of a month is considered an incredible military feat, and yet somehow Russia is in "a quagmire" four days in.

There's no evidence of "taking" major cities, even official propaganda is tentative about Kherson using words like "officials says". Kyiv is definitely not surrounded even 50%.

I haven't seen anything from any side that isn't propaganda one way or the other (incl. the supposedly homegrown stuff). It's too soon to tell how this is really going.

It isn't an incredibly military feat to march a few hundred miles from occupied territory into a nation with 1/10th of your GDP and a week later sort of control one city at the cost of thousands of your solders and hundreds of vehicles with no air definitive air superiority, shrinking supply of munitions, factories reliant on foreign parts that will soon grind to a halt, market heading toward freefall and a geopolitical position so bad that the only thing keeping the rest of the world from absolutely murdering them is a threat to murder the world combined with a reputation so degenerate that people believe they are apt to do it.

It is a humiliating defeat because it indicates that the cost of pacification would be outright horrifying. Full control might well cost a 5 figure death toll and could approach the Russian GDP and this indeed buys you what? The privilege of getting to literally square one in Afghanistan 2.0.

Well what makes you say all that?

Which part do you believe to be incorrect?

I think my question was probably less a matter of, "you have this wrong" and more "what motivates you to think about it from this moral standpoint" or perhaps "is the moral standpoint from which you speak driving the view of the logistical and strategic situation in the region (which forgive me if I'm wrong, is a conflict you are not currently, personally engaged in)"?

I don't understand your moral stake in it. I also don't know your level of experience. Caveat: As I'm neither a military strategist nor a military historian, my understanding of what constitutes a difficult situation military is rather poor. I've certainly never won any wars. But I wonder why you think marching a few hundred miles from your territory into someone elses territory in a week isn't significant. It took the US a couple weeks to take Fallujah, at an arguably far greater mismatch. Not as close, I know, but America was already in the region. I don't know why you think the cost for one city was thousands of vehicles and soldiers. I can imagine I'd lie about those numbers whichever side I was on, if I was involved. I also don't know that these are massive numbers at the scale of modern war. I don't know why you think air superiority was something they needed to have before going in, or something they had to have in a week, when it's quite possible neither of those are true. I imagine we will know the answer to that one shortly. I don't know why you think their supply of munitions are shrinking, when Russia has a decent sized munitions industry. I don't know why you assume their factories rely on foreign parts, when they might very well be quite autarchical in their operation, as opposed to the western manner of global supply chains. I don't know why you assume the status of the ruble in the foreign markets is directly germane to the continued existence of Russia as a country, when again, they might be quite autarchical. After all, Russia is not America. And finally (for your first paragraph) I do not understand how you have come to the conclusion that Russia is in "a geopolitical position so bad that the only thing keeping the rest of the world from absolutely murdering them is a threat to murder the world combined with a reputation so degenerate that people believe they are apt to do it." given that the worlds largest superpower, China, seems to be behind them, and India also does not seem to be terribly opposed. It seems more that half the world seems to support Russia, and it is that half that manufactures most of what the world consumes. I don't know why you believe Russia's reputation to be "so degenerate". I find the language more charged than necessary.

I don't understand how you know what Putin wants is "pacification" when it could very well be surrender, treaty signing, and then departure, or why you judge 5 figure death counts to be "horrifying" when on the scale of modern war (as opposed to "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorism") those seem to be rather small.

Above all, and forgive me as I don't know who you are or what kind of stake you have in all this, but I don't understand why you're grandstanding moral about it.

Well what makes you say that?

Cute.

What makes me say all that is the fact that the moralizing position on this is incomprehensible to me. It feels like everyone got whipped up into a frenzy because all the major western propaganda organs and all the social media astroturfing started marching in lockstep to the drums of war.

If I believed in our rulers, I suppose I’d be marching too. But they’ve lied a lot on every other war. And worse? They’ve LOST every other war. Why follow a bunch of losers?

The war drums are Russian.

This. Russia, is no different from the USA when it comes to war crimes. The only difference is the USA can get away due to the political clout in their sphere of influence. Those countries that did not condemn the aggression - India, Brazil, UAE, etc could see through the western hypocrisy. Crazy to say, but the USA was the "role model", precursor to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. No point in calling any nationality as barbaric, because let's be honest, power comes exploitation, no matter who you are

Probably the last time Putin is going to grant any wishes to Xi

These guys are tight. China has been migrating into Siberia for years.

"Digesting" Siberia.

Russia is very much the junior partner in the relationship with China, and now that they have burned their bridges to the West they lack any leverage against China. They are going to have to defer a lot more going forwards.

Yup, as sole buyer China are going to set the price of Russia's oil and gas.

Does China have other sellers?

"Russia is very much the junior partner in the relationship with China"

Exactly, Putin is not the grand strategist the world thinks he is

Anyone that can make Switzerland and Sweden take sides against you isn't a grand strategist.

Putin just was, and remains, in a desperate place. Strategy is fine at leisure. He had no choice but to do something to seem strong, to remain in power. If this doesn't work, he may move on to something desperate.

that's not true at all, he doesn't need anything to remain in power, but if he wanted to get more popular among general population he could provided economic growth

Evidently he is not, then, interested in getting more popular, because the invasion is an economic disaster. But he doesn't get his power from popularity. He gets it by being the baddest ass on the totem pole.

Chances are the invasion on the northern and eastern fronts are more or less feints, and only the southern front actually matters to him, as it gets him full control of the Black Sea shore and the oil fields. He needs the Ukrainian forces fully occupied elsewhere, and doesn't much care what happens there as long as it absorbs enough of their attention.

Russia may become like a bigger North Korea. North Korea doesn't listen to China but it doesn't go out of it's way to piss China off. China props it up because it doesn't want a bigger humanitarian crisis on it's borders.

China will probably prop Russia up 1) It will get Oil and Gas cheaper 2) A mean Russia keeps the West from picking on China. 3) Russia has a lot of nukes and making it crazy helps nobody.

Probably the last time Putin is going to grant anyone's wishes.

There's only one way for him out now, and it doesn't involve him being alive. It's only a matter of time at this point.

> There's only one way for him out now,

What way is that? Because I think the one he's banking on is victory in the war over the next four weeks.

Russia will suffer greatly under sanctions, but that itself is unlikely to bring him under.

> What way is that?

The Hitler 1945 option.

BTW, for those who haven't read it, one of the most chilling books on war is "The Last Days of Hitler" (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo362699...) which is a carefully researched (if imperfect) chronicle of ... well, the last days of hitler. With US and Russia approaching Berlin on two sides, and no hope whatsoever, Hitler commanded over a near-impenetrable bunker and refused to surrender. By the end, the US retreated and lets Russia do the last work, and german units fought westward to surrender to the US.

The other enlightening book is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(Beevor_book) which shows just how truly absurd the war between Germany and Russia was and how megalomaniacal the leaders of those countries were.

Because after Russia "wins" comes the propaganda campaign, which will involve public executions and reeducation "camps" aimed at "proving" Putin's story about a Ukrainian Nazi genocide. This doesn't end with Putin going home and the violence ending. What will happen is that Putin will take Ukraine, and then the violence continues and gets worse.

His oligarchs are already scrambling. Usmanov lost his boat, Abramovich is trying to sell all his UK estates. The ordinary Russia can suffer, but I doubt Putin can keep going with his Oligarchs against him.

He is a resourceful survivor. Don't eulogize him before his time

Putin being deposed is the optimistic scenario, but I don't see it as the most likely one. He's pretty insulated from external attack, and he has internal dissent pretty locked down at this point. Hitler wasn't finished until the allies were rolling into Berlin. He fought off coup attempts well after it was clear the war was lost. Putin isn't going to be under nearly the same level of external pressure. Honestly I expect it's most likely the world is stuck with him until aging and/or disease make him unable to rule. Hope I'm wrong, of course.

You might be right, in this scenario Putin will cling on a la Bachar al Assad

20 years ago Russia had term limits for the president of 8 years I think...

He might not have many friends to grant wishes for anymore.

When you're talking about military operations of this scope unexpected but familiar (this happens every year) weather conditions is practically rounding error compared to the unanticipated level of resistance from the people you are fighting.

Yes and no. 1) Slava Ukraini 2) Muddy fields/roads means that Russian armor has to stick to hard ball roads which in turn means longer and stretched out convoys which in turn means harder to defend supply lines, etc.

Tanks and such are maintenance nightmares, and need a lot of material support in order to be effective.

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