Russia Cannot Win The War
blogs.lse.ac.uk
blogs.lse.ac.uk
I hate it.
Sadly I don't think it'll play out that way,
From General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as NATO deputy military commander until 2014, when Putin last invaded Ukraine.
The only upside I see is that there'll be a slew of really great spy thrillers set in Europe to read when I next get to travel internationally.
It was left intentionally vague.
Whatever lawyers decide that clause means, I think the odds of outright invasion of an EU member _not_ leading to open european/world war is basically zero
The way Russia put in their lousy equipment and untrained staff (if all the reports are to be believed) then his better troops and weapons are not yet there / ready for other use.
Hear me out. Russia is corrupt to the core with leadership that's only focused on enriching themselves.
It wouldn't surprise me if their conventional military proved to be way less capable then they're presenting it to be.
Sure, they have enough smart people that are able to design advanced weaponry, but do they have the industrial capacity to actually build? And do they have the capability to maintain it? How about troop training?
Can’t risk a military coup.
Nordic and countries next to Russia have to rethink their strategy. Maybe they decide to wait and see the next strong man from Russia will be and negotiate with them. But PEACE based purely on the words of a mad man is precursor for war.
I can understand that he was lied to, and/or he miscalculated the power of his own army. But at this point it should be clear even to him it's a complete mess and they are being ridiculed by the whole world - outdated equipment, weak morale, soldiers without food, no fuel, sinking tanks. Do they really want to be humiliated by the Nordics? I really doubt so.
My take is that Finland and Sweeden will wait a bit to see how the situation develops, and if Putin starts to bark about enlarging the invasion, they will join in a blink.
you recall how long it took to take Bagdad right? you really think Putin thought this will be over in a week?
come on.
Take a note that US came from overseas, yet they had superior logistics. They also advanced hunderds of kilometers in week inside Irak, Russia is still quite stuck close to thr borders. They just got their fist major city.
also, did you notice that they rarely kill civilians? i am by no means trying to defend them, but I have the feeling (!) that this is on purpose. and this might slow down operations. for instance today, they agreed for ceasefire and a refugee corridor. that will again take days probably. We should not forget that Ukraine is the birthplace of Russian culture. Ukraine is essential to the identity of Russia. They won't just carpet bomb it and call it a day. If anything of the stuff that Putin and his professors have written is what they truly believe, then we can assume that Russia doesn't want to annihilate the Ukrainians.
lastly, ukraine is HUGE. its bigger than France. And tanks roll slowly. Still, Russia will very soon circle Kiew and then its a siege until Ukraine gives up. No matter how many weapons they get. No stuff will get in and out. Civilians will hopefully have left already so women and kids don't have to starve.
all of this is my own opinion and I might be totally wrong.
What would that accomplish? Fins would just join NATO even faster.
Because of the geopolitics and strategical requirements of missiles, Russia loses nuclear war (in terms of response time ) if Sweden and Finland joins to NATO. Russia might go very far to prevent that.
There is a little seed of truth in their security claims, that Ukraine should stay neutral.
Missiles around country in close positions means, that West has better likelihood to win nuclear war with first strike, eliminating the most nukes from Russia. Especially, since they think that US is the enemy. And they want to hit US which is very far.
Russia loses their nuclear threat advantage, if other countries can position their missiles better, to reach far better damage with first strike.
This is the core of Cuban crisis, and why there are so many bombs, in submarines as well. Russia needs to believe that there is a balance.
Stakes are high.
Nothing Russia can do changes that. They know that. We know that. They know we know.
It's all just a game of chicken. And for Russia to win they would have to go all in 100 times in a row. Whereas NATO wins if nothing changes.
So they won't go all in. It's just a matter of NATO deciding where the final line on sand is. I think we're witnessing it being drawn and Putin mistakenly thought he can do a few more steps.
They need at least a little illusion that there is at least balance. This is about Putin’s power and their narrative. All decisions are based on the fact that Putin will stay in power and looks strong leader.
Could you elaborate on that?
NATO will not strike first. I understand you can respond to ICBMs but there's very little you can do to protect your cites against them. So what do you mean by "losing nuclear war"? Even if 10% of Soviet nuclear equipment still works, that still means hundreds of nukes. The only "winners"* would be China, South America and Africa, not Russia.
* good luck living through nuclear winter
It does not matter from Russian perspective. Anyway, cities are just third priority. Opponent’s nukes and command centers are the fist priority.
If you can place enough nukes close enough, so that response time is very low, then first strike might paralyze nation and there is no response at all.
Russia needs to consider this, regardless of narrative who strikes first.
I really hope we shed this mentality of appeasement and catering to unfounded "needs". It doesn't work and never did.
I'm assuming Russia's incentives weren't to prevent them from happening altogether, but rather to position themselves in a way that would allow them to manoeuvre when they did happen.
The fact their actions have caused these to happen sooner is certainly relevant, but whether they "lost" or not to me is simply a matter of whether their actions have placed them in the above position of better manoeuverability or not.
Whether this is the case or not, no idea.
Also, "win" and "lose" are highly relative terms here.
That said, Putin and his crew are gambling with their lives on this one, and I almost think they were led into this by forces that would like to see them gone (count me among those forces).
OTOH, for a dictatorship, of a just plain bad economy with no external actor to pin the blame on and a miserable economy with a clear external actor to blame and a grievance narrative, the latter can at times be more politically useful, though its obviously worse for the people: Russia may have lost strategically, but Russia-as-actor is a anthropomorphistic fiction. The harder question is has Putin lost strategically. And while there may be hope for that, I don’t think it is anywhere near as clear.
History books will talk more about Putin than before. But likely in a different role than he wanted to be remembered with.
How the hell is Russia and China allied at all? China is basically the one protecting Russia and allowing them to invade Ukraine.
This is something I don't quite understand.
After Crimea happened, nobody really did much. 70-80% of Crimea is Russian and it probably should have been their own republic after USSR fell. However, Ukraine just kind of got to keep that land? It was ultimately a problem. It's fine for Crimea to be self-determining.
NATO has never threatened Russia. A defensive alliance is never a threat. Obviously you only find it a threat if you have plans to invade like they do. Yet China and Russia feel threatened?
Even more unusually... it is NATO who feels threatened. They are worried China and allies are about to invade various entities. Taiwan is the first one, but Japan and South Korea are immediately next. India shortly after. Australia is not long after India. Obviously the USA will be involved in all of those.
Lets also look at the tally card. Russia is the one doing the invade thing. Not anyone else. What has been the response? Everyone united against Russia's aggression. Said, 'no thanks we're out, you can go play with yourself from now on' Where's the threat from us? We ultimately dont care about who is in power. We said, nope, we are closing our borders to you and your trade. We cant ethically or morally support Russia in their actions.
Mind you, who am I? I'm nobody and know nothing. China's own actions will reveal the truth in the near future.
If China truly believes in world peace and the end of cold war mentality. Building tall is far more intelligent than invading for land. It is china's ally right now who is breaking this. It is their ally whose actions are justifying the 'west' to be so defensive and feel threatened.
You know what the west wants? They want the sanctions to work. If such powerful sanctions can cripple a nuclear power's ability to wage war. The threat to the rest of the world is that the same will happen to you if you declare war. It would mean we are post-war. People can feel safe within their borders. Nobody is threatening anyone else anymore.
Sure militaries must still exist. Civil wars, insurgencies, etc are still going to exist. United Nations peacekeeping will always be a thing in the world.
china could lead the way. recognize taiwan as a country within a country. see quebec in canada. Then hold russia up to their diplomatic commitment to ukraine. dispell the rumours they are about to invade and demand immediate peace.
There are two primary reasons we think the Russians did it.
Putin has gone full conspiracy theorist, nostalgic, delusions of grandeur, fear of dying. He has locked himself away with alternative history since the start of covid. If Russia wants to defend its borders, capturing Ukraine decrease the length of the borders significantly. In a 100 years who knows? NATO might try to expand.
Personally, i don't see how anybody under the age of 60 can be persuaded with this logic. But it does explain part of the failure so far. Putin beliefs it had to be far easier and cheaper than it turned out so far.
I think the economic reason to do it is far more plausible. Ukraine as a sovereign nation is an existential threat to Gas/Oil Russia. Since 2012 it has become clear that they hold enough gas and shale oil that it would break Russia's monopoly to the EU. That's could half their state budget, in a time the social security for the baby boom needs to be paid out.
I personally think they could have figured it out, but Putin is obsessed with gas and oil. To him they are the foundation of a Great Russia.
That doesn't seem right. The EU is intending to be carbon-neutral by 2050. Recent events probably hugely accelerated this roadmap. Even if they had started building infrastructure now Ukraine's gas fields won't be production ready for quite some time. That leaves them with a 10 year time window where Russia would have to compete for a slice of a dwindling cake.
Its a little strange whenever i find media from before the invasion talking about Putins position.
Getting a European war going that draws US forces out of the Pacific is an obvious benefit if you want to invade Taiwan.
In contrast to the Russians, the Chinese are completely dependent on international trade to keep people fed and the lights on.
If anything, I bet China has had to think twice about Taiwan after seeing the way the world has reacted to Russia. China has not been tested against a determined, capable enemy and their credibility as a superpower is at stake. They could lose to Taiwan even if no one helps Taiwan.
No, they "made up" recently. Russia supports Chinas claim to Taiwan and China supports Russias claims.
This makes the whole situation even more ugly.
* Russia is foreign country, invading other country. China respects sovereignty. Their claims for Taiwan are based on that - Taiwan is not independent according to their narrative. Huge military invasion into Taiwan is against this ideology. It proves that Taiwan was not part of China.
* If they are OK with invasion of Ukraine, then other countries have arguments for invading China, and help Tibet, Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang to be independent nations. China really does not want that.
As Mao Zedong put it, "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".
They need to be logical to maintain the image.
But it does not seem like logical consistency is the driving force of their foreign policy.
A rival for influence in Central Asia backing you committing to a fight in Europe that aligns the rest of the world strongly against you as long as it persists might not be doing it because they support you in any meaningful sense of the word.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annua...
https://www.hoover.org/research/5-questions-stephen-kotkin
He believes, and I agree, that it might be enough for Russia to have "ruined" Kyiv, etc., and to have significantly degraded Ukraine's military. And, militarily speaking, Russia lacks the precision weapons to do much else. Put another way, I think Russia has made its point, that perceived (or contrived) threats on its border will be addressed. One hopes, having made the point, they will withdraw; otherwise Putin is facing regime change or worse IMHO.
EDIT: I should probably add that Russia has a point-of-view on Eastern Europe that shouldn't be ignored. Not as a justification for its invasion, but as a legitimate security and *influence* concern. Much was imposed on Russia after WWI, after the Kosovo conflict, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Again, not an invasion justification, but an important consideration for a lasting diplomatic resolution... that doesn't require further fighting, escalation or heaven forbid WMD use.
1. Russia continuously invades and annexes ex soviet neighbors
2. Neighbors join defensive alliance against Russia for protection
3. Russia claims this is provocation against them and uses it as justification to invade another neighboring country
There’re people who support war because the Russian government maintains an information blockade about the topic. Saying anything about the war that was not previously said by the government is going to become a criminal offence tomorrow. Two independent media (TV Rain and Echo of Moscow) were recently banned for telling too much. At the same time, every state-controlled media is spreading propaganda non-stop.
Many citizens genuinely think that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis, and Russian military is successfully removing these Nazis without damaging non-combatants. It’s hard to spread the truth because government is going all-in on stopping opposition.
If considering NATO a threat, the further west Russia can put it's troops, the easier time it would have defending it's territory. The flat open lands of northern Europe expand the further east you go, all the way to the Urals. If they have troops at the western end of Ukraine, then it's a smaller front line to guard with the Carpathian mountains to the south and the Baltic sea to the north.
The west is perfectly happy to have Russia as a friend and to respect its autonomy if it would just stop attacking other countries.
Ukraine is not of vital interested to the West. If it had been they would have integrated it into NATO already. They tried the same with Georgia and right away Russia attacked Georgia.
More importantly he said that the west actually needs Russia against China, because once China becomes an actual threat it will become incomparable to any previous threat. Throwing Russia into China's arms over something that is not of vital interest to the US is insane.
Not invade with conventional troops vital but publish all the intel around the invasion and send money missiles and veterans.
> More importantly he said that the west actually needs Russia against China
But based on this, was also completely out of touch to start with.
Is distinguished professor Mearscheimer perhaps forgetting that Ukraine is of vital interest to the Ukrainians?
They want it tho, the argument is not that they need it. The argument is that they want it. And the "just want it as a buffer" is completely unsupported and hard to believe.
> Ukraine is not of vital interested to the West.
When they decide they want part of Poland and Estonia too, will you say those countries dont matter for the west too? Will their membership in NATO then matter?
Undeniably this war is ravaging Ukraine but the sanctions will be far much worse for Russia on the long term. He already lost on all his goals. If Russia doesn't agree or at least move forward with a ceasefire today this will be a signal that Putin is really insane.
Not as much as Russia imposed on Eastern Europe after WWII.
"Four Russian fighter jets violate Swedish airspace over Baltic Sea"
https://www.thelocal.se/20220302/four-russian-fighter-jets-v...
It's of course provocative but still less than 2013 when 4 fighter jets and 2 bombers flew in attack formation against Sweden in a simulated nuclear attack.
Even without NATO, Russia can't afford to engage Finland and Sweden in the coming years.
They also violate NATO airspace
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/russian-fighter-jet-violates...
And more
Ukraine's border is much more significant than Finland's.
Check out the "winter war". Invading would be a crapshoot both ways.
The Ukrainian border has no geographic features that would impede an invasion though, and would let NATO cut Russia off from its oil fields, form a land bridge to the caspian sea and cut Russia off from the black sea entirely all within about a day.
Its strategic significance cant be underestimated.
Yes but it doesn’t go anywhere
Look at Ukraine and Poland on the map - they can close off Russia to Europe
And it'll be accepted, because what Europe wants is not to have to sanction Russia so it can continue buying its gas. And that is now easier to do when Russia is locked out of being able to prosecute border wars.
That's the thing: the only interest anyone had in Ukraine not being in NATO was if Russia didn't cause more problems because it wasn't. That's gone.
Ukraine has spent the last two years begging NATO to hurry up and approving their accession and Putin sitting on the border with tanks for three months only served to make Zelensky more insistent.
I suspect NATO would be a lot more willing to let them in in one piece than if they were militarily destroyed, but who knows.
But Putin has shot the hostage now: Russia occupying Ukraine means Russia has a NATO border anyway, Europe has a refugee crisis again, and no one can sit around and just get rich off of gas pipelines.
NATO had already expressed its desire quite clearly both in Bucharest in 2008 and in Brussels in 2021 to put and keep Ukraine on the path to full membership.
Putin's gamble is that reducing the country to rubble now makes it unviable as a member and hence lowers the likelihood of him ending up like Gadaffi and Russia ending up like Libya.
It could backfire and it may be the worst gamble anybody ever made but it's not irrational.
Buffer states are now a liability with Russia.
I am not a strategist so why is this? And why for example wouldn't Russia tried to sign an alliance with this countries where they promise to respect each other territories and not participate in aggressive actions against each other. Isn't this a good enough buffer? it won't work if you don't want to renounce at teritory claims though
I've read conflicting statements about how Russian speaking Ukrainians are treated in Ukraine but it's also not obvious to me why it should be so much worse in Donbass versus the rest of Ukraine.
Just because there is a different language doesn't mean that there is automatically a cultural divide.
Zelensky has spent the last two years begging them to hurry the membership application up.
And I think even with all the excitement, clear heads will seriously question how well this strategy has worked.
That’s the Schengen area, not NATO.
Also if that was the case, then Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were dead as soon as Russia took Crimea, making this entire ordeal completely pointless.
What does 'ok' mean here?
I was Ukraine, if I got NATO I would drop Crimea like its nothing. Crimea was always practically controlled by Russia anyway. And its by far the most pro-Russian part of Ukraine.
This is a real problem and a cause for worry though since insane escalation may very well occur with the singular goal of saving faces of russian heads of state.
[0] https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1497993363076915204
Now, there is of course point of view of Eastern European countries who see Russia as legitimate security and influence concern. These are NATO members and became NATO members specifically to be protected against what you call legitimate security concern of Russia (read inability to expand).
> Much was imposed on Russia after WWI, after the Kosovo conflict, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Now, how much of that "imposition" is Poland not wanting to be occupied by Russia anymore?
Eastern Europe (and now especially Ukraine) has a point-of-view on Russia that you seem to be ignoring.
-- Sun Tzu
Well, that's more or less what Putin said he wanted to do, right? De-militarize and "de-nazify" (he actually means change the regime to one that, like the Ukrainian government prior to 2014, supports Russia) Ukraine.
--
I do wonder how operational Russia's nuclear arms currently are, though. The US has spent many billions on the maintenance of its nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War. I'm highly skeptical that the Russians have been anywhere near as meticulous in keeping their own in good working order.
Russia starts to look very awkward if they launch a nuclear attack and it does not work. What happens next? The loss of credibility drops substantially with each attack. I think, for this reason, a nuclear attack on ukraine is not likely to happen.
Edit: As spywaregorillla corrected me, there are only a few countries with nuclear weapons. 8 in number other than Russia.
Now, what I do believe is that the Russian boomer subs have working nuclear weapons and represent the largest danger of all.
Yes, I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
Anything could happen.
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/08/russias-hypersonic-weapo...
Which country ? Even the craziest nuclear bomb as a total destruction radius of 50-100km
I expect that corruption endemic in the ground forces (especially infantry) is much more in check with nuclear forces.
There was also a report from the Congressional Research Service about Russian arms exports and development from October 2021 [2]. It's filled with lots of interesting data, but a couple of interesting points: Russia is the world's second largest arm's exporter, behind only the US, accounting for 20% of all sales. Russia was also the driving force behind the modernization of the Chinese military. The only downside mentioned is that, "Despite producing modern and technologically advanced systems, Russia’s defense industry has numerous challenges, such as inefficiency, low production capacity, lack of a modern machinery base, limited innovation, and efforts to diversify into civilian and dual-use technologies."
We're currently in the middle of a ongoing information war. Take everything you read, from any source, about current events with a grain of salt. Remember how different Iraq looked before, during, and then long after the war. Ironically, slightly dated sources can provide the most relevant information.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...
Also they have been investing in the nuclear program as well, creating devices like Poseidon[0] which could theoretically make an entire US coast unliveable.
The only winning move in nuclear brinksmanship is not to play.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/nuclear-treaty-i...
They wanted it torn up and there was no secret agenda of Russians involved. The way they justified it was to say that Russia doesn't abide by it anyway, therefore we're just making it official.
But that's just the US perspective. It's possible that Russia was looking forward to it as well, who knows. But in John Boltons book he wrote that the Russians were surprised and he was quite proud of it as well.
Aha: the article explains further down. It’s all very well being able to dig up thousands of tonnes of oil and iron but that’s no use when your citizens want TVs and jeans.
So I wondered this as well... Given the vast resources within Russia there's no reason why they can't build their own TVs or make their own Jeans. Obviously that's currently not the case, but a society that has a space programme can surely achieve this?
That's up to Putin. I think the Oligarchs have perhaps lost there power and leverage within the last 10 days.
> Also capitalism and startups are a culture. People who don't grow up around others that think like that don't ever learn how to think in that way.
This is where China steps in. They offer to build factories / infrastructure in exchange for oil & gas. This is what they have been doing in Africa.
You cannot have imperialistic ambitions of this scale in 2022 via warlike means, only possible are via US-like "export" of the Silicon Valley ethos all over the world.
Really? I'd like to see the reaction if you were to suggest this to the USA.
There is no comparison to what Russia is doing.
Also in Iraq in 2003-06
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_munition#Afghanistan,_...
That's kind of a weak argument imho. Artifical shortage (sanctions), uncertainty (war), and peak oil (someday) don't seem unlikely to raise the oil price continuously.
It's against my intuition that a switch to renewable energy will compensate for that.
What's the reasoning behind „What goes up must come down”?
And the costs to produce them might be different. In the West its high wages and strict safety requirements inflate the cost of production, but if in your country people are motivated to work for food for the victory then you can produce much more with the same expenses.
Putin does not lack that will.
He has longer than 19 days. If the conventional phase of the war takes 40 days then he will see that as fine.
He can see the summer in and wait for the Europeans to return to chasing butterflies and playing with their children. He will wait for another year. All the while the Ukrainian resistance will be being dragged into carparks and playgrounds to be executed. All the while the Russian army will be repairing, refueling and restocking. What comes next is in Putin's hands.
All the wishing for a good outcome in the world does not change this. What could have changed it is if the Dutch, the Belgians and most of all the Germans had acted like adults in the world. Instead they have been dancing on the edge of a disaster. Now they have fallen off into the chasm and we all will have to pay for those happy summer afternoons and heady evenings of dance, drugs and song now.
We are in dark times friends.
Vague and weird words that could mean almost anything.
Speak plainly.
1. Spending <1.2% of GDP on defence
2. Reducing tanks to 18 (Holland). 18! 1 per million people. 57 howitzers. 40 fighter aircraft.
3. Germany : arming its troops with broomsticks. BROOMSTICKS (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-s-neglected-soldi...)
4. Belgium : 0 (read it straight) 0 MBT. 0. 1 Self propelled gun I think.
These are rich and powerful countries. They have been utterly delinquent for the last 20 years. When you see unanswered Russian aggression in the east it's because these people who should be the core of European power have pretended that everything will be alright if they let their martial capabilities rot.
It's not only their forces (and foreign policy, particularly Germany's and the EU's in Ukraine and the Balkans). The near evisceration of the European military infrastructure and production capability has screwed everyone. Where is the Tornado replacement? Let alone the Eurofighter replacement? How many F35's has Germany bought (spoiler :0) how much more expensive has that made F35 for everyone else (spoiler : alot).
Now the Germans are going >2% on defence - how many years will it take for that kind of money just to repair the barracks? Where is the Dutch emergency budget? (https://nltimes.nl/2022/03/01/dutch-armed-forces-facing-russ... --- let's grow towards 2%!)
Also the wording is an allusion to the first world war.
Unless you choose to believe that the Russian military, for some reason, is throwing green units and third-tier armor into the field - and holding back battalion after battalion of elite troops equipped with elitely-maintaine vehicles - it seems very hard to criticise European levels of defence spending given the reality of the enemy forces it appears to face.
Even if they do get beaten with a broomstick and sent back to Moscow in little bags how much damage would it do?
That's why to spend.
Having a strong defense deters this kind of thing. Having the US divided and Europe impotent has enabled this behavior.
Yes, and it appears to be working. Russia is invading Ukraine, not Poland.
Social media is making it seem like Russia is losing, when in reality they are just winning more slowly than they expected.
But now the kit that doesn't work is discounted and parked and no one expects cheering flower throwing welcome. The Russian Army will deliver - even if the airforce won't / can't, if boys die doing what they were trained to do then that's expected. The Motherland is grateful.
There will be a reckoning though. They won't forgive or forget this. Unfortunately they all do agree with the war aims, but the set up will not be allowed to happen twice. I expect adults wearing uniforms to grab the reigns when this is over.
Indeed we are, but you're speaking riddle that tells nothing, but sure do looks wise and profound to the unsuspecting mind.
Putin doesn't have the economy, the material nor the young men for a prolonged occupation of Ukraine.
Without a prolonged occupation, there is no win for Putin. He may install a puppet regime, but that will fall as soon as Russian forces leave the country.
The Ukraninians are extremely motivated and they'll have an unlimited flow of advanced weapons and local support. What does it mean for a town to "fall"? All someone has to do is smuggle in a Javelin within 1 mile of an armoured vehicle and destroy it. Parking your APC in the middle of a town after you've "captured" it isn't going to make the Russians safe.
To get a sense of the dire condition of the Russian army, check out this thread: https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1499164245250002944
Tldr: an advanced missile launcher (one of their most expensive vehicles) was so badly maintained, the tires just shred apart and it was captured. If thats the state of a 15 million dollar piece of equipment, what's everything else like?
So, what are we not seeing?
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
Basically: Russian people and territory re-unification before letting the cultural erosion making it impossible, which is seemingly insufferable.
Then there is some rambling about a new order due the coordination of Ukraine Bielorussia and russia would make Europe autonomy crumble.
Then the world was expected to be in awe in such a display of power, and that would have made all countries realize that west dominance is in jeopardy.
It's that a simple madness.
french translation here: https://www.fondapol.org/decryptage/la-russie-na-pas-seuleme...
Not everything makes sense.
Humans are not rational creatures. We are complicated things that are far more driven by emotions than by dispassionate analysis.
Even when we do engage in dispassionate analysis, we get it wrong a whole lot. See the number of software bugs in the world.
https://exopolitics.org/is-discovery-of-an-ancient-ark-drivi...
But it was aliens.
2. He's surrounded himself with yes men
3. Those yes men told him Europe wouldn't do anything and Ukraine would fall quickly. They told him it'd be another Crimea
4. Once the war started it became obvious they made a terrible mistake, but now Putin's stuck in a clusterfuck of epic proportions for Putin, Ukraine, and Russia.
They problem with that strategy would probably be massively increased sanctions and Europe that gradually weans itself off of Russian fissile fuels, their main source of income. However they could shift to selling all of it to China, along with their new revenue from the agricultural breadbasket of in the Ukraine. At a steep discount I'm sure because they would not be in a bargaining position, and the other sanctions would still hurt a lot.
It would leave them weakened for decades, but they (Putin) may either not believe that outcome or be willing to accept it. Other powerful forces (the oligarchs) might not like this, and could work to remove Puting from power, or maybe they receive assurances that they'll maintain their status and wealth under the new order. Hard to say. It would leave them closer to a North Korea model of existence though, which can hardly be their plan A.
My guess is that right now they're still pushing to see just how much further the west itself is willing to push back. If they can regroup, escalate the violence and rapidly and be done in another week or two then maybe maybe they can still mostly get away with this. If not, I think the most likely outcome (at least more likely than the bleaker one outlined above) is that they, Ukraine, and Europe try to find any figleaf of face-saving they can ti allow Russia to declare their goals accomplished. And Russia will still have succeeded in significantly reducing Ukraine with much more empowered and entrenched separatist groups. Second to that would be an Oligarch-driven removal of Putin. At least, I think those are the best case scenarios. Once Russia's "done in a week and back home to watch football this weekend" plan failed, these seem to be the options they're left with.
The scenario you're describing is basically the one they can't afford, it's simply too costly in men and weapons, without guarantees of outcome, military is not concentrated is the cities, and can expect a lot of help from the west. The level of incompetence display is incredible, which increases the danger of worse scenario, that don't make sense either.
Like they say in the Marine Corps, create and exploite opportunities on the battlefield.
https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201%20Wa...
Some already do: https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-bolsonaro-uses-ukraine-war-to-s...
The bear probably won't go over the mountain long term this time, but he showed up quite angry and vile.
Who knows? What is a win for Russia from Putins and his cronies perspective? Or for him and his cronies, in case Russia is just a tool for them. Surely not from ours, but they don't care about that anymore, anyway.
We obviously should adapt our theory of their mind fast.
That is the whole point.
[1] https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/03/02...
Russia is already selling a lot of weapons around the world - they are typically not as good as American counterparts (in most fields, at least), but they tend to be cheaper; further investment would see prices fall even further, effectively flooding all markets where the Russians play. A lot of African and Asian countries might well jump at the chance, resulting in profits for Russia and increased worldwide instability. Already the successful Russian intervention in Syria was meant to be a showcase of the latest Russian tech.
Putin's Russia might not be able to afford a 10- or 20-year conflict like the US could, but I fear it can afford more than enough to produce very bad outcomes for the world at large. And I still don't see how they'd fail to take Kyiv, at the very least, which might well be all they want.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-exit-russia-op...
There are ever shrinking pathways for putin to even claim a win as this evolves.
When all paths are closed, we'll see who's willing to stick with him.
This is fundamentally another petro-war, all of the media/ideological stuff about de-nazification or the mighty Russian ethno-state is bullshit. It's money and oil.