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awb

Long article, but the first part reads like the Ukraine playbook:

* Cede territory early and retreat to defensible positions

* Let the enemy rush in and attack their stretched supply lines from the flanks

* Let the people know you are still fighting and not defeated

* Prepare the people to fight a long guerrilla war

* When the enemy spreads out to take too much territory too quickly, counter attack

I really don't understand the Russian military strategy. Their strategy of taking slivers of territory seemed to be working in Georgia and Crimea. They could have taken Donetsk and Luhansk with little effort and much less worldwide condemnation. Then started the bribery, disinfo, threats, "security" offer process all over again in the next territory.

But driving full force to Kyiv seems like exactly what a much weaker army would want you to do.

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They have literally not driven full force into kiev though. Most of the action is in Crimea and the South Even right now and they have been pretty successful on that front, advancing very quickly instead of getting bogged down in cities. I'm not sure where the impression that they are focusing on kyiv comes from considering the past couple of days, and the huge pincer movements they have been orchestrating in the Crimea front.

I thought the 40km long column was headed to Kyiv.

Also, I thought they staged troops in Belarus and started one portion of the invasion from there because it was closest to Kyiv.

I know they’re invading from all directions, but there’s a symbolism to Kyiv as Ukraine’s capital and I read somewhere that Russia wanted to capture it with the intent of demoralizing Ukrainians.

Agreed that it will be an objective if only because of it's symbolism but the crux of the attack really seems focused on a southern push while they basically just encircle the cities instead of fighting urban battles. Those are always insanely costly, no matter how well prepared the attack is. Even the US army had an incredibly tough time in Fallujah, and they are the best army in the world. The symbolism is a double edged sword since ukrainians will probably defend it very bitterly especially if they go straight for the city instead of besieging it. So it just makes sense imo that kiev isnt the main focus.

They might even want to cut the country in half, but at any rate they have been advancing really swiftly from Crimea. IIRC they are still advancing there faster than the Americans were advancing in Iraq back in 2003.

If one wanted to take the south of Ukraine it’d make a lot of sense to keep their armies distracted on the north end. Just sit outside the cities and shell them while the primary operations hit the softer coastal area. Even Odessa might be ignored, who knows.

> I really don't understand the Russian military strategy

I thought about it and this is the best explanation I could come up with basis the info we have right now https://twitter.com/elSidCampeador/status/149942182647656038...

> I really don't understand the Russian military strategy.

I'm the opposite, I really don't understand what people aren't seeing regarding the Russian strategy. People seem to think the Ukraine invasion should look exactly like the Iraq invasion and be over within 2 weeks with Putin in front of a "Mission Accomplished" sign.

We all know that wouldn't accomplish anything. The Ukrainian population would still resist Russian government whether or not Kyiv falls quickly and Zelenskyy is ousted. The Euromaidan forces that ousted the last Russian puppet will still be there. While you could argue Iraq was a boondoogle because removing Saddam left a giant power vacuum, arguably the removal of Zelenskyy wouldn't change anything about Ukraine.

This isn't the Iraq playbook. This is the Chechnya playbook. And that playbook is much more horrifying.

Contrary to Vietnam and Afghanistan, Russia has the ability to take large swathes of territory early, absorb it, and start moving Russians into that territory while continuously sieging major cities.

The Ukrainians will look bad if they attack the Russian citizens that are now occupying them, and the Russian army doesn’t need to convince the local population to join them but instead they can encourage them to evacuate and give them safe passage into the EU.

Eventually the country will be more and more Russian and most of the world will forget about the Ukrainians. We’re just in the initial “rough” stages where it’s the new news item and countries not actually involved in the conflict aren’t bored yet. Once they reach a stable position, they can just wait them out while occupying the majority of the country.

I'm skeptical that long term ethnic displacement is Putin's endgame. The Chechnya stratagem seems more likely — savage pacification followed by installation of a Kremlin-friendly regime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#Post-war_reconstructi...

> [...] Russia installed a pro-Russian Chechen regime. In 2003, a referendum was held on a constitution that reintegrated Chechnya within Russia but provided limited autonomy. According to the Chechen government, the referendum passed with 95.5% of the votes and almost 80% turnout. The Economist was skeptical of the results, arguing that "few outside the Kremlin regard the referendum as fair".

Regime change by the country that successfully defended Syria’s regime? The Russians military strategists should know better than anyone how difficult that can be. Even with western backing.

Ukraine has 45M people. To flip it from being a Ukrainian majority to a Russian majority state wouldn’t that mean migrating 10-20M Ukrainians out and 10-20M Russians in? That sounds like a huge operation.

Otherwise you have a South Africa situation where a minority rules over a majority and it’s just a matter of time before the majority takes back power.

>'start moving Russians into that territory while continuously sieging major cities.'

Moving pepple out of their houses into bombed out cuties wont be popular. Nothing like it was attempted in the last 3-4 generations.

> Russia has the ability to take large swathes of territory early, absorb it, and start moving Russians into that territory while continuously sieging major cities.

Not anymore, with their economy collapsed.

Russia's globalized economy has been snubbed, but russia is perfectly capable of deeding prime farmland to existing successful russian farmers. When it comes to tractors and fuel, russia has these in spades

Was this done in Chechnya?

EDIT: Turns out it's the opposite — Chechnya has far fewer ethnic Russians than it used to. It's now less than 2% ethnic Russian.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/left-behind-russian-lif...

> According to official figures, in 1979 over 30% of the population of Soviet Chechnya were ethnic Russians. By 1989 the figure had fallen, although not by much – they still made up 25% of the population. In 2002, however, less than four percent of residents were Russian, and by 2010 Chechnya was losing its Russian population faster than any other North Caucasus republic. It was, effectively, a mono-ethnic member of the Russian Federation.

A lot of post soviet bloc countries have lost double-digit percentages of their population to emigration over the last thirty years, so it's hard to draw any conclusions here, is my guess.

So doing something like what Zimbabwe did? Which turned that country from the breadbasket of Africa to the basket case of Africa?

What Zimbabwe did was the opposite of turning land over to existing successful farmers.

Given the history of other things turned over to other people in Putin's rule of Russia, I suspect Putin would be more likely to turn land over to successfully supportive farmers than successful farmers, which is what Zimbabwe did.

The people who were ‘gifted’ Zimbabwe farms weren’t farmers.

Ukraine doesn't really have the firepower to hit back. All territories it loses are really hard to recover. Russia is also sprinting to take the Dniepr river which would make any counter-attack nearly impossible.

They are also going for encirclement of areas they can't capture east of the river, breaking out of a modern siege is also really hard.

Russian strategy would be to encircle the cities and Ukrainian forces, demand surrender or shell otherwise.

I haven't read the article yet, but couldn't help but notice that that playbook should probably look really familiar to Russia. It's how the Soviet Union beat Nazi Germany.

Agreed. But it can’t be used by an attacking force, which is why I suspect the Russians aren’t using it now.

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