For context: Germany invaded Poland (population ~31 million) with 60+ divisions, and that invasion required almost a month to succeed, with the Soviets jumping in partway through to quicken the end.
Russia has invaded Ukraine (population ~41 million) with ~13 divisions, less favorable weather, and vastly more urbanized terrain to fight through. While they have made some absolutely embarrassing mistakes, they are fielding the largest army seen in a generation, and still conducting offensive operations.
Not even the US has put 13 divisions into a theater since....Vietnam? Korea? Desert Storm was ~9 US divisions + allies. The big difference is we can show up with ~9 divisions that will be well-supplied and well-motivated anywhere in the world (and with endless air support to make up in bombs what we might lack in manpower), while Russia has a terribly motivated and already-hungry army even in their own backyard, and surprisingly not enough ordnance to make up for it.
One early vid featured a Ukrainian civilian driving up to a stopped Russian APC. The Russian crew said they were out of gas. Your vehicle has a 300km+ fuel range and you ran outta gas 50km from the Russian border? WTF? Did you leave your Assembly Area with a 1/4 tank of fuel?! No I don't think the Germans ever launched an invasion with such poor preparation.
>>>struggling to use what they have in the field effectively in most of the battlefield
We've been discussing some examples at work (with an Iraq-veteran Staff Sergeant and a recent infantry company commander): videos of just absolutely terrible security habits from the Russians. I don't care if they are unmotivated conscripts: you've gotta realize by now that you are in "Indian country". You need to keep your head on a swivel and watching your surroundings if you simply want to NOT DIE. There were parked tanks getting knocked out by ATGMs at fairly close range.....doesn't make sense when the T-72B3 has a thermal imager, and it's winter, so body heat should stand out at a reasonable distance. The crew should be scanning the treelines periodically with the thermal.
There's some aspects of the war where I'm willing to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt because, as I said, nobody has done this in 30+ years, maybe even 50+. But there are FAR too many flaws where we are sitting shocked and thinking "You guys suck so bad at your JOB, that I'm embarrassed for you."
I think if I were to summarize the "Russia is failing" narrative it's that Russia expectations of a quick, easy victory were completely unmet, and now even if Russia does want to occupy Ukraine it's not going to be the quick and easy decapitation strike that they thought it would.
So your argument is you assume Russia wanted to take Ukraine in 100 milliseconds, and if people can't prove you wrong you win?
I'd actually like to read more of this, if you have happen you have a source at hand.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-believes-russia-planning-de...
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/05/ukraine...
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/02/russia-aiming-to-decapit...
https://www.axios.com/russia-seeking-decapitate-ukrainian-go...
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-invasion-of-ukraine-w...
Yes. They have shown they are not well organized, have poor leadership, have defective planning, are terrible at logistics, have poor discipline in the ranks.
Eh. I don't understand others military analysis. Russia is doing the right thing to just sit a convoy north of Kyiv. Ukraine doesn't have air power anyway. If they rolled into Kyiv it would be a urban combat meat grinder. They are better off waiting until the forces from the south and east meet south of Kyiv. Then they can surround Kyiv and shell it to rubble [what they learned in berlin]. Wait for white flags, then roll it. Ukraine needs to wipe out that northern convoy NOW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1
Vacuum explosives aren't nuclear, but god damnit: https://pomf2.lain.la/f/7vj9hxrh.mp4
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNMiInhXIAQHEdl?format=jpg&name=...
You might want to hold your judgment until things are over. You don't judge a football match after the first 10 minutes are passed.
In reality, this is an almost total disaster for Russia so far. No matter what, Russia will not recover from the last 12 days in the next fifty years. International support for Ukraine will only grow stronger. The scale of verified Russian losses was NEVER predicted by anyone prior to this invasion. Prior to invasion, the reports were almost entirely about how fast Ukraine would fall.
Now, everything is about "Russia is yet to send it's best, it's early days, etc" - from the same "experts" and talking heads.
With regards to what you have said, of course never underestimate your enemy, and yes it may sadly be on the early days, but you could do this to get one single data point of what is happening:
1)research and find the most likely estimate of Russian troop deaths so far. 2)using that number, estimate the number of injured Russian troops (military experts can help you here, wars are somewhat predicable with death/injured ratios). 3)add those two numbers together.
What number do you come up with, and show your workings please.
For context, I have some hard currency, but I'm not spending it as yet. Electronic means of payment are fully functional - spend at the supermarkets, or pharmacies, without issue (other than supply issues at supermarkets of course). I haven't yet tried an international bank transfer into Ukraine, but I suspect it would be OK. I use an EU issued bank card, it works no problem (I also have a UA bank card as backup)
At the moment, therefore, the best thing to do: get money into the hands of regular Ukrainians. Personally, I have been raising funds from abroad and using the money to either give directly to Ukrainians (via bank transfers), or purchasing food etc and delivering it (in my local area) to the most vulnerable. At the moment, if people run out of money, they will run out of food.
Keeping people fed, keeps people sane. It's the most effective thing for Ukrainians that are remaining in Ukraine.
I would say the second most effective thing, is asking your politicians to do more - that may be providing lethal aid, humanitarian aid, or money, to Ukraine.
Further - logistics are incredibly compromised now, in every possible way. For the moment, money is the most effective solution. The situation is fluid - what Ukraine needed yesterday, is possibly not what they will need tomorrow. Money can be used immediately to help purchase what needed, with respect to what is actually available.
Internet in Kyiv has been stable the entire time.
Edit
> purchasing food etc and delivering it (in my local area) to the most vulnerable.
is there more information here? a way to do this over the inet that can be verified as legit and not a scam? If so, i can see this being very useful. I've been seeing people rent AirBnbs in Ukraine all of social media to get money in people's hands. I'm wary of fraud though, it's a situation ripe for fraudsters to take advantage.
The problem is, I see we both have our contact details empty on HN.
If you can suggest a way for me to contact you, I will reach out. I don't want to be compromised (which for me, is a bigger threat than normal right now).
what matters is how you adjust vs your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, even during military operations, because nothing is known in advance.
With massive aid from...the United States.
Somehow I don't see the US running arctic convoys round the clock to re-supply the Russians this time.
Did you perhaps grew up under Russian occupation, like I did, and not learn in school about Molotov–Ribbentrop Pacts? We were only taught the part after 1941 where Russia gloriously liberates Europe.
I did personally know a person that was close to me (he passed away about a decade ago) who had been a soldier on that front, he was in Odessa, in Crimea and all the way East to the Don river. He considered that the war started when his commander in chief at the time, marshal Antonescu, had ordered him and his fellow Romanian soldiers to pass the Prut and attack the Soviets, in June 1941. As it happens marshal Antonescu is considered a war criminal, and he was indeed a war criminal if you look at what he did to the Jewish population from Romania. That didn't count for people like that close person of mine I had told you about, who regarded him as a hero because marshal Antonescu was one of the the only persons who really wanted "to defeat the Bolsheviks" (I'm quoting my close acquaintance on this). That's why history around these parts of the world is really, really complicated, is not black and white all the time.
Regardless, I don't think anyone has ever thought the post-Soviet Russian military could take on NATO in conventional warfare, but that doesn't matter because they have nukes.
And the Ukrainians don't even have a full complement of modern weapons. IIRC, they're mainly getting sent infantry heavy-weapons at the very last minute. Even the US was pretty stingy with things like Javelins until very recently, out of fear of "provoking" the Putin.
Since the Baltics are in NATO, I doubt they'll have as many issues with getting more/better weapons. Hopefully they'll also take some lessons from Ukraine (e.g. really, really beef up their reserve forces and military training for their civilian population).
Also, since they're actually in NATO, they can hopefully count on better support from their allies than what the Ukrainians have gotten.
At that point you'd have to ask yourselves: who would risk nuclear escalation to retaliate for Latvia or Estonia? not the US. Would the UK bomb Russia with London on the line? probably not.
Just about everyone has more to lose than Russia at this point, which is an incredibly dangerous situation to be in.
I'm not saying I know the answer. But this is what strategists on the US/NATO side would be thinking about, and Russia sure knows they would be thinking about it. It would be madness to gamble on this strategy working out in the long run.
Obviously Russia would not start a nuclear war. It will simply take steps that either need to be conventionally opposed or dare US/NATO to go nuclear. Sanctions are hoped to collapse the economy of Russia and put the fear into the Chinese and other fence sitters. It's like running the clock down in a game. US probes for incremental steps (the famous "salami slicing") to ramp up counter force. Nothing should happen until we have Russia's promised counter-sanction response this Tuesday. After that next move is getting planes into Ukraine and possibly NFZ. What follows will be a non-nuclear hypersonic attack on NATO airfields used. And so on. Until someone lobs a nuke.
Oh no, that wouldn't be their objective. Which would be rather 1) military (obliterate resistance) and 2) political (show the resolve to use whatever means they deem necessary).
I think the major conclusion from the Ukraine war is that the Russian army is not in a particularly strong condition, and certainly would not fare well against superior NATO forces (particularly the air forces.) And this is assuming they are not further degraded by a long, bloody occupation in Ukraine. Nuclear first-use is a move from weakness, not strength.
Also, keep in mind that Russia is already spreading FUD about Ukrainian dirty bombs (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...).
All of NATO
NATO have been quite clear that the line is attacking a NATO member. Russia is pushing that line by invading a country they believed was about to join NATO, but they have not yet attacked a NATO country
If you think Russia can nuke a NATO population center and we're going to sit around and pretend like nothing happened, you're crazy.
That's MAD.
If the US retaliated with a bomb on Russian soil, would the expectation not be full-out nuclear war? Would it be smart for the US to enter that because Russia bombed Latvia?
This is not a case of Turkey whining about a few kurds blowing up a few police stations, this is the raison d'etre for the whole thing. Renouncing NATO duties would be the worst loss of dignity the US ever experienced, and would jeopardize its richest partner market, with uncalcolable losses.
I think Russia could even get away with "peace keeping" a "Russian separatist group" in a Nato country like Latvia.
Which is what makes this war so strange. Russia could've easily stolen Donbas - and NO ONE in the world would've cared. They could've taken away one state at a time, and NO ONE would have cared. There was no reason to rush.
But if Russia nuked a NATO population center, or even just invaded to this degree a NATO country - that's MAD.
But, what this war has exposed is how bad the russian army is trained, and how not so great their equipment is. While a prolonged war would be hard for any country, they struggled from the get go.
I hope this doesn't embolden the US and Europe to be more aggressive. I really hope that cooler heads eventually prevail.
WRT to the really really far fetched ( I hope ), that Russia would launch any nuclear strike. The missile defense systems that NATO and the US have were built exactly to counteract Russian missiles in a situation like this. This will even accelerate the development of hypersonic interceptors ( afaik, already in final stages) .
It would mean total annihilation of russia, as their in flight missies would be intercepted, and it would guarantee a total attack by the us. ( we as a nation tend to over react... and not go tit for tat ).
I hope this never happens. The reason why countries need leadership changes often. And why stable leaders are needed everywhere :-/
But it’s not clear what NATO membership’s really worth for Eastern Europe. I’m from EE and I don’t understand why the US or the UK would risk their countries or even WE getting nuked for EE.
I have the feeling that EE was accepted into NATO just to piss off the Russians and put some space between them and WE. Just like with Ukraine before it went sideways.
I don't think that's the plan. Also, no one is going to use tactical nukes against a city. The last thing Putin wants is to look like a mere terrorist. (And no, the Russian forces aren't using terrorist tactics in Ukraine.) So, the first one will probably be used against a military installation (a weapons depot, a radar station, a war ship, etc.), most likely in Poland.
That is the point behind asking for US soldiers to be permanently based. They are a sign of commitment. An "engagement ring" if you will. Without the US soldiers there it becomes much easier to ignore an attack.
That's the very point of the existence of NATO. If NATO doesn't retaliate, it could as well not exist. Fortunately the Western reaction to Putin's invasion helped to unite NATO and everybody knows that if we give in, there is no reason why Putin should stop at any defined point.
If a President as unpredictable as Trump happens to be in office, I wouldn't be so sure.
That's not to mention the drastically increased risk of accidents once even a one-sided nuclear war has begun.
Think of how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.[1] Once nukes start flying the risk grows much higher, even if there are still (presumably rational, cautious, and non-hawkish) adults in control.
[1] - https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/lone-russian-submar...
One could argue anything, but I don't think there is a good argument for that position. In fact, I think it's painfully obvious that such a leader makes it less likely that efforts at avoiding conflict will be successful.
No, it doesn't, and, no, it isn't.
NATO is very public about not saying what its specific response plan on various nuke scenarios is.