Putin’s Worsening Problems | Hacker News Reader

Putin’s Worsening Problems

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121 pointsguildwriter71 comments

Hmmmm… I think people are overlooking the fact that Putin is willing to simply lay siege and use artillery to shell the Ukrainians into submission.

What do you think he's been trying to do since the war started? Play footsie?

Not really. Artillery needs to be constantly resupplied. UA has been pretty great at disrupting those lines, and there are pretty good indicators that the Russian military is simply not logistically prepared to execute on such a long term operation.

Someone clued me in to the magnitude of the problem recently -- a former fire control sergeant in the Israeli army. He told me that a whole flatbed truck can only resupply one or two MLRSes. And apparently logistics is the big weakness of the Russian military, so this is apparently a big problem for them.

It’s not only logistics it’s also maintenance and medical assistance. While rudimentary maintenance can be done in the field providing medical assistance is a lot harder especially in a -20 Celsius cold snap and if you can’t supply it the moral of your fighting force goes even lower because they know what’s coming for them.

Indiscriminate bombardment of cities does very little to achieve any military objectives, especially when a substantial part of the country 'under siege' is actually entirely untouched by enemy troops. In purely military terms, doing that would be almost the same as just having all that artillery sit around and do nothing while the Ukrainians execute major counter-offenses.

>Indiscriminate bombardment of cities does very little to achieve any military objectives, especially when a substantial part of the country 'under siege' is actually entirely untouched by enemy troops.

So all the allied bombings in ww2 were pointless?

> So all the allied bombings in ww2 were pointless?

More bombs were dropped in Vietnam. Pointless was your word but to address the GP, how effective was that militarily? Stationed artillery is not an occupation.

To answer his question and not provide a meaningless comparison, YES ALL THOSE BOMBINGS IN WW2 were effective.

Now, if someone wants to digress into Vietnam…

> YES ALL THOSE BOMBINGS IN WW2 were effective.

How exactly?

Some strategic ones at least appear to have ben effective: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War_II

Not do much for area bombing (cf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_Wor...).

In both case we are talking of multiple years of bombing.

So not all of them were effective, and the second link specifically mentions bombings of Dresden and Hamburg as controversial.

And it’s very easy to be effective at bombing oil installations as they are not a part of the city.

Vietnam probably was pointless because they couldn't bomb where all the weapons were coming from. Bombing Germany in WWII was less pointless because bombs could have an effect on German war material production - and Germany had to defend it like it did. At the end of the day North Vietnam was getting the means to fight it's war from abroad and bombing it back to the proverbial stone age wouldn't stop those weapons from coming in country.

Many experts do think they were of little military value. Remember that WWII was the first time humans could attack cities far behind enemy lines. Bombers were revolutionary, but nobody knew how to use them effectively.

They could destroy enemy factories and infrastucture, though unguided dumb munitions were so innacurate that you needed 500+ to destroy one building (IIRC). Modern precision guided munitions work much better, but the Russians apparently are using dumb ones, at least sometimes. But both the Nazis and possibly the Allies thought that they could break the enemy's will to fight by bombing civilians - throughout history, protected from the ravages of war until the armies reached them - into submission. That doesn't work - bombing London didn't drive Britain toward surrender, and bombing Dresden didn't cause Germany to surrender. Bombing/shelling Ukraine won't do much more, unless they just try to kill everyone in the city (unlikely, even for Putin).

IIRC Air force leaders in WWII claimed that they could defeat the enemy through air power pretty much alone, and that land forces were becoming obsolete. It didn't work but they've claimed that ever since - including even for the Afghanistan invasion in 2001.

As we have seen, all the airpower in the world wouldn't stop the Taliban. Bombers are especially ineffective against insurgencies: The insurgents don't present targets, especially ones that linger in the open like a tank division or a weapons factory. And even if you could target a few insurgents, that is a very expensive use of a bomber, its fuel, bombs, etc.

> They could destroy enemy factories and infrastucture, though unguided dumb munitions were so innacurate that you needed 500+ to destroy one building (IIRC).

And when you account for all of those bombs, and the bombers that carried them, and the fighter escorts for those bombers, and the ammunition for the fighters and turret gunners, and the aircraft losses to enemy fire, and the loss of manpower in air crews, and all of the logistics to maintain these bombing campaigns, you are paying very heavy costs for the damage you’re ultimately inflicting.

For the most part, yeah.

24 July 1943 Hamburg 30.000 died in that one night. Firebombing.

Did you not read the "indiscriminate" part? Bombing production facilities and supply lines/depots is one thing. Bombing apartment buildings and hospitals is quite another. Unfortunately, Putin has quite a record of doing the latter.

> all the allied bombings

Not all. Many of those had the explicit goal of at machine factories and industrial centers (sometimes the whole town) for airplanes, ball bearings, etc, (at least in 1943/1944) although there were carpet bombings and there were a fair share of generals in favor of the “indiscriminate” aspect

1. This was done every single day and night of the war.

2. Rubble still makes for surprisingly good cover in urban combat.

No, the convoy near Kyiv was only recently deployed. The artillery can strike from 18-20 miles away.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/satellite-images-sho...

It's the horrible thought we don't want to think but it's a possibility.

Question for military analysts: what is the counter to siege / artillery barrage?

Guesses:

1. dig deep bunkers to survive the weeks/months of artillery,

2. organise ambushes on the artillery (taking out a few pieces per day will add up over months), or

3. use flying forces (e.g. Bayraktar TB2).

Would these counters work; are they likely to occur?

Another idea is taking out the transports that resupply artillery ammo, but if they're coming from the North that probably won't work, since it's close and well protected.

Think the biggest issue with the more offensive actions they could take is that it’s very difficult to make troop movements or position your personnel when they are pinned down with artillery.

From my view, their best options right now are to

1) minimize the number of directions/locations which they have to defend,

2) shelter and minimize losses during air raids/artillery strikes,

3) blow every single strike they make out of proportion to gain sympathy of Western partners and even Russian citizens. I’d even go so far as to start staging fabricated atrocities - the world has a short attention span and international pressure helps their cause).

4) employ unconventional warfare, including coordinated psychological operations directed towards Russian citizens and military members/their families (e.g., their mothers).

These are all things I’m pretty sure they’re doing right now and is part of their strategy. Authoritarian governments have some positives, but central decision making is also a glaringly vulnerability.

The same person who can decide to start a war, is the same person who can be the target of an entire war effort to try and persuade them to stop the war.

Let’s just say, we probably don’t even hear about/know half of what is going on behind the scenes/clandestinely to sabotage Russia’s potential for success right now.

Ignore them, as much as possible. They are mostly ineffective against insurgencies (unless you kill everyone, which the Russians probably won't do). The only option to defeat insurgencies is with ground forces.

> Another idea is taking out the transports that resupply artillery ammo

Definitely part of insurgent warfare - attack the weak spots. I don't have it in front of me, but one military expert said the soft underbelly of a seige is the outer ring - the outside of the siege.

If you have your own artillery and the right radar/targeting equipment, counterbattery fire. The counter to counterbattery fire is to use self-propelled artillery and “shoot and scoot”, but the muddy conditions in Ukraine might complicate the scooting aspect.

Russian doctrine dubs artillery the “god of war” and they have more artillery than Ukraine, but Western radar and targeting might make Ukraine’s artillery more precise. Hard to tell. Would have been nice to set Ukraine up with that stuff before the invasion.

To what effect? So that Ukraine can join Vietnam and Afghanistan and form a "Do Not Do This" triefecta for military history?

If this were the only concern, should we just tacitly support Ukraine until Russia implodes? There are nuclear weapons rattling around in there. Politics is all about managing uncertainties. I should think a calmer, less dictatorial outcome would be everyone's interests.

Or is it? Because Ukraine/Russia, while tragic for those involved, is hors d'oeuvres for the real discussion: Taiwan. Anyone paying much attention these last years knows what's going down as soon as the Ukraine situation is escalated to a full-on regional conflict.

May Fortune lay peace and wisdom upon the heads of all the leaders involved.

If anything, this has made me doubt that Taiwan's eventual takeover will be via a hot war. The country is smaller, but its military is actually slightly larger than Ukraine's was, and they have better technology than the Ukrainians did. And the Chinese would need to cross 180km of water to get there. And the only point of taking over Taiwan is for what's already there -- the people, the technology. Shelling it would be counterproductive to say the least.

I would imagine some sort of interdiction/economic approach would be much more efficient for China. Or just wait until an amenable political group takes power on the island and reintegrate at that point.

Everyone fights the last war. An attack on Taiwan would be nothing like Ukraine, and if it happens, everyone will readjust their expectations for the next war - and be surprised again.

Excuse my candor but isn’t the status of Taiwan way more contentious than Ukraine? Honestly I’m not the sure the claim is illegitimate enough to stop China (at least that’s what I get after just reading Wikipedia), so while unfortunate for Taiwan at least I hope public opinion in other countries might not want a war, given it’s not even recognized by a lot of countries. The strategic importance it has for the US (and Europe?) is problematic obviously though.

> Excuse my candor but isn’t the status of Taiwan way more contentious than Ukraine?

Arguments can be made. Also: lost, for a glance at Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was never really independent hence the lack of a war there. It was part of China, then a British colony, then returned to China.

That's a high-level summary, skipping over substantial detail.

There's always the more modern and enlightened way of doing thing of having something like a Chinese Union like the European Union with free trade and the like but separate governments. I'm hoping the mess in Ukraine encourages the Chinese to look to more peaceful options.

Even if millions of civilians flee or die, Putin still has to maintain an expensive occupation force (with its stretched supply lines) while the Ukrainians fight on as an insurgency amidst the rubble of their cities.

The question is, once the war becomes too expensive for Putin, will Ukraine be in a position to take back Crimea and Donbas, and will the EU send peace-keepers to help protect Ukraine's borders like it has in Bosnia:

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

Artillery are far less of a concern now than chemical weapons. Russia is laying the groundwork to say that Ukraine is using chemical weapons on its own people, which means that in actuality Russia will be using them and blaming Ukraine of a false flag attack:

https://www.economist.com/news/2022/03/11/could-russia-use-c...

How long before some of those artillery pieces are captured and turned on their erstwhile comrades? The Ukrainians have already been quite successful capturing Russian equipment, and the more they seize the easier it becomes to seize more. Putting more equipment into the theater without adequate personnel and logistical support (which the Russians don't seem to have) won't help at all militarily, and indiscriminate bombardment will only worsen their diplomatic/economic situation. That's why Putin has refrained so far - not some imaginary respect for human life or humanitarian norms that he simply doesn't have.

You would hope that the Russians, more than anyone, would realize how much resistance a city under siege can put up given that their most lauded military accomplishment is being on the opposite end of that equation in Stalingrad.

Putin is a bully and needs to be treated as such. We should have established that no fly zone long ago. Russia only understands strength. We should make it clear that we are stronger, don’t even consider his point and he will back down.

This is hacker news. You have all dealt with bullies. Have they ever backed down, except after being physically hit?

> This is hacker news

This is a cheerleading blog for tech startups, run by a VC firm. This audience has more experience with elevator pitches than bullies and geopolitics.

40M citizens using NATO weapons > 140M citizens using Russian weapons...

Mearsheimer’s prediction, based on the assumption that this is a superpower feeling under existential threat:

“The Russians are not going to roll over and play dead. In fact what the Russians are going to do is they're going to crush the Ukrainians. They're going to bring out the big guns. They're going to turn places like Kiev and other cities in Ukraine into rubble. They're going to do Fallujahs.”

https://youtu.be/ppD_bhWODDc?t=1257

Thing is Russia itself isn't under existential threat and never was. No one was thinking of invading it or attacking it. This seems more about trying to re-establish a Russian empire where it controls other countries.

In some ways it's more like Afghanistan where they thought they'd go occupy some country and then found it too expensive and unrewarding.

I'm not sure Russia, or at least 99% of Russia wanted to invade Ukraine proper which it why Putin asked their parliament to recognise Donbass rather than admitting his real plan. It's kind of one man's project.

Jump backwards a minute or two from the timestamp I linked to. Addressed exactly this point.

I get the need for flag waving but Kyiv is at best a distraction. The real aim here was to create and occupy a land bridge between Donbass and Crimea and that seems to be pretty much done.

If I was to bet on anything, I'd expect Russia to gradually withdraw to the south and then occupy it, digging in for a long negotiation process.

> Kyiv is at best a distraction

What is that based on? Factually, Russia has invested a lot to conquer Kyiv and Ukraine; the rest is speculation. They may settle for less, but that is not evidence that it was intended as a distraction.

(Also, it is no 'distraction' to the people of Kyiv and Ukraine.)

To bolster empressplay's comment, I read on iz.ru before the invasion that Putin's aims would be (a) to "rescue" Donbass and establish a land bridge to Crimea, and (b) to destabilize NATO. Pundits there also said that claims he intended to attack Kiev were western propaganda. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I disagree. We're not guessing blindly. We have plenty of evidence. Russian media predictions are not evidence, were plainly wrong, and are now plainly propaganda.

They're a proxy for what Putin wants Russians to believe, ie. he wants a withdrawal to the southeast to play well domestically (regardless of his actual goals).

To reduce the level of rando mass murder by Putin from long range positions:

Stand with Ukraine:

paraphrasing HR: "Medium range air defense and shore to ship missiles ..."

https://youtu.be/MDpTACez5cY?t=473

No fly zone seems like an great way of escalating the conflict, with a nuclear power no less.

"No fly zone" doesn't have a side effect of escalation, its entire substance is nothing but escalation. I think people have some rose tinted view of no fly zones as some objective neutral declaration, but that's basically an artifact of how they have been used to market what was essentially heavy US involvement in other wars. Instead of saying "no fly zone", saying "US jets should attack Russian jets" makes for a more honest description.

The real humanitarian/strategic answer would be to create a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping zone in the western part of the country, backed up by US/NATO forces. This mirrors the WWII style where as soon as Russia invaded the eastern half of Ukraine, NATO would have invaded the west, but paying respect to our modern notion of borders. That NATO has not done this is likely surprising to Putin, since he's basically operating from the old mindset of fighting a WWII style war complete with an appalling contempt for human life.

> saying "US jets should attack Russian jets" makes for a more honest description.

Saying "US jets will directly attack and destroy Russian SAM missile batteries several hundred kilometers within Russian soil" gets the picture across better.

It's just guessing if things will escalate. But it does seem plausible that providing anti-air weapons is less provocative than enforcing no fly zone with foreign jets.

If the Ukrainians are allowed to protest, then Russia is fighting this while trying to minimize overt civilian casualties (most likely to avoid video of such acts becoming galvanizing propaganda tools against them). If things go poorly, then what? If Russia then starts fighting to destroy rather than conquer Ukraine intact, then it's a whole different story. This piece reads of wishful thinking.

Way too much hopeful rationalization

It's certainly not blitzkrieg, more blyatzkreig. The western belief was 72 hours to complete. He didn't even make 400 hours, it lost momentum. The materiel by volume and age does not speak well of supply chain logistics. There is no rational plan of battle which puts your weakest armour first.

He's lost the media war facing westward, India and China are temporising friends at best. Inward media is paper thin maintaining "the Ukrainian nazi" story, it's leaking like a sieve. Mobile crematorium won't bring conscripts home any better than body bags, so belief in a victory worth winning is dying on the vine.

Other articles have spoken to systematic corruption in petrol and tyres: these ones haven't been rotated and checked in storage, are cheap import knockoffs and look like a huge mistake.

I still think a repression/occupation is going to materialise in at least part of Ukraine but the outcome is not net advantageous to Putin medium to long term.

It's at best stalemate with adjusted borders.

As long as western weapons flood in, there's no hope for boosting the morale of Russian troops.

Presumably attacking Lviv has dual benefit: close refugee paths (increase terror and social pressure to compromise) and interferes with materiel delivery to the east where the action is.

I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties, and more likely that their occupying forces just don't have the numbers or cohesion to do anything about the protests without getting picked off piecemeal.

>I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties

A significant population of east Ukraine has family in Russia. This is like New York invading New Jersey. Ridiculous and terrible but they are aware that their family and friends live there.

There are hundreds of videos of Ukrainian civilians trying to climb aboard moving Russian convoys and blocking their paths and knocking out their mirrors and the Russians doing their best to ignore it.

Would it have been possible for Iraqis/Afghans/Syrians to do this to the US army?

Cool, thanks new poster, but there's also videos of Russia shelling hospitals and using cluster bombs (plus there's that whole occupying a country that doesn't want them there thing), so it's likely a case of soldier actions in spite of Russia's intentions rather than because of them.

Putin is a totalitarian. Russian citizens do not see accurate reporting on this war. They're fed more lies than FOX viewers. Their view of the war might just be more distorted than Putin's.

Would you care to name a specific lie and explain how you know it's a lie?

No, because the analysis out more than available to all interested, without my unavoidable editorialization of the topics. This typically isn't the place for it anyway.

Russia is doing nothing to minimize civilian casualties. I've made three trips to Ukraine, spent about three weeks total in Eastern Kharkiv in a residential neighborhood with nothing but apartment buildings, shopping, schools, and restaurants, and the utter destruction I have seen of sights I have known has been heartbreaking.

Russia's internal propaganda controls are so good that in the early days, two mothers we know refused to believe their sons' reports of being bombed in Kharkiv. Since then, this has become a wider reported story. Our Russian friends in the US have come over to video chat with their relatives back in Russia to convince them of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas. And they have not believed. Or at least they are too embarrassed to admit that they have been fooled by propaganda.

Russia will likely deploy chemical weapons in Ukraine as they lose, just as they have elsewhere. There is no humanity, no rules, among their commanders and Putin. And they have suffered zero consequences for their war crimes in the past.

> And they have suffered zero consequences for their war crimes in the past.

Bringing me some grim joy that Ukranians have picked off at least 2 high-ranking Russian military. The morale setbacks for Russia, just the ones that make the news, are pretty serious. It's not clear there will be a winner of this war, but the losers are already stacking up on both sides.

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