Russia confirms Ukraine destroyed its warship in Crimea attack
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
The war in Ukraine while tragic has been fascinating. I have curated a list of seemingly intelligent and informed open source intelligence (OSI) people on twitter that I have followed since early on. Most of them favor Ukraine and have been a bit optimistic. Still it is fascinating to follow a war in real time, with real reports. It is easy to see "the fog of war". An event will happen and a couple of weeks later you will understand that event in context.
Ukraine has performed incredibly well in this war for being so outmatched. Russia has done poorly. The asymmetric warfare should make much of our military industrial complex quake in their boots. To my understanding, in addition to drones, sea drones (sea baby) and western military hardware, Ukraine has innovated with tactics and software. They have apparently developed advanced counter battery fire (firing at their howitzers) software that allows geographically dispersed units to coordinate.
For this specific attack a couple of things are interesting. Over time Ukraine has eroded Russian anti aircraft batteries and radars, particularly in Crimea. This has forced Russia to either deploy more to Crimea or risk assets to slow moving missiles like this storm shadow attack. This attack was also well timed, happening late Christmas night at a period of presumably reduced readiness.
My personal list of Ukraine twitter people https://twitter.com/i/lists/1502282049054552071
The war on the rocks podcast. Michael Korfman shares particularly sober analyses (most summarized as "well this was a costly attack, but it's not decisive, this war will last a long time"). https://warontherocks.com/
I think a key takeaway, at least for the general public, is that the Russian military is actually weak and obsolete against Western weaponry and that the Russian economy cannot produce missiles, etc.
Ukraine is of similar size and population compared to Iraq. The US could almost literally level Iraq with missiles and air power before even moving ground troops. This hasn't happened in Ukraine, not even close because Russia cannot do that. They rely on "good old" artillery shells only pretty much in the same way as over the last 80 years, and they were apparently even short of those (asked North Korea for supply).
Ukraine earlier on Tuesday said its air force destroyed the Novocherkassk landing ship, with President Volodymyr Zelensky joking on social media that the vessel had now joined “the Russian underwater Black Sea fleet”."
The two parties make different claims. Ukraine says destroyed, Russia says damaged (the title of this HN post is correct in that it copies that of the article, but that title isn’t correct)
Ukraine probably doesn’t want to lie, but may be willing to exaggerate a bit to boost morale of their troops, with the risk of getting caught when more becomes clear of this attack.
Similarly, Russia may be willing to play down the effects, and has it easier in that “damaged” covers a very wide range, from “hit by one bullet, a window got broken” to “sunk in port after explosions, salvageable, but building a new one would be cheaper”.
See also the BBCs reporting at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67821515, which currently is cautious not to declare the ship destroyed.
1. Admitting your enemy blew up your ship or
2. Admitting you stupidly or ineptly blew up your own ship by accident.
I would go with the Kremlin would tend to avoid looking inept or stupid and prefer people believe the enemy blew up their ship.
In war, truth is the first casualty. -Aeschylus
I would think the Kremlin would go with the option that doesn't give their enemy any credit for being able to hurt them. You can pin your own incompetence on a few miscreants who can be punished, but the enemy's capacity for success is something entirely out of your control. Authoritarian states need to seem strong, even when losing.