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Comment by iammjm | Hacker News Reader

The author seems to be more interested in the past than in the present or the future. They must've been rereading Clausewitz as Russia was turning Bakhmut, Vovchansk, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar et al. to _literal_ rubble. They speak of some abstract "urban warfare", where "Every strike is a message, every misstep a liability", where the reality is basically a grid-like approach of how to deliver as much kinetic energy per square kilometer as efficiently as possible.

I have a sense that articles like these is why a lot of people think the "academics" are completely disconnected from the reality.

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine is one of the mini-case studies analyzed in the piece, specifically for its note that Russia's disregard for Clausewitzian principles has failed to bring it meaningful success.

It should also be noted that, objectively, Russia's war has not been a success. It also has not been a failure, except in the grand strategic sense of provoking the realignment and reinvigorating of NATO it was meant to prevent.

Russia: starts a war to prevent it from having a much longer land border with NATO.

Outcome:Russia's land border with NATO is now 1300km longer.

> Russia: starts a war to prevent it from having a much longer land border with NATO.

woefully reductive. Russia sees Ukraine and Slavic Orthodox populations as their dominion -- Ukraine was under the Tsar and the USSR, and it should be theirs again.

it would be like if the US has a minor collapse and Alaska gets independent, and later the US invades; "this was our state, has been our state, and everyone there speaks something like our language and religion"

this is also why Putin won't back down on it.

That sounds like "the leg amputation operation was a success, other than the fact that the patient died on the operating table". That "except" is doing rather a lot of heavy lifting.

I have absolutely no idea what Russia was expecting from their three day special military operation, currently on 3 years, 7 months, and 2 weeks. But surely whatever they were thinking, if I could go back in time and paint them a picture of how the situation is today, they'd jump out the window (or be 'helped' out of them, as appears to be a popular pastime in Moscow this decade). This has to be on the levels quite near 'worst than our worst case scenario'.

I think Von clausewitz's revenge on the russian plan for Ukraine hasn't even begun yet. If Russia ends up wanting to turn lands they currently occupy in lands they annexed (a land that is productive and well on its way to just being culturally subsumed), the cost of that operation will be even larger than the astronomical cost they are paying to gain them: Their utter disregard for Clausewitzian planning means it'll be one heck of an insurgency.

Unfortunately, Russia is one of the most ruthless countries in this regard and will simply massively replace the population, starve it out, or otherwise eliminate any odds of low morale amongst the populace or active insurgency by simply replacing the entire population.

But that also destroys all inherent economic productivity other than natural resources. Russia already has plenty of land and plenty of resources; what they need is more people in general and productive, creative members of society in particular, neither of which you can make happen by starving a population that hates you for how you fought that war and still holds out hope they can drive you out.

You are right, but also expect some high noble goals from russian leadership. It was supposed to be an easy land grab, a very valuable land grab full of heavy industry and literal gigatons of natural gas. There was never a rich greedy person who didn't want more. And lets not forget they weren't that far from success in first days - if they won Hostomel airport, Kyiv would probably fall and with it the rest would be a domino effect.

Especially given how russian elites are just several pyramids structured (and behaving) exactly like typical mafia. They only go for themselves, screw the rest. They only think now and maybe tomorrow, long term planning ain't a strong point of decision makers to be polite. Nihilism all around, to the very top. The whole war became purely an ego game, emotional stupidity of little boys who simply refuse to lose face (and thus life and legacy) even when colossal fuckup they created is right in their faces all the time.

But is is actually colossal fuckup to them? No it isn't, they get some international hate but plight of commoners is completely irrelevant to them, and who cares when you still have billions all around the globe. Also don't underestimate the capacity of russian population to just quietly accept brutal oppression and go on, its not something west can fully grok. Life of a human being has no value there, that's still the case as it was.,

> And lets not forget they weren't that far from success in first days - if they won Hostomel airport, Kyiv would probably fall and with it the rest would be a domino effect.

I think the war would have been very short if Zelensky hadn’t rejected the USA offer to evacuate him, asking for ammunition instead.

> But is is actually colossal fuckup to them? No it isn't, they get some international hate but plight of commoners is completely irrelevant to them

Maybe it isn’t a colossal fuckup to them _yet_. The plight of commoners was irrelevant to the tsars, too, until it became very relevant, and then, it was too late for them.

My comment originally contained something along the lines of "When the invasion of hostomel failed, they should have ended their operation on the spot" but that felt too presumptuous.

But perhaps it did inform my sense that this war is such a shambles. Because of what Moscow must be thinking about what could have been and how close they came.

I disagree with the 'plight of commoners' comment, though.

This war is being paid by the oligarchs. The printers are printing rubles nonstop and sending them to the commoners. It's not like the russian economy is creating that value (quite the opposite; it's bleeding value). That means the massive amounts of rubles that the oligarchs hold are worth way, way less now. Also a bunch of them have flown out windows.

The plight of the oligarchy that has supported this regime for decades doesn't seem "irrelevant to the tsars" to nearly the same level. There's the sense that the regime has shown they can screw over the oligarchy without repercussion and that can be considered 'a success', but I'm guessing there will be repercussions. Just, now right now, the populace presumably likes the situation partly because they are now much richer (at the cost of the oligarchy) than before. But once this war ends, or drags on too long and the economy collapses due to it - I think we're going to be back to this being a total failure of an operation for the tsars.

important context: That gas is theoretical/unproduced. You need to dig lots of wells first.

Even there I don't really see it. I agree that it was intended as an easy land grab (and I guess, after Hostomel failed, they should have pulled the plug on the SMO then and there and accept the consequences). But the reasons don't make sense.

In particular, that gas thing:

Gas is on the way out. Clearly so. Even during the cuban missile crisis, with everything that was going on, the flow through the pipelines of russian gas to west germany never stopped. It wasn't even considered.

The west totally distrusted russia for good reason. They spent 20 years being a reliable supplier to build up that trust and they finally managed to get it.

And then they toss it out the window like it was nothing even before the 2022 Ukraine invasion.

I think the reason is clear: EU keeps saying it wants to wean itself off of gas in the next 15 years or so. What possible value does this trust relation have if the EU is no longer interested in buying gas at all?

Then either way Russia's grab is nonsensical:

* Either they understand gas's future (as in, 10 to 30 years from now) is highly limited, and this land grab never made any sense; it won't come online in time and the SMO further incentivises EU to divest. Even if the SMO worked out, there'd be some incentive (it did not work and the EU massively divested. They still buy russian gas but are going at an astronomical pace compared to 1970-2010 reliance on russian gas which increased even in the middle of a cold war and crises!)

* Or they do not believe it'll end, in which case that trust relationship is very important, in which case they screwed up the plan when they used their relationship with the EU as supplier-of-gas a bargaining chip even before the failed SMO.

Either way Russia messed this up badly.

Add to that: The ones essentially paying the bill for this war are the oligarchs. The relative rates of richness between the russian plebs and the oligarchs has swung massively towards the plebians. The government is printing rubles nonstop and the average salary of russians has skyrocketed. That, obviously, 'costs' the oligarchs. Their rubles are worth far, far less. Already today and that won't change anytime soon.

Possibly the oligarchs were assuming the SMO would work out, but, "the russian elites dont care and wanted this" - okay, but that means they are idiots then, as this did not at all work out in their favour.

I think it's a lot simpler: Putin is in control, not the oligarchs. Haven't been for a while. As he ages he wants to leave a mark and thinks his reign was best summarized as "carefully shepherding Russia through its terminal decline, down from the days of the USSR" and didn't like the look of that epitaph... and massively underestimated the difficulty of the SMO.

There's nothing more to it.

>if I could go back in time and paint them a picture of how the situation is today, they'd jump out the window

Debatable. The war itself is basically a massively failure, but it completely stabilized the regime. Whereas 5 years ago there were clear questions about what would happen after Putin died, ZOV-logic is enough to power the regime for the next 10 years.

20 years of careful building of liberal oppositions by highlighting corruption is now out of the window. FBK, Kats, Volkov, etc are now all abroad with no chance to return; literally no one gives a fuck about corruption that's not military related. The new "liberal" party that replaced Navalniy & Co (Noviye Lyudi) is basically only liberal in economics.

The only thing that will decide if Russia ends up winning or losing in the long term is whether the "Pivot to Asia" strategy that they basically were forced to take will end up working.

> Debatable

This war either ends eventually or we move back to 'there are clear questions about what is going to happen to the stability of the regime' territory.

And when it ends we... also move back to that.

Probably, anyway. I have no crystal ball and you make a good point; the regime has enjoyed nearly 4 years out of stability out of this, that's a win of some sorts.

There is another aspect that Moscov gets out of the whole shitshow: Economical integration/growth/success of an EU-aligned Ukraine is slowed down.

I believe falling behind former Sovjet countries economically is a continuous pain point for the Putin regime; but getting overtaken by Polish, Slovenian or Czech former "compatriots" is one thing (those being much closer to Europe), but the same happening with Ukraine (or Belarus) would be a whole other story, and seen as complete failure of the regime domestically.

Preventing that is a worthwile outcome for Putins government by itself.

Annexing Ukrainian lands and making them productive was never the primary Russian strategic goal. What they wanted to do was establish defensible strategic depth. There are no natural geographic borders (like mountain ranges or wide rivers) between NATO member states and Moscow so Russian leaders still fear a land invasion from Western Europe (which has happened a couple times before). If they controlled Ukraine then they could make an invasion by NATO much more difficult. I'm not trying to justify Russian aggression but from an amoral geopolitical perspective there was a certain logic to it.

That never made sense to me for various reasons.

Firstly no one in Ukraine or NATO had any thoughts of invading Russia. Even now after Russia launched its war, no one wants to invade Russia. Why invade some godforsaken place with the world's largest nuclear arsenal? Makes no sense.

Second if they wanted to invade they could have gone from Estonia or Latvia which share a border with Russia and are fairly close to Moscow and St Petersburg.

My take is the Russians regard Ukraine as Russian lands and Ukrainians as their property and felt the west was trying to steal it from them by promoting democracy and independence.

I'm not claiming that it makes sense to a rational outside observer, I'm just pointing out part of the strategic calculus from the perspective of a paranoid Russian leader. They conceptualize the world in a fundamentally different way that's hard for westerners to intuitively comprehend. And obviously that wasn't the only factor, they thought they had multiple reasons for acting.

Except Putin is not, and has absolutely never been paranoid of NATO invading Russia.

He literally believed the west would barely react to this invasion. They didn't even take hundreds of billions of dollars of hard cash out of foreign accounts.

Russia continues to pull defensive weapons like SAM systems from the NATO border to use them in Ukraine

Because "NATO invasion" has always been bullshit.

The strategic calculus was that Putin has spent a decade killing anyone who tells him something he doesn't want to hear, so a couple years ago he heard "We could take over all of Ukraine in 3 days and they would welcome us with open arms" and he believed it.

Vladimir Putin genuinely believed that they could blitz Ukraine and be thanked for it.

A reminder that for Putin to genuinely believe that Ukrainian people who the soviets killed and repressed quite significantly would choose to be Russian willingly, he must have believed that EuroMaidan was not genuine protest.

Putin believes the CIA did it.

Which is yet again another reason why the "Protection from NATO" argument is horse shit, because Putin does not believe that a country has to be in NATO for it to be used against Russia.

Let's assume for a moment that this is true. In 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, European militaries were in the process of unilateral disarmament. Military units were being disbanded, bases were being shut down, equipment like Leopard tanks was being sold to places as far away as Chile. The US removed its last permanent heavy equipment from Europe in 2013. The few countries that still had conscription were debating a move to much smaller professional armies.

If a leader in Moscow had truly feared an invasion from the West, why would they have needed to do anything other than sit and wait for the disarmament trend to continue?

Perhaps it was the other way around: the leader in Moscow saw all that and believed that no one would have the resources to stop him?

Exactly. The West did next to nothing when Russia invaded Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, Donbas and Lugansk... no wonder then that Russia kept taking if we kept giving. We should've acted sooner. We would've saved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives if we did.

The reality of Bakhmut is one of failure, massive time and resources used, which led to an attempted coup

What? The latter part discusses the current battles of Kyiv and Gaza in some depth.

Choosing Kyiv as an example of a modern urban warfare is really weird, as there wasn't really much urban fighting at all (with the exception of some Russian saboteur groups in Kyiv), since the main Russian army didn't even make it into the city because their logistics got blown up in the outskirts.

Also, we are talking about the most technologically advanced war that ever took place, where the iteration cycles are measured with weeks. The Russo-Ukrainian war of the beginning of 2022 looked very different from what it currently is. For the actual modern urban warfare see the cities I mentioned.

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I absolutely agree that this analysis was lacking.

I would then ask you about your mention of:

> turning Bakhmut, Vovchansk, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar et al. to _literal_ rubble

Leaving aside the horrible ethics. Would you say that this was an intentional strategic approach by the Russian leaders, as a mechanism of avoiding the difficulty of urban warfare, or an unintended side-effect of trying to conduct urban warfare?

I think they just lack the sophistication to do it any other way. According to their own doctrine, they should be trying to flank and encircle a city, cut off enemy logistics and reinforcements, and suffocate the defenders. But in most cases they were unable to to do, so they just default to pure destruction. It's just simpler to bomb everything that could shelter Ukrainian defenders. Russian artillery and aviation is not really known for their precision. There is nothing surgical about their approach. They are just throwing tons and tons of explosives at urban centers until they are stopped or there is nothing left to bomb. I think the siege of Mariupol was the only somewhat successful Russian urban operation in this war.

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