Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Jacob]

I think Russia might be a little more careful with the "we'll murder people in your country, watchugonnadoaboutit huh?" thing right now.

Right now I'd guess that the value of not triggering a "well fuck you, we're giving andother $400 million in aid to Ukraine" response is higher than the intimidation factor in most cases.

But homegrown reactionaries radicalized by "what the West is doing to Russia" is probably fair game.

[Barrister]

Russia, for all it's bluster about "being at war with NATO", has been pretty careful to not extend the war to any NATO countries in any way.

Although it's killed people in Berlin and the UK in the last five years. I don't think they'd stop that type of operation just because of what's going on in Ukraine.

But I agree it doesn't feel like Russia - I can't see why they'd attack any particular Ukrainian embassy or diplomat and I'd trust them to put a bomb together successfully.

Fair point on all the Russian assasinations - but they have all exclusively been against Russian opponents to the regime, no?  I don't think they've gone and murdered any UK or German nationals


Edit: they have, of course murdered many Ukrainian nationals as well (Victor Yuschenko most prominently, although he did survive)

[Sheilbh]

Fair point on all the Russian assasinations - but they have all exclusively been against Russian opponents to the regime, no?  I don't think they've gone and murdered any UK or German nationals

Litvinenko and the Skripals were British citizens, and they just left the Novichok in Salisbury so about three months later two random people happened to be exposed and one died.

Although I agree I don't think they've targeted foreign nationals without a Russian traitor angle and I can't see why they'd target a Ukrainian diplomat in a random country.

[Barrister]

Fair point on all the Russian assasinations - but they have all exclusively been against Russian opponents to the regime, no?  I don't think they've gone and murdered any UK or German nationals

Litvinenko and the Skripals were British citizens, and they just left the Novichok in Salisbury so about three months later two random people happened to be exposed and one died.

Although I agree I don't think they've targeted foreign nationals without a Russian traitor angle and I can't see why they'd target a Ukrainian diplomat in a random country.

British citizens but Russian nationals.

[celedhring]

Another letter bomb has been intercepted at an armaments manufacturer that has supplied RPGs to Ukraine.

[Legbiter]

Interesting. Either vatnik diaspora or sympathizer with too much free time on their hand...

[celedhring]

Third bomb intercepted at a Spanish air force base (also used by NATO) near Madrid.

EDIT: and two more, one addressed to the Spanish president and another to Ministry of Defence. All of them low-grade stuff.

[Duque de Bragança]

I think Russia might be a little more careful with the "we'll murder people in your country, watchugonnadoaboutit huh?" thing right now.

Right now I'd guess that the value of not triggering a "well fuck you, we're giving andother $400 million in aid to Ukraine" response is higher than the intimidation factor in most cases.

But homegrown reactionaries radicalized by "what the West is doing to Russia" is probably fair game.

Or self-styled "anti-imperialist" leftists, radicalised tankies.

[Sheilbh]

Another interesting Turkish move, they're sending electricity power ships to the coast of Odessa to provide power into Ukraine which, presumably because it's under a Turkish flag, can't be bombed by Russia.

I've said it before but I think Turkey's positioning in this war has been fascinating and it feels likes one thing they've maybe achieved is that they are now the primary Black Sea power?

[The Brain]

I've said it before but I think Turkey's positioning in this war has been fascinating and it feels likes one thing they've maybe achieved is that they are now the primary Black Sea power?

A reason why I think it's not at all obvious that Turkey would let Ukraine into NATO.

[Legbiter]

Pretty good summary of the military lessons coming out of the Ukraine war.

Long range artillery is king, drones need to be simple and plentiful, your advanced botique drones will be gone in a few days, forces need to be dispersed and most NATO militaries have maybe one weeks' worth of munitions and equipment with very little prospects of quickly ramping up production in case of a real war. Good read.

Contrary to popular wisdom, Javelin and nlaw anti-tank missiles supplied by America and Britain did not save the day, despite featuring heavily in video footage from the first week of the conflict. Nor did Turkey's tb2 drones, which struggled to survive after day three. "The propaganda value of Western equipment...was extremely high at the beginning of the war," noted Jack Watling of rusi, one of the report's authors, recently on "The Russia Contingency", a podcast on Russian military issues. "It didn't really have a substantial material effect on the course of the fighting...until...April." The decisive factor was more prosaic, he added. "What blunted the Russians north of Kyiv was two brigades of artillery firing all their barrels every day.

The pivotal role of artillery is a sobering thought for western European armies, whose firepower has dwindled dramatically since the end of the cold war. From 1990 to 2020, the number of artillery pieces among large European armies declined by 57%, according to a tally by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, another think-tank in London. Ukraine's arsenal was formidable. It started the war with over 1,000 barrel artillery systems (those with long tubes) and 1,680 multiple-rocket launchers—more than Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Poland put together, and the largest artillery force in Europe after Russia. The principal constraint was ammunition.

Ukraine maintained "artillery parity" for around six weeks, far longer than almost any Western army would have managed under the same circumstances. Then it began running out of shells, giving Russia a ten-to-one advantage in the volume of fire by June, an imbalance that persisted until Ukraine received an influx of advanced Western artillery systems, including the American himars. "[C]onsumption rates in high-intensity warfighting remain extraordinarily high," note the authors. Few Western countries have the capacity to build new weapons, spare parts and ammunition at the rate required. "nato members other than the us are not in a strong position on these fronts."

Drones have played a vital role, though largely for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance rather than for strike missions. Russian units which had their own drones, rather than relying on those from a higher headquarters, could rain down "highly responsive fires", says rusi, striking targets within three to five minutes of detecting them—a remarkably speedy sensor-shooter loop by historical standards. The figure for units without their own drones was around half an hour—with lower accuracy.

But a key lesson from Ukraine is that armies need more drones than they think. Around 90% of all drones used by the Ukrainian armed forces between February and July were destroyed, notes rusi. The average life expectancy of a fixed-wing drone was approximately six flights; that of a simpler quadcopter a paltry three. Such attrition would chew up the fleets of European armies in a matter of days.

It puts a premium on cheap and simple systems, which can be treated as near-disposable, rather than tiny fleets of large and expensive drones, with big liquid-fuelled engines, carrying advanced sensors. That, in turn, requires a larger number of trained personnel who can fly them, and a more relaxed attitude towards their use in peacetime. "At present, there are fewer administrative restrictions for [Britain's] Royal Artillery to fire live 155-mm howitzer munitions over civilian roads," sniffs rusi, "than for them to fly a [drone] over the same airspace to monitor what they are hitting."

Economist: What is the war in Ukraine teaching Western armies?

[Josquius]

I would take a pinch of salt here that this is looking at a smaller nation single headedly defending against a land invasion from a superior invader.
This isn't a situation NATO is ever likely to find itself in.
I don't think its that NATO is poorly prepared for modern war so much that the wars they plan to fight will be short snappy affairs rather than anything like what Ukraine has to deal with.
Still some lessens to take of course- there can always be another Ukraine that needs passive support- but not quite a case to  totally shift the setup of our forces.

[Grey Fox]

Nato's artillery plan is air supremacy, no?

[Jacob]

Or self-styled "anti-imperialist" leftists, radicalised tankies.

Yeah, also a possibility. Personally I consider tankies to be the reactionary left, so included in my initial statement.

[Duque de Bragança]

Or self-styled "anti-imperialist" leftists, radicalised tankies.

Yeah, also a possibility. Personally I consider tankies to be the reactionary left, so included in my initial statement.

If you include them among reactionaries, a somewhat vague concept IMO, it makes sense.