Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Admiral Yi]

It's not your turn to give a fuck, seriously, not about this. Ukrainians are having maternity hospitals bombed and dying by the thousands. Are Russians being treated legally in the West? If the answer to that is yes, I don't really care if on an individual level people choose to distance themselves from Russian celebrities. Choosing to care about that over the thousands of dead Ukrainians reveals a pretty obvious bias to be quite honest.

Choosing A over B is an argument usually reserved for the progressive left trying to fend off criticism of something one of their own has done and it works just as poorly in this situation.  I can care about both, they are not in conflict.  Letting the pianist play in no way impacts Russian ability to bomb hospitals.  All it does is punish someone who's (bravely) on the right side of the conflict.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's not your turn to give a fuck, seriously, not about this. Ukrainians are having maternity hospitals bombed and dying by the thousands. Are Russians being treated legally in the West? If the answer to that is yes, I don't really care if on an individual level people choose to distance themselves from Russian celebrities. Choosing to care about that over the thousands of dead Ukrainians reveals a pretty obvious bias to be quite honest.

Choosing A over B is an argument usually reserved for the progressive left trying to fend off criticism of something one of their own has done and it works just as poorly in this situation.  I can care about both, they are not in conflict.  Letting the pianist play in no way impacts Russian ability to bomb hospitals.  All it does is punish someone who's (bravely) on the right side of the conflict.

I think most of these situations the Russians in question are not on the right side of the conflict. The Russian pianist is not actually willing to denounce Putin:

In two Facebook posts, Malofeev has decried the war, first writing on March 2 that "the truth is that every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence and predict."

On Monday, however, he added that he's upset by the "hatred going in all directions, in Russia and around the world," and that he "still believe Russian culture and music specifically should not be tarnished by the ongoing tragedy, though it is impossible to stay aside now."

He also said he'd been asked to make more anti-war statements but was "very uncomfortable" about it and was worried it would affect his family in Russia

[Sheilbh]

Choosing A over B is an argument usually reserved for the progressive left trying to fend off criticism of something one of their own has done and it works just as poorly in this situation.  I can care about both, they are not in conflict.  Letting the pianist play in no way impacts Russian ability to bomb hospitals.  All it does is punish someone who's (bravely) on the right side of the conflict.

Yeah I agree. I also don't particularly care about the individual pianist - I fully support a cultural boycott. But that's a boycott of cultural to and in Russia, it's not a boycott of Russian culture. That doesn't really have an impact on Russia which is the point of a cultural boycott - like in South Africa.

[grumbler]

Choosing A over B is an argument usually reserved for the progressive left trying to fend off criticism of something one of their own has done and it works just as poorly in this situation.  I can care about both, they are not in conflict.  Letting the pianist play in no way impacts Russian ability to bomb hospitals.  All it does is punish someone who's (bravely) on the right side of the conflict.

I'm kinda surprised that you even needed to say that.

[Josquius]

It's not your turn to give a fuck, seriously, not about this. Ukrainians are having maternity hospitals bombed and dying by the thousands. Are Russians being treated legally in the West? If the answer to that is yes, I don't really care if on an individual level people choose to distance themselves from Russian celebrities. Choosing to care about that over the thousands of dead Ukrainians reveals a pretty obvious bias to be quite honest.

Choosing A over B is an argument usually reserved for the progressive left trying to fend off criticism of something one of their own has done and it works just as poorly in this situation.  I can care about both, they are not in conflict.  Letting the pianist play in no way impacts Russian ability to bomb hospitals.  All it does is punish someone who's (bravely) on the right side of the conflict.

I think most of these situations the Russians in question are not on the right side of the conflict. The Russian pianist is not actually willing to denounce Putin:

In two Facebook posts, Malofeev has decried the war, first writing on March 2 that "the truth is that every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence and predict."

On Monday, however, he added that he's upset by the "hatred going in all directions, in Russia and around the world," and that he "still believe Russian culture and music specifically should not be tarnished by the ongoing tragedy, though it is impossible to stay aside now."

He also said he'd been asked to make more anti-war statements but was "very uncomfortable" about it and was worried it would affect his family in Russia

I mean... I don't know about you but in my book "I'd love to say the war is wrong but if I do so my family will be sent to the gulag" is actually better than "war bad"

[Malthus]

Anti-tank is definitely at a point where armor isn't nearly as powerful, in my mind, relative to other elements, as it was in the 40s/50s etc. Both shoulder-mounted, towed, and aerial anti-tank options are all quite powerful. The U.S. tries to get around a lot of this by making our Main Battle Tank use active armor and a bunch of other shit that supposedly makes it nigh invulnerable to a lot of common anti-tank weapons, but the reality is you can still lose them.

A tank can definitely still be quite decisive if you need to push into entrenched enemy territory, a couple tanks rolling in on top of dug in enemies suddenly fucks up their situation really bad and opens the entire enemy front to being splintered and broken apart by supporting forces.

There's things happening right now in Ukraine that defy a lot of conventional thinking of how wars would play out like this. The biggest thing by far is U.S. doctrine in all of its modern wars has been to erase the enemy from both the skies and from organized anti-air very, very quickly. Aerial supremacy really changes everything. Like I don't have to worry nearly as much about my column of men and material rolling down a road being ambushed when I have continuous close air support, including attack helicopters running infrared cameras--you aren't ambushing that, and those helos can kill ground forces with terrifying efficiency at great range. Support fixed wing aircraft open all kinds of other opportunities, with their ability to attack enemy soldiers, drop down re-supplies, break apart enemy fortified positions etc. They also remove the ability of the enemy to move, in a situation of aerial supremacy if the enemy is dumb enough to move in the open, they die, almost without fail. Our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan essentially knew that, and you have to work around it in various ways (i.e. by melding in with the civilian population, moving in very small numbers in far out of the way areas etc), but all of those ways definitely lower your ability to fight. Of course the lesson from Afghanistan is even that isn't decisive for an insurgency operation, but it limits the ability of insurgents to perform traditional assaults and offensives.

There's tons of speculation about why Russia hasn't established aerial supremacy, but it would have been unthinkable to most American military experts to imagine a country of Russia's presumed sophistication and power would not have made that a very top goal for the first 48 hours of the war.

I have yet to see a really convincing reason why Russia did not go for air supremacy right off the bat.

Lots of theories out there, I'm in no position to judge which is correct.

- Russia is saving its air assets in case NATO chooses to tangle.

- Russia's air assets have decayed due to corruption.

- Ukraine has decent low level air defences. Shitty weather means air attacks have to be made from low level, which is risky.

Dunno if any of these have any validity, though. Anyone have insights?

[Grey Fox]

Russian AA and Russian Airforce don't coordinate apparently.

[Sheilbh]

I wonder if part it maybe goes back to the miscalculations/assumptions. There wouldn't be much fight and the military wouldn't put up much fight defending a "puppet regime" (see also Putin's call for the military to coup Zelensky because it would be easier to deal with them directly) and as in 2014 when the Russians basically got most of the Ukrainian navy they maybe thought the same would hapen with the air force?

[PDH]

Whatever the reason, thousands of missiles heading into the country, with some now being more than the shorter range ones, makes the air more unsafe for the Russians going forward.

I would chalk it up at least in part to institutional inability to see what it real.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think that's why, from my understanding, Fox have pivoted hard on Ukraine (even Tucker Carlson) - because the directive from above is keep the audience watching.

They haven't really though - they've been speaking out of both sides of their mouth.  They have news segments that cover the story straight but they also run long segments on the FSB conspiracy theory du jour.  Carlson comes out - mumbles a few mea culpas about Putin, but goes right back to "just asking questions" and giving airtime to Putin proxies.  They are keeping the message going out to the pro-Putin deplorables in their viewership base while keeping the normies online by sending out Jennifer Griffin to play whack-a-mole on the very disinformation others are spreading on the same network. 

[grumbler]

I have yet to see a really convincing reason why Russia did not go for air supremacy right off the bat.

Lots of theories out there, I'm in no position to judge which is correct.

- Russia is saving its air assets in case NATO chooses to tangle.

- Russia's air assets have decayed due to corruption.

- Ukraine has decent low level air defences. Shitty weather means air attacks have to be made from low level, which is risky.

Dunno if any of these have any validity, though. Anyone have insights?

My guess, based on what I've seen written various places, is that the Russians didn't have anything like the stockpile of weapons needed to actually gain air superiority (especially SEAD weapons), because it's been so long since they've really considered their needs in a conventional war that they failed top predict their needs accurately.  Russia has spent a shitload of their defense budget on foolish prestige projects like the  hypersonic cruise missile (still not operational five years after nominal IOC) new SSBNs and SSNs, and the hugely expensive 14-plane fleet of Blackjack bombers.  Money for maintenance and weapons stockpiles has apparently been scarce.

In addition, I think that the weather effects reported sound like they impose severe restraints on Russian aircraft survivability, especially in the absence of SEAD. 

[Jacob]

So?  That's not evidence of Kompromat.  I don't believe that a vast array of the people have been suborned by Russian intelligence.  I don't think the Russians have the resources for that.  Instead I believe there are lots of bad people in the world.

I used the world "suborned" in a sentence!

For sure, it's not evidence that it's happened, merely that it's possible. Your thesis that Murdoch is just a giant piece of shit is definitely possible as well

[The Minsky Moment]

Lots of theories out there, I'm in no position to judge which is correct.

- Russia is saving its air assets in case NATO chooses to tangle.

- Russia's air assets have decayed due to corruption.

- Ukraine has decent low level air defences. Shitty weather means air attacks have to be made from low level, which is risky.

Dunno if any of these have any validity, though. Anyone have insights?

No insights but my 2c is all of the above.
Putin is aware of the NATO air assets very close by and recalls back in the 90s how Western opinion eventually swung from "Yugowhere?" to "Bomb the Serbs" after graphic accounts of atrocities went public.  Visual distribution and the media cycle have only radically accelerated since then.

Does Russia have the ability to blunt a NATO air strike?  Whatever hope they have would be eliminated if the air assets available to that task were significantly degraded.  And the early returns from the Ukrainian operations indicate that attempts to deploy airpower usefully carry heavy risks.

[The Minsky Moment]

Your thesis that Murdoch is just a giant piece of shit is definitely possible as well

If nothing else that hypothesis will never be rejected for lack of evidence.

[Berkut]

I give a fuck.  I think canceling the pianist was stupid.

Though if you want to institutionalize it you would be in the impossible position of vetting their anti-Putin credentials.

It's not your turn to give a fuck, seriously, not about this. Ukrainians are having maternity hospitals bombed and dying by the thousands. Are Russians being treated legally in the West? If the answer to that is yes, I don't really care if on an individual level people choose to distance themselves from Russian celebrities. Choosing to care about that over the thousands of dead Ukrainians reveals a pretty obvious bias to be quite honest.

It would appear we all have time to care about multiple things at the same time.