Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[The Minsky Moment]

If it is true that the Russian nuclear arsenal is unreliable overall, that the most reliable warheads are on active platform and the least reliable in reserve, then that increases the potential incentive of a US first strike (counterforce) on the theory that Russia's residual second strike capability lacks credibility.  But if that is true, then if the US publicly messages its belief in the unreliability of the Russian arsenal, it could be interpreted by the Russia as signaling an intention or incentive to first strike, thus giving Russia the "use or lose" incentive to pre-empt with their own first strike.

[The Minsky Moment]

We all have to go back to the drawing boards and read our Schelling again  . . .

[DGuller]

I've always wondered what would happen if one of Russia and US had a 100% credible but short-term failure of all their nuclear arsenal.  Let's say some hackers installed ransomware on the whole nuclear launch system, and it would take the target country 24 hours to get enough bitcoins to get the decryption key.  Would US launch a first strike on Russia?  Would Russia launch a first strike on US?  And what do you do with China, which has nothing to do with any of this, but which can get spooked by all the unprovoked nuclear attacks and start wondering about whether it's in a "use it or lose it" situation itself?

[jimmy olsen]

Had no idea Russia's battle of Donbas losses were already so high. The fact that Russia hasn't already gone for full mobilization is insane. It's likely they are trying to lose. Ukraine has a two month lead on them now.


https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1520313948834353152
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1520313952558895105

I made this chart showing cjlaimed losses over 2 day periods between 14 April and just released information for today. Losses really leapt up after 18 April when the Battle was said to have started. The rise in tank loss rates was approx double and in APC losses more than 75%



If these Ukrainian claims are at all accurate (it should be noted that documented, photographed claims of Russian losses are about two thirds of those claimed, so they certainly should not be out by much) then the Russians have lost 217 tanks and 404 APCs since the battle started

Even if they are exaggerrated by 20 percent, Russian losses would be extreme, around 20 full strength BTGs worth? And according to the Pentagon, the Russians have 92 BTGs in Ukraine.

That means they could have lost 20% of their tanks and APCs in Ukraine since the battle started (thats if the BTGs were at that point close to full strength. If they were considerably weaker, it could be higher).

[Darth Wagtaros]

So? Heavy losses against the Western-backed Nazis will justify further repression and inspire patriotic outrage.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

As long as the russians keep making gains their losses aren't high enough...

[celedhring]

Rumor from non-stupid sources that Gerasimov was wounded yesterday in the attack on a command center at Izyum.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1520765814781186049

I still don't get what the Chief of General Staff is doing in the fucking frontlines, but whatever.

[Legbiter]

It'll be interesting to see who stands next to Putin in the May 9th parade. 

[Malthus]

Rumor from non-stupid sources that Gerasimov was wounded yesterday in the attack on a command center at Izyum.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1520765814781186049

I still don't get what the Chief of General Staff is doing in the fucking frontlines, but whatever.

It seems the Russian way of war is to send senior officers to the front to kick asses when an offensive stalls. Presumably to inspire (or threaten) subordinates in person into making greater efforts.

Having him flown out wounded is unlikely to be very inspiring of greater efforts, though I guess it could be argued that having senior officers sharing the risks of combat may be good for morale - but doesn't that usually mean somewhat lower officers like colonels and the like? The chief of staff visiting the front seems bizarre. I mean, isn't his role supposed to be planning the overall direction of the war?

[PDH]

I mean, isn't his role supposed to be planning the overall direction of the war?

The war plan was decided on months ago, and everything is following that to the "T" - now it is time for the generals to get their rewards for such a successful plan.

[DGuller]

Transnistria is planning to ask Putin for help tomorrow in response to terrorist acts that haven't happened yet.  I wonder if these terrorist acts are still on schedule to happen, despite the publicity.  It's not like revealing the Russian plans has prevented them before.

[grumbler]

Transnistria is taking a big risk going to war on the Russian side.  If the Russians don't win (and it doesn't look like they are going to), then Transnistria will have gone to war on the losing side, and will be eliminated from the map.  Ukraine would, I am sure, be delighted to help Moldova wipe out a Russian force in the Ukrainian rear area.

Transnistria needs to keep the frozen conflict frozen if it is to survive.

[DGuller]

I agree.  This reminds me of one of my USSR HOI4 games.  I helped Spanish Republicans win the civil war, so Spain was my puppet.  I was planning to keep it out of WW2, but then Germany attacked me and I was far less prepared than I expected to be.  I made Spain enter the war so that they'll be a distraction on the other side of Germany while I bought some time to regroup.  It worked out well for me, but far less well for Spain, but at least they I annexed them into USSR at the end of the war, in recognition of their sacrifice.

[celedhring]

Russia going all Indiana Jones villain.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/world/europe/ukraine-scythia-gold-museum-russia.html?fbclid=IwAR2MZYvBmevU6t6EcvfeOXHgdCvqsFv_9Bh4xUgzgPgl12LM97yhtm0RtwY

Ukraine says Russia looted ancient gold artifacts from a museum.

April 30, 2022, 1:18 p.m. ETApril 30, 2022
April 30, 2022

Jeffrey Gettleman and Oleksandr Chubko



KYIV, Ukraine — The heist started when a mysterious man in a white lab coat showed up at the museum.

A squad of Russian soldiers stood behind him, with guns, watching eagerly.

Using long tweezers and special gloves, the man in the white coat carefully extracted scores of special gold artifacts more than 2,300 years old from cardboard boxes in the cellar of a museum in Melitopol, a southern town in Russian-occupied territory, Ukrainian officials said. The gold items were from the Scythian empire and dated back to the fourth century B.C.

Then the mysterious expert, the Russian soldiers and the gold disappeared.

"The orcs have taken hold of our Scythian gold," declared Melitopol's mayor, Ivan Fyodorov, using a derogatory term many Ukrainians reserve for Russian soldiers. "This is one of the largest and most expensive collections in Ukraine, and today we don't know where they took it."

This was hardly the first attack on Ukrainian culture since the war began.

In Mariupol, the town that has been hammered for weeks by Russian forces, officials said that Russian agents broke into an art museum and stole masterpiece paintings, a famous sculpture and several highly valued Christian icons.

Across Ukraine, officials said, dozens of Orthodox churches, national monuments and cultural heritage sites have been destroyed. In one town near Kyiv, Borodianka, Russian soldiers shot the bust of a famous Ukrainian poet in the head.

On Saturday, Ukrainian officials said that more than 250 cultural institutions had been damaged or destroyed.

But perhaps no cultural heist has been as brazen as what unfolded in Melitopol just a few days ago.

According to Leila Ibrahimova, the director of the Melitopol Museum of Local History, the trouble started in late February, when Russian forces shelled the airport and took over the city. Soldiers went on a rampage, smashing into supermarkets, stores and homes.

Most of the city's residents hid inside their houses. But a few museum workers, including Ms. Ibrahimova, made their way back to the museum.

It is an elegant, three-story, stone building in the old part of town, home to 50,000 exhibits, from Soviet-era medals to old battle axes. But its prized collection was a set of rare gold ornaments from the Scythians, a nomadic people that founded a rich, powerful empire, centered in the Crimean Peninsula, that endured from around the eighth century B.C. to the second century A.D.

It was the Scythian gold that Ms. Ibrahimova was most worried about.

She and other staff members secretly hid it and some other historic artifacts in cardboard boxes, stashing the boxes in a dank cellar where they didn't think anyone would find it.

"We knew that any second someone could come into the museum with a weapon," she said. So they worked fast, she said, because "the collection is priceless."

In mid-March, Ms. Ibrahimova said Russian troops burst into her house with assault rifles, threw a black hood over her head and kidnapped her. After several hours of intense questioning, they let her go. Two weeks later she left Melitopol for an area not under Russian control.

But on Wednesday, she received a call from a caretaker at the museum. The caretaker said Russian soldiers, along with intelligence officers and a Russian-speaking man in a white lab coat, had come to her house in the morning and ordered her, at gunpoint, to go with them to the museum.

They commanded her to take them to the Scythian gold.

The caretaker refused, Ms. Ibrahimova said. But the man in the white coat found the boxes anyway with the help of a Ukrainian, Evgeny Gorlachev, who was appointed by the Russian military as the museum's new director, she said. A Russian crew filmed part of the robbery.

"We hid everything but somehow they found it," she said.

What was stolen: at least 198 gold items, including ornaments in the form of flowers; gold plates; rare old weapons; 300-year-old silver coins; and special medals. She said many of the gold artifacts had been given to the Scythians by the Greeks.


In an interview on Russian television, Mr. Gorlachev said the gold artifacts "are of great cultural value for the entire former Soviet Union" and that the previous administrators of the museum "spent a lot of effort and energy" to hide them.

"For what purpose, no one knows," he said. "But thanks to these people and the operational work carried out, residents of the city of Melitopol — and not only Melitopol — will be able to observe again a large collection of Scythian gold." He did not say when or where the artifacts would be displayed.

Ms. Ibrahimova, who spoke by phone, sounded despondent as she spoke about the Russian invaders.

"Maybe culture is the enemy for them," she said. "They said that Ukraine has no state, no history. They just want to destroy our country. I hope they will not succeed."

Scythian gold has enormous symbolic value in Ukraine. Other collections of the artifacts had been stored in vaults in the capital, Kyiv, before the war broke out. But Ms. Ibrahimova said events unfolded too fast for her museum to spirit out their collection.

For years now, Ukraine has been locked in a complicated dispute with Russia over collections of Scythian gold that several museums in Crimea had lent to a museum in Amsterdam. After Russia seized Crimea in 2014, Ukraine pleaded with the Amsterdam museum not to return the gold. Russia demanded the museum do just that. A court has ruled in Ukraine's favor and the gold remains in Amsterdam.

But historians said the looting of the artifacts in Melitopol is an even more egregious attempt to appropriate, and perhaps destroy, Ukraine's cultural heritage.

"The Russians are making a war without rules," said Oleksandr Symonenko, a fellow of Ukraine's Archaeology Institute and a Scythian specialist. "This is not a war. It is destroying our life, our nature, our culture, our industry, everything. This is a crime."

The caretaker who refused to help the Russians was released on Wednesday after the gold was stolen. But on Friday she was taken away from her house at gunpoint again, Ms. Ibrahimova said, shortly after the mayor, who is also in exile, announced the theft.

She has not been heard from since.

[Tamas]

Explosions in Belgorod overnight, allegedly in Kursk as well.

I am really puzzled by where the Russian airforce is. Thinking at the start that you don't need them because you stroll in and take over in a shower of flowers from the natives is one thing, but since then? Does the airforce even exist?