Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[DGuller]

Kadyrov fulfills other roles as well.  Chechens can be very active in Moscow when it comes to assassinations, and many suspect that he's a useful crazy guy at Putin's disposal.  Kadyrov probably was behind Nemtsov's murder, but he probably wasn't the one who ordered it.  He's also a counterweight to FSB, which loathes him, and his fate is probably tightly linked to Putin's fate.  I don't think FSB will let him live for long once Kadyrov's protection goes away.

[Duque de Bragança]

Gone are the days where he was Head or deputy head of the kolkhoz or sovkhoz?

[Razgovory]

I don't think a civil war would be driven by popular sentiment in the provinces, but rather by elites with control of military forces being unable to agree on how to share power. People like Kadyrov and Prigozhin, for example. Someone setting themselves up as spokesperson for "disgruntled mobiks" or "returned veterans who were betrayed by the generals" or, maybe a regional commander collaborating with a regional governor.

That could, superficially, look like it's driven by popular sentiment - it might be used as propaganda - for example, but I don't think it'll be the primary cause.

Kadyrov is a Chechen with a powerbase in the tiny Chechen Republic, and importantly he is not ethnically Russian--he would be a non-entity in a civil war.

The last Russian civil war saw minorities play an outsize role.  Notably Jukums Vacietis and his Latvian Riflemen.

[Berkut]

I mean, if you only looked at social media and twitter, you would conclude that the USA is composed of nothing by right wing bigot MAGA asses and social justice warrior identity politics crazies. The reality is that those extremes are not at all representative of most Americans.

I won't comment on the current democratic administration but in 2016 we literally elected the MAGA guy president. Doesn't really seem like a fringe extreme.

Yeah we may talk about the silent majority and all that but look at the people getting elected.

That is because the system is broken, not because there isn't a majority who don't align with who is getting elected.

This isn't exactly news you know.

[celedhring]

Reports that utilities are being restored in most bombed areas, and so far the death toll isn't - touch wood - as frightening as I feared yesterday.

The Russians seem to have expended an impressive amount of expensive ordinance for just chest beating and bloodlust. Thank god their callousness isn't matched by their wits.

[crazy canuck]

The Russians are apparently using repurposed surface to air missiles for these attacks. 

[Josquius]

The Russians are apparently using repurposed surface to air missiles for these attacks. 

That 5 year old who ran around shouting "Nerr I'm an aeroplane" must be feeling so guilty.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Missile strikes like this generally are not going to be effective at causing "mass death", at least not if you're thinking in the order of thousands of dead civilians. That is the stuff of large-scale dumb bombing of civilian centers, and large-scale artillery bombardment of same (the latter of which has happened extensively in the war, the use of dumb munitions dropped from planes has also occurred albeit to a lesser degree), these sort of cruise missiles are primarily intended to hit and destroy targets of strategic importance, their precision and flight dynamics are generally what make them expensive and valuable. They are actually a fairly expensive and unwise tool for "terror" bombing, there are lower tech missiles that are less accurate that are more bang for your buck there--but they also tend to be relatively low yield relative to the publicity they create.

At population scale weapons of this type being used this way, purely are a demoralization effort, and one that probably won't work--in this specific instance I think they are largely being used for PR purposes by Putin for domestic political reasons. There's actually so much double speak going on in Russia it puts Putin in a weird position. They want him to "escalate" against the Ukrainians, but it ignores the fact he has already escalated massively beyond these sort of missile strikes. We are finding evidence of torture chambers and mass murder in Russian occupied territory, and he basically has leveled several entire cities with artillery (specifically against one of the earliest Geneva Conventions) in the southeast, including destroying multiple civilian and humanitarian gathering points. Those incidents caused a lot more death than these missiles, but were not reported on much in Russia because they don't paint the "right kind of picture" of the war (special military operation) back home.

This puts Putin in a situation where his hardliners want him to escalate, but it's hard to escalate when you are already mass murdering and doing war crimes every single day. The ways in which his public perceives him as being strong then require him to do things that actually don't militarily make much sense.

[Berkut]

Yeah, the entire thing is just becoming bizarre.

I mean, how do you escalate without nuking something? It's not like they were treating their attack on Ukraine with kid gloves previously, and that is why it hasn't gone well.

It's kind of like the hardliners in the USA demanding that we "take the gloves off" and escalate in Vietnam, except that in the case we actually were in fact fighting with the gloves on, and there was in fact a lot of escalation steps available (some of which were actually taken, of course).

Putin is a victim of his own lies. This is not new of course - authoritarians who control the media always become victimes of their own lies. When you deny reality, eventually reality notices. Then what?

This is all scary. More and more we are moving away from rationally reasoned evaluation of options for Russia. I see only two real options for them going forward:

1. Accept that they lost and make the best possible deal they can and end the war.
2. Actually escalate.

#1 seems impossible from a political standpoint for Putin. Or maybe even just a personal standpoint, or both.

#2? There is nowhere to escalate, except with NBC weapons. 

I hope I am wrong about #1. That is why I am quite hopeful that there is a coup or some kind of transfer of power. Putin cannot do what needs to be done. If he is replaced, no matter who replaces him, that person or persons will have radically more political space to maneuver, if only because Putin doesn't appear to have any space at all. They could come up with some version of #1, and simply blame it all on Putin, regardless of how hard line they might appear to be, they cannot practically actually be MORE hard line on the war then Putin. 

[celedhring]

After the annexation I was expecting some kind of ultimatum "leave Russian territory or else...", the fact we haven't had anything of the sort makes me think that nukes - so far - are not on the table. I feel they're relying on the mobiks to help them resume offensive operations and stall this thing long enough that the political landscape in the west becomes more favorable, which doesn't seem that great of a bet.

[alfred russel]

Yeah, the entire thing is just becoming bizarre.

I mean, how do you escalate without nuking something? It's not like they were treating their attack on Ukraine with kid gloves previously, and that is why it hasn't gone well.

It's kind of like the hardliners in the USA demanding that we "take the gloves off" and escalate in Vietnam, except that in the case we actually were in fact fighting with the gloves on, and there was in fact a lot of escalation steps available (some of which were actually taken, of course).

Putin is a victim of his own lies. This is not new of course - authoritarians who control the media always become victimes of their own lies. When you deny reality, eventually reality notices. Then what?

This is all scary. More and more we are moving away from rationally reasoned evaluation of options for Russia. I see only two real options for them going forward:

1. Accept that they lost and make the best possible deal they can and end the war.
2. Actually escalate.

#1 seems impossible from a political standpoint for Putin. Or maybe even just a personal standpoint, or both.

#2? There is nowhere to escalate, except with NBC weapons.

I hope I am wrong about #1. That is why I am quite hopeful that there is a coup or some kind of transfer of power. Putin cannot do what needs to be done. If he is replaced, no matter who replaces him, that person or persons will have radically more political space to maneuver, if only because Putin doesn't appear to have any space at all. They could come up with some version of #1, and simply blame it all on Putin, regardless of how hard line they might appear to be, they cannot practically actually be MORE hard line on the war then Putin.

I don't think it is bizarre. From the perspective of February, this is the logical place we would arrive at in the event the russians militarily failed.

[Tamas]

Allegedly one of the Kerch bridge fatalities was a high profile Russian judge who was considered quite independent-minded and dealt with stuff re. Gazprom for example, his last case was against the daughter of Kadirov...

Interesting coincidence, if true. I wouldn't expect Kadirov's men could sneak a big enough explosive on the guy's car to do this much damage let alone time the explosion that well, but Kadirov was calling for an escalation...

[celedhring]

I still find the Kerch bombing really odd. The whole suicide bombing doesn't really fit Ukrainian M.O., but who knows.

[Tamas]

I still find the Kerch bombing really odd. The whole suicide bombing doesn't really fit Ukrainian M.O., but who knows.

Has anyone but Russia claimed it was suicide bombing?

[Jacob]

I feel like if the Ukrainians didn't do it, they'd let it be known. Russian infighting and false flag stuff is pretty damaging to Russia as well.

But who knows.