Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[The Brain]

I wonder if we will see a major mutiny by a Russian army unit soon. Would rule.

[Sheilbh]

I hope the siege of Warsaw in 1939 isn't a guide for how long Kyiv can hold out:[...]
Warsaw garrison surrendered on the 27th September; 27 days after this Russia invasion of Ukraine is Tuesday March 22nd.

I have no idea on military stuff but I suspect Kyiv's a bit of a nightmare city to try and take. It's very up and down, lots of hills. There are cave networks in parts of the city and the Soviets built the world's deepest metro system (to use as a nuclear bunker). It doesn't strike me as easy to take (at leasts on the West side of the Dnieper, I think the East is more flat).

Damn, it is catchy    Bayraktar!

It really is - unexpected

[Maladict]

I hope the siege of Warsaw in 1939 isn't a guide for how long Kyiv can hold out:[...]
Warsaw garrison surrendered on the 27th September; 27 days after this Russia invasion of Ukraine is Tuesday March 22nd.

I have no idea on military stuff but I suspect Kyiv's a bit of a nightmare city to try and take. It's very up and down, lots of hills. There are cave networks in parts of the city and the Soviets built the world's deepest metro system (to use as a nuclear bunker). It doesn't strike me as easy to take (at leasts on the West side of the Dnieper, I think the East is more flat).

The elevation only really works when defending against an attack across the river, from what I've seen at least.
And those caves are more like catacombs, far too small for military purposes and a major religious shrine. The metro is a different story, those escalators are unbelievably long.

[celedhring]

If Kyiv can last 3 weeks (like Warsaw did) I'd call it a win. I'm not sure the Russians can carry out a prolonged campaign, materially and politically.

[Josquius]

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1498945849258397696
https://twitter.com/chrsaile/status/1498948785631809536
https://twitter.com/chrsaile/status/1498949612815724553

The mayor of #Konotop declares that the occupiers have delivered an ultimatum - either he surrenders the city to them, or they will completely destroy it.

Mayor: They have given us the condition: Surrender or the city will be shelled with artillery. We have a choice, surrender or fight. [Repeats]. We vote, who is for fighting?
Crowd: [Rather undecided.]

Mayor: I'm for it. But we have to make the decision together, because the attack will be on the whole city.

Translated by my fiancee, while we received the message that Odessa is being attacked, where her mother is stuck. My heart is bleeding.

EDIT: The Russians who made the demand to the mayor above held grenades in their hands as a deadman safety features to keep from getting lynched
https://twitter.com/kemal_115/status/1498960233544224770

This video is the perfect analogy for the Russian invasion overall.

[Sheilbh]

The elevation only really works when defending against an attack across the river, from what I've seen at least.
And those caves are more like catacombs, far too small for military purposes and a major religious shrine. The metro is a different story, those escalators are unbelievably long.

Interesting - I might be wrong but there's the small catacomb caves at the Lavra but I swear I'd read there were cave networks under some of the other hills and that you could do potholing and stuff there. Might not be useful though.

[The Larch]

From a FT piece on the possible impact of the war on commodities:

[Zanza]

Charkiv:

[The Larch]

The EU has just announced new economic sanctions against Belarus. Combination of sanctions against individuals (members of the government and the military) and economic sectors (steel, chemicals and timber).

[jimmy olsen]

If Kyiv can last 3 weeks (like Warsaw did) I'd call it a win. I'm not sure the Russians can carry out a prolonged campaign, materially and politically.

City covers 839 km2 (324 sq mi) and has 3 million people. That's a huge area to encircle. The Russians have 200k people max in country including Belorussians.

Even if half of them invest Kiev is that enough to do it tightly? They have to set guards facing both directions to fend off attacks from Ukranian forces from outside the city, especially the west.

[Maladict]

The elevation only really works when defending against an attack across the river, from what I've seen at least.
And those caves are more like catacombs, far too small for military purposes and a major religious shrine. The metro is a different story, those escalators are unbelievably long.

Interesting - I might be wrong but there's the small catacomb caves at the Lavra but I swear I'd read there were cave networks under some of the other hills and that you could do potholing and stuff there. Might not be useful though.

Could well be, and I'm sure there are lots of underground passages and tunnels.

[Sheilbh]

I thought Lawrence Freedman's latest assessment of where we are was interesting:

Russia's Plan C
And Plan D...
Lawrence Freedman
Mar 2   

As the Russo-Ukrainian War takes a darker turn it is important to emphasise this essential point. This is a war that Vladimir Putin cannot win, however long it lasts and however cruel his methods. 

From the start the Russian campaign has been hampered by political objectives that cannot be translated into meaningful military objectives. Putin has described a mythical Ukraine, a product of a fevered imagination stimulated by cockeyed historical musings. His Ukraine appears as a wayward sibling to be rescued from the 'drug addicts and Nazis' (his phrase) that have led it astray. It is not a fantasy that Ukrainians recognise. They see it as an excuse to turn their country into a passive colony and this they will not allow. No Russian-backed government would have legitimacy and Russia lacks the capacity for an indefinite occupation to keep such a government in place.

This underlying strategic folly has been reinforced by the tactical ineptitude with which the campaign has been prosecuted. A quick and relatively painless victory, with Kyiv in Russian hands and President Zelensky nowhere to be seen, might have allowed Putin to impose a victor's peace of some sort, whether in promises of neutrality and demilitarisation, new constitutional arrangements, or even territorial concessions.

Instead, the Russian generals chose to show how smart they were by relying on speed and surprise to take key cities, using only a fraction of the assembled force, and not even bothering to gain control of the skies. The arrogance of the plan was shown in the move against the capital. This involved flying in regular units to the outskirts of the capital to meet up with special forces and sundry saboteurs already in its precincts. This ended as an operational shamble.

The failure of Plan A hampered the switch to Plan B. The Ukrainians were able to slow the movement of incoming troops by harassing them and forcing them to follow roundabout routes, including by blowing up bridges. Advancing Russian forces were split up creating problems of coordination and enabling individual convoys to be ambushed up by the defenders. Problems of logistics grew as supply convoys, including those carrying essential fuel, were unable to keep up with the forward units. On 28 February a massive convoy was reported – 40 miles long – and said to be travelling towards Kyiv. In practice it turned out to be a series of smaller convoys, jammed together because the road is blocked by vehicles that have broken down or run out of fuel. The Ukrainians do not need to go to great lengths to interdict this offensive force: it has stopped itself. 

If only for reasons of prudence, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves in the analysis, we must still assume that the Russians will be more successful in bringing the weight of their military strength to bear. We get far more sight on social media of Russian prisoners, along with their abandoned and destroyed vehicles, than we do of the travails of Ukrainian forces (although one suspects that Russian media would not have been slow to present images of miserable Ukrainian prisoners had they been available). In the South those forces moving in from Crimea continue to have more success, although even here progress has been less than expected.  If they are able to capture the Black Sea port city of Kherson that will be a blow to the Ukrainian war effort.

Space for Time

Yet even with such gains getting into a city is not the same as holding it. Contrary to the BBC's map, territory in which the Russians move freely is not under their control. Control is a political and not a military concept. The Ukrainians have not tried to defend every inch of their land but instead have made their stands in the key cities, of which the two largest Kyiv and Kharkiv remain symbolically and politically the most important. They have traded space for time, and then used that time to strengthen their position. 

Most importantly, they have mobilised and organised a popular militia to help defend their cities. Zelensky found the words to motivate his people and gain international support. The Ukrainian narrative speaks of solidarity, heroism, and sacrifice, with no suggestion that the coming days and weeks will be anything other than tough. This forms a stark contrast to the Russian narrative of festering grievances and phoney innocence, as Putin's mouthpieces have been unable to provide convincing accounts of what Russian forces were doing and why, and left pointing to the unrelated crimes of others to justify their own. 

As a result of this the international community has been galvanised into action, promising to keep up arms supplies (assuming they can get through) and, crucially, imposing far more severe economic sanctions than most observers anticipated. Meanwhile, allies of Putin have kept their distance and, in some cases, have come out strongly against the Russia invasion. Hungary has fallen into line with its EU and NATO partners. China is not going to take the side of the West or impose sanctions, but it abstained in the UN Security Council vote and has insisted on the importance of Ukrainian sovereignty and protecting civilians. As Chinese citizens are in Ukraine it is alarmed by their vulnerability to Russian strikes. We know of other foreign nationals that have been killed, including from Greece, India, and Israel.

Apart from the odd exceptions such as the Assad regime in Syria, which owes its existence to Russian firepower, and Pakistan, which oddly took this moment to sign a new trade deal, Russia has minimal international support. Even Kazakhstan, where Russian troops were sent in January to help restore order, has refused to support Moscow. President Lukashenko of Belarus, Putin's co-conspirator, provided a vital staging post for the Russian invasion, but even he may be dithering about the extent to which he wishes his own troops to be engaged, not least, one presumes, because this would add to his deep unpopularity. 

Lastly, though this has yet to be of value, the Russians accepted the possibility of a negotiated cease-fire, as opposed to an imposed peace, by agreeing to talks at the border with Belarus. It is worth noting that Putin prior to the war showed no interest in direct talks with the Ukrainian government, not least because this would confer upon them some legitimacy. Putin's spokesman has acknowledged Zelensky as the true leader of Ukraine. In the past Putin proposed only that the Ukrainian government talked to the separatist leaders from the Donbas. A channel of sorts to the West is being kept up by President Macron's conversations with Putin. China may now get engaged as a mediator. But in the end any deal has to be negotiated directly with the Ukrainians. It is not for others to decide on their behalf what they should accept.

Plan C

Putin has now been forced to move to Plan C. There are a number of elements, some of which are left over from Plans A and B. Because there is an improvised, ad hoc aspect to what is going on now, it would be unwise to be too definite about what is to come. 

On 27 February Putin highlighted Russia's nuclear strength and announced that he had raised the alert status of his deterrent forces a notch, which is one still short of getting close to a war footing. There has been a lot of speculation about why he did this, which is normal these days when trying to understand any of his moves, and anxiety about where this might be heading, which is appropriate given his state of mind. The simplest explanation remains that in the face of growing material support from the West for Ukraine, and heightened sanctions against Russia, he wanted to reinforce the warning against foreign interference he made when announcing the invasion. He will be aware of proposals for NATO to announce a 'No Fly Zone'. This would be tantamount to a declaration of war, as NATO aircraft took on Russian, and for that reason has been ruled out by NATO leaders. At any rate to fully protect Ukrainian cities a 'No Artillery Zone' would also be required. 

It is the strikes against cities that are the most alarming and upsetting aspect of this stage of the war. Their strategic effects remain difficult to gauge, but three points are worth noting.

First, a lot depends on the reaction of the population. Although it is a cliché to assume that civilians under bombardment become more defiant and learn resilience that is not invariably the case. It depends on the extent of the bombing, the prior state of their morale, and the quality of their leaders. So far,  however, in this case the cliché appears to be true. Kharkiv, the city that has suffered the worst, remains defiant. This is supposedly one of the most Russophile cities in Ukraine, where the Russians hoped to trigger a popular counter-revolution to the EuroMaidan revolution of February 2014. No longer.

Second, it may be as the Russian claim that some strikes are directed against key military and government targets, but no serious effort has been made to avoid civilian death and destruction. Even if some of the targets have a tactical purpose, this may reflect another fallacy, that destroying administrative buildings or media towers really makes a big difference to a war at this stage.  Ukraine is being run from Kyiv's Metro stations and underground passageways, and on zoom calls.

Third, to make a strategic difference these attacks need to be related to other military moves. Here we come to the big choices the Russian military must make. Artillery can be used, brutally, as an instrument of urban warfare, to demoralise the defenders, to remove defensive positions and create pathways for an offence. But we know, from Stalingrad to Grozny, that defenders can fight amongst the rubble. Even at that desperate stage, urban settings remain a challenge for invading force. Units can get lost and isolated, caught in city streets, with reliable intelligence difficult to acquire. If Russian commanders want to keep their casualties down this is an uncomfortable prospect. 

Furthermore, to emphasise an early point, and as we have seen in areas where Russians have moved in, presence is not the same as control. There are numerous images now of Russian troops being confronted by large crowds of angry, unarmed residents and unsure what to do. It is one thing to kill civilians from afar with artillery and missile strikes, but another to have to look ordinary people in the eye, who could be your relatives, in a street similar to your home town, and start to shoot them out of the way. Somehow if they wish to hold what they have taken, the occupying forces will have to introduce the numbers able to impose curfews and deal with protestors, while protecting themselves from ambushes.

The alternative might be to mount sieges. The population can be forced to spend their time in bunkers, while cities loses power, food and medicines becomes scarce, and the situation becomes progressively more distressing. This may end up being, by default, Plan C, especially if Russians continue to struggle with efforts to get more than footholds in the major cities.  Human beings can endure these conditions for some time but at some point this will lead to a humanitarian crisis. In this respect calls for corridors to allow civilians to escape or just efforts to get in extra supplies while the cities are not completely surrounded can be expected.

A siege is unlikely to bring results quickly enough for Putin. His people are not suffering in the same way but Russia's economy is now under siege. He can cope with this for the moment, and clamp down on dissent and independent news outlets. But the human and economic costs of this war cannot be covered up for long. People discover what has happened to their sons and brothers, and how little their roubles can buy. Putin needs this war to be over sooner rather than later. He can't afford to be too patient. Little about his demeanour has been reported, other than intense frustration. 

Plan D

If there was ever any possibility that this war would end with the complete subjugation of Ukraine by force of arms this has now gone. Nor will it end with Russian forces being chased out of the country. Most likely there will be a negotiated conclusion, probably at the cease-fire talks. Although it is possible to conjure up some document in which the Ukrainians promise not to do things that they would not have done anyway (like develop a nuclear arsenal or be Nazis), and might even make some major concessions, such as accept the loss of Crimea, they must emerge from this ordeal as a free and independent country with no Russian troops on their soil.

It is now as likely that there will be regime in Moscow as in Kyiv. Machiavelli posed the question of whether it is better for a prince to be loved or feared. His answer was that it was best to be both, but if a choice must be made it had to be fear. 'If the subjects fear the ruler, that fear guarantees support. They ask themselves: "What will he do to us, if we are disloyal?"' Putin, who has isolated himself, in all senses of the word, risks now losing that aura of ruthless power that he has carefully cultivated. That aura meant that only the bravest of domestic opponents took him on and autocrats elsewhere embraced him as an exemplar to follow. We know that he still enjoys much popular support even though demonstrations against the war continue. What will matter most will be rumblings among the elite as they see the consequences of their leader's recklessness. When we know more about how this war ends we will understand better how his regime ends. 

[Sheilbh]

The EU has just announced new economic sanctions against Belarus. Combination of sanctions against individuals (members of the government and the military) and economic sectors (steel, chemicals and timber).

Just on this - I can't see a reason any more not to apply basically every sanction aimed at Russia also at Belarus.

Other thing is it's really striking the companies just getting out of Russia: Apple, Nike, Simens. I'm not sure that any of that is strictly legally necessary under the sanctions - my impression is it's not. But I think it's the other side of the economic squeeze on Russia that there's formal sanctions but given public opinion in most Western countries there's just a big reputational hit to doing business in Russia right now. I wouldn't be surprised to soon see campaigns against Western companies who are operating in Russia - so lots will pull out voluntarily to avoid that. Again, I think that's probably going to be a bigger deal than anticipated before the invasion.

[The Larch]

The EU has just announced new economic sanctions against Belarus. Combination of sanctions against individuals (members of the government and the military) and economic sectors (steel, chemicals and timber).

Just on this - I can't see a reason any more not to apply basically every sanction aimed at Russia also at Belarus.

Other thing is it's really striking the companies just getting out of Russia: Apple, Nike, Simens. I'm not sure that any of that is strictly legally necessary under the sanctions - my impression is it's not. But I think it's the other side of the economic squeeze on Russia that there's formal sanctions but given public opinion in most Western countries there's just a big reputational hit to doing business in Russia right now. I wouldn't be surprised to soon see campaigns against Western companies who are operating in Russia - so lots will pull out voluntarily to avoid that. Again, I think that's probably going to be a bigger deal than anticipated before the invasion.

Maybe with the banking sanctions it has become (or it might become) difficult or impossible to bring their profits from within the Russian market outside the country?

Some musicians are also announcing their cancellation of the Russian stages of world tours that are re-startign after the pandemic.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Russians are not very good at trying to look like the good guys.

Why would they? Would they gain more international support for their invasion and future annexation of Ukraine?  Would Ukrainians be more acceptive of their invasion?  Would it reduce the sanctions we inflict on them?

I don't think Putin really cares about that.  Many dead Georgians could attest to that.

Georgians, Chechens, probably others I'm not remembering right now. And Putin gets away with it! I hope this time is quite different as it seems to have a lot more attention and worldwide anger. Perhaps much more serious talk of war crimes which will be a deafening crescendo if Putin's forces go on a similar blood bath as in the past. And it seems they're starting to do just that.

I still don't see Ukraine surviving without direct military intervention by western/NATO countries, as brave as they are.

There needs to be a proper understanding of what this war is and what it could be. Russia's strategic goal is a pacified, vassalized Ukraine. To achieve that goal it does not need to control Ukraine's cities and territory--it needs Ukraine's people to be compliant. It is entirely possible that once most major Ukrainian cities have fallen, they will stop fighting and Putin will have achieved his goal. But that is not necessarily true. There are many, many examples from history, some that we should be directly familiar with, of fully occupied enemies never surrendering, no matter the costs. I doubt that Ukraine for example will be treated more harshly than Afghanistan was in the 1980s by the USSR--mostly because you can't really be more harshly treated than "mass murdered", the Afghans did not stop fighting. Winning a war is not the same as winning an occupation. And to win an occupation of Ukraine Russia will need far more troops than it has (and I mean has in total, not just has in theater.) Russia has around 900,000 active-duty military personnel split among Ground Forces / Navy / Air Force; it would need about 800,000 infantry forces alone to likely succeed at a truly hostile occupation of Ukraine.