Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[The Brain]

While I think that the stuff is for domestic use, I observe that all signs point to Russian intelligence being horribly bad. So who knows what crazy stuff they may report as true to their superiors.

[The Brain]

While I think that the stuff is for domestic use, I observe that all signs point to Russian intelligence being horribly bad. So who knows what crazy stuff they may report as true to their superiors.

To elaborate: diarrhea flows downwards. It seems likely that Putin only wants to hear intelligence briefings that support his world view. When the top guy does this it will cascade downwards, and eventually grassroots assets will report what they think their immediate superiors want to hear. And Putin has been top guy for decades.

[Threviel]

If the leaked report is indicative of Russian quality intelligence it's good enough. It's just that it seems that reports are written to order with a decided result. They know their shit, but they write what they believe their superiors want to hear.

As Brainiac says, if Putin wants to get shit, shit is what he gets.

[Sheilbh]

There are still cohesive Ukranian mobile unts about, yesterday on Al Jazeera the correspodent was returning to Zhizokzia, you know the city with 3 z's in the name, and going the other way they filmed a convoy of Ukrainian T72s and APC heading south.

The most striking thing about this war for me is how unprepared the Russians appear to have been for it - despite planning it for almost a year, having huge numbers of troops in place for several months and choosing to invade.

The second most striking thing is that in what feels like the first big social media war where everyone has a camera and is recording everything - I have seen barely any footage of the Ukrainian military. We don't know where they are, we don't know where they've been, we don't know what shape they're in. That side of the information war (and other parts of it) are extraordinarily asymmetrical - I've no doubt in the background Western countries are helping the Ukrainians to scrub this stuff for very good reason. But there also just seems to be a general, social, 21st century version of "loose lips sink ships" about filming Ukrainian forces.

Struck again by the footage of big protests by civilians in "Russian-controlled" cities and I just don't see how Russia has anyway - short of mobilising far more forces than they currently have - of meeting their goals here.

Edit: Incidentally on the information war - I have no idea about the theories on that Putin with Aeroflot staff video - except that it seems weird in general. But I do love that Zelensky seemed to take the piss out of it (at the end of this video)
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1500485920763662342?s=20&t=JMglhpWroBl4_2bWypjM2A

[Legbiter]

Struck again by the footage of big protests by civilians in "Russian-controlled" cities and I just don't see how Russia has anyway - short of mobilising far more forces than they currently have - of meeting their goals here.

Yeah Russia will need to mobilize soon. The problem is awful demographics in the Russian heartland and draft dodging is a national sport. They can send off a lot more Chechens, Dagestani, etc. Central asians are another source of meat.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I hope the stuff about Russian logistics is true and not just bullshit.

Unless a lot of reporting, frontline and intelligence, is massively off base the Russians are in logistics hell.

It should be noted that none of the problems with logistics are likely to be decisive, unfortunately for the Ukrainians. Russia just has a lot more men and material, their logistical problems mean their offensives will be slower than they should and frequently worse equipped--which mean longer and likely to suffer higher casualties. It is likely that as they capture rail centers and can take over parts of the Ukrainian rail system, they will see an uptick in logistical performance as Russia/Ukraine use the same gauge rail lines, so Russia will be able to move in heavy equipment by rail.

Russia is particularly susceptible to logistical issues in part because they are so reliant on rail transport versus trucks. Russia also uses a system of temporary pipelines to move fuel towards the front, in preference over oil tanker trucks. Without being able to use rail/pipeline, right now they are mostly depending on the Russian truck fleet which has simply always been lacking in number and quality of vehicles. This whole system is actually designed for a "ponderous" and large scale, artillery fueled war where Russia just kind of slowly moves inexorably forward. That was at least what it was designed for, as in many ways Russian military doctrine still imagines large scale land warfare on Europe its primary mission.

There are a few problems though, frankly. One of the big ones is that the military of the USSR was much bigger in terms of raw numbers than modern Russia's is, I honestly was unaware of just how small Russia had let its number of career service members get. This smaller modern Russian military thus is bringing, frankly, not enough manpower to this battle to sustain the sort of large land warfare operation their military was designed to handle. They are plugging manpower gaps with forced conscription by forcing young Russian into temporary contracts. This is creating low morale and low competency units.

Does all of that mean the Russian offensive's goose is cooked? I don't think so--despite all those troubles, Russia ultimately has the resources and time to work through it unless something happens that seriously threatens Putin's rule. They're making mistakes and they aren't properly manned for this operation, but they still hold many advantages over Ukraine. Time can stabilize many of these problems, the temporary pipelines will get built, the Ukrainian rail system will be turned into a vital artery for supplying the Russian front, and Ukraine's forces will steadily get pushed back and its cities will fall. Also remember just about every large military operation in modern history has suffered serious logistical problems compared to the "best expectations" of the war planners. This is true even of fairly "well run" U.S. military invasions like the push into Iraq during the Persian Gulf War by the United States, and most major offensives in World War II for example had logistical issues. Logistical issues are to some degree just the reality of war, where planning collides with men and steel and things get fucked up.

Ukraine's military is almost certainly also suffering serious logistical issues as their country gets picked apart.

Now all that being said--there is opportunity here for Ukraine to continue to make things hard on the Russians. You can't guard the entire length of a temporary pipeline or a rail line...it would be a shame if someone were to do something about that, y'know? Moving infrastructure like that over territory with hostile citizenry means there can be a real chance of logistical disruption by partisans/insurgents.

As much as I am confident in the ultimate likelihood of Russia's success in its overall offensive, I can't be sure exactly how far they will go past the major cities of the East and eventually taking Kiev, and the ports in the South. Do they plan to go all the way to the Polish/Moldovan border? Given the logistical and manpower problems, I am somewhat less certain they will succeed all the way to that point--however they could if there was a complete collapse in Ukrainian opposition.

In any case the real determining factor of Ukraine's future is the same as it was a few days ago--how long and how hard are the Ukrainians willing to fight? Even Stalin, who held a lot more power than Putin relative to his enemies, backed down from Finland because they were simply able to make the cost benefit analysis so rough that it wasn't worth continuing. Stalin still won both of his wars against Finland, though.

[The Brain]

Stalin still won both of his wars against Finland, though.

Russian war aims in the Winter War: military possession and annexation of the entire country.
Finnish war aims in the Winter War: remain a free and independent country within its original borders.

Result: Russia took 9% of Finland's territory. Much less of the population since almost all Karelians managed to flee.

NB: I don't think defining winners and losers in wars is extremely helpful, but for the Winter War it's more complicated than "Stalin won".

[Sheilbh]

Yeah my initial suspicion was that this might end up like the Sino-Vietnamese war - short and not going well for the larger power but over time they were likely to eventually win. Both sides claim victory but history and external observers consider it more of a victory for Vietnam.

The issue I have with that is the objectives Putin's set and the way he has framed this war. If it stays a "special military operation" it will be easier to climb down from - but I think a lot depends on how Putin assesses his own individual position and the reports, especially from Macron's calls with him, indicate no sign of looking for a way out or anything short of total determination to win utterly. So I don't know - and when he says this is all going according to plan we don't know that that isn't the information he's hearing (which can't last forever).

[Tamas]

Yeah my initial suspicion was that this might end up like the Sino-Vietnamese war - short and not going well for the larger power but over time they were likely to eventually win. Both sides claim victory but history and external observers consider it more of a victory for Vietnam.

The issue I have with that is the objectives Putin's set and the way he has framed this war. If it stays a "special military operation" it will be easier to climb down from - but I think a lot depends on how Putin assesses his own individual position and the reports, especially from Macron's calls with him, indicate no sign of looking for a way out or anything short of total determination to win utterly. So I don't know - and when he says this is all going according to plan we don't know that that isn't the information he's hearing (which can't last forever).

I suspect the hard, almost immediate crackdown on home dissent indicates that Putin -rightly or wrongly- assessed his throne wobbling even before the war, and in fact maybe the reason for the war was to prop up his regime. In this case I don't think he feels like he can climb down.

[Sheilbh]

I suspect the hard, almost immediate crackdown on home dissent indicates that Putin -rightly or wrongly- assessed his throne wobbling even before the war, and in fact maybe the reason for the war was to prop up his regime. In this case I don't think he feels like he can climb down.

Yeah - but from my understanding the line from the Kremlin is to limit coverage of the war. It's a just a temporary "special military operation".

If this was inspired by some need for a great national victory and for internal propaganda purposes, I feel like there'd be a lot more propaganda. Instead, from what I've read, the word "war" is banned, normal broadcasting is continuing (unlike in 2014 or 2008).

There's the whole Z thing but there doesn't seem like much of a push from the state for a narrative about this war beyond that it's a necessary "military operation" to "de-nazify and demilitarise" Ukraine.

It's one of the many things that don't really make sense (in my view as anything excet a personal, narrowly discussed decision by Putin for Putin's reasons) because it's just mad to do a war for propaganda purposes and then not talk about it.

[Syt]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/06/trump-focuses-foreign-policy-speech-gops-top-donors/

NEW ORLEANS — Former president Donald Trump mused Saturday to the GOP's top donors that the United States should label its F-22 planes with the Chinese flag and "bomb the s--t out of Russia."

[...]

"And then we say, China did it, we didn't do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch," he said of labeling U.S. military planes with Chinese flags and bombing Russia, which was met with laughter from the crowd of donors, according to a recording of the speech obtained by The Washington Post.

[KRonn]

There are still cohesive Ukranian mobile unts about, yesterday on Al Jazeera the correspodent was returning to Zhizokzia, you know the city with 3 z's in the name, and going the other way they filmed a convoy of Ukrainian T72s and APC heading south.

The most striking thing about this war for me is how unprepared the Russians appear to have been for it - despite planning it for almost a year, having huge numbers of troops in place for several months and choosing to invade.

The second most striking thing is that in what feels like the first big social media war where everyone has a camera and is recording everything - I have seen barely any footage of the Ukrainian military. We don't know where they are, we don't know where they've been, we don't know what shape they're in. That side of the information war (and other parts of it) are extraordinarily asymmetrical - I've no doubt in the background Western countries are helping the Ukrainians to scrub this stuff for very good reason. But there also just seems to be a general, social, 21st century version of "loose lips sink ships" about filming Ukrainian forces.

Struck again by the footage of big protests by civilians in "Russian-controlled" cities and I just don't see how Russia has anyway - short of mobilising far more forces than they currently have - of meeting their goals here.

Edit: Incidentally on the information war - I have no idea about the theories on that Putin with Aeroflot staff video - except that it seems weird in general. But I do love that Zelensky seemed to take the piss out of it (at the end of this video)
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1500485920763662342?s=20&t=JMglhpWroBl4_2bWypjM2A

Good points, and what I've been thinking and wondering also. Russian forces seem unprepared, almost without operational plans to deal with anything except light resistance. Also equipment breakdowns and fuel shortages, which speaking of social media, we see videos of Ukrainian farm tractors towing out of fuel Russian vehicles. I assume those have been abandoned and will next likely be in the hands of Ukrainian forces.

Lots of social media along with TV coverage. These all tell quite a compelling story as they show everything from people fleeing, bombings, blasted out buildings, to Russian helicopter shootdowns. The biggest story is the plight of the Ukrainian people who were having a normal life, work, families, etc. and then all of a sudden all turned upside down.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I love the idea that Russia would think F-22s were Chinese piloted.

[The Brain]

Is donating to the GOP still legal?

[Syt]

Some refugees are "better" than others.