Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[crazy canuck]

Question for the armchair generals:

We've seen Ukraine's forces being successful in stalling - and in some places pushing back - Russia's advance. In response, Russia has settled into their more regular strategy of artillery and rocket barrages against Ukrainian population centres from afar. What are Ukraine's tactical and strategic options to respond to that?

Continue to attack the supply lines that supply the food, ammunition, and fuel of the forces employed to bombard those centers.

Attack them directly in harassing attacks where possible.

Employ drones to attack the assets directly where they can be located and identified via a variety of intel means.

Which gets back to yet another reason why the drive on Kyiv was so ill-advised.  In the south and east, the Russian supply lines are more secure but in the north they have left themselves badly vulnerable.

I don't think you can probably even really measure accurately the value of US intell quietly being fed into Ukrainian ops cycles.

We are really, really good at that stuff, and I am certain we are happy to share any and all of it with our Ukranian friends.

You don't have to put US boots on the ground in Ukraine to play all the various SIGINT games we are good at (and apparently Russia is really, really, REALLY bad at).

That is an excellent point and probably helps explain how the Ukrainians have been so effective at targeting Generals etc.

[mongers]

In some ways this war resembles the Iran-Iraq war, a dictator attacks his apparently weakened neighbour, assuming that regime will collapse and he'll be welcomed as a liberator. But after very limited gains he's stopped and with quite a bit of improvisation the defenders stablilse the front and begin to push him back in places.

Lets just hope China doesn't play the role to Putin that the Europeans and the USA played for Saddam, building him up and forcing the now thrown back defenders to sign a bitter peace.

I hope there's not one further similarity, the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield and later against civilian population centres.

[grumbler]

Mark the graves with sunflowers.

[jimmy olsen]

Do Germany et al have any old coal generated plants sitting around idle they could fire up?  As a stop gap until a permanent solution comes along.

They have nuclear plants they could fire up

[Admiral Yi]

What Zanza said for Germany basically goes for most of Europe. About 40% of European gas consumption is by households for heating, cooking etc and another 30% in industrial production. If it was just an energy issue I think it'd be easier to solve.

Every little bit helps, no?

[Tamas]

Do Germany et al have any old coal generated plants sitting around idle they could fire up?  As a stop gap until a permanent solution comes along.

They have nuclear plants they could fire up

But but but, what if a tsunami hits them?!

[viper37]

Ukraine requests 500 javelin and stinger missiles per day

That's a lot of ammunition.

[viper37]

I've seen the number of casualties at 20 000 for Mariupol... Up from 1800 a few days ago, don't know how reliable it is, I can't seem to find another source than pravda.com.ua.

[Legbiter]

Ukrainians launching a counterattack near Kharkiv in the last half hour. That's a lot of concentrated artillery.

https://twitter.com/UkrainePressOrg/status/1507118567547883535

[Threviel]

So that's what WWI looked like. Is that drum fire?

[jimmy olsen]

Ukraine requests 500 javelin and stinger missiles per day

That's a lot of ammunition.

They're just asking for big numbers, so that even the negotiated down number they agree on is still large.

[Zanza]

Do Germany et al have any old coal generated plants sitting around idle they could fire up?  As a stop gap until a permanent solution comes along.

They have nuclear plants they could fire up

No, we cannot. This was already checked. The three remaining running plants were no longer maintained and would need a major maintenance. Also they did not order new fuel and it takes one-and-a-half years to manufacture. Anyway, electricity production is not the big issue.

[Zanza]

On the last point: There were estimates that stopping Russian energy imports would cause a 3.5% hit to the German economy. A bit less than a Brexit or a 2008 financial crisis, so costly, but not unheard of. Germany is preparing for this case now by defining a ranking order for consumers. Main consumption is industrial processes and heating, not electricity generation.

Same study claimed that stopping all energy exports to the West would cause a 30% or so contraction in Russia...

A 3.5% contraction is nothing to sneeze at. It'll be very uncomfortable. But a 30% contraction is pretty intense. On a high level strategic perspective it seems like it'd be a worthwhile trade. I guess the question is how the German people's resolve would hold up in face of such a contraction.

Surveys state that while Germans are of course unhappy with higher energy prices, they want sanctions on Russia and are willing to bear the pain.
Germany is also rich. We will just buy gas elsewhere - probably at the cost of our less wealthy European neighbours. And the German government will now "subsidize" energy by reducing taxes for the next few months and give a special income tax credit to everybody.
Wir schaffen das! 

[Zanza]

Do Germany et al have any old coal generated plants sitting around idle they could fire up?  As a stop gap until a permanent solution comes along.

Yes. Of course the coal is also imported from Russia.   But more easily replaceable with other sources apparently. 

[Threviel]

Ukraine requests 500 javelin and stinger missiles per day

That's a lot of ammunition.

They're just asking for big numbers, so that even the negotiated down number they agree on is still large.

I doubt that, war always eat up gigantic amounts of materiel. They will soon need a lot of cargo, I hope our factories are ramping up as we speak.

Ukraine is fighting a total war, they have manpower for an army of millions and an army of millions need a metric fuckton of materiel.