Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Legbiter]

It looks like (first?) battle of Kyiv is over - Russia has announced they're withdrawing, presumably to focus on the Donbas and Crimea.

If they withdraw completely that would free up Ukrainian forces for other fronts so unless the North turns into a rout they'll maintain a smaller dug-in position to keep Ukrainian forces tied up.

[Razgovory]

I meant before the invasion.  I was pretty glum.  The first night of the invasion there were glimmers of hope.  From the Western perspective this is the best possible result.  Not only is Putin defeated and humiliated his fascist supporters in Europe and American are knocked back on their heels.  Several months ago I told Jake that this was not just about Ukraine but about the whole West.  A victory by Putin would strengthen his admirers abroad at a time we can't afford. 

[DGuller]

It looks like (first?) battle of Kyiv is over - Russia has announced they're withdrawing, presumably to focus on the Donbas and Crimea.

If they withdraw completely that would free up Ukrainian forces for other fronts so unless the North turns into a rout they'll maintain a smaller dug-in position to keep Ukrainian forces tied up.

Would it free up the Ukrainians all that much, though?  Belarus serves as a front in being, sort of like the puppet in HOI4 that you never call to war, but the enemy AI has to guard against and thus dilute their forces.

[The Brain]

I meant before the invasion.  I was pretty glum.  The first night of the invasion there were glimmers of hope.  From the Western perspective this is the best possible result.  Not only is Putin defeated and humiliated his fascist supporters in Europe and American are knocked back on their heels.  Several months ago I told Jake that this was not just about Ukraine but about the whole West.  A victory by Putin would strengthen his admirers abroad at a time we can't afford.

More importantly his non-fascist supporters in the West are in retreat too.

[OttoVonBismarck]

My guess is they aren't pushing into Odessa for the same reason Kyiv was giving them trouble, these are just very large cities (Odessa has over 1m population), if there is a lot of active resistance there isn't a great way to take a city that size without incurring significant losses.

[Sheilbh]

My guess is they aren't pushing into Odessa for the same reason Kyiv was giving them trouble, these are just very large cities (Odessa has over 1m population), if there is a lot of active resistance there isn't a great way to take a city that size without incurring significant losses.

Also they haven't taken Mykolaev, from my understanding, so they can't encircle Odessa by land. Perhaps after the repeated attempts to take Hostomel airport and Kyiv with a few paratroopers, they've realised that it would be a very bad idea to launch an amphibious attack on a defended city without any support from land?

[Duque de Bragança]

I meant before the invasion.  I was pretty glum.  The first night of the invasion there were glimmers of hope.  From the Western perspective this is the best possible result.  Not only is Putin defeated and humiliated his fascist supporters in Europe and American are knocked back on their heels.  Several months ago I told Jake that this was not just about Ukraine but about the whole West.  A victory by Putin would strengthen his admirers abroad at a time we can't afford.

More importantly his non-fascist supporters in the West are in retreat too.

 
Leftist supporters of Putin are not exactly in retreat, see Mélenchon in France.

[Legbiter]

Would it free up the Ukrainians all that much, though?  Belarus serves as a front in being, sort of like the puppet in HOI4 that you never call to war, but the enemy AI has to guard against and thus dilute their forces.

Not sure how excited Luka is about joining the war at this point. You'd leave a screen at the border to get the point across but it would free up significant forces for the Ukrainians. Hence if the Russians are smart they'll try to leave dug-in forces in the North while shifting as much combat power as they can to the Donbas where they're still, kinda, if-you-squint-at-it making progress.

Given the beating the Russians are taking, at this tempo (over 2000 tanks and various vehicles destroyed according to open-source intelligence) they'll probably start to seriously negotiate in 4-6 weeks.

[DGuller]

The beauty of being a front in being is that you don't have to intend to open it.  Lukashenko is probably more useful to Russia not being directly involved, his territory serves as a one-way valve into Ukraine for Russia.  Russia's forces in Belarus can always threaten Ukraine without being threatened in return.

[Josquius]

Yes. I imagine Russia is very happy to leave Belarus as a threatening factor/bridge into northern Ukraine.
It'll not be until Russias manpower troubles bite that they'd want Belarus directly involved.
Belarus gets involved then I would say there's a very real risk that Russia loses Belarus.
That's an area I haven't heard much about in all this - public and army feeling about this whole thing in Belarus. Considering the regime was already teetering...

[Malicious Intent]

Not only should they not stop engaging, they should do the most they can to bring in additional forces and push them hard. Turn that withdrawal into a rout.

Withdrawal under contact is one of the hardest military maneuvers to manage. It takes coordination and discipline.  I have seen no reason to believe the Russian Army has either of those things. Don't let them withdraw to a line of their choosing.

Of course, I have no idea if the Ukrainian Army has the capability to mount that kind of pressure.

Is there any intel if Ukraine still has functioning maneuver units of sufficient size?

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm pretty sure they do actually. Indicators are that Ukraine's military soldier losses haven't been as bad as you might expect, their civilian losses have been quite bad. This isn't entirely shocking because the Ukrainian military has not stood and fought pitched battles in places where the Russians came in heavy, they have been using retreat, hit and run tactics etc.

The Russians meanwhile are avoiding going deep into cities where there is still active resistance in the area due to fears of all the ambush opportunities and ways they could inflict casualties...so their response has been to setup camp outside cities and shell the civilians. A lot of the resistance is also Ukrainian Territorial Defense, it appears the Ukrainians aren't wasting their regular army on fruitless battles and are being fairly selecting in putting them into combat.

It seems like a large amount of the Russian military casualties have actually been from fighting along supply lines and transit routes towards fronts, it appears the Ukrainians aren't doing as much pitched fighting against the Russian front lines as you might expect--albeit with reports of recent Ukrainians offensives in areas around Kyiv I imagine some of that has been picking up in the past week.

[PDH]

Not sure how excited Luka is about joining the war at this point. You'd leave a screen at the border to get the point across but it would free up significant forces for the Ukrainians. Hence if the Russians are smart they'll try to leave dug-in forces in the North while shifting as much combat power as they can to the Donbas where they're still, kinda, if-you-squint-at-it making progress.

Given the beating the Russians are taking, at this tempo (over 2000 tanks and various vehicles destroyed according to open-source intelligence) they'll probably start to seriously negotiate in 4-6 weeks.

First of all:

if the Russians are smart

Speaks for itself in this war.

[PDH]

As OvB said, it seems a lot of the losses in the North have been from hit and run attacks, however a fair chunk seems to have come from overambitious assaults on smaller towns where the Russian attacks were rolling in buttoned up in armor and APCs.  The fact that there is video evidence of this happening over and over makes this combination so nasty for the Russians.

A village held by a platoon of regulars and some territorial defense, armed with ATGMs and such has been lethal.  The Ukrainians are light enough to bug out with fewer losses, but the Russian tactics assure more casualties than they needed to have.

Also, I wonder how many Russians are still wandering around in the woods after the vehicles ran out of gas?

[grumbler]

I would think tracking Russian SSBNs has to be priority #1 when it comes to any of this stuff, right?

I mean, they have ten of them. That's not that many. I imagine some are in port (and those ports are known and likely target #1 in any exchange). Getting a SSBN to sea is not something that can be done quickly, I imagine. IIRC, you can actually see the heatblooms by satellite when they power up their reactor in preparation to going to sea.

Say out of ten they have 6 at sea. I could imagine that in normal peacetime ops, there is a US or Brit attack sub basically assigned to every single one of them, to pick them up as they leave port and try to track them. But doing so is probably not that simple - we aren't typically, I suspect, going inside the 12 mile national zone, so that means that there is likely a possibility they can evade that pick up point.

Well, having two out there to pick up each one means that is more likely, right? I know subs don't coordinate with each other closely, for obvious reasons, but it would seem to me that if I was worried that a shooting war might start, I can't imagine too many more important jobs for US attack subs to be doing then sitting around trying to track those SSBNs.

I could certainly imagine a reasonable step to take now, and one pretty hard for Russia to notice or complain about, is to double the number of subs assigned to that mission. Or not - I am no expert of course. Maybe we are really good at keeping track of them and don't really need to assign more to that mission?

I don't think that one can tell via satellite-detectable heat signatures whether a sub has increased reactor output (remembering that those are always active), but you could tell that a sub is preparing for sea by the satellite images of them loading perishables.

I don't think it would be escalatory to be more aggressive in tracking the one or two (not six or so) Russian SSBNs at sea; in fact, it would provide a salutary lesson that the Russians do not, in fact, have a secure SLBM force, even for a first strike.  They couldn't be sure that their subs could get to launch depth, open the launch tubes, and launch before it got punched in the face by a CBASS.  Anything that adds to Russian planning uncertainty is a win for the West.