Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[The Minsky Moment]

So.... Are tanks done as a front line military weapon?

Don't know but I don't think one can leap to a firm conclusion from how they've been used by Russia in this conflict to date. 

[viper37]

Here is an interesting take on Putin's strategy.  I gift one of my free monthly links to Languish

He's less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia's energy dominance.

Well, duh, we knew that from the beginning, no?

I disagree with the whole of the analysis.  It's one more variant of the 5D chess.  That he was targeting Ukraine's resources and not its people, yeah, I get that.  However, it is false to assume that the whole war, the way it was conducted, solely aimed at that.  What Russia wanted was a puppet regime in Kyiv.  It didn't want to occupy the whole area and maintain it directly itself, as another province of Russia.  It wanted someone to do it for Putin, who would sell Ukraine's resources for peanuts, the way Viktor Yanukovych was prepared to do.  Putin does not want a democratic Ukraine part of Europe on its borders, that's way too risky for his own economic model.

[crazy canuck]

Here is an interesting take on Putin's strategy.  I gift one of my free monthly links to Languish

He's less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia's energy dominance.

Well, duh, we knew that from the beginning, no?

You may have missed the point of the article. It does not take long to read and I suggest you do it if you want to understand what it has to say.

[The Minsky Moment]

Here is an interesting take on Putin's strategy.  I gift one of my free monthly links to Languish

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DODmwTiOMNAo6B_EGKeKl5bto10nGETcUEKKIzRfo0zvNaOwYlbTiUlaa-ucZPJTQp-8X0V3kq3pnJUPdk-G7nNDPkcKIglLbn-k_ePmD1UKLe1WkiLFxn9MdmJ1ug3ncY1-ySRL4Or9p01fwkBpBwRC5RJ3XZ-qm1VGgtfYmOfRre6QIpWutGWzi1ndSU6rgIcAQ6GkuRBTokoj56sIUATYtRaKXvLBcge978hKERAgFrLoSrBZ4yTuvEhnabUCO-vdx9JZfPMPEmPPQ&smid=url-share

Makes no sense for lots of reasons:
+ If the strategy was a "Novorossiya" land grab then the entire effort vs Kiev wouldn't have happen.  No one deliberately launches an offensive with the intention of having a large portion of one's force rendered combat ineffective for no purpose. 
+ Chenchnya covers 6700 square miles with a population of 1.4 million. Ukraine is orders of magnitude larger: 233,000 square miles, 44 million people and a far better equipped and organized military; it is insane to think you could repeat that "success" in Ukraine.  And I use the scare quotes because Russia's first invasion failed after several years and the second invasion took nine months with 10% of the force being killed.
+ THe idea that the Donetsk region is some great prize is risible - at this point, it is an economic basket case and a drain on whoever holds it (which is why the Ukrainians stopped paying transfers despite the effect on their negotiating position). The gas field there is estimated capable of producing 8-10 billion cubic meters per year, compared to the Russian prewar total of 700 billion and the US total over 900 billion.  It's a good size field but far from a game changer.  The Russians have probably wasted more fossil fuel energy prosecuting this idiotic war to date then they will ever get out of those fields.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't agree with most of Stephens's analysis, although there are elements of it that I think are fairly obvious/mainstream for example almost no one in the security/intelligence/foreign policy profession, or the press covering those fields, seriously seemed to think Putin actually wanted to annex all of Ukraine.

I also think his hypothesis doesn't meaningfully jive with stated Russian war goals or how they physically conducted the war. I also disagree with his comparison to the Chechen Wars and the siege of Grozny.

To get a little more specific:

1. If he really believed there wasn't much chance of Ukrainians welcoming Russia as liberators, at least in broad swathes of the country, he would not have thrown away so many Russian special forces lives, and some of the best units and equipment in his army, on the initial wave of attacks which were clearly aimed at quickly toppling Zelensky from power.

2. If he really had no goals at all other than a corridor of land from Crimea to Donbas/Luhansk, and expanding Russian-aligned holdings in the breakaway regions to encompass the entire provinces, the multiple other fronts approach probably makes no strategic sense given Russia's limited resources and the fact that they could have been pushing harder into the eastern front from day one if that had been the initial goal.

3. The comparison to Chechnya is silly for the exact same reason I pointed out many months ago that a Putin invasion of Ukraine would bear no resemblance to his minor incursion over Crimea, his minor deployment to Syria, his small war in Georgia etc--Ukraine is a vast country with a huge population relative to the size of Russia. Chechnya was tiny, tiny, tiny. The scale of the job in Ukraine is several orders of magnitude bigger than it was in Chechnya, like say his Grozny tactics work in Mariupol. Okay, he has 30 other cities to go, some much bigger and more heavily defended. He also wasn't facing the most crippling Western sanctions levied on any country other than North Korea while he was fighting in Chechnya. Given the West's generalized view of Islamic militants, a lot of Western leaders kind of kept quiet and didn't give too much of a fuck about the Chechen wars. The Chechens were also conducting terror attacks in Russia against Russian citizens, which I think gave that conflict a different tenor.

4. As has been talked about before in terms of the "profits" from war, big wars are so expensive and forced territorial annexations carry with them such significant long-term costs that it is almost impossible to profit from them in a pure economic sense. That was one of the issues I always took with the theory we were in Iraq for oil. The reality was no benefit we got from the Iraqi oil industry was ever going to outweigh the massive costs of the war and the long-term occupation costs if we had sought to continue controlling Iraq by proxy. We know for a fact that even before factoring in the costs of the sanctions, the annexation of Crimea was a net loss--remember the biggest strategic benefit of Crimea, control of the major naval base in Sevastopol, Russia had already secured by a very long term, renewable lease (akin to say U.S. basing in Guantanamo Bay or Diego Garcia.) Likewise, this isn't EU4, you don't have to conquer a province to benefit from its resources, Russia had long been involved in Ukraine's oil and gas business and there are many alternative ways that Russia could largely stand to benefit from the development of the shale fields Stephens is talking about without invading Ukraine--options that Putin could have pursued if his overall policy on Ukraine wasn't drop dead stupid.

While he doesn't entirely flesh it out--there is one aspect of Stephens argument I agree with. I actually think Putin has long wanted more of a cultural and economic separation from the West, and an excuse to crack down on domestic opposition, and I do think this war in part was expected to help him achieve that. I think Putin's math likely anticipated and was fine with some level of sanctions precisely because he wants some level of economic disengagement from the West. Where I think the analysis falls apart is I don't think he thought we'd do even half of what we did, and we've crossed into a sort of sanctions that are really more like economic warfare, and which if continued are going to basically do generational/permanent harm to Russia. In many ways the bite of those sanctions isn't really being felt by Russia at the moment (which is why I never expected sanctions alone to stop the war), but what they do over time is they force Russia to go down an economic path of isolation and limited trade partnerships. The "compound losses" of all the lost foreign investment and trading relationships is going to leave a country that was already being badly outgrown economically by countries it dreams of challenging on the world stage, is only going to suffer that fate even moreso because of these sanctions.

Also finally--I don't really find it credible that Putin would be unsurprised by how abjectly terrible his military has been performing in battle.

So nah, this isn't another "Putin is smarter than all of us."

I think some of the logic Stephens mentions has some elements of truth to it, and I think Putin's war goals could end up being more limited to territorial concessions in the East, but there is little evidence to suspect this was all going as planned.

[jimmy olsen]

The modern version of the German tank problem: https://informnapalm.org/en/medal-count-osint-analysis-of-real-russian-losses-for-the-first-week-of-hostilities-in-ukraine/.

TLDR: Analysis of the serial numbers of posthumous awards seems to indicate that Ukrainians were dead accurate in more ways than one; the analysis validates the Ukrainian figures of Russian dead.

At least 4,794 dead by March 3rd!? 

[The Minsky Moment]

Likewise, this isn't EU4, you don't have to conquer a province to benefit from its resources, Russia had long been involved in Ukraine's oil and gas business and there are many alternative ways that Russia could largely stand to benefit from the development of the shale fields Stephens is talking about without invading Ukraine--options that Putin could have pursued if his overall policy on Ukraine wasn't drop dead stupid.

This is an excellent and important point.

Shortly before launching the invasion, Russia had achieved an enormous diplomatic and strategic coup with Nordstream 2- the pipeline was a done deal.  In addition to the economic gains from exploiting the pipeline directly, the project effectively gave Russia enormous economic leverage over Ukraine, leverage that could have easily been exploited to give Russian state controlled entities key roles in the development of Ukranian gas reserves across the entire country - not just the one field in Donetsk.  The war has cost him all of that - Nordstream 2 is a dead letter now and he has ensured that Europe's biggest energy policy priority is weaning itself off of Russian gas completely.

Viewed solely from the view of pursuing industrial policy by military means, it would be hard to conceive of a more counterproductive policy.

[celedhring]

The modern version of the German tank problem: https://informnapalm.org/en/medal-count-osint-analysis-of-real-russian-losses-for-the-first-week-of-hostilities-in-ukraine/.

TLDR: Analysis of the serial numbers of posthumous awards seems to indicate that Ukrainians were dead accurate in more ways than one; the analysis validates the Ukrainian figures of Russian dead.

Let's see.

During the First Chechen War and until the end of the 90s the numbering was from 0 to 30000. During the Second Chechen War and before the seizure of Crimea and the war in the Donbas the numbers ranged from 30,000 to 60,000. The Ukrainian campaign for the Russian army started with numbers as of 7xxxx.

According to the article's reasoning, this would seem to indicate that the Russian army has had roughly 40k KIA since the end of the First Chechen war. It Seems a pretty large figure for the kind of limited engagements they have had.

FWIW, looking at the wikipedia pages (best source I can be arsed to look):

- Second Chechen war: 3,500 KIA
- Georgian War: 65 KIA
- War in Donbass: 5,800 KIA (including separatist forces)
- Syria: 120 KIA

Far short of 40k.

There are all the other indirect entanglements using PMCs and such, but I don't think they amount to much, or they even received a medal.

What I mean is that I'm not sure that either a) the medal serial numbering is purely sequential or b) medals are only awarded posthumously.

[celedhring]

Looks like Russia is starting to backpedal on the "pay me in roubles or no gas for you" threats.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-will-not-demand-immediate-switch-gas-payments-roubles-kremlin-2022-03-30/?utm_source=reddit.com

Russia won't demand immediate switch to rouble gas payments, Kremlin says
Reuters


2 minute read

March 30 (Reuters) - Russia will not immediately demand that buyers pay for its gas exports in roubles, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, promising a gradual shift and saying Russia should work on an idea to widen the list of its exports requiring rouble payment.

President Vladimir Putin issued an order last week for Russian gas, which accounts for 40% of European needs, to paid for in roubles instead of dollars or euros.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russia's top lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the European Union would have to pay in roubles if it wanted Russian gas and said oil, grain, metals, fertiliser, coal and timber exports could be priced the same way.

The government, the central bank and Gazprom (GAZP.MM) are due to present proposals for the switch by Thursday.

Asked whether the payments should be in roubles starting from Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Absolutely no."

"As we discussed before, payments and delivery is a time consuming process ... This does not mean that a tomorrow's delivery should be paid (in roubles). From a technological point of view, this is a more prolonged process," he said.

Putin's order to charge "unfriendly" countries in roubles for Russian gas boosted the Russian currency after it plunged to all-time lows when West imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. European gas prices also rocketed up.

The Russian demand has been rejected by European countries, which pay for Russian gas mostly in euros and say Russia is not entitled to redraw contracts, and by the G7 group of nations.

Commenting on the Russian rouble plan, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the financial committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said this week: "I believe we don't have to change the law, it's all stipulated there.""

"The foreign currency will be exchanged at a market rate, which will be set at the Moscow Exchange," he said. "They can buy the roubles wherever." read more

[The Minsky Moment]

Putin decision matrix

1)                                           2)
If you do                                    If you dont

[FunkMonk]

That NYT Opinion piece strikes me as Bret Stephens looking at a map of current operational control in Ukraine and saying "Yes, this is what Putin is really after--the Coastal South!", without fully taking into consideration the massive operations that have failed in the north and the east, or thinking more critically about why Russia has had more success in the South versus other fronts.

That is not to say that Putin won't recognize his failures in the rest of the country and then publicly proclaim his real objective, control of the Black Sea coast and connecting Crimea to the Dumbass People's Republics, was a smashing success for him and the glorious Russian army, though.

[Habbaku]

That NYT Opinion piece strikes me as Bret Stephens looking at a map of current operational control in Ukraine and saying "Yes, this is what Putin is really after--the Coastal South!", without fully taking into consideration the massive operations that have failed in the north and the east.

That is not to say that Putin won't recognize his failures in the rest of the country and then publicly proclaim his real objective, control of the Black Sea coast and connecting Crimea to the Dumbass People's Republics, was a smashing success for him and the glorious Russian army, though.

[Darth Wagtaros]

So.... Are tanks done as a front line military weapon?

They need infantry support to protect them, but I think they always have. 

We'll see how active defenses work, this will likely reinvigorate that particular arms race. 

[Grey Fox]

Israel has good Anti-rocket defense on their tanks.

 

[Berkut]

I think there is a very good chance that armor has gone from the pre-dominant decisive arm of the modern battlefield to a support tool, and the way they ought to be designed and used is going to be radically different from the model that has dominated the idea behind modern high intensity conflict since WW2.

I suspect that right now tanks are like battleships in about 1935. It is clear that they are not the dominant weapon anymore, but its not entirely clear what the dominant weapon is going to be.

My suspicion is that lethality has gotten so high that we may very well be going back to the infantryman being the dominat battlefield weapon, because everything larger is just too damn vulnerable.