Russia/Ukraine conflict

[samppa]

My theory:
- Russian warfare has always been more or less like this: badly planned, badly executed ops, success based on superior numbers
- Now it is all followed in twitter in real time by the whole world, this hasn't happened before in such a scale

 

[Xdama]

My theory:
- Russian warfare has always been more or less like this: badly planned, badly executed ops, success based on superior numbers
- Now it is all followed in twitter in real time by the whole world, this hasn't happened before in such a scale

Pretty much sums it up, quantity not quality. However how far does it go, is Putin sitting there with overall control of launching nukes …. or are there checks & measures in place with sane people at the control or just his minions who’ll follow his every command. Bear in mind anyone who opposes doesn’t go very far in Russia ….. even children it appears.
Pretty sure unlike Trump, Putin doesn’t do Twitter & really doesn’t give a stuff about it

 

[MC3OZ]

It will be interesting to see if Kherson is recapured by the Ukrainians overnight.

It seems the army could have left before the city was taken, leaving the district guard to hold the fort. (I read this somewhere)

That means all the high value gear leaves with the army.

Maybe the army stays within striking distance just in case an overnight raid to retake the city is viable.

 

[nativewolf]

May well be but it didn’t prevent Croatia joining the EU so why should it prevent Ukraine from joining? As someone else pointed out Germany (the biggest member of the EU financially) was the main protagonist in WW2 & shall we say “not exactly Pro Jewish”

Xdama it is because you have the history of that conflict completely wrong.

It is very similar to this case where Croatia voted to leave because the serbs has started to dismantle the work of Tito and to dominate all aspects of the country (Tito had enforced a multi ethnic communist party state and a croat could do well, a muslim could do well, etc). So they wanted to leave. Solvenia left first but the Serbs couldn't get there and no serbs really lived there. Croatia border Serbia and the border areas were mixed. Yugoslav army was ordered to invade to stop the croatia from leaving and it spiraled into hell from there.

Croatia was not the "aggressor" so much as they wanted to leave Yugoslavia. Anyone that was not serbian felt the same way. Bosnians, Albanians in Kosovo, Croats, Solvenians. The serbs were the aggressor, the ones that carried out the massacres, the ones convicted in the ICC. A few croat were also convicted of war crimes. In croatia it got ugly but it wouldn't have if the serb dominated government had not been determined to impose will by force. The history of the breakup of yugoslavia was very ugly, plenty of wrong by both sides but it was mostly the serbs that behaved in a brutal and criminal fashion. Trying to hold something together by force is silly, the chechs and slovaks split nicely. Putin did not learn this lesson or care.

 

[CHGolferJim]

As I said earlier in the thread I expect Putin to be deep underground in a facility designed to survive for many years.

Hiding from his own countrymen, like a Czar……..

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

The history of the breakup of yugoslavia was very ugly, plenty of wrong by both sides but it was mostly the serbs that behaved in a brutal and criminal fashion. Trying to hold something together by force is silly, the chechs and slovaks split nicely. Putin did not learn this lesson or care. [My underline.]

Putin obviously doesn't care.

A few pages back I think wdolsen posted an article that got published on some state owned Russian propaganda site and then immediately retracted. It was obviously written in advance to fit a reality where Putin was in control of almost all of Ukraine. That article clearly gives away Putins real motive. He wants the landmass that today is Ukraine since it was once a port of Russia/USSR. And for him – that is all that matters. He doesn't care regardless of how many thousands of people that die. Children. Women. Men. To Putin – a little child is just an insignificant pawn that doesn't matter what so ever. What's the total death toll this far? ~15,000? Someone else in the thread has pointed to his KGB evaluation prior to recruitment. And apparently he 'scored' the wrong way on the sociopath/psychopath chart – and significantly so. But obviously those were the kind of excuses for human beings the KGB was looking for...

And there also really doesn't seem to be any lesson for him to learn since he has got Nuclear Weapons. And the civilized world doesn't seem to dare to risk a Nuclear exchange with what is clearly a Mass Murdering Complete Nut Job.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Just a wild guess here... Could the reason be that those two events were separated in time by roughly 45 years?

May well be but it didn’t prevent Croatia joining the EU so why should it prevent Ukraine from joining? As someone else pointed out Germany (the biggest member of the EU financially) was the main protagonist in WW2 & shall we say “not exactly Pro Jewish”

I think that there is a slight language barrier in play here because I do not quite understand your point...

 

[mars_or_bust]

Russian military aggression has to be stopped, but I wonder how many people here are familiar with the Jewish tragedy in Ukraine ? Wikipedia is a pretty good summary, but below is a tl;dr version:

• Violent anti-semitism has been rampant in the Ukraine for hundreds of years. Wholesale slaughter of Jews was so common it got its own name -- the pogrom (invented by the cossaks, adopted by the ukrainians.)
• During WW II the most extreme genocide of Jews occurred in Nazi Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. The Ukraine stood out in particular for not only passively supporting the slaughter, but carrying out the slaughter themselves.
• The few Jews left today in Ukraine (about 17k today, 900k 100 years ago) remain a political dog whistle for the Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian Nazi supporting descendants, both of whom use Jewish hate propaganda to rally the population to their side.

I can think of better candidates for the EU.

Not 17k today, its closer to 400k.

Who are Ukraine’s Jews, and how is Russia’s invasion affecting them?

Tens of thousands of Jews living in Ukraine are plunged into uncertainty, including country's Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky; while some have fled, others are staying to fight

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[nativewolf]

Putin obviously doesn't care.

A few pages back I think wdolsen posted an article that got published on some state owned Russian propaganda site and then immediately retracted. It was obviously written in advance to fit a reality where Putin was in control of almost all of Ukraine. That article clearly gives away Putins real motive. He wants the landmass that today is Ukraine since it was once a port of Russia/USSR. And for him – that is all that matters. He doesn't care regardless of how many thousands of people that die. Children. Women. Men. To Putin – a little child is just an insignificant pawn that doesn't matter what so ever. What's the total death toll this far? ~15,000? Someone else in the thread has pointed to his KGB evaluation prior to recruitment. And apparently he 'scored' the wrong way on the sociopath/psychopath chart – and significantly so. But obviously those were the kind of excuses for human beings the KGB was looking for...

And there also really doesn't seem to be any lesson for him to learn since he has got Nuclear Weapons. And the civilized world doesn't seem to dare to risk a Nuclear exchange with what is clearly a Mass Murdering Complete Nut Job.

I am in complete agreement, just that he should have taken the soft approach and pulled Ukraine back in via economic integration. The path he has chosen will lead to a disaster for Russia.

Frankly he's just not very smart. Brutal, yes. Smart, not so much. Russia is a glorified criminal state with a tsar and dukes and counts and barons. Not unlike China but much less savvy. All the natural resources of the wold but no verve.

 

[wdolson]

Weaponry doesn't excite me, so I don't know the ins and outs of the various drone technologies, but it's my understang there are already US made drones in play in Ukraine.

If that's the case.....why not just dump 2,000 more into the mix? Who's to say which nation owned these downed drones 3 weeks ago? Or even who was operating them just before they went down?

If the engagement is already operating along the lines of Ukrainian pilots jumping into Polish fighter jets, can't we just hand Germany tons of drones? They hand em to Poland. Poland hands em to Ukraine. Convoy cancelled.

The US has less than 700 drones with offensive capability. Most drones are used for reconnaissance. The combat drones used specialized missiles. Any drones provided would have to include the specific missiles that drone can handle. It would be better to provide Ukraine with more drones and missiles for what they already have.

Don't estimate China.

There are stories of China paying shipping companies to not pick up American containers to China in Long Bench ports. These ships paid to go back to China with empty containers, so no import into China.

The CCP can pay oil ships more... Good luck getting tankers in general.

Again, don't underestimate China and their hate of US and allies.

Russia only has so much port capacity to load oil onto ships and those ports are probably close to maxed out loading oil now. There is no capacity for more. Redirecting natural gas is more difficult. Without a liquefied natural gas facility on each end of the transfer, it can't be used except via pipelines. In the US natural gas was dirt cheap a few years ago, but it's getting expensive because the oil companies are exporting the glut to Europe and other places. Facilities were built in, I believe Louisiana and Texas to compress and load the LNG and the ports on the other end decompress it and put it into pipelines.
Germany announced last week they were building two LNG ports in the north of the country. When the war was looming the US promised to step up LNG deliveries to make up for the loss from Russia. The US exports are still in early days so they haven't maxed out capacity yet.

The Russians have the only options of selling natural gas to Europe, or keep it in the ground.

 

[Xdama]

Maybe I didn’t word it correctly, I didn’t mean Croatia was the aggressor in the case of the split. I was merely trying to point out that in WW2 the 2 sides weee reversed in terms of who supported whom. Ie Croatia was Germanys ally, Serbia was the Allies. But fast forward a few years and Croatia is in the EU but Serbia & Bosnia are not. Consequently the fact the Ukraine committed any atrocities in WW2 is moot, as is proven by Germany, Croatia, Italy all being in the EU.
Hope that clarifies.

 

[wdolson]

9 parts lie and manipulative propaganda, 1 part a kernel of truth.

The 'nationalist' movement in Ukraine has German and rabidly anti-semitic elements. To this day they use Jewish hate propaganda. It is not by chance that both Putin and the Ukrainian nationalists use anti-semitic propaganda. It plays well in that populace.

Zelensky is the Colin Powell of Ukraine.

Many democracies now have racist nationalist movements. Considering that Zelensky got 70% of the vote and now has a 91% approval rating, I wouldn't say the nationalist/racist movement there is as serious a problem as some other democracies. A number of NATO and EU countries have worse problems right now.

 

[wdolson]

Good to see Ukraine still having some wins;-

https://twitter.com/x/status/1498799589100605444

I'm skeptical they took out 800 vehicles in one action. But it probably was a big win for Ukraine.

In combat the defender always has an advantage. When the defender is defending their homes, it's essentially a force multiplier.

Don’t forget a good part of Northern California.

The Russian River is named such because of the Russian explorations. They also had some outposts in British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. The whole Pacific coast has a lot of suitors before finally being split between England and the US.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

The US has less than 700 drones with offensive capability. Most drones are used for reconnaissance. The combat drones used specialized missiles. Any drones provided would have to include the specific missiles that drone can handle. It would be better to provide Ukraine with more drones and missiles for what they already have.

I have no insight into the US military and don't follow military news, but I can say with near certainty US weaponized drone fleet is well beyond 10x700.

Its 2022. And we're spending trillions on this stuff.

 

[wdolson]

Surprised we're not seeing more press about potential successors to Putin. There's pretty much no avenue out of this now, so I gotta think the oligarchs replacing him has the best odds.

In my 5 minutes of googling, it seems current PM Mikhail Mishustin looks like the logical move. Didn't know he existed until 4 minutes ago, but he's a nice business-centric interim leader while the big boys figure out the real plan. Economist with no real aspiration to succeed Putin or stretch out an interim role.

Throw him in office, put out the fires, get the money flowing again, and go from there.

Since the fall of the Czars the Russians have struggled with regime change. They never really nailed it during the Communist era.

Russia has basically a three legged stool under Putin: the oligarchs, the military, and the intelligence people. Somebody high up leaked the entire war plan to the US and presumably the US has stayed in touch. This could provide a back door channel where the US could make and offer for what a post-Putin Russia would be acceptable to the US. The US is probably also talking to various oligarchs.

The intelligence people and military people are motivated by protection of Russia. If the US offered to eliminate the sanctions in return for someone who would keep his hands off other countries and the US would then leave Russia pretty much alone, they would at least be interested.

The oligarchs are motivated by wealth. The US promises to let them keep their money if they help get rid of Putin and in return they don't have to answer to a boss anymore. Putin has allowed the oligarchs to make massive wealth, but in return he always wants favors. Tell them they can have their yachts and soccer teams if they just quit supported Putin.

The intelligence people were nervous about this war from the start. I think they had evidence the Ukrainians were not going to back down. The military at this point is probably quite nervous. They are losing and losing badly. They have committed so much of the army to this war that if some serious unrest brewed up back home that was more then local police could handle, there would not be enough troops to call on to restore order.

The military people are also aware of history. The Russian Revolution was kicked off when the military refused to keep fighting Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire and instead decided to fight other Russians. Germany's war effort collapsed a little over a year later when their troops started rebelling.

We don't have a lot of insight into he political processes in Russia, and we don't really know how the war is going to plan out...

If the Ukrainians win, that possibly happens in a few weeks... if they can prevent Kyiv being encircled, then it is going to be hard for Russians to take the city.
That would be Plan C failing...

If the Russians take the cities, perhaps that happens in the next few weeks, but after that the insurgency should last for years..

Trying to guess a timeline is very problematic.

If the Russians win and try to change the government in, all likelihood the sanctions last for years, until the West is happy with the elections for a Ukrainian government.

IMO a defeated army returning home almost always changes the government especially in a totalitarian regime,

The other alternative is Putin might die from natural causes, and that might be a circuit-breaker,

For the military campaign itself, there are reasons to be optimistic or pessimistic, experts are expressing various opinions, we might have a better idea in about 1 weeks time... The best case for the Ukrainians is they are able to prevent city sieges, or break city sieges, destroying a lot of Russian hardware in the process.

Once a major city falls and is held for a few days, then the insurgency period probably starts in that area.

At this point the Russians have a higher chance of launching nukes than winning any of the major cities. An assault on Kharkiv or Kyiv would turn into Stalingrad II immediately. To even be competitive in urban warfare on offense requires determined, battle hardened troops with good discipline and god supply. The Russians have none of that. An urban assault would end up becoming a slaughter for the attackers.

In Iraq even the US was hesitant to get into urban warfare and it has one of the most professional armies in the world with near infinite supply.

 

[wdolson]

I am in complete agreement, just that he should have taken the soft approach and pulled Ukraine back in via economic integration. The path he has chosen will lead to a disaster for Russia.

Frankly he's just not very smart. Brutal, yes. Smart, not so much. Russia is a glorified criminal state with a tsar and dukes and counts and barons. Not unlike China but much less savvy. All the natural resources of the wold but no verve.

I think Putin has been quite intelligent in his sociopathy over the years. This is an aeration for him, he got very reckless for some reason we don't fully understand.

It's possible he isolated himself so much during the pandemic he convinced himself that the advisors he normally listened to were idiots?

I have no insight into the US military and don't follow military news, but I can say with near certainty US weaponized drone fleet is well beyond 10x700.

Its 2022. And we're spending trillions on this stuff.

I did a quick search and the number of active combat capable drones from one source was somewhere in the 700s. Drones aren't as sexy as the bigger machinery so the military brass discount them. The A-10 was on the perpetual chopping block before it proved its worth first in the first Gulf War, then more definitively in the Iraq invasion.

The bulk of drones are unarmed reconnaissance planes. In that role they are invaluable.

 

[JRP3]

I have no insight into the US military and don't follow military news, but I can say with near certainty US weaponized drone fleet is well beyond 10x700.

You should probably gain some knowledge before commenting with certainty. Most of our military drones are small surveillance drones and can't carry any weapons.

 

[SmokyPeat]

European wars tend to be full of complexities. Just look at Finland during WW2/the Continuation War. They allied with the nazis to repel Russia's invasion despite not sharing any of the nazi ideology. In fact, they staunchly refused to deport the small Finnish Jewish population despite German requests. When jewish Finns serving in the army were offered the iron cross(by the nazis) for their service, they responded in a similar fashion to the Ukrainians defending Snake Island responding to the Russian destroyer.

 

[mars_or_bust]

Maybe I didn’t word it correctly, I didn’t mean Croatia was the aggressor in the case of the split. I was merely trying to point out that in WW2 the 2 sides weee reversed in terms of who supported whom. Ie Croatia was Germanys ally, Serbia was the Allies. But fast forward a few years and Croatia is in the EU but Serbia & Bosnia are not. Consequently the fact the Ukraine committed any atrocities in WW2 is moot, as is proven by Germany, Croatia, Italy all being in the EU.
Hope that clarifies.

Both your Yugoslav and Ukranian history is grossly oversimplified, especially the Ukranian one.

Yes, Croatia had a puppet Nazi regime, and it was extremely brutal, but this one was never voted in (had about 1% support in 1939), and there was a huge anti Nazi partisan movement in Croatia (Tito for example was Croatian). Yes, a lot of Serbians were in the partisans, but they also had an imposed puppet Nazi regime, and the Serbian chetniks were all over the place in the alliances, depending on opportunity - with/against Germans, Italians, allies etc.

Yes, there was some pro Nazi movement in Ukraine, but the bulk by far was anti Nazi- (some of the) the most ferocious fight against Germany was in Ukraine, by the Ukranians. And the pro Nazi movement can to a huge degree be explained by their very justified hatred of Stalin - if Germany was not hell bent on killing off (or enslaving) the entire East European population (instead of just defeating them militarily), the Soviet Union would have fallen easily in 1941 (from the 2nd half of 1942 the Soviet Union got its *sugar* together regarding military tactics, weapons production, officer corps, etc but till then it was a complete incompetent clusterfuck).

Anyway, this is just a historic clarification, and completely irrelevant to what is happening today - invading another country is never justified, killing civilians is never justified, Putin is a war criminal.

 

[mars_or_bust]

I think Putin has been quite intelligent in his sociopathy over the years. This is an aeration for him, he got very reckless for some reason we don't fully understand.

It's possible he isolated himself so much during the pandemic he convinced himself that the advisors he normally listened to were idiots?



I did a quick search and the number of active combat capable drones from one source was somewhere in the 700s. Drones aren't as sexy as the bigger machinery so the military brass discount them. The A-10 was on the perpetual chopping block before it proved its worth first in the first Gulf War, then more definitively in the Iraq invasion.

The bulk of drones are unarmed reconnaissance planes. In that role they are invaluable.

Yes, probably the US military does not favour drones due to financial/historic reasons. Drones are the future, manned planes will become obsolete.

I think most of the Ukrainian drones are Turkish. These drones proved themselves in the last Azerbajani-Armenian war, where they decided the victor (azerbajan). They also saved Ethiopia recently from getting overwhelmed by the insurgency.

From what I understand, it is in fact Israel and Turkey who are the leaders in droned warfare.