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Russia/Ukraine conflict

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I see no evidence of any "flipping" in Crimea or the east. I haven't even seen Ukrainian propaganda make this claim. The link I posted last week quoted an officer on the eastern front who said 30% were pro-Russia, 30% pro-Ukraine and 40% didn't care. That was an area not previously controlled by Russia and currently under attack. I also mentioned the CNN interview with an older couple whose house was destroyed by Russian shelling -- they blamed Biden.

NBC News' Richard Engel was in Mariupol just before the war and for a week after the war started. He said from interviewing many people on the street that he saw a dramatic shift in public opinion the day the war started. Before the war he interviewed many people who were mildly pro-Russia or neutral, but it was hard to find anyone pro-Russia after the war started.

This poll is from April, but 92% of Ukrainians were strongly supportive of what the military was doing.
Public Opinion Survey of Residents of Ukraine

Conscription in general is not popular in any country. Resistance goes up when it's doe to send people to a war that is seen as a waste or one that is going badly. The Russians have been shanghaiing every male they can catch in the Donbas they have held since 2014.

Again, I've seen no evidence of 15 year olds fighting for Russia.

Some of the POWs look very young, though I don't know how old the youngest is.

The Russians sent out letters gathering information on women age 35-50. It's rumored they are planning to draft women in that age group to send into the war

Russia has 4x the population of Ukraine. And guess which country saw a faster population decline than Russia over the past decade or so? Yep. And that was before 7 million Ukrainians fled and millions more got caught in areas now controlled by Russia.

The Ukrainians slapped travel restrictions on all men between 18 and 60. Except for some men exempt from military service mostly due to severe health problems, all of the 7 million refugees are women, children, and the elderly. Getting those people out of the country are less mouths for the Ukrainians to feed.

From day 1, the Ukrainians started full mobilization of their military age men and Ukraine's civilian economy is mostly shut down with everything focused on the war effort. They need a lot fewer of those men of military age in the civilian workforce because there is less civilian workforce for them to work in.

Russia is trying to keep the peacetime economy going, which means most men of military age are employed in that economy. They are not switching to a wartime economy nor are they expanding the draft. The Russians dismantled all of the infrastructure needed for a full wartime draft, which means if they wanted to do it, they would have to start over from scratch.

For most countries in modern history who did full mobilization to send troops abroad, it has taken about 6 months before significant changes started appearing on the front lines. Mobilizing a population for home defense can go much quicker. If the Russians started today their army would not grow significantly until early 2023 at the soonest.

Ukraine is well down the full mobilization process and their economy is being propped up with international support. Russia's economy is falling apart with virtually no international support.

Just having a larger population doesn't make an army stronger. There are many, many factors involved.

Ukraine has a motivation advantage, but they are at a huge numerical disadvantage. And numbers rule in a war of attrition.

Ukraine has more troops in the field now than Russia does. Russia is not raising more troops in Russia. They have their conscript class for the spring completing training now, but those conscripts would have to sign contracts to go to the war zone and they are probably having a tougher time conning people into signing contracts now.

There was a story in Forbes that the Russians are planning on stripping all their training people out of training duty to send them into Ukraine. That would boost their forces short term, but at the cost of having the ability to train any more troops at all. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. That's only been done by armies near collapse like the last days of Imperial Japan or the last days of Nazi Germany.

The Russians still have a numerical advantage in equipment, but that gap is closing every day. The Ukrainians are already making use of NATO artillery to take out Russian artillery. In the first few days 12 artillery pieces have taken out 80 Russian artillery pieces.
Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App

The Russians are resorting to mercenaries and conscripting any warm body they can catch in Donbas. Stories of mutiny are getting more common.

Sounds like a rationalization. Ukraine is losing ground in Donbas. It's very hard to regain lost ground, no matter how cleverly you retreat.

Ukraine took back part of Sievierodonetsk. They did what insurgents always do, they let the Russians take most of the city with troops laying low in hiding, then when the moment was right, their hidden troops popped up and took out the rear of the Russian columns.

The Russians have thrown almost their entire army into fighting in Donbas. Around 35 BTGs were committed to the Sievierodonetsk attack. The forces on the north and south parts of the pocket have slowed their advances because the large concentrations of troops for those attacks have been whittled down. There have been stories from a few places that the forces around Irpin have been decimated. One brigade was down to 12-25 men from around 1500.

It's a lot easier to gain lost ground if the enemy was decimated taking it. To hold ground you need infantry. Boots on the ground. The Russians are running low on infantry.

The US led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq failed in large part because the US didn't send in enough grunts to hold the ground they captured quite easily. There were not enough boots on the ground.

A rule of thumb for any operation to hold conquered territory is that once fighting stops you need about 20 troops per 1000 population to prevent insurgency. The US forces were too small and insurgencies developed.

The Russian invasion force was way too small to control all of Ukraine even if the Ukrainians hadn't put up a lot of initial resistance. With their losses, the Russians don't have enough troops to hold the ground they have taken. The Ukrainians have only done a bit of partisan activity in the south concentrating on regular army forces, but without enough men to hold the ground they have captured, the Russians are going to be pushed out when the Ukrainians are strong enough for a regular offensive.


Take back? They are a very long way from that. You know that propaganda we hear about Ukraine taking back land in the south? "Major counteroffensives" and so forth? CNN sent a reporter in who found a stalemate. Both sides are dug into trenches with very little movement either direction. And that's a location the military allowed them to see. Ukraine will need much more offensive weaponry to push Russia back. They'll probably need many more well trained troops, as well.

The Ukrainians have lacked the equipment for offensive operations until now. The NATO equipment coming in is allowing them to equip units for offensive operations into the captured territories.

The Ukrainians are conducting some offensive operations around Kherson but the front around Melitopol has been stable for a while. The Russians have stripped this front to feed troops into other areas. That will bite them when Ukraine is strong enough to switch over to the offensive.

There are stories that the Russians are trying to hold a front about 100-200 miles wide with two under-strength BTGs. There will be gaps in that line the Ukrainians will exploit.

The Russians are trying to hold territory the way Japan did in China. They hold and fortify strong points and leave the countryside unguarded. That works OK when the enemy is very weak, but an enemy with any offensive ability will quickly isolate all the strong points and roll over that territory.

Every day Ukraine gets stronger with more men under arms and more western equipment flowing in. Every day Russia gets weaker with losses of equipment they can't replace as well as losses of troops they can't easily replace.

Russia's equipment problems are severe enough they are shipping in ancient T-62s to replace tank losses. They are not raising more troops at home to replace losses. They are trying to plug the losses with mercenaries (who refuse to fight if it looks hopeless), men grabbed off the streets in LPR and DPR, and training troops. Only the latter will likely have any skill and be willing to use them in combat. But the trade off with sending in the training troops is nobody is left to train the next class of conscripts.
 
I see no evidence of any "flipping" in Crimea or the east. I haven't even seen Ukrainian propaganda make this claim. The link I posted last week quoted an officer on the eastern front who said 30% were pro-Russia, 30% pro-Ukraine and 40% didn't care. That was an area not previously controlled by Russia and currently under attack. I also mentioned the CNN interview with an older couple whose house was destroyed by Russian shelling -- they blamed Biden.


Again, I've seen no evidence of 15 year olds fighting for Russia.


Russia has 4x the population of Ukraine. And guess which country saw a faster population decline than Russia over the past decade or so? Yep. And that was before 7 million Ukrainians fled and millions more got caught in areas now controlled by Russia.

Ukraine has a motivation advantage, but they are at a huge numerical disadvantage. And numbers rule in a war of attrition.


Sounds like a rationalization. Ukraine is losing ground in Donbas. It's very hard to regain lost ground, no matter how cleverly you retreat.


Take back? They are a very long way from that. You know that propaganda we hear about Ukraine taking back land in the south? "Major counteroffensives" and so forth? CNN sent a reporter in who found a stalemate. Both sides are dug into trenches with very little movement either direction. And that's a location the military allowed them to see. Ukraine will need much more offensive weaponry to push Russia back. They'll probably need many more well trained troops, as well.

The number you use for population is illusory, Russia has only used ethnic minority troops so in effect they are drawing on the same population base. To nitpick Russia does not have 4x but 3.x times. To nitpick further Russia is fighting 2 wars as they are still staffing in Syria. In a war of attrition what matters is who is on defense, who is motivated, who has better logistics, and who is better able to replace arms and munitions. In this regard Ukraine has much of the advantage as long as it stays on the defense, morale is high, they move on interior lines, and western govts are acting as the weapons commissary.

As the war progresses the question for Russia will become are they willing to have mothers in moscow and st petersburg see coffins. Til now this has not happened but for generals and ranking officers.

This holds true as long as Ukraine is fighting on the defense, offensive operations will be costly.
 
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The number you use for population is illusory, Russia has only used ethnic minority troops so in effect they are drawing on the same population base. To nitpick Russia does not have 4x but 3.x times. To nitpick further Russia is fighting 2 wars as they are still staffing in Syria. In a war of attrition what matters is who is on defense, who is motivated, who has better logistics, and who is better able to replace arms and munitions. In this regard Ukraine has much of the advantage as long as it stays on the defense, morale is high, they move on interior lines, and western govts are acting as the weapons commissary.

As the war progresses the question for Russia will become are they willing to have mothers in moscow and st petersburg see coffins. Til now this has not happened but for generals and ranking officers.

This holds true as long as Ukraine is fighting on the defense, offensive operations will be costly.

Russia has a number of foreign bases.
List of Russian military bases abroad - Wikipedia

Russia was making noises about full mobilization in April, but they dropped it and instead are doing a low scale mobilization. They are doing everything they can to get volunteers for the war, but have had few takers. There have been a slew of arson and bombings of recruitment offices.

It's likely the Russians realized that going for full mobilization was going to take a long time and it would probably create more internal tension than any gains down the road. They needed the extra troops over a month ago. They wouldn't be much benefit until 2023 when the war might be over.
 
Reuters casually mentioned it's likely more Russian troops have dies in these 3 months in Ukraine than 9 years in Afghanistan.

That's bananas.

The Soviet population in 1980 was double what the Russian population is today.

Soviet deaths estimated up to 15k in Afghan campaign.

I have seen estimates as high as 31k for Russian dead in Ukraine campaign after 100 days.
 
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Re MLRS numbers now apparently confirmed as US sending 4 HIMARS (the wheeled ones with six rockets, the M142) and UK sending 3 M270s (the tracked ones with twelve rockets). I wonder if this is an initial tranche or whether more will follow. And will any other MLRS users also contribute.

 
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Looks like they got one. According to Trent Telenko the first 12 155mm howitzers got 80 Russian artillery in the first week or so. The Ukrainians probably have lost more than one 155mm, this is just the first I've seen documented.

A lot of this war is a war of attrition at this point. And the Ukrainians have the advantage in every area for that kind of war. They are getting a flow of better replacement equipment than they lost, morale is good, and they have completely mobilized the country for war. Russia's equipment quality is degrading as they have to dip into older equipment to replace the newer lost, morale is terrible, and their economy has not been mobilized for war.

Ukrainian losses are mounting though. Their defense ministry admitted they are suffering about 100 troops dead and 500 wounded a day. The Russians are losing about 200 a day. Still 2X Ukrainian losses, but a much narrower gap than earlier in the war.
 
Meanwhile Germany continues to disappoint:
"Germany has not sent any weapons to Ukraine in the last few weeks. The supply of German weapons to Ukraine is still not going well. In fact, in the last few weeks, mostly spare parts have been given". (Spiegel)

Also, one of Merkel's former military leaders, Erich Vad, sure seem like he is in Putin's pocket.

 
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Re MLRS numbers now apparently confirmed as US sending 4 HIMARS (the wheeled ones with six rockets, the M142) and UK sending 3 M270s (the tracked ones with twelve rockets). I wonder if this is an initial tranche or whether more will follow. And will any other MLRS users also contribute.

This administration might be slow, but Ukraine-and the rest of us would be totally screwed if we still had the last administration.
 
All of Ukraine would be a burned out wasteland if this "mission" we're deployed 2 years ago. Makes me wonder why it wasn't?

Hell, we probably would've been sending Putin "anti-Nazi defense munitions" from the start.
At that point Putin thought his stool pigeon Trump would win the US election and gift him Ukraine and the Baltics.
 
All of Ukraine would be a burned out wasteland if this "mission" we're deployed 2 years ago. Makes me wonder why it wasn't?

Hell, we probably would've been sending Putin "anti-Nazi defense munitions" from the start.
I think we had some discussion on the timing at the beginning of this thread. Iirc, some felt the pandemic depressed demand for oil, so Putler waited for new production to slow.
 
All of Ukraine would be a burned out wasteland if this "mission" we're deployed 2 years ago. Makes me wonder why it wasn't?

Hell, we probably would've been sending Putin "anti-Nazi defense munitions" from the start.

There are still stories out there that Putin is dying and he wants to cement a legacy as the new Peter the Great. Two years ago he probably was ill, but may have thought he was going to beat it and thought he had more time to wear down Ukraine.

Putin was also working to get the US to completely abandon Europe in its foreign policies and either cripple NATO, or leave NATO. He probably thought the last guy would be re-elected and continue the campaign to weaken NATO and possibly pull off something that would hand Ukraine to Putin without having to lift a finger.

During the pandemic nobody was doing any work to bring new oil and gas to market, but as the world recovered, exploration was starting up again and developing the Ukrainian fields was on the table again.

Putin also is obsessed with history, an especially Russian colored version of history. For the USSR the invasion of Afghanistan was a back breaking event when Russia had to pull out. Russia's national identity is very much wrapped up in its identity as a strong military power. Russia had a constantly expanding empire for 500 years with only the occasional setback, usually after encountering a well equipped foe rather than the peasants of interior Asia. Losing wars has led to political instability in Russia, especially in the last 120 years.

He thought the US was a mirror of Russia in this regard (after all the US loves a lot of military type things, even more than Russians) and thought the US government was badly wounded by the Afghanistan pull out. The US can be patriotic to extremes not seen in a lot of other countries and it can be very proud of its military, but starting with the defeat in Vietnam, Americans tend to sort of roll with military defeats and move on after a short period of blaming the administration for the loss.

Vietnam's loss was probably the biggest war reflection the US has ever done because there had been a large number of people who had been actively resisting the war who suddenly had to figure out what to do next now that they got what they wanted. Putin may look at the fall of Nixon as really being about the end of the Vietnam War (his fall from power was on a similar time line from the wind down of Vietnam as the fall of the USSR vs the end in Afghanistan), but he is blind to the subtleties of American politics that Nixon's fall had nothing to do with Vietnam.

The US pulled out of Iraq with little fanfare. It got some news coverage, but it was forgotten within a few weeks and possibly days. The Afghanistan pull out got a bit more coverage and a bit more political flak because the opposition was actively seeking something to pin on the new administration. The pull out from Afghanistan was also messier.

But the US has moved on to other things. There is the occasional political muck raking, but most Americans have moved on.

So Putin may have thought that the US was politically as damaged after the Afghanistan pull out as the USSR was and assumed the US was going to be unable to help Ukraine. He also probably doesn't understand how democracies can have quite vocal arguments about policy, but when threatened they can pull together into a formidable porcupine. Europe has been dealing with the long drawn out Brexit for years, there have been constant squabbling between EU and NATO countries about various things, Germany just changed administrations after 16 years of Merkel, etc.

He thought Europe was fragile and would fall apart if hit. Because he doesn't really grok how democracies work, he didn't foresee that an external crisis was the perfect thing to coalesce the countries into a unified front against him. The only hold outs are a handful of leaders who are in his pocket. And even they aren't holding out as strongly as Putin wishes.

Ukraine wasn't the most stable democracy in the world pre-war, but they were far enough down the democracy track that the war had the same unifying effect on Ukraine it had on the rest of the developed world.

Ukraine was a massive miscalculation for Putin. He underestimated many things and now he's stuck in a war that has the potential of changing everything for Russia. Russia will come out of this war changed in some fundamental way. Russia could turn into a hermit state like North Korea, it could have a civil war and dissolve into many countries, or it could go back to Imperial Russia.

Their military will be dramatically weakened by this conflict. They are facing a serious manpower shortage. By population it's one of the larger countries on Earth, but the population is top heavy with a large elderly population and a small population that is military age. To keep the pensioners fed, they need to have as many of the young people as possible working in the economy. Drag too many into the military and the economy suffers unless they use the military like they did during the Soviet era and use them as low paid farm help, which doesn't leave anybody to actively defend the country or suppress uprisings.

The birthrate in Russia is among the lowest in the world and has been for 30 years. What's more dramatic is the birthrate among the white Russians of the NW part of the country vs the ethnic groups in the east and the south. The white Russian birthrate has been extremely low.

Russia will likely be something very different than it is now within a few years. Though who knows which direction its going to go at this point. I personally think the dissolution scenario is most likely right now, but that's a WAG on my part.
 
self-explanatory


Ukraine and Europe are running out of ex-Soviet ammunition. The Ukrainians have plenty of Soviet era artillery left, but they are running out of ammunition. The US or somebody should start contacting countries that aren't super cozy with Putin but have stocks of Soviet/Russian weapons and offer good rates to buy their stocks of Russian ammunition. That could probably scrounge some ammunition for the ex-Soviet artillery, but NATO guns and ammunition is what Ukraine needs longer term.

On the upside the NATO artillery is generally better than Russian artillery in both range and accuracy. The good results the Ukrainians have gotten out of the first NATO guns put into action is a positive sign that the Ukrainians can do more with less to some extent, but they still need a lot more than they have gotten thus far. And fortunately there is an abundance of ammunition for the 155mm guns.

From what I've read, the US and other NATO allies are paranoid the Ukrainians are going to take their rocket artillery and use it against Russian territory. Even if the government promises that they won't, there is still a risk that some rogue artillery crews might attack Russian anyway. The first deliveries might be small to see what the Ukrainians do with them. If they show they can be trusted, the MRLS may start flowing in earnest.

Russia has already surprised western intelligence by launching this war in the first place. It was an insanely risky move by Putin who has historically been more of a cautious chess player looking for openings for small gains. Western countries are acting very cautiously to try and prevent Putin from reacting dramatically against them.

If this was something more akin to the Iran-Iraq War where both sides lacked nuclear weapons, the west would probably be more free in supporting the Ukrainians. But the fact Russia has nuclear weapons (who knows if they will actually work, but nobody wants to find out for sure), makes everyone act cautiously. Blundering into a full scale nuclear exchange is the #1 thing to avoid here.
 
Interesting 5 minute read


I read yesterday that quite a few Ukrainians who had dual citizenship have renounced their Russian citizenship. The war is de-Russifying Ukraine.

This is a weird story I first saw last night. It could just be Putin being paranoid for paranoia's sake, but it is weird