Russia/Ukraine conflict

[Tiger]

If in fact Russia must be eliminated due to its threat to the rest of the world then it should be done quickly and decisively. — No more half measures.

True, but you want to accomplish this without creating unnecessary martyrs (with a vendetta) in the process - Russians already see themselves as the outsiders, the underdogs, due to effective propaganda. And they already have (been given) a bone to pick with Ukraine. Unfortunately, Alea iacta est, and at the time being, this process (or Russian roulette) is ongoing with Ukraine as the vessel.

Russia is probably trying to avoid balkanization by sending all eligible (and uneligible) men to the war. It may eventually be up to the women to stand up against the regime, after their sons and husbands lives have been wasted.

Russians themselves avoid the creation of martyrs using their "filtration" process which is probably more or less the same as concentration camps of the past, they try to leave no-one from the opposing side alive to tell the tale.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas

It's all from the Machiavelli/Sun Tzu playbooks:

 

[lolachampcar]

Regarding goals, I take Lloyd Austin at his word when he says the goal is to degrade Russia (better put, enable Russia to degrade itself) to the point where they no longer have the capability to inflict the same type of harm on other neighbors. Russia is dismantling itself. Russians feel like outsiders because they are actively behaving in a way to exclude themselves. Circular feedback loops are potent.

There is pushback and reverse pendulum swing for every action in life. The real trick here is to let Russia bleed itself out at a rate that is slow enough that P does not back himself into a nuclear corner. Suppliers of weapons can control that pace a bit, and I believe we are, but at the cost of Ukrainian lives. I'm just glad I am not tasked with striking that balance as it presents a huge moral challenge combined with unlivable guilt getting it wrong.

Regarding a comment someone made about the US involvement in Afghanistan, our behavior saddens me greatly. I remember watching the second plane fly into the towers and thinking the world has changed. As the days passed, it became clear to me that we were no longer in a world where you are attacked by nation states but that our technology had advanced to the point where a small group can do serious harm. The solution at the time was an open dialog in the US as to how to properly migrate from a no official sanctioned wet work policy to one that allowed the US to respond to a threat once it reached a threshold short of shooting back. How much to you have to say regarding killing us before we believe you and kill you? We took the "easy" way out because we lacked the strength and leadership to do the hard/right thing at the time and we wanted to pound our chest and go beat up on a country to make ourselves feel better. There is not a day that I do not think about the number of Afghans we killed who had no knowledge of, let alone a roll in, the attack that was used as an excuse to kill them.

I only bring up the above to address all the gut reaction posts I'm reading (mostly by one participant but there are conciliatory elements in other's writings). Please take the long view and allow Russia to bleed itself out. Sure, the West can step in and end this much more quickly either by enabling the Ukrainians with MUCH better weaponry or outright using NATO assets. That may be necessary if P choses to use small yield nuclear weapons. Let's try to not let that happen. It's hard and it's tricky but, if successful, Russia will be 100% responsible for all that it reaps from this behavior.

 

[SmokyPeat]

I'm pretty disgusted to see a box full of gold teeth extracted from Ukrainians at a Russian torture prison in a recently liberated town in Eastern Ukraine towards the end of this video. Pretty clear who the true nazis are here.

 

[nativewolf]

Direct involvement of the US military now runs the highest risk for nuclear war.



The war is going to end in less than a year. Hopefully the world will help Ukraine rebuild, but a lot of that money will go to American companies. The Marshall Plan after WWII was a big expense but it paid massive dividends both financially and politically.



Here is the goal as I see it: protect Ukraine's sovereignty with an increasing likelihood that Russia will be dismantled. If not dismantled it will become a vastly smaller threat to world peace coming out of this. The chances for a two-fer are very high.

Direct military intervention by the US risks the ICBMs flying.

Hope you had a chance to read last nights post on understandingwar.org. Lots of discussions about the fracturing of russian base and infighting. Topics you've enjoyed posting on before and I suspect you find no surprises but a good read nonetheless.

 

[nativewolf]

Regarding goals, I take Lloyd Austin at his word when he says the goal is to degrade Russia (better put, enable Russia to degrade itself) to the point where they no longer have the capability to inflict the same type of harm on other neighbors. Russia is dismantling itself. Russians feel like outsiders because they are actively behaving in a way to exclude themselves. Circular feedback loops are potent.

There is pushback and reverse pendulum swing for every action in life. The real trick here is to let Russia bleed itself out at a rate that is slow enough that P does not back himself into a nuclear corner. Suppliers of weapons can control that pace a bit, and I believe we are, but at the cost of Ukrainian lives. I'm just glad I am not tasked with striking that balance as it presents a huge moral challenge combined with unlivable guilt getting it wrong.

Regarding a comment someone made about the US involvement in Afghanistan, our behavior saddens me greatly. I remember watching the second plane fly into the towers and thinking the world has changed. As the days passed, it became clear to me that we were no longer in a world where you are attacked by nation states but that our technology had advanced to the point where a small group can do serious harm. The solution at the time was an open dialog in the US as to how to properly migrate from a no official sanctioned wet work policy to one that allowed the US to respond to a threat once it reached a threshold short of shooting back. How much to you have to say regarding killing us before we believe you and kill you? We took the "easy" way out because we lacked the strength and leadership to do the hard/right thing at the time and we wanted to pound our chest and go beat up on a country to make ourselves feel better. There is not a day that I do not think about the number of Afghans we killed who had no knowledge of, let alone a roll in, the attack that was used as an excuse to kill them.

I only bring up the above to address all the gut reaction posts I'm reading (mostly by one participant but there are conciliatory elements in other's writings). Please take the long view and allow Russia to bleed itself out. Sure, the West can step in and end this much more quickly either by enabling the Ukrainians with MUCH better weaponry or outright using NATO assets. That may be necessary if P choses to use small yield nuclear weapons. Let's try to not let that happen. It's hard and it's tricky but, if successful, Russia will be 100% responsible for all that it reaps from this behavior.

There is no double like option, this post deserves one.

 

[wdolson]

Whether they do or not, it’s certainly something to think long and hard about.

We suck at proxy wars and should stop participating in them.

Proxy wars can work if the people receiving the help are motivated to do something with it. The US essentially conducted a proxy war on the Eastern Front in WWII. It had no direct involvement, but sent massive loads of aid. The Russian counter offensive from 1943 to the end of the war was made possible with Studebaker trucks, large supplies of chemicals (60% of the Soviet ammunition supply stemmed from American chemical supplies), aircraft, and even tanks.

Other successful proxy wars from history include the American Revolution which was a French proxy war at the end.

The problem the US had during the Cold War was it would back banana republics with a dictator who was labeled the "good guy" because he claimed to be anti-communist, but his people were rather indifferent about any kind of war and the aid would go to waste. That's not happening in Ukraine. Ukraine is an emerging democracy who wants to be a part of the European community and the world community who are dedicated to fighting off an invading force. All evidence points to the Ukrainian people being overwhelmingly behind the effort to expel the Russians and make sure they never come back.

I do agree the US should think about the motivation of the people on the pointy end of the spear before the US starts backing someone.

Hope you had a chance to read last nights post on understandingwar.org. Lots of discussions about the fracturing of russian base and infighting. Topics you've enjoyed posting on before and I suspect you find no surprises but a good read nonetheless.

I didn't see that, but my partner read part of it to me. Fractures are forming inside the Russian government. It sounds like Prigozhin is angling to replace Putin, which would be very bad for the rest of the world. Among other things Prigozhin runs the Wagner Group and had a direct hand in interfering in elections around the world.

Putin has historically known how far he could push the envelop before the rest of the world started seriously pushing back. This war is a rare, but vast miscalculation. Prigozhin doesn't have any of those instincts, he's arrogant like the Project for a New American Century guys in the US who didn't realize the real world limits to their might makes right policies until it was too late (Iraq). But Prigozhin has no pretenses about wrapping his policies in any nice packages, he very simply believes that Russia should be allowed to do what it wants and if anyone complains nuke them. He assumes the west will be too weak to nuke back. Even now.

He would be about the worst case replacement for Putin.

 

[SageBrush]

I agree with you on a personal level, but as a collective civilization, such backwards mordor-like developments must be stopped. War is not even the best way to do it (it begins with information warfare), but war is what it comes to when push becomes shove, when we have failed at all the other means, and it's even the opponent's initiative.

This is pretty much where I stand too. Putin's Russia is fascist imperialism that must be stopped and broken. I don't care about modern day UKR any more or less than any other country that has been trampled, although I DO remember that UKR was complicit in the genocide of its Jewish population in WWII, and to this day it has what I call an easy identifiable Nazi element. I view Poland and Hungary the same way, for the same reasons. It remains to be seen just how fascist Italy will become, and all bets are off if Trump or a Trump-like cretin regains federal power in the USA.

I don't really doubt that the NATO embrace of these eastern European, x-USSR satellite nations will come back to bite them in the end, but Russia has forced NATO's hand.

 

[SmokyPeat]

This is pretty much where I stand too. Putin's Russia is fascist imperialism that must be stopped and broken. I don't care about modern day UKR any more or less than any other country that has been trampled, although I DO remember that UKR was complicit in the genocide of its Jewish population in WWII, and to this day it has what I call an easy identifiable Nazi element. I view Poland and Hungary the same way, for the same reasons. It remains to be seen just how fascist Italy will become, and all bets are off if Trump or a Trump-like cretin regains federal power in the USA.

I don't really doubt that the NATO embrace of these eastern European, x-USSR satellite nations will come back to bite them in the end, but Russia has forced NATO's hand.

I think it's time to let go of that old animus toward the eastern European nations. Ukraine elected a Jewish president with an overwhelming majority. Has the US done that? The far right fringes of the Azov battalion are a very small but highly visible slice of Ukraine's population. I'm sure most of them can be rehabilitated when the war is over.

 

[CatB]

Sure, the West can step in and end this much more quickly either by enabling the Ukrainians with MUCH better weaponry or outright using NATO assets. That may be necessary if P choses to use small yield nuclear weapons. Let's try to not let that happen. It's hard and it's tricky but, if successful, Russia will be 100% responsible for all that it reaps from this behavior.

Very well said.
It may be "the right thing" for the West to step in and help, but 1) to your point, we have a pretty poor track record of that going well; and 2) we have no (indisputable) right to do it, yet.

 

[iPlug]

I think it's time to let go of that old animus toward the eastern European nations. Ukraine elected a Jewish president with an overwhelming majority. Has the US done that? The far right fringes of the Azov battalion are a very small but highly visible slice of Ukraine's population. I'm sure most of them can be rehabilitated when the war is over.

Antisemitism in Russia is 3x higher than Ukraine by this measure (below), and Ukraine has the lowest level in the region. Ukraine has made substantially more progress over the decades.

Most Poles accept Jews as fellow citizens and neighbors, but a minority do not

 

[iPlug]

*Map also suggests for Russians if they are looking to "denazify" anything:
1) Russia would first need to attack itself
2) What's going on in Armenia, 32% (not suggesting they need any more trouble)
3) Model themselves after Ukraine

 

[petit_bateau]

In Kherson area it looks like both sides of the Inhulets River * are about to collapse for the Russians, splitting the west bank of the Dnipro River in two, ""Russian officers have fled the city of Snihurivka". This map is a few days old so I have crudely updated it.

* EDIT : the Ukraine has already destroyed most of the bridges over the Inhulets River - which is the water feature running south from Snihurivka city to the Dnipro River. So losing Snihurivka really will mean both Russian parts of the west bank are operating as two separate groups with ever-reducing manoeuvre and withdrawal options.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577618016950419456

and trouble at home ........ where let us remind ourselves 700,000 Russians have fled their own country so as not to b eincluded in a 300,000 conscription effort .... so it is not as if the Russians are unaware of the survival odds and direction of progress ....

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577633032042938368

 

[ElectricIAC]

and trouble at home ........ where let us remind ourselves 700,000 Russians have fled their own country so as not to b eincluded in a 300,000 conscription effort .... so it is not as if the Russians are unaware of the survival odds and direction of progress ....

That’s really like any country that’s in turmoil or going through color Revolution. Those who can afford to leave will do so swiftly and decisively.

 

[petit_bateau]

Anyone who wants some front-line background reading on the 2014 situation (where we in the West did not cover ourselves in glory in the short term, but recognised that we needed to put in place better longer term structures to avoid Ukraine being with no options in the future) might do worse than start here.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577485544237535232

Debaltseve Diary – Viktor Kovalenko's Blog

Posts about Debaltseve Diary written by Viktor Kovalenko

viktorkovalenko.wordpress.com

 

[nwdiver]

Generally the attacker takes quite a lot of casualties, especially if the forces are anywhere near evenly matched. There are exceptions to this but they are hard to achieve: they take a lot of training; then a lot of battlefield preparation; then tight all-arms co-ordination and (paradoxically) a preparedness to take necessary unavoidable losses when punching through defenses. The Ukraine appear to have learnt how to do all this and are now showing that ability in several widely separated areas of the 1000-km front line, i.e. this is not just a few elite troops.

The continuing exchange ratio in the statistics is telling this story very clearly.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577414896442015746

This is the best set of up-to-date maps I've seen in my scan this morning, together with a commentary that is also self-explanatory for both the southern and northern fronts

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577431239803691008

At this point the Ukraine forces are growing in number, in quality of personnel/training/experience, and in quality of equipment, and in confidence that what they are trying to do is achievable. The Ukraine troops know that their command teams are being as parsimonious as possible with their lives, and they are acting in a very disciplined cohesive manner with high morale. The Ukraine command team is fighting a battle with a series of good options at this stage and are selecting carefully and executing well.

The reverse is true in almost every way for the Russian forces and they have nothing but bad options at every turn, some worse than others. The best thing the Russians could do now is to declare a unilateral ceasefire and withdraw at max speed. Somehow I don't think Putin will approve that. It is difficult to know what will break first within Russia but the implications are obvious.

Our task is to make sure our populations in the West understand what is going on, understand that the combinations of military/economic/political efforts are working, and that we should stay the course in support of the Ukraine people, but be realistic that it will not be easy, quick, cost-free, or painless for us either. That is something that each and every one of us can help with.

Mark Twain really was on to something....

The Japanese plan in 1944 to defend the Marianas with poorly trained pilots was called 'Operation Z'. This became known to Americans as 'The great Marianas turkey shoot'. To whomever is running the simulation... this one isa bit on the nose

 

[petit_bateau]

more of this please, there have been enough lives lost ..... (it is unclear if this video is 'staged' as a demo ... personally I don't know)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577711009225211904

 

[jabloomf1230]

The Russian Army in Ukraine is starting to remind me of the Russian Army in WW1.

 

[bobby g]

To be fair, Noam Chomsky also has this view. He thinks a compromise that cedes land to Russia in order to stop the fighting ASAP is the way to go. I'm not agreeing, just reporting.

He wasn't that great of a linguist either, just saying

 

[PlaidCPA]

The Russian Army in Ukraine is starting to remind me of the Russian Army in WW1.

Are you talking about this video? ( Same video by the way)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577752565839806472

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577754621422014473

 

[jabloomf1230]

All I can say is unfucking glaublich. Wait can I say that here?