Great Power contentions

[Sarmatian]

How do you confront the evidence against this? Your only evidence for it is that you don't believe the Kremlin could be so stupid or arrogant.

And your evidence is? Was there a statement from any high ranking Russian official that it would last a few days?
They may have hoped it would be quick and easy. They may have underestimated Ukraine's ability to resist, but they weren't banking on it.
They're not going "oh my God, it's been longer than 10 days, what are we going to do now????". They were prepared for this, and they will not back down.

It is a fact, protested by the UN, that the Russians have been targeting civilians, on many occasions, documented by reporters and third parties on the ground, as well as the actual victims. That is what we know so far.

And for reference, after two weeks the Iraqi Body Count project was estimating

Well, if we take that US army during Iraq and Russian army now employ similar precautions to preserve civilian lives, I would expect civilian casulties in Ukraine to be higher due to two factors primarily. First, Russian army is less high tech than US army, and second, Ukrainian army is much more competent than Iraqi army.

Now, if the Russian are deliberately targetting civilians, how many civilians do you think they would have been able to kill so far, considering they have effectively encircled several major cities, with total population in the millions. You mentioned "total war" tactics. Do you know how many civilians died in total war situations, when a major city was within artillery range?

Major conventional fighting would basically end in Iraq by three weeks after D0, with the fall of Baghdad, so most of the civilian casualties must have been priced in by the time the quoted estimate was published. The IBC would in a few months revise its estimate of civilian casualties upward by an order of magnitude.

Well, we will see after the war is over.

In Mariupol, the city government - people on the ground - claimed two days ago that 2400 civilian deaths had been confirmed. This is in a city that has been under siege, under heavy bombardment, for 2 weeks. Here is some aerial footage of Mariupol.

One would have to muster very strong evidence to discount such a figure as "vastly exaggerated."

I have seen similar exaggerations in the past. Civilian deaths are often used as a way of propaganda, by inflating numbers and sometimes even deliberately causing them. A true and tried tactic in Sarajevo was to close a street, fire a couple of shells from a motorized artillery, move and open the street for traffic again. Croatian army placed artillery on top of hospitals and schools. Serbian army in 1999 place AA guns in schools (empty at that time, thankfully). NATO didn't take the bait most of the time, but Serbian AA wasn't really much of a threat to NATO planes.

Most of all, I'm taking into account cui bono. Killing of civilians galvanizes the rest of the population and boosts the will to resist, makes them less likely to surrender, and makes the rest of the world even more hostile to your position. I also have trouble believing that either Russian or Ukrainian army would deliberately target civilians. For the various hastily formed Ukrainian units, their civilians who took up arms and nationalistic components of the army like Azov battalion, I'm far less certain.

In the end, I'm not saying I'm absolutely certain that the numbers are exaggerated, I'm just saying I'm sceptical.

I did not disagree that Russians dislike NATO as a concept. The problem for your construction was always that the Russian government's actions have not been consistent with a limited opposition to Ukrainian NATO accession, which was not a remote possibility in February 2014, when Putin ordered the seizure of Crimea and the partition of Ukraine hours after Yanukovych's flight. While these and subsequent encroachments are not consistent with the goal of mitigating a perceived security threat from Ukraine, they are consistent with colonialism.

I would disagree there. Even though early protests appear to have been spontaneous, US and NATO quickly jumped in and ended up even setting up the government of Ukraine. Do you think that Russians needed the recording of Victoria Nuland to know that?

And yet, consistently, the Kremlin has reacted to Ukraine moving toward the EU, whereas NATO accession was never a short-term or medium-term prospect from the perspective of the US or of actual Ukrainian governments since 2014. At the same time, from 2014 to the declaration of war, Russian media and political discourse up to the President's office has objected to Ukraine's economic and cultural "separation" from Russia.

At some point we must admit that the NATO angle is discredited as propaganda for outsiders.

This is blatant disregard of the facts. If you ignore three decades of warnings from Russia, the rhetoric from Kiev and the West, the presence of NATO arms and instructors, then yes, you might construe that it has nothing to do with NATO.

The only choice we have is to assess the Russian government and military by their words, actions, and results, not alternate universe hypotheticals. What I described is what's going on; we have a lot of information. The Russian government gives such-and-such reasons for its invasion. The Russian media presents such-and-such stories to justify the government. The Russian military's tactics are such-and-such, their losses are such-and-such, their progress on the ground is such-and-such. It's all verifiable. When assessing a situation one must account for a well-documented set of facts; it is never fruitful to generate facts from first principles. A comprehensive explanation that captures what we observe involves various manifestations of malice, corruption, and incompetence.

Your information is coming from the western and Ukrainian media and government officials, neither of which are independent, unbiased observers. Western reporters on the ground are within Ukrainian units and within Ukrainian controlled territory. How many of them are in Donbas with the separatists? How many reports have there been that Ukrainian army is shelling Donbas population centers daily? A few maybe, if you look hard enough. They create their own echo chamber. How many reports there are about 2500 civilian deaths in Mariupol? Dozens and dozens. All traced back to a statement by city official in Mariupol, a possibly biased source.
Like the report in Syria about Russians shelling a hospital. When you trace that back through several reports, you get to a report by MSF in French that says that a shell hit a different building further away, and the blast caused some windows to open and glass to break in the hospital.

I just referenced early-year reporting that shows that OPEC+, led by Russia and the Saudis, just prior to the invasion agreed to gradually return their output to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2022, and the Saudis continue to produce up to their quota, which is indeed for their part already at its pre-pandemic level.

Especially when the Saudis now only have about 1 million bpd in spare capacity, whereas in late 2019 they maintained 2 million bpd spare capacity (with overall OPEC spare capacity being over 3 million bpd, as opposed to non-Saudi OPEC having no spare capacity today). From all the information I have in front of me your theory is not much more credible or substantive than the Republican Party theory that JCPOA was designed to enable Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

I am talking about a more recent demand, by Biden, for OPEC to increase production which was rebuffed. You can see the date on the article.

That when Putin says he upholds fascism, we ought to believe him, and ought to have believed him all the other times he advanced Russian ultranationalism in the vein of Ilyin, Galkovsky, and Dugin, and worked to rearrange Russian society on the basis of their conspiratorial, anti-liberal hierachies. The final metastasis into imperial expansion was by those qualities a barely-repressed matter of time - we just dared to hope otherwise. When Putin claims he is fighting for the "right to be and remain Russia", take him seriously and literally.

The video meme alludes to the classic nature of the rhetoric of self-purification and purges of cosmopolitans to strengthen the nation and its cohesion.

And you accuse me of engaging in hypotheticals? NATO enlargement was real and verifiable. Russian opposition to it has been real and verifiable. Russian warnings have been real and verifiable.

The Monroe Doctrine was abandoned nearly 100 years ago, and the US has not attacked another country to annex territory since the 19th century. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the watershed event that henceforth guaranteed geographic buffers between superpowers in terms of nuclear missile deployments up to the present day, and foreclosed the possibility of Ukraine hosting American missiles even if it or the Americans wanted it, which neither ever did, and which the Russian government never believed they did.

Monroe Doctrine appears to be dead when not needed and is resurrected when it is needed again. Last one to say that it is still alive and well was John Bolton just a few years back.

This "smaller scale" is the largest military operation in Europe since WW2, with whose instigator it shares common designs.

Smaller scale in terms of geographic area.

This was never a possibility, including for the reason that NATO traditionally does not consider candidates who have compromised territorial integrity and maintain claims on territory they don't control. That disqualification is precisely what Putin triggered by severing parts of Georgia in 2008. The idea that Ukraine had to be destroyed following Russia's attempt to conquer it for fear that it would expeditiously be admitted to NATO for the purpose of activating the alliance's self-defense clause against Russia is very obviously a false pretext. Not that it is too false for the Russians to wield in concept, but it is not even one the Russians themselves invoked.

Well, then NATO officials should have been encouraging Ukraine. There are examples of NATO countries with disputed territory. Parts of Serbian and Croatian borders are still disputed. Slovenia and Croatia have a dispute about territorial waters.

The actual Finnish people unsurprisingly hated the imperial yoke of Finlandization, and they did not demilitarize - they maintained a strong, well-motivated conscript army to deter the Soviet Union. Poetically, today a majority of Finns report backing NATO accession for Finland for the first time in its history.

They hated it so much that they have never been in favour of joining NATO. They have became an EU member states, they have developed cooperation with NATO but their refusal to join NATO and allow foreign military bases on its territory has kept them safe. This is the first time there's a bit over 50% support for NATO, in the midst of an ongoing major crisis and unprecedented media hysteria. I am not sure it will last.

This is false on two accounts. First, it conflates NATO with the specific, independent, policies of the United States (and sometimes the UK and France). Second, it ignores that the USSR, and later Russia, match the US on the score of "started most wars, invaded most countries, meddled the most in other countries affairs, both overtly and covertly, fostered and encouraged civil wars, propped up dictators and autocrats."

I said "NATO countries", not "NATO". As for the numbers, do a count and compare.

In Europe, it's really just Serbia and Russia who hate NATO, and they hardly count.

In the end, I think this statement is the crux of the issue. The very problem with NATO is that they think they get to decide who counts.

Neutrality is fine with me but not a disarmed neutrality.

Well, I doubt it will be total disarmament.

If you put the window back to:from WW2 to present I think the Warsaw pact actually has a worse history in regards to interfering and propping up every revolution in the third world. Not to mention when France left NATO in the 60s they weren't invaded, the US just closed it's bases there. Not like the USSR invading Hungary or Czechoslovakia to keep them in the Warsaw Pact. Propping up and funding a communist revolution movement in almost every African and South American country certainly wasn't the kindest, nor was the US supporting the cruel dictatorships that tried to fight those communist revolutions.
If the window is post USSR, then yes, NATO countries have been involved in more wars and interventions but not necessarily as NATO. I know the intervention in Yugoslavia/Serbia is a touchy subject, the next 'NATO' war was the reaction to 9/11 which involved fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Libya was the only real 'adventurism' of NATO.

1946 Iran Troops deployed in northern province.
1946-1949 China Major US army presence of about 100,000 troops, fighting, training and advising local combatants.
1947-1949 Greece US forces wage a 3-year counterinsurgency campaign.
1948 Italy Heavy CIA involvement in national elections.
1948-1954 Philippines Commando operations, "secret" CIA war.
1950-1953 Korea Major forces engaged in war in Korean peninsula.
1953 Iran CIA overthrows government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Read More
1954 Vietnam Financial and materiel support for colonial French military operations, leads eventually to direct US military involvement.
1954 Guatemala CIA overthrows the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.
1958 Lebanon US marines and army units totaling 14,000 land.
1958 Panama Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.
1959 Haiti Marines land.
1960 Congo CIA-backed overthrow and assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
1960-1964 Vietnam Gradual introduction of military advisors and special forces.
1961 Cuba CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
1962 Cuba Nuclear threat and naval blockade.
1962 Laos CIA-backed military coup.
1963 Ecuador CIA backs military overthrow of President Jose Maria Valesco Ibarra.
1964 Panama Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.
1964 Brazil CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government of Joao Goulart and Gen. Castello Branco takes power. Read More
1965-1975 Vietnam Large commitment of military forces, including air, naval and ground units numbering up to 500,000+ troops. Full-scale war, lasting for ten years.
1965 Indonesia CIA-backed army coup overthrows President Sukarno and brings Gen. Suharto to power.
1965 Congo CIA backed military coup overthrows President Joseph Kasavubu and brings Joseph Mobutu to power.
1965 Dominican Republic 23,000 troops land.
1965-1973 Laos Bombing campaign begin, lasting eight years.
1966 Ghana CIA-backed military coup ousts President Kwame Nkrumah.
1966-1967 Guatemala Extensive counter-insurgency operation.
1969-1975 Cambodia CIA supports military coup against Prince Sihanouk, bringing Lon Nol to power. Intensive bombing for seven years along border with Vietnam.
1970 Oman Counter-insurgency operation, including coordination with Iranian marine invasion.
1971-1973 Laos Invasion by US and South Vietnames forces.
1973 Chile CIA-backed military coup ousts government of President Salvador Allende. Gen. Augusto Pinochet comes to power.
1975 Cambodia Marines land, engage in combat with government forces.
1976-1992 Angola Military and CIA operations.
1980 Iran Special operations units land in Iranian desert. Helicopter malfunction leads to aborting of planned raid.
1981 Libya Naval jets shoot down two Libyan jets in maneuvers over the Mediterranean.
1981-1992 El Salvador CIA and special forces begin a long counterinsurgency campaign.
1981-1990 Nicaragua CIA directs exile "Contra" operations. US air units drop sea mines in harbors.
1982-1984 Lebanon Marines land and naval forces fire on local combatants.
1983 Grenada Military forces invade Grenada.
1983-1989 Honduras Large program of military assistance aimed at conflict in Nicaragua.
1984 Iran Two Iranian jets shot down over the Persian Gulf.
1986 Libya US aircraft bomb the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including direct strikes at the official residence of President Muamar al Qadaffi.
1986 Bolivia Special Forces units engage in counter-insurgency.
1987-1988 Iran Naval forces block Iranian shipping. Civilian airliner shot down by missile cruiser.
1989 Libya Naval aircraft shoot down two Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra.
1989 Philippines CIA and Special Forces involved in counterinsurgency.
1989-1990 Panama 27,000 troops as well as naval and air power used to overthrow government of President Noriega.
1990 Liberia Troops deployed.
1990-1991 Iraq Major military operation, including naval blockade, air strikes; large number of troops attack Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait.
1991-2003 Iraq Control of Iraqi airspace in north and south of the country with periodic attacks on air and ground targets.
1991 Haiti CIA-backed military coup ousts President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
1992-1994 Somalia Special operations forces intervene.
1992-1994 Yugoslavia Major role in NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
1993-1995 Bosnia Active military involvement with air and ground forces.
1994-1996 Haiti Troops depose military rulers and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office.
1995 Croatia Krajina Serb airfields attacked.
1996-1997 Zaire (Congo) Marines involved in operations in eastern region of the country.
1997 Liberia Troops deployed.
1998 Sudan Air strikes destroy country's major pharmaceutical plant.
1998 Afghanistan Attack on targets in the country.
1998 Iraq Four days of intensive air and missile strikes.
1999 Yugoslavia Major involvement in NATO air strikes.
2001 Macedonia NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.
2001 Afghanistan Air attacks and ground operations oust Taliban government and install a new regime.
2003 Iraq Invasion with large ground, air and naval forces ousts government of Saddam Hussein and establishes new government.
2003-present Iraq Occupation force of 150,000 troops in protracted counter-insurgency war
2004 Haiti Marines land. CIA-backed forces overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Soviets/Russians are not much better, but they do have a shorter list.

In the end, I'm not excusing Russian aggression. I am a pacifist and I detest wars. I'm just explaining why Russia felt this was necessary. I also think the Ukraine's neutrality is the fastest and safest way to end the crisis and return to some semblance of normalcy for the foreseeable future.

I think it's important to separate NATO and the US though because US foreign policy is not equal to NATO. There's no shortage of flawed US interventions but that doesn't equal NATO. Same with France and the UK, their intervention in former colonies does not equal NATO. That's why the Falkland War did not get NATO support behind the UK just some intel support from the US an France pausing their exocet missile sales to Argentina.

NATO is primarily a way for US to remain the primary decision maker in Europe. It is a tool of US foreign policy. In most cases, you can use US and NATO interchangeably. Germany and France were vehemently against extending invitations to Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucurest summit in 2008, but relented under immense US pressure. They were aware of the risk.

Bottom line though, NATO is not a direct threat to Russia as nuclear deterrence will prevent any direct NATO aggression. Russia demanding to keep a sphere of nation's that don't necessarily want to be vulnerable to Russian bullying isn't exactly fair either.

It is not fair. Unfortunately, it is how the world works. I personally detest NATO, but I would still be opposed to Serbia taking any hostile actions towards it, even if they were legally and morally right. The discrepancy in power is hundreds of times bigger than between Russia and Ukraine, of course, but it is the principle. Could Russia place missiles in Serbia to bypass NATO missile shield in eastern Europe? Legally, why not. Serbia is a sovereign nation, we have every legal and moral right to decide our own alliances. Realistically? Of course not.

Anyway, I think we have exhausted all avenues of dialogue here. I like to visit backroom from time to time to gauge what slightly more informed westerners think of a given issue. Granted, the sampling size is too small right now, but, it's a force of habit.
It's been a nice trip down the memory lane. Have fun guys and stay safe.

[Montmorency]

Entirely agreed.

Russia fears the single market, and most particularly the possibility that its economic 'near abroad' will be annexed away behind a regulatory curtain.

It's ability to maintain its own economic independence - from both china and the west - is entirely dependent on keeping hold of a zone of satellite nations that it can trade into: Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine(!!!), the 'stans.

NATO is irrititating, but it can never be an aggressive threat to a nuclear armed nation.

As this Twitter thread said it, "Moscow's worst nightmare isn't hypersonic missiles in Ukraine -- it's the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism."

See also from this week:

EU countries support plan for world-first carbon border tariff

European Union countries on Tuesday backed the bloc's plan to impose a world-first carbon dioxide emissions tariff on imports of polluting goods, although the finer details will need to be worked out in upcoming negotiations.

The EU wants to introduce CO2 emissions costs from 2026 on imports of steel, cement, fertilisers, aluminium and electricity -- a move aimed at protecting European industry from being undercut by cheaper goods made in countries with weaker environmental rules.

A three-year transition phase for the levy would begin in 2023, so EU countries and the European parliament are racing to negotiate and approve the rules this year. Finance ministers from EU countries on Tuesday agreed on their negotiating position.

And your evidence is? Was there a statement from any high ranking Russian official that it would last a few days?
They may have hoped it would be quick and easy. They may have underestimated Ukraine's ability to resist, but they weren't banking on it.
They're not going "oh my God, it's been longer than 10 days, what are we going to do now????". They were prepared for this, and they will not back down.

Sarmatian, don't think I'm being mean to you when I insist that you can't rely on a prior favorable image of the Russian government/military to guide your judgement in a developing situation. Very few analysts envisioned the war developing the way it has, in part because of how highly they rated Russian capabilities. But good analysts change their opinions with new facts.

The evidence has been laid out throughout the thread, including the immediately preceding posts. That the Russians did not expect strong resistance on the ground, or did not expect resistance to be effective, is overwhelmingly indicated at this point. There are the captured timetables for one, and the state media essay published on Feb. 26 proclaiming the dawn of a new world order and the resolution of the "Ukrainian question", in which Ukraine had been "returned" to Russia (the essay was immediately retracted upon publication).

On the ground, troops and officers were not informed of the operation prior to D0, and were not allowed to organize their assets appropriately, as Putin concealed his intent from almost everyone (except Western intelligence). Russian forces were rushed from the border into Ukrainian cities without support or combined arms tactics, and without securing their lines of communication. Their units were not provisioned for determined combat and its expenditure of basic resources such as fuel and ammo, to the point that widespread hunger and equipment abandonment was observed days into the invasion, continuing even after all this time. Some tankers, lacking reactive armor for their vehicles, improvised birds' nests on their cupolas in an attempt to defend against AT rockets. Their air force - an estimated quarter of all Russian combat frames were allocated to the theater - has, as of a week ago, been running half as many sorties as aircraft on hand on paper, leaving air supremacy elusive. Issues of missing or unmaintained equipment have been widespread to the point of helping paralyze operations. Whatever materiel they stockpiled at the staging areas has run low enough that Russian cities near the border are being requisitioned for civilian food, trucks, and other supplies for the war effort. Days into the war, Putin asked Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Syria to supplement the effort with manpower; Russian international deployments in the Caucasus and elsewhere have been drawn down to reinforce the war effort. Irregular Ukrainian forces, whether small units, special forces, or militias, continue to strike at Russian supply columns and depots with regularity. The invaders still have not sorted out the lack of coordination between units and axes and combat arms, nor discovered an efficient way to resupply the frontlines's daily activities while stockpiling supplies for a new offensive. Russian forces are so overstretched and disorganized that besieged Ukrainian formations out of Mykolaiv and Kharkiv have been able to prosecute successful deep counteroffensives. In the past days, Russian forces near Kyiv and elsewhere were first observed entrenching and fortifying their positions - an acknowledgement of the transition to more static battle.

Russia has taken at least as many casualties in 3 weeks as it did in 10 years of Afghanistan. Of the 3500 tanks in Russian active service, around 10% have been lost in the course of the invasion to date.

Just for a start. I'm not even including more speculative incidents like Western intelligence assessing that Putin has begun purging his siloviki, and has asked China to supply him with food and other basics that one would think any "great power" (let alone superpower) could self-provision. Or other items I've posted in this thread alone that I missed in the roundup.

Now, it's possible that all of the above does reflect Putin's best and considered preparation, that the Russian military's competence in all domains of conventional war just happens to be at or below the level of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army, with that lack of ability producing the results we observe - but that just brings us right back to the issue of underpreparation. If Putin could not rationally guarantee the superiority of his own force at peak capacity over that of his opponent's at the time of decision, he was acting with lack of preparation by that fact at a minimum.

Saddam Hussein too thought he had prepared a quick seizure, a question of days, of Khuzestan beyond the Shatt al-Arab. He calculated that the young Iranian regime was too disorganized and unpopular to resist, that the concentrated Arabic-speaking plurality of the border province would joyfully rise to greet him as a liberator - but he was wrong. Hussein was unprepared for war with Iran. At least he could replace his lost equipment with imports, and suffered from no shortage of young men...

The only evidence for Russian foresight that I am aware of is the government's effort to expand conscription between late 2021 and the immediate prelude to the war.

Why do you think the Russian military has been so ineffective against Ukraine when all of Russia's worst enemies, including the US, expected so much more? Why is there a consensus among both Western and Third World or independent analysts that Russia is horribly underperforming? Even Caspian Report characterizes this war as "the biggest strategic blunder of Putin's life", and he assumes Russia can still overwhelm the Ukranian army. There is no such thing as preparing to underperform. Any branching plan should predict and account for inadequacy, not permit it. If your answer ever veers in the direction of assuming that Putin must have intended the decimation of the RF Armed Forces, stop immediately and reconsider.

This all demands an answer, not a glib reliance on the sobriety and wisdom of a totalitarian government (who as a historical matter tend to fail miserably at warmaking). I expect more than "Trust the plan." Is that unfair?


A few links on the matter to flesh out the case:

A 2017 analysis that predicted all the flaws the Russian military is manifesting today.
Reports of severe challenges of discipline and provisioning among Russian soldiers assembled in Belarus prior to the invasion.
How the defense routed a Russian BTG at the Battle of Voznosensk (nearly eliminating the threat to Mykolaiv and Odessa).
Visual explainer of Russian performance

Now, if the Russian are deliberately targetting civilians, how many civilians do you think they would have been able to kill so far, considering they have effectively encircled several major cities, with total population in the millions. You mentioned "total war" tactics. Do you know how many civilians died in total war situations, when a major city was within artillery range?

Civilians in WW2 overwhelmingly died from starvation, disease, or organized mass murder and execution, not day-to-day fighting, even bombing. But they were still dying from combat and bombing, and both sides were targeting them.

The reporting indicates that the Russians have been escalating their conduct against civilians day by day - the first week actually did somewhat conform to your interpretation - so we should expect to see casualties increasing over time for one thing.

There are also countervailing factors. The first is that the country has been largely depopulated around the frontlines, with the large cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol excepted. They're still densely-populated on top of being the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war so far. Overall though, going by the latest UN estimate of 10 million refugees/internally-displaced (out of 38 million sans the occupied territories), much of the less-dense East must be a proverbial ghost town. Moreover, Ukrainian cities, whether as Cold War remnant or a product of the past decade's militarization, are densely built with bomb shelters or equivalent. Even when people remain in the battle zone, they are often going to be spending at least nights in a relatively-safe space. As an example, the Drama Theater in Mariupol that was leveled the other day happened to house a bomb shelter, which hopefully mitigated the human damage of the bombing.

But all in all, even a tally of ten thousand civilian deaths nationally up to now really ought not stretch the imagination.

I have seen similar exaggerations in the past.

When one's position relies on numerous actors on the ground being publicity-seeking liars with the exception of the invading armies who happen to have extensive track records of civilian-targeting and war crimes, one rightfully won't get traction. I can't think of any instances in history in which denial of atrocities has been vindicated. It puts me in mind of the people who claim that reports of civilian casualties from drone strikes are presumptively fabrications by malicious terrorists and credulous media outlets. The mere insinuation of exaggeration is also beside the point when we have physical conditions against which to judge claims; this doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Most of all, I'm taking into account cui bono.

This entire invasion, and indeed most war, is an insoluble question of cui bono. But war is not rational, and any benefits are usually more emotional than anything.

In the end, I'm not saying I'm absolutely certain that the numbers are exaggerated, I'm just saying I'm sceptical.

One Ukrainian think tank, about a week ago, released an estimate for Russian casualties of 45000, including the "demoralized." One can compare such a figure to various facts, starting with other available estimates - there skepticism is justified.

Skepticism at the claim of a few thousand civilian deaths over three weeks of a conflict involving half a million combatants, hundreds of aircraft, over a thousand guided missiles, and thousands of artillery pieces fighting block-by-block through large cities is entirely unreasonable and demands rigorous justification. So too does an orientation that discounts the statements or recordings of dozens of eyewitness reporters, civilians, and government officials across many locations and times, that they are being attacked.

You can't treat this in the same way you would treat a claim by the Ukrainian government that all Ukrainians are ready to fight to the death for the motherland, or a Russian government claim that civilians are lining up in the streets to thank and cheer advancing columns.

Your information is coming from the western and Ukrainian media and government officials, neither of which are independent, unbiased observers.

Like the report in Syria about Russians shelling a hospital. When you trace that back through several reports, you get to a report by MSF in French that says that a shell hit a different building further away, and the blast caused some windows to open and glass to break in the hospital.

The problem lies with your own bias. Russia, the state aggressor, routinely makes provably-false claims, from battlefield fakes and over-successful updates up to cynical planetary conspiracies; normal people on the ground have no such track record in war, period. The evidence for many specific Russian war crimes in Syria is unassailable. The pernicious desire to take the Russian government's (or their allies') word for everything on probity, but immediately dismiss anything said against them regardless of source or corroboration as intrinsically tainted, does not merit debating. Beginning from a pro-Russian stance is not neutrality or objectivity, and there is no neutral or objective way to compile and assess all available claims and conclude otherwise.

It's honestly shameful, intellectually and morally. It's even worse than automatically dismissing the long history of American war crimes and criminal wars as the raving of a freedom-hating Communist, since those people are likely not straying from their asserted values when they BS.

I am talking about a more recent demand, by Biden, for OPEC to increase production which was rebuffed. You can see the date on the article.

You claimed that Putin formed a secret agreement with the Saudis and/or OPEC to prevent production rises but didn't present evidence that there was either an agreement or that production rises have been prevented.

Don't be this way:

I would disagree there. Even though early protests appear to have been spontaneous, US and NATO quickly jumped in and ended up even setting up the government of Ukraine. Do you think that Russians needed the recording of Victoria Nuland to know that?

That is, as we say, fake news.

And you accuse me of engaging in hypotheticals? NATO enlargement was real and verifiable. Russian opposition to it has been real and verifiable. Russian warnings have been real and verifiable.

Russian rhetoric and justifications for war in Ukraine have been verifiable too, in terms of their having been promulgated. The issue is "Anglo-Saxon" interference in the Russian sphere of influence (the perception is that the EU is driven by Anglo-Saxon interests as well). Russian security is not the stake here. The Putin regime's worldview, and indeed its own survival, is on the contrary deeply implicated.

I'm just explaining why Russia felt this was necessary. I also think the Ukraine's neutrality is the fastest and safest way to end the crisis and return to some semblance of normalcy for the foreseeable future.

And it's just so damn sad to think some people believe Russia is mechanistically doomed to be governed by fascist tyrants (even though Putin is the most brutal and aggressive Russian leader in 70 years), let alone that fascist tyrants deserve to be catered to and appeased. But if this is your genuine belief you have dramatically misunderstood both Russia and Putin, to ill. In extremity there is a specific category of Russian nationalist, properly fascist, who believes in national and global rebirth in the competition for world domination between Anglo-Saxon and Eurasian civilizations. What's up is that Putin went all in on this manifesto. National purification and restoration through the reclamation of ancestral living space is the name of the game. There is no doubt that Putin preferred to suppress Ukrainian dissent without firing a shot, but think how perverse it would be to frame Western efforts to integrate Ukraine with Europe as at fault for "provocatively" encouraging Ukraine to reorient from Russia.

Abraham Lincoln had something to say about this in his famous Cooper Union speech:

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication. Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language.
[...]
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me - my money - was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

I just wish Putin had tried it on Kazakhstan first, so that China would have kicked his ambitions to the curb.

This is blatant disregard of the facts. If you ignore three decades of warnings from Russia, the rhetoric from Kiev and the West, the presence of NATO arms and instructors, then yes, you might construe that it has nothing to do with NATO.

The facts are that Russia at no point attempted to use its extensive political or economic leverage to guarantee a limited guardrail against NATO presence. Never. Every action it took was toward capturing Ukraine geopolitically and geoeconomically. The issue between 2015 and 2021 was not that Ukraine was somehow verging on dragging in NATO against Russia, or vice versa, but that Russia was relentlessly warring against Ukraine and trying to seize even more of its territory. Russia could have secured Ukrainian neutrality any time it wanted. It didn't because Russia, that is to say Putin, wanted more than neutrality.

It's not 2014 anymore. There's just too much evidence on hand, and you're not analyzing any of it to stick with well-worn prewar agitprop. The picture you present is one the Kremlin has long promoted to the West, but it does not fit with their behavior, Ukrainian behavior, or Western behavior.

Your insistence on scapegoating NATO is also logically self-defeating, since if Russia is so inherently warlike and aggressive, it is too dangerous not to proactively contain. Which propagandist's bright idea was it to posit a zero-sum contest between Russia and the West without realizing that someone might not like Russia's side of that equation?

Monroe Doctrine appears to be dead when not needed and is resurrected when it is needed again. Last one to say that it is still alive and well was John Bolton just a few years back.

Russia has never tolerated the level of economic and political independence of its neighbors that ours have with us today. Should we be less tolerant, or Russia more? Which governments are treated as possessing agency?

NATO is primarily a way for US to remain the primary decision maker in Europe. It is a tool of US foreign policy.

It's uncomfortable to hear this when Slovenia, Czechia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark all express willingness to dispatch a humanitarian expeditionary force into Ukraine, with other members on the verge of signing on, and the US role so far has been that of the guy holding his friend back from a bar fight.

Well, then NATO officials should have been encouraging Ukraine. There are examples of NATO countries with disputed territory. Parts of Serbian and Croatian borders are still disputed. Slovenia and Croatia have a dispute about territorial waters.

Why would they have encouraged Ukraine to abandon its annexed territories? After 2014 the US, and most of NATO outside Eastern Europe, had near-zero will to pursue NATO membership for Ukraine, whereas they had significant will, and interest, in stopping Russian annexations from succeeding.

Anyway, since at least the 1990s one of the principles of NATO candidacy has been

States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance.

The Baltic countries had to conclude a treaty settling their internecine disputes over the marine shelf, plus claims over other Polish and Russian borders, and guarantee the rights to ethnic Russians, in order to join (e.g. the NATO Madrid Summit). A more proximate example, Romania had to give up its claims on... Bukovina, IIRC. The whole point of NATO is of course to promote close political cooperation between member states, which they cannot do if they're consumed by irredentist jealousy. We can see it's not absolute, given that Spain sometimes acts like it wants to dispute Gibraltar's status, and Turkey and Greece often resent the very existence of one another (there's also the Cyprus backdoor), but these have not interfered with the functioning of the alliance. Indeed, the alliance is goes far to deconflict outbursts along these lines. I don't know anything about Croatia, but I would say the puny area under their claims, the low risk/absence of attendant conflict, and Croatia's willingness to at least work with international legal frameworks to mediate disputes is decisive. On the other hand, that Ukraine was in a de facto state of war with Russia - of all countries - was also decisive in the other direction.

I said "NATO countries", not "NATO".

That's a rather profound difference, but the contraction may be revealing. If some actor, the Russian government or otherwise, just doesn't like Western countries as a category (regardless of the existence of NATO as an overlapping category) because they're 'mean to Russia', then screw 'em.

They hated it so much that they have never been in favour of joining NATO. They have became an EU member states, they have developed cooperation with NATO but their refusal to join NATO and allow foreign military bases on its territory has kept them safe.

Finnish refusal to join NATO was not conditional on any love they had for being subordinate to the Soviet Union. Nor did love for the Soviets generate a large and sophisticated military built on mandatory service and trained to fight just one hypothetical adversary.

Finnish strength of arms is what "kept them safe" during the Cold War. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, despite Kekkonen's neutrality policy, the new weakness of Russia, and the very engraving at the 18th-c. Helsinki Sveaborg fortress - "Progeny, stand here on your own foundation, and do not rely on foreign help" - Finland speedily chose to pursue de facto NATO integration and cooperation.

You rely too much on the language of a wife-beater. Should "we" smack your country around a little, or something? You could always choose safety to make it stop. You say it's how the world works, no?

This is the first time there's a bit over 50% support for NATO, in the midst of an ongoing major crisis and unprecedented media hysteria. I am not sure it will last.

I don't believe your track record on media hysteria and geopolitical intuition looks strong (over 60% in the latest polling btw). If Finland does join NATO, please don't lay accountability onto the Finnish people for their treacherous aggresssion towards poor put-upon Russia, or on Western media for tricking them with "hysteria."

As for the numbers, do a count and compare.

You would be displeased if I were to produce an accounting of every war, proxy war, military deployment, and act of political interference that Russia was involved in over 70 years. More awkward should be the realization that for the first time in generations US forces are involved in almost no hostilities anywhere on Earth, whereas Russia is at this very moment the country doing the Hitlerism. Not unimportant details for pacifists to take into account.

In the end, I think this statement is the crux of the issue. The very problem with NATO is that they think they get to decide who counts.

Why does Russia get to decide? I'd much rather NATO decide than any other bodger.

Maybe it's time to stop framing things in terms of national teams or blocs to arbitrarily support and think consequentially. What kind of values are harmed or promoted by a given foreign policy stance? What principles will one use to measure world events? As a leftist and an anti-fascist, it's very obvious to me that calamitous, world-raping reactionaries ought to be destroyed, and I choose my friends according to those values. The question is how to assemble the resources and coalition to secure my priorities. The sole credible option is American and European power.

It is not fair. Unfortunately, it is how the world works.

I hate this handwave so much. It's a normative statement that reflects personal preferences, not an actual description of "how the world works" nor an ethically-just premise. I have preferences too, in which I put much more stock.

I'll leave you with this: Why does every European country occupied by either, or both, Germany or the Soviet Union prefer to be in an alliance with Germany over an alliance with the Soviet rump? Why does Russian militarism produce an environment of instant consensus support for German militarization?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

ONE SIDE IS GOOD GUYS ANTIHEROES
THE OTHER IS BAD GUYS SUPERVILLAINS

It's not brain surgery.

Serbia is a sovereign nation, we have every legal and moral right to decide our own alliances. Realistically? Of course not.

Tangentially, Serbia's relationship with Russia almost comes across like that between Donald Trump and his loyalists. Serbia is part of NATO's Partnership for Peace program and hosts a Russian military base (Nis). (To be clear, I'm not saying Serbia should be prohibited from hosting Russian bases in principle, though wartime would be a different matter.)

[Montmorency]

Spmetla, Ukraine maintained an arsenal of 100mm AT cannons before the war. Is there any point in keeping them crewed these days? Have they managed to kill anything?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1504390459296305167

I'm not sure I have confidence any longer that the Russians retain sufficient fresh and capable mobile elements to develop and exploit any breakthroughs toward a rapid double envelopment of the Donbas front.






For 8 years, Ukraine studied the blade.
While Russia was bombing hospitals in Syria, Ukraine practiced the blade.
While Putin trolled the West for the sake of vanity, Ukraine used the blade.
Now that the war is here everyone is unprepared. Except for Ukraine.
For Ukraine studied the blade.

(Not enough is made of the fact that Ukraine spent all the time between Maidan and now transforming its moribund military into the second-most powerful - even on paper - ground force in Europe. So this is the power of militarization. Had Russia spent the same time copying Ukraine at scale, their military could be a genuine threat to Euro-NATO.)

War_Mapper has been creating frequently-updated maps of territorial control in the conflict. Here is an interactive version, though it may not be updated as often as the static images.


The fascist Yuri's maps, also about a week apart, are quite funny when juxtaposed with his impertinent brashness about Russian progress. I wonder if any of his viewers notice this?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Pannonian]

The Baltic countries had to conclude a treaty settling their internecine disputes over the marine shelf, plus claims over other Polish and Russian borders, and guarantee the rights to ethnic Russians, in order to join (e.g. the NATO Madrid Summit). A more proximate example, Romania had to give up its claims on... Bukovina, IIRC. The whole point of NATO is of course to promote close political cooperation between member states, which they cannot do if they're consumed by irredentist jealousy. We can see it's not absolute, given that Spain sometimes acts like it wants to dispute Gibraltar's status, and Turkey and Greece often resent the very existence of one another (there's also the Cyprus backdoor), but these have not interfered with the functioning of the alliance. Indeed, the alliance is goes far to deconflict outbursts along these lines. I don't know anything about Croatia, but I would say the puny area under their claims, the low risk/absence of attendant conflict, and Croatia's willingness to at least work with international legal frameworks to mediate disputes is decisive. On the other hand, that Ukraine was in a de facto state of war with Russia - of all countries - was also decisive in the other direction.

There's a hilarious youtube video that explores the border in dispute between Croatia and Serbia. The border was settled some time ago as being the course of the river. The problem being that the river has changed course over the years, so the two countries have been claiming the river at various historical points as being the true border. With a small territory ending up being unclaimed by both sides, as either claiming it would mean accepting an argument for a border that's unfavourable to them. I think there's an understanding between the two countries that no one outside those two are allowed to move in, and anyone from those two moving in will be expelled by them.

[Montmorency]

Boris Romanchenko, 96, who lived through imprisonment at Buchenwald, Peenemunde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen, was killed by bombing or shelling in Kharkiv last Friday. Definitely a new world order being built by Russia.

The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda yesterday printed the following, before it was hastily edited out.

According to preliminary estimates of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, from the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine to March 20, the RF Armed Forces have lost 96 aircraft, 118 helicopters and 14.7 thousand military personnel.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation refutes the information of the Ukrainian General Staff about the alleged large-scale losses of the RF Armed Forces in Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9861 people killed, 16153 people were injured.

Читайте на WWW.KP.RU: https://www.kp.ru/online/news/4672522/

9861 people killed, 16153 people injured would be below Ukrainian estimates (themselves unclear as to whether they are restricted to the Russian armed forces alone) but on the higher end of US estimates.

The entire Russian armed force in active service, including conscripts in advanced training, was 900000 at the start of the war, or 360000 when comprising just the Army, Airborne, and Marines. Losses among Rosgvardia, mercenaries, and separatists are not figured.

10% losses from total national maneuver elements in less than a month would have been staggering in WW2. Today it is paralyzing.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Boris Romanchenko, 96, who lived through imprisonment at Buchenwald, Peenemunde, Dora and Bergen-Belsen, was killed by bombing or shelling in Kharkiv last Friday. Definitely a new world order being built by Russia.

The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda yesterday printed the following, before it was hastily edited out.



9861 people killed, 16153 people injured would be below Ukrainian estimates (themselves unclear as to whether they are restricted to the Russian armed forces alone) but on the higher end of US estimates.

The entire Russian armed force in active service, including conscripts in advanced training, was 900000 at the start of the war, or 360000 when comprising just the Army, Airborne, and Marines. Losses among Rosgvardia, mercenaries, and separatists are not figured.

10% losses from total national maneuver elements in less than a month would have been staggering in WW2. Today it is paralyzing.

Nice Post

[spmetla]

Spmetla, Ukraine maintained an arsenal of 100mm AT cannons before the war. Is there any point in keeping them crewed these days? Have they managed to kill anything?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1504390459296305167
.

There's not really too much point in 100mm AT cannons. They can kill anything but MBTs but require a crew, can't track moving targets well, and are vulnerable once found. They do have a good a rate of fire. They could be used as direct fire short range artillery or attacking things behind walls and a few other specialized tasks. Modern disposable rockets and ATGMs are much better but in this type of war AT guns may used for territorial forces and other lower tiered forces or maybe even for training.

I'm not sure I have confidence any longer that the Russians retain sufficient fresh and capable mobile elements to develop and exploit any breakthroughs toward a rapid double envelopment of the Donbas front

Looking at the videos of the Russians moving hardware out of South Ossetia and the Kuril islands I think they're scraping the barrel for serviceable equipment with some levels of modernization.

Also, considering losses of vehicles, the replacements for crew members will degrade crew proficiency if they don't get a chance to work together a bit before combat so I think with the casualty rate as it is will still end in a net result of degraded combat ability for their armored platforms of all types.

The laying of minefields and digging trenches and fighting positions are certainly proof that in most areas the Russian attack has culminated and outside the Eastern front it will be a battle of attrition as each side tries to gather enough offensive ability to mount an effective attack.

The Ukrainians still can't muster enough armor and artillery in reserve yet to conduct anything more than company sized local counter-attacks and considering the lower numbers of these weapons in their hands the losses are felt a bit more firmly than the Russian losses. The Russians can still rely on overwhelming artillery power to stop any effective larger attacks.

I think the Russians are most vulnerable NE of Kiev on those thin lines but seeing the reinforcement of their positions west of Kiev I think this is where the Ukrainians will concentrate most of their newly raised forces. Getting the Capital out of artillery range and eliminating the threat of encirclement seems to be the main effort for the Ukraine while they hold on other fronts with secondary efforts to the NE front to keep lines open to the East. The southern front seems to be a economy of force mission to just deny the Russians an advance North along the river or West toward Odessa.

The shipping of more capable ADA systems like the S300 will go a long way in denying the Russians use of CAS and CCA though the Russian capability with even better systems denies the Uk AF the ability to mount sorties near any border regions.

Soviets/Russians are not much better, but they do have a shorter list.

In the end, I'm not excusing Russian aggression. I am a pacifist and I detest wars. I'm just explaining why Russia felt this was necessary. I also think the Ukraine's neutrality is the fastest and safest way to end the crisis and return to some semblance of normalcy for the foreseeable future.

Seeing as you listed plenty of cases in which the US sent troops in support of an existing government and by their request can you really count those as invasions? The US defense of South Korea was not an offensive war for just one example on your list and this was also a UN backed mission against the North Korean aggressors that were backed by the PRC and USSR.

And once again those are not NATO wars, by your same logic every US war is a UN war too.

Ukraine was already neutral and was not on the verge of joining NATO despite its urgent appeals. Russia is the aggressor, that is indisputable, the victim nation is not the one that must cave to demands of its bully neighbor.
WWI could have been avoided had Serbia caved into Austro-Hungary's outrageous demands however they were right to reject them. WW2 could have been avoided/delayed had Poland caved into Germany's demands, but they were also right to reject them. Peace by appeasement has not demonstrated any success in realizing long term peace when dealing with autocratic states like present day Russia.

It is not fair. Unfortunately, it is how the world works. I personally detest NATO, but I would still be opposed to Serbia taking any hostile actions towards it, even if they were legally and morally right. The discrepancy in power is hundreds of times bigger than between Russia and Ukraine, of course, but it is the principle. Could Russia place missiles in Serbia to bypass NATO missile shield in eastern Europe? Legally, why not. Serbia is a sovereign nation, we have every legal and moral right to decide our own alliances. Realistically? Of course not.

Anyway, I think we have exhausted all avenues of dialogue here. I like to visit backroom from time to time to gauge what slightly more informed westerners think of a given issue. Granted, the sampling size is too small right now, but, it's a force of habit.
It's been a nice trip down the memory lane. Have fun guys and stay safe.

It's fine if you detest NATO, I'm not trying to convince you that it is good and all else is bad, especially as your nation was at war with NATO not too long ago which tends to not help its reputation.

Russia's ICBMs, geography around the Arctic circle, and boomer submarines already bypass any missile shield but yeah, Serbia could have Russian missiles. Serbia could outright ally with Russia or China too, no one will invade it for doing so.

You haven't really engaged in much dialogue though, you claim the Russians campaign is going fine despite proof to the contrary. The Russians have much more capacity for war, this is true, however do the Russian people want to make the blood and treasure sacrifices necessary to legalize what they already had defacto?

NATO expansion didn't lead to this war as there was no change in status in regards to NATO and the Ukraine prior to the start of this war. The Euromaiden revolution was pro-EU not pro-NATO, only the subsequent Russian invasion of Crimea and stoking of revolution in the east has lead the Ukraine toward pursuing NATO membership, something that has been repeatedly rebuffed by NATO.

Time will show this war will go but based on what's evident on the ground right now the Russian invasion has been a strategic failure that recognition of Russian ownership of Crimea and a few other provinces don't seem to justify. It has only strengthened NATO and EU unity and resolve and recalibrated the West's views toward the US away from the negative effects of the Afghan debacle last year.

The blood and treasure expended by Russia is immense and though this is true of Ukraine too it has resulted in more Ukrainian unity and sense of national identity as the winter war did for Finland and Gallipoli did for the ANZAC countries.

The Ukrainians may still lose this war and even larger swathes of their country, but Russia has lost several future generations friendly ties by a brother east-slavic nation while severely damaging its own reputation as resurgent great-power to challenge declining US super-power.

All in all though, I will miss your responses even if I do vastly disagree with them. I'm usually here to read the contrary views though declining membership has made the number of different posters far fewer.

[Pannonian]

@spmetla or anyone else who can answer. There have been reports of Soviet ships moving out of the far east with materiel. How are they going to get them to the battlefield? Haven't the Turks closed the straits?

[Montmorency]

Most powerful confirmation yet that Putin thought the boys would be home by — by now.
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/sta...67647125319681 [VIDEO 2/28]

A Russian Armor Vehicles in the town of Bucha that was Broadcasting the Propaganda Message, "Citizens, stay calm, everything is under control" was blown up by a Ukrainian Paramilitary Member earlier today with an RPG.

Yuri the fascist is alarmed that the Russian occupation does not appear to be providing adequate food and economic relief to the denizens under Russian control. He hopes his government will rectify this oversight before the occupied grow disgruntled. I'm surprised he would publish this sort of thing, and by the looks of the comments so are his viewers, who aren't having the notion that the special military operation could have a flawed implementation in some regard.

Nice Post

Unfortunately, there's little cause for excitement. DoD estimated recently that despite more than 10% of in-theater Russian combat power being lost, Ukraine had lost a similar proportion of its own combat power. The biggest killer for Ukraine's forces is artillery, which is very hard to counter when Ukraine has less artillery and almost no air cover. Both sides have drones, but the increasing fielding of Russian drones is most prominently a multiplier for the pre-existing Russian advantage. DoD also assessed that Russia retains the majority of its inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles, despite having fired over 1100 in a month. Knowing more about Russia's military now than I did previously, I suspect Russia's ability to simultaneously strike at critical infrastructure in all NATO countries except the US is a factor in Biden et al. ramping things up very deliberately and gradually. Maybe this is still too low a risk tolerance when a few hundred Russian missiles reaching their targets spread across a continent is barely a nuisance - Ukraine is comfortably in the fight despite having absorbed a thousand - but it would be politically undesirable to suffer more damage than necessary through haste. Ultimately Ukraine needs, besides more ammo and fuel, a hell of a lot more UCAV, to make it untenable for Russia to operate extended bombardments.

As Russia's campaign takes a pause for refit and reconstitution, and the Russians adapt their assault tactics and spend more time attriting Ukrainian defenses with artillery, the danger for all of Eastern Ukraine remains high (as I have repeatedly emphasized).

Moreover, if Ukraine does substantially "win" by their own efforts, that is without direct NATO intervention, the patriotic fervor infusing the war could combine with success to inculcate undesirable sociological tendencies. It has come to the point that in a short period of time Putin subverted a "brotherly nation" into pure loathing for Russians. This isn't just bad for Russian cultural reach and prestige; it could lead to the kind of animosity that Russians, for example, felt for Germans after WW2. One of the best available cases would be Ukraine becoming another Poland, which is notorious for its suspicion and resentment toward Russia.

There's also so much anger in Ukraine that it would take a lot of time and suffering during war for it to wane naturally. The implication is that Zelensky might not even be politically licensed to broker a deal returning Donbas but not Crimea to Ukraine. The political imperative is to liberate all occupied land. Sentiment plus abundant weapons plus the brutalization of war could foster insurgent and terrorist activity well into the future if Ukraine can only manage to restore the (territorial) status quo ante.

The reality, as Zelensky himself said, is that neutrality vis-a-vis NATO was always the easiest concession Ukraine could offer - yet also the one Putin is least interested in.


Someone finally experimenting with no-man's-land formatting, as expected from Ruser. Is Konotop (the blue blob NW of Sumy, itself the larger blue blob surrounded by red near the NE border w/ Russia) still holding out? Holy crap, IIRC it's only been defended by local militias (Territorials). Let's have a reminder of the mayor cinematically exhorting the townsfolk to resist at the beginning of the war. There's even a humorous aside from 0:16-19 where the filmer asks the mayor why he didn't want to fight the day before; the mayor tells him to shut up before resuming his rabble-rousing.

[spmetla]

@spmetla or anyone else who can answer. There have been reports of Soviet ships moving out of the far east with materiel. How are they going to get them to the battlefield? Haven't the Turks closed the straits?

I imagine they'll just go to Vladivostok and then over the trans-Siberian railroad, should take weeks if true but a indicator of Russian high command's resolve to keep fighting.

As Russia's campaign takes a pause for refit and reconstitution, and the Russians adapt their assault tactics and spend more time attriting Ukrainian defenses with artillery, the danger for all of Eastern Ukraine remains high (as I have repeatedly emphasized).

That's where I'm cautiously optimistic for the Ukrainian situation now. The Russians in country aren't being allowed a pause for refit or reconstitution as the UA is able to take the fight to them though on a smaller scale. US intel doesn't seem to report any new BTGs lining up as reinforcements anywhere outside the Ukraine so that seems that units are being fed right into combat or the troops and equipment are being used purely as replacements. Both are indicators to me that Russia won't be able to adapt their tactics at the lower level Company and below and are going to be forced to rely on artillery.
This artillery reliance would usually be a good thing but considering the poor logistics situation as well as the security of those supply lines I think front line units won't be able to use their artillery as liberally as their doctrine would like. We haven't been seeing the massive rocket barrages of the first few weeks pop up in a while so that to me says they're being used at Battery and lower level as Battalion and greater sized barrages aren't sustainable right now.

The danger in East Ukraine is absolutely high as you've mentioned, Mariupol can't hold forever but it amazes me how well they've done so far.

If the UA is actually threatening Kherson as the rumor mill suggest this may draw more Russian units off of Mariupol too.

Also, I'm hearing through OSINT rumor mill of increased UA counterattacks NW of Kiev which makes me wonder about the situation if several BTGs get cut off from their lines of supply. Without air superiority they can't rely on aerial resupply, it's winter and they've already alienated the population so they can't forage off the land. It'd be a Stalingrad type of omen for the course of the war that even the staunchest pro-Putin supporters would struggle to paint as positive or a fluke.
If the UA somehow pulls off an encirclement of any BTGs in the NW Kiev salient that'll be a huge loss for the Russians and may eliminate any potential goading of Belarus into the conflict. Not to mention it'd enable the UA to have some strategic reserves to affect the same elsewhere.
This is all way too optimistic at this point and I get ahead of myself though the above is what I hope for. The war is far from won by any means but us armchair generals get excited when seeing vulnerable salients to cut off.

Moreover, if Ukraine does substantially "win" by their own efforts, that is without direct NATO intervention, the patriotic fervor infusing the war could combine with success to inculcate undesirable sociological tendencies. It has come to the point that in a short period of time Putin subverted a "brotherly nation" into pure loathing for Russians. This isn't just bad for Russian cultural reach and prestige; it could lead to the kind of animosity that Russians, for example, felt for Germans after WW2. One of the best available cases would be Ukraine becoming another Poland, which is notorious for its suspicion and resentment toward Russia.

I'm actually not too worried about this aspect as so many Ukrainians are part Russians or have close ties there so that they won't blame the Russian people just the government. Same for Russian citizens, this gamble and potential loss is clearly at the feet of Putin and his corrupt cronies. Sorta how the Nazis blamed the 'stab in the back' and 'the Jews' rather than acknowledge their defeat.

I could see the Russians angrier at the US specifically and the West generally than at Ukraine for somehow 'tricking' Putin into this war. I just wonder what this means for the future political environment of Russia. Will it be revanchism and meddling in Europe or will they do their historically turn eastward and focus on their influence in Central Asia and the Far East.

[Montmorency]

EDIT: Wrong thread