Twenty Years On...

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Originally Posted by BalticSailor

The Swan Lake score itself is symbolic enough, really: https://hazlitt.net/feature/portento...oviet-politics

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That was fascinating! :up:

Beyond the black & white metaphors for good & evil, it's a reminder that state-sponsored Russian propaganda was 'successful' at manipulating the 'audience' long before the internet or social media even existed. But now that most of the world is watching a geopolitical and humanitarian catastrophe unfold in real time....it's hard to grasp that some people are *only* getting Putin's propaganda, including Russian-Americans who get their 'news' from RT links on Facebook. :bulb:


edit: as for Putin's "Grand Plan" --- if it was just to exploit and exacerbate the existing divisions in democracies, and make us fight with ourselves about policies and procedures while he's been trying to create a new Russian Empire, he's mostly been successful. :donkey:

Hey Being, maybe you should change the title of this thread to "Russia Putin Declares War on Europe and Western Democracies"

Finally, a reasonably short explanation of what Russia wants from Ukraine...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

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Originally Posted by GGT

Hey Being, maybe you should change the title of this thread to "Russia Putin Declares War on Europe and Western Democracies"

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I don't know how to do that.

Since you started the tread, you can change the title by clicking "Edit".

I think there is a time limit to changing the title. Plus it might just confuse people.

I was confused when I logged in and didn't see a thread about the WAR IN EUROPE

Y'all can argue academics to the 9th degree.....but as someone who lived thru the Cold War, and practiced hiding under my school desk in the event of Nuclear War with the USSR.....it's chilling to see history repeat itself in the 21st century, with Ukrainians hiding in their basements, hoping to save themselves from Russian military bombardments. It's insane, crazy, and unacceptable!

I've been having bad dreams that take me back to my childhood, asking my parents if we will die in a nuclear war, or if the world will be made unlivable in the nuclear fallout. They always told me everything will be alright, and I believed them, because that's what children do. Buy they were just telling me what I needed to hear. Cognitive Dissonance has reared its ugly head, and history is repeating and/or rhyming.

This is not a drill.....

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Originally Posted by GGT

Y'all can argue academics to the 9th degree.....but as someone who lived thru the Cold War, and practiced hiding under my school desk in the event of Nuclear War with the USSR.....it's chilling to see history repeat itself in the 21st century, with Ukrainians hiding in their basements, hoping to save themselves from Russian military bombardments. It's insane, crazy, and unacceptable!

I've been having bad dreams that take me back to my childhood, asking my parents if we will die in a nuclear war, or if the world will be made unlivable in the nuclear fallout. They always told me everything will be alright, and I believed them, because that's what children do. Buy they were just telling me what I needed to hear. Cognitive Dissonance has reared its ugly head, and history is repeating and/or rhyming.

This is not a drill.....

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Indeed

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Originally Posted by GGT

I've been having bad dreams that take me back to my childhood, asking my parents if we will die in a nuclear war, or if the world will be made unlivable in the nuclear fallout. They always told me everything will be alright, and I believed them, because that's what children do. Buy they were just telling me what I needed to hear. Cognitive Dissonance has reared its ugly head, and history is repeating and/or rhyming.

This is not a drill.....

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Didn't we let the Russians assassinate our president when he was acting crazy? Just asking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

Yesterday I started predicting that the objective of the Russian attack is severing the entire black sea coast of Ukraine + some token concessions on Ukraines future status. I expect a marked difference in the attacks on northern and southern cities. Keep an eye on Odessa the next week.

Also turned down the heat in most of our house. Only the TV room isn't cold. Not to save money, but to not use gas.

Too much info to summarize but the gist of it is that Russian forces are mired in mud, losing fighter planes, helicopters, tanks, and all sorts of other armored vehicles at a hilarious rate—and in hilarious ways—failing to hold on to cities they've nominally captured, repeatedly failing to assassinate Zelenskyy, failing to establish air superiority (with Ukraine purportedly still having pretty much all of their aircraft in play), and are just dying/deserting/surrendering left and right. Obv much of this may be misleading info from Ukraine, but the things that have been independently verified suggest most of it is reasonably accurate—and an indictment of the Russian military. The impact on civilians has been awful—both on those suffering under the criminal strikes on civilian targets (allegedly used for military purposes) as well as on those 1.5m who've already fled the country. The relief at EU member states finally stepping up to the plate to help refugees is tempered—somewhat—by the comically racist discourse and the farcical attempts by mainstream parties all over the EU to out-racist one another in increasingly stupid ways. Russia may finally make good on its threats to cut off EU countries from Russian gas and oil, which will obv. be troublesome, but also obv. nowhere near as painful as what ordinary people in Russia are already going through. Unbelievable reports of large protests in many Russian cities, despite the great risk to individual protestors. Over 10k arrested now? Russians have made it clear that they'll stop losing and dying in the mud if Ukraine promises to install a puppet PM, give up Crimea and the fake republics, and ofc stay out of NATO.

Bellingcat's exec director just reported Ukrainian forces have killed a Russian general... other sources reporting over a thousand Russian officers have been killed or taken prisoner.

I'd be cautious about the officer claims, but there's evidence that the general is indeed dead.

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Originally Posted by Loki

I'd be cautious about the officer claims, but there's evidence that the general is indeed dead.

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I think all of this (and other gleefully reported setbacks) is essentially meaningless noise that obscures the harsh reality. Provided that Putin is willing to stomach the cost (military and economic), Russia will win, however they want to define it. They were clearly unprepared for the scale of the resistance (and never had the appropriate logistics/preparation in place, which is hardly surprising given pre invasion assessments), but given adequate time and enough indifference to civilian casualties from indirect fires, the Russian advance will continue and the Ukrainian government will fall. I am moderately impressed with Ukrainian resistance to date, but it's at best a holding action that may lead to the nucleus of a long running insurgency. We shouldn't mistake Russian blunders as strategically relevant. Being impressed that a country hasn't fallen in days vs weeks is the definition of grading on a curve.

The longer this takes, the more sanctions start to hurt and the more morale plummets. There's some point when Putin's ability to stay in power will be jeopardized. Military actions can't be divorced from the political and economic reality.

Putin can carpet bomb Ukraine, but that will be hard to sell to the Russian people who are still being told there is no war. There's probably some threshold beyond which sanctions will become so severe, the Russian economy will collapse.

Plus, the longer this takes, the more Putin will have to rein in his demands. The quality of the military operations doesn't give me great confidence in the quality of the ensuing occupation, especially since we already knew Russia had manpower problems trying to occupy a country of this size.

I don't think we have any actual sense of how good or bad morale is right now. The main phase of the second Chechen War took 9 months, killed upwards of ten thousand Russian troops, and somewhere around 50-100k civilians. Grozny was essentially flattened. I think it's far from clear that Russia can't manage internal opinion and their military operations adequately to cause the Ukrainian government to fall and occupy some portion of Eastern Ukraine.

Sanctions will bite, yes, but absent cutting off gas/oil exports, they'll be able to muddle through, albeit at substantial cost to the economy. I think the RCB sanctions are a really fascinating tool, but it's not entirely clear how effective it will be, and we're still providing Putin with upwards of $1 billion a day to stay afloat.

And I would not bet anything on a real challenge to Putin. Anything is possible, but his power is so entrenched it will be very difficult to oust him.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

Provided that Putin is willing to stomach the cost (military and economic), Russia will win

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Why?

Because he has much more resources, manpower, and materiel?

We haven't even seen a fraction of it used to date. But provided the political will (and absent Ukraine getting NATO involved), it's pretty obvious.

I should mention that I'm talking about the narrow question of his ability to defeat the conventional military and topple the government. I'm sure we can all talk about Russia's 'defeat' by insurgency in 5 or 10 or 50 years, but I doubt Ukrainians will be so upbeat about such a resolution.

I'm not certain about the side show that the war in Ukraine is rapidly becoming. Russia is the bigger side, but you have to wonder if they can afford throwing all they have at Ukraine with the new Cold War kicking into full gear.

Of course depletion of the kind that's going on right now makes our mad dash for re-armament just that much easier.

I am curious what 'The West` will look like in the next 12 months. Wouldn't surprise me if getting off Russian oil is coupled with getting off Chinese everything soon.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

Because he has much more resources, manpower, and materiel?.

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What's in question is Russia's ability to actually bring that to bare against Ukraine. They can barely supply what they do have in country. That big convoy baring down on Kyiv has pretty much stalled, what, 100km from friendly borders? That's like England invading Scotland but running out of fuel before they reach Edinburgh.

Internally, Russia serves the army's logistical needs using its massive rail network. The roads in Russia are bad and the country is huge, so they use trains. Logical.

But to supply the soldiers actually doing the fighting, they need trucks to get the supplies from the train stations to where the soldiers are. And they don't have enough trucks to keep up with the intensity of combat going on in Ukraine right now. And, being well aware of this weakness, the Ukrainians keep blowing up their trucks. Then we have the problem of poor maintenance (the infamous tires that don't work in mud) and the sanctions (where are spare parts coming from? how will you pay for them?), and you see the nature of the problems Russia is facing in Ukraine.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is fighting on home ground, they are extremely motivated, and they have the backing of the entire western world. Like, the outcome is very much in doubt here.

Russian Tank Inventory: 12,000
US Tank Inventory: 6,000
France: 527

US Defence Budget: 800 billion
Russian Defence Budget: 60 billion
France Defence Budget: 40 billion

How is Russia maintaining a fleet of tanks twice the size of the US with a budget only 1.5 times that of France, who only have 500? As well as maintaining the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the world, and a large air-force and a substantial navy? Well, I'd say they're probably not.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Russian Tank Inventory: 12,000
US Tank Inventory: 6,000
France: 527

US Defence Budget: 800 billion
Russian Defence Budget: 60 billion
France Defence Budget: 40 billion

How is Russia maintaining a fleet of tanks twice the size of the US with a budget only 1.5 times that of France, who only have 500? As well as maintaining the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the world, and a large air-force and a substantial navy? Well, I'd say they're probably not.

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Yes, but also:

https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/wh...-as-is-chinas/

(although not corruption-adjusted :o)

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Originally Posted by wiggin

I think all of this (and other gleefully reported setbacks) is essentially meaningless noise that obscures the harsh reality. Provided that Putin is willing to stomach the cost (military and economic), Russia will win, however they want to define it. They were clearly unprepared for the scale of the resistance (and never had the appropriate logistics/preparation in place, which is hardly surprising given pre invasion assessments), but given adequate time and enough indifference to civilian casualties from indirect fires, the Russian advance will continue and the Ukrainian government will fall. I am moderately impressed with Ukrainian resistance to date, but it's at best a holding action that may lead to the nucleus of a long running insurgency. We shouldn't mistake Russian blunders as strategically relevant. Being impressed that a country hasn't fallen in days vs weeks is the definition of grading on a curve.

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Generally, I would agree with you on this (though Loki is also right and in fact I think there is no hope for an occupation effort) but Russia really bungled their prep for the invasion. Even ignoring the political and economic factors, they simply were not and are not prepared for months of active operations. Their ability to prosecute the campaign is going to be exhausted well short of the nine months they spent on the Chechen War. I would be amazed if they can support four months of active operations. Will they need that long? Depends on what war goals they'll accept, and when the regular resistance finally fails it's likely to be quickly and without a lot of warning so it's awfully hard to tell how much Russia can/will accomplish before they completely run out of push.

I have precious little time to spare, but I will attempt to elaborate. It may be pithy compared to my normal exposition.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

I'm not certain about the side show that the war in Ukraine is rapidly becoming. Russia is the bigger side, but you have to wonder if they can afford throwing all they have at Ukraine with the new Cold War kicking into full gear.

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They are not throwing 'all they have' at Ukraine. They are throwing a relatively small, poorly supplied/resourced force at Ukraine because they weren't expecting this level of resistance. They are scrambling to fix their error but it will take time to play out.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

What's in question is Russia's ability to actually bring that to bare against Ukraine. They can barely supply what they do have in country. That big convoy baring down on Kyiv has pretty much stalled, what, 100km from friendly borders? That's like England invading Scotland but running out of fuel before they reach Edinburgh.

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Competent estimates ahead of the invasion were skeptical of the Biden administration's warning of imminent war because despite some measures of readiness for an operation (e.g. field hospitals), a lot of defense analysts (including some pretty solid Ukrainian ones) thought that critical troop levels and support/logistics trains were not in place for fighting. It turns out everyone was right - the invasion was indeed launched, but it also wasn't prepared for the logistical support needed for an actual war (rather than a token resistance followed by capitulation). Just because Russia didn't prepare correctly (and seriously underestimated the scale of the challenge) doesn't mean they don't have the capability. We are still in very early days and even with Russia's substantial miscalculations, I think that a withdrawal of Russian forces will only be brought about by a political calculation, not one of necessity.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Internally, Russia serves the army's logistical needs using its massive rail network. The roads in Russia are bad and the country is huge, so they use trains. Logical.

But to supply the soldiers actually doing the fighting, they need trucks to get the supplies from the train stations to where the soldiers are. And they don't have enough trucks to keep up with the intensity of combat going on in Ukraine right now. And, being well aware of this weakness, the Ukrainians keep blowing up their trucks. Then we have the problem of poor maintenance (the infamous tires that don't work in mud) and the sanctions (where are spare parts coming from? how will you pay for them?), and you see the nature of the problems Russia is facing in Ukraine.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is fighting on home ground, they are extremely motivated, and they have the backing of the entire western world. Like, the outcome is very much in doubt here.

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See above, but you are giving Ukrainian forces (who are understrength, relatively poorly equipped, and poorly positioned) a lot of credit here. We like stories about plucky underdogs winning fights, but in most case with a substantial difference in power, the smaller adversary generally only successful if the bigger guy has a vast asymmetry in quality of personnel, weaponry, or has bigger fish to fry. Larger powers generally end wars by choice.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Russian Tank Inventory: 12,000
US Tank Inventory: 6,000
France: 527

US Defence Budget: 800 billion
Russian Defence Budget: 60 billion
France Defence Budget: 40 billion

How is Russia maintaining a fleet of tanks twice the size of the US with a budget only 1.5 times that of France, who only have 500? As well as maintaining the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the world, and a large air-force and a substantial navy? Well, I'd say they're probably not.

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Aside from obvious discussions about the lower cost of manpower and goods in Russia and various hidden bits of the Russian defense budget, and how regional powers can get more bang for their buck by not investing in massive power projection infrastructure, there's two key points here: First, the Ukrainian military budget is about $5 billion. Second, Russia's MBT inventory is irrelevant to your comparison, the question is how much of their inventory is modern and active. They have about 2k tanks in active service (equivalent to the US ~2.5k), of which a much smaller number are relatively late model variants of T-72/T-90s and T-80s. Of course, this is much, much more third generation MBTs than are available to Ukraine, but it means that the Russian military's modernization is relatively modest compared to the sprawling and expensive efforts of Western forces - albeit still more than enough to take on Ukraine.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

Generally, I would agree with you on this (though Loki is also right and in fact I think there is no hope for an occupation effort) but Russia really bungled their prep for the invasion. Even ignoring the political and economic factors, they simply were not and are not prepared for months of active operations. Their ability to prosecute the campaign is going to be exhausted well short of the nine months they spent on the Chechen War. I would be amazed if they can support four months of active operations. Will they need that long? Depends on what war goals they'll accept, and when the regular resistance finally fails it's likely to be quickly and without a lot of warning so it's awfully hard to tell how much Russia can/will accomplish before they completely run out of push.

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I agree that the preparations were badly bungled (and frankly their timing wasn't great either - most countries launching wars of choice wait for better weather/ground conditions), likely due to aforementioned miscalculation about Ukrainian resistance. But I'm not sure that translates into a heavily limited capacity to sustain operations going forward. Russia's armaments industry is largely self sufficient, their fuel capacity is effectively limitless, and they have a large reservoir of manpower they can bring to bear (heh, bear). As I understand it, the Russian military is actually in much better shape now than it was in the late 90s during the Chechen campaigns, though I am not an expert on their logistical capabilities.

The key point I've been trying to make is that an end to this war won't happen by military mistakes or Ukrainian soldiers prevailing, but by a political process driven by cost/benefit calculations. Getting bogged down in the battlefield long term will certainly be part of those calculations (as will sanctions), but it's important to understand that there is no reasonable path to military victory for Ukraine, and we shouldn't be pinning our hopes on one. If anything, I expect to see the scope, destruction, and pace of military operations to significantly increase in the coming weeks as the Russian military works out the logistical bottlenecks caused by poor preparation. We have been spoiled by decades of unsurpassed US projection power into believing that presence of these kinds of problems is evidence of eventual defeat, rather than a surmountable challenge for a sufficiently well resourced adversary.

I don't understand why you nerds always let yourselves be dragged into weird proxy debates like this when Ukrainian grandmothers are assassinating drones with jars of pickled tomatoes.

In other news, some sources put the number of arrested anti-war protesters in Russia at 16,000 and rising. Remarkable courage, given the brutality with which these protests have been met, and the extreme severe penalties that have been threatened. Expert consensus seems to be that this hasn't really moved the needle much wrt Putin's hold on power. A couple of sources have reported that 40,000 foreign fighters have joined Ukrainian forces, which is kinda surprising if true (even if the figure were from an official source, it would be suspect I guess). Heard Ukrainian embassies in various countries have been involved in some sort of expedited vetting process. Will be interesting to see whether these fighters will be treated differently from eg. EU citizens who went off to join Kurdish forces.

Analysts scrambling to understand what state the Russian economy really is in right now, with assessments ranging from "big trouble" to "Venezuela redux". Will be interesting to see which countries step in to keep them afloat—and how such assistance will be met by the US in particular. The sanctions that have been announced are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future, but do we think the US is ready to impose extraterritorial sanctions against third parties such as China?

I'm wondering whether Russia will use this war as an opportunity to demonstrate new weapons.

General points for wiggin

• Russia may be able to reconfigure themselves for a more protracted conflict, but it's going to take them some time. The build up for this invasion had been going on for at least a year, they're probably not going to be assemble a more powerful force in a matter of weeks or months.
• An outright military victory for Ukraine is not a relevant criteria, all wars are judged by the political/economic aims they're supposed to achieve, or else was Vietnam actually a US victory?
• There are problems the Russian army is experiencing that go beyond not expecting the level of resistance it's faced. Even if they were expecting a three day walk over, there's no good reason for Russian vehicles to be breaking down constantly, there is no good reason for them to have failed to achieve air superiority or destroy Ukraine's air defence capability in the opening hours of the war and there is no good reason for Russia to be using barely trained conscripts who (allegedly) weren't even told they were going into combat.

So, that's why I say the outcome is in doubt, too many unknowns: the ability of Russia to ramp up it's military activity, the extent to which the problems Russia has suffered in Ukraine are systematic within the rider Russian military or local to this operation, the ability of the Russian economy to withstand sanctions, the ability of the Ukrainians to resist Russia and prevent them from making the gains they need to force a desirable political settlement (no evidence of any ability to actually retake territory so far), how the political situation in Russia will play out.

In other news, Biden has just banned gas imports from Russia and the UK is looking to phase them out by the end of 2022 and I just filled my tank up at £1.63.

As an aside, this is from Minx's article:

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At nearly 50 percent of federal budget spending on national defense, a large proportion of the Russian defense budget goes to procurement and research and development. By comparison, in other countries with large defense budgets, procurement spending tends to be much lower: in India, the United States, and the United Kingdom, spending is at about 20–25 percent.

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This is bad, actually, at least from the point of view of using the defence budget to assess their capabilities now, today - all this money is going on R&D for modern weapon systems which don't actually exist in enough numbers to materially affect anything

Maybe they should have procured some trucks instead of 14 5th generation fighters, if they were set on starting a land war in Europe?

I also have reason to believe that Russian defence procurement may be at least as corrupt and wasteful as it is in the west, so pretty damn bad :o

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

As an aside, this is from Minx's article:

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At nearly 50 percent of federal budget spending on national defense, a large proportion of the Russian defense budget goes to procurement and research and development. By comparison, in other countries with large defense budgets, procurement spending tends to be much lower: in India, the United States, and the United Kingdom, spending is at about 20–25 percent.

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This is bad, actually, at least from the point of view of using the defence budget to assess their capabilities now, today - all this money is going on R&D for modern weapon systems which don't actually exist in enough numbers to materially affect anything

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The way they phrased that may indicate that it's not an apples-to-apples comparison (procurement + R&D vs just procurement). For the past decade, analyses of Russia's defense spending have noted the very high share (roughly 40-50% or more of the defense budget, according to several reports) spent on procurement specifically. Again, without adjusting for corruption :o

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