Twenty Years On...

[LittleFuzzy]

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.

Overall the Russian military may be in much better shape than during the Chechen campaigns. I'm not going to make a statement one way or the other there. But they do have substantially less invested in power-projection than we do, and Russia is so big that they have to tie up a fair amount of what capability they do have just maintaining their ability to project power in their own territory. They did not prepare for an extended campaign and my understanding is they can't just reorganize and reallocate to provide the all resources, support and maintenance they need for one on the fly. There's a limit to their capability to divert from their other requirements in the medium-term which I think you're failing to recognize.

I will note, by the way, that the Ukrainian regular forces will be facing a lot of the same difficulties there. And while they get some advantages from being the defender in this regard, they also gain some disadvantages. Shorter supply lines, but more vulnerable supply sources, for instance. Western support mitigates that to an extent but doesn't eliminate it in the same medium-term.

[GGT]

It's weird to read all the military analysis (that almost sounds like gamers talking about strategies and logistics for the WIN) when there is no winner here. Ukraine is being de-populated, millions are now refugees, millions more are trapped in cities being reduced to rubble, without food or water or power, civilians buried in mass graves.

It's even weirder to see how the West is limited by honoring boundaries, rules, laws, alliances, treaties....compared to Putin, who doesn't believe in anything but his own power and re-creating the Russian Empire. He doesn't even care about Russian citizens, let alone their military; they're just expendable/exploitable pawns. He's turned diplomacy into farcical theater and we're "negotiating" with a terrorist, but he gets away with it because he has oil, and nuclear weapons?

No matter how this ends, or how long it takes, I'm struggling to see what GOOD will follow in the aftermath.

[GGT]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/o...-invasion.html

Putin Has Killed Germany's Post-Cold War Assumptions

I don’t think there’s much talk of positive consequences in Germany. “Europeans know there is no complete security in Europe against Russia,” said Klaus Scharioth, who served as Germany’s ambassador to the United States during both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies. “You can unite, we all do that, which is absolutely necessary, but if Russia stays on the current path, then nobody is secure, because they have all these tactical nuclear weapons. They have also intermediate-range nuclear weapons. And they can, if they want to, they can destroy any European city within minutes.”

Germany has reason to be proud of its reception of Ukrainian refugees, reprising the “willkommenskultur” that led it to accept a million Middle Eastern and North African refugees in 2015. A large section of the Hauptbahnhof train station has been transformed into a makeshift refugee processing center. On Wednesday evening, countless volunteers — wearing yellow vests if they speak only German or English, orange if they speak Russian or Ukrainian — helped new arrivals navigate toward free accommodations in Berlin or buses onward. But the scene is still unspeakably sad. Hundreds of people newly forced from their homes milled around, some laden with baggage, others with only rolling suitcases. Families were slumped on the floor. Some people clutched pets. The catastrophe they’d fled wasn’t that far away; Berlin is closer to Lviv than to Paris.

“We live in a different world now,” said Ricarda Lang, a co-leader of the German Green Party, when I met her at a pro-Ukraine demonstration outside the Russian Embassy. “I, as a person who was born in 1994, I grew up in a peaceful Europe. For me, peace and democracy in many ways were something that was taken for granted.” Such assurance, she said, has now disappeared. Putin has murdered a whole constellation of post-Cold War assumptions. No one knows what new paradigms will replace them.

[Lewkowski]

It's even weirder to see how the West is limited by honoring boundaries, rules, laws, alliances, treaties....compared to Putin, who doesn't believe in anything but his own power and re-creating the Russian Empire. He doesn't even care about Russian citizens, let alone their military; they're just expendable/exploitable pawns. He's turned diplomacy into farcical theater and we're "negotiating" with a terrorist, but he gets away with it because he has oil, and nuclear weapons?

No matter how this ends, or how long it takes, I'm struggling to see what GOOD will follow in the aftermath.

Spoiler alert - bad people exist. There will always be bad people in power. This is why a strong national defense is one of the few government expenditures I'm fully in support of.

[GGT]

Spoiler alert - bad people exist. There will always be bad people in power. This is why a strong national defense is one of the few government expenditures I'm fully in support of.

WTF are you taking about? A strong national defense didn't protect us from "bad people in power" like Trump.

[GGT]

...let me share with you what we were taught in elementary school back in the sixties...When you see the flash, get down on the ground, put your head between your legs, kiss your ass goodbye.

We were taught to hide under our school desks before the nuclear flash came, that hiding in the school's gym would keep us safe, and the cafeteria was well-stocked with food. If we just took the sirens seriously and practiced the drills, everything would be okay.

It's eerily similar to the "active shooter" drills that today's students are forced to deal with. That kind of fear and anxiety about *potential* harm is bound to fuck up any mind; imagine what these Children of War are actually going through. It's horrible and beyond shameful.

[Being]

We were taught to hide under our school desks before the nuclear flash came, that hiding in the school's gym would keep us safe, and the cafeteria was well-stocked with food. If we just took the sirens seriously and practiced the drills, everything would be okay.

It's eerily similar to the "active shooter" drills that today's students are forced to deal with. That kind of fear and anxiety about *potential* harm is bound to fuck up any mind; imagine what these Children of War are actually going through. It's horrible and beyond shameful.

Yes, your description is more accurate than my embellishment but I personally never believed that "everything would be okay".

[wiggin]

Sorry I've been so awol lately, just don't have the time to give this the attention it deserves.

• 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.

I suspect we don't really disagree all that much, I just have a more pessimistic view on Russia changing course by some combination of political, economic, and military pressure. I think my real point of contention with most of the commentary (including bits here) is the focus on the relatively slow and clearly chaotic advance of armor, especially in the north of the country. This is being used as evidence of fundamental Russian weakness against concerted Ukrainian resistance, rather than as a result of badly bungled Russian planning/expectations, and a piss-poor attempt to recover from it. The former might be a reason to be optimistic about Ukraine's chances, but the latter suggest it's just a matter of time before the Ukrainian government falls and we have de facto annexation of substantial parts of Eastern Ukraine. Sure, in the long arc of history, I'm sure this will be seen as an absolute travesty and policy failure on Russia's part, but that does precious little for the Ukrainians who are going to be stuck under the thumb of Russia (or Russia-sponsored thugs) for the foreseeable future.

I do disagree with you that they can't bring more power to bear in weeks to months. Their buildup may have been gradual (and a lot of it was political theater), but they can certainly bring more force to bear - notably more indirect fires against cities as they slowly encircle them, as we've been seeing with substantial ramp ups in the south. I expect the north is only a matter of time as well.

The one thing that I do think is somewhere between puzzling and downright mystifying is the air war. Russia clearly has the airpower to vastly outclass/outnumber the remaining Ukrainian air force, and most defense folks ahead of the war were assuming that the war would start the way Western nations (well, the US) wage war against a numerically and technologically inferior opponent: spend the first day or two systematically destroying the air defenses, airfields, and aircraft of the enemy to achieve air supremacy. There would always have been some residual Ukrainian anti-air capability, of course, but a concerted SEAD campaign early on should have given Russian aircraft (especially higher altitude aircraft) relative impunity. Instead, we are seeing an ongoing contested airspace and surprisingly small amounts of CAS for advancing Russian ground forces. I have yet to hear a convincing explanation for this strategy - some have suggested that Russia is concerned about losing expensive planes and pilots during SEAD and CAPs, others have suggested that the Russian air force might not be up to the complex operations involved in routine CAS, so they're not bothering. Both of these explanations would be very worrying to me as a Russian military planner when not measuring up against such a weaker foe, and I don't know if they're accurate or not. It is definitely difficult to understand, and could be the first indication of real, fundamental weakness in the Russian military.

Overall the Russian military may be in much better shape than during the Chechen campaigns. I'm not going to make a statement one way or the other there. But they do have substantially less invested in power-projection than we do, and Russia is so big that they have to tie up a fair amount of what capability they do have just maintaining their ability to project power in their own territory. They did not prepare for an extended campaign and my understanding is they can't just reorganize and reallocate to provide the all resources, support and maintenance they need for one on the fly. There's a limit to their capability to divert from their other requirements in the medium-term which I think you're failing to recognize.

I will note, by the way, that the Ukrainian regular forces will be facing a lot of the same difficulties there. And while they get some advantages from being the defender in this regard, they also gain some disadvantages. Shorter supply lines, but more vulnerable supply sources, for instance. Western support mitigates that to an extent but doesn't eliminate it in the same medium-term.

The Ukrainian military was wholly incapable of evicting separatists from the Donbas region for the last 8 years. Part of this was an unwillingness to countenance the kind of nasty urban combat (and more concerted confrontation with Russia) this would have entailed, but a lot of it was simple incompetence/poor training/poor equipment. Russia's military isn't in great shape, but it's light years ahead in most ways that matter.

I suspect that you have correctly identified our point of departure - I think their poor preparation is a shortish term problem (say, a month or two), while you seem to think it's a medium term problem. Time will tell! I imagine that NATO defense planners are watching this whole mess keenly (and with no small amount of satisfaction) - this is a long way from the days when NATO planners were deathly afraid of thousands of tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap, the most likely place to see tactical nukes used during the Cold War.

[Steely Glint]

Not sure where your getting your info on the state of the Russian military from, wig, but it seems it's increasingly not matching up to reality. The forces they built up before the invasion have all already been committed and they are not making any moves to bring in other forces.

Twitter Link

Twitter Link

The one thing that I do think is somewhere between puzzling and downright mystifying is the air war. Russia clearly has the airpower to vastly outclass/outnumber the remaining Ukrainian air force, and most defense folks ahead of the war were assuming that the war would start the way Western nations (well, the US) wage war against a numerically and technologically inferior opponent: spend the first day or two systematically destroying the air defenses, airfields, and aircraft of the enemy to achieve air supremacy. There would always have been some residual Ukrainian anti-air capability, of course, but a concerted SEAD campaign early on should have given Russian aircraft (especially higher altitude aircraft) relative impunity. Instead, we are seeing an ongoing contested airspace and surprisingly small amounts of CAS for advancing Russian ground forces. I have yet to hear a convincing explanation for this strategy - some have suggested that Russia is concerned about losing expensive planes and pilots during SEAD and CAPs, others have suggested that the Russian air force might not be up to the complex operations involved in routine CAS, so they're not bothering. Both of these explanations would be very worrying to me as a Russian military planner when not measuring up against such a weaker foe, and I don't know if they're accurate or not. It is definitely difficult to understand, and could be the first indication of real, fundamental weakness in the Russian military.

The other explanations I've seen given are a lack of precision weapons (after they used up a large part of their stock pile in Syria) and Russian's lack of planes designed to tackle enemy sam platforms. There's also the fact that NATO is giving Ukraine live access to the data from AWACS flying over Poland.

Another possibility (aside from the obvious one that the Russian air force is simply bad) is that maybe some people in the Russian air force/military think the war is a bad idea and are deliberately sand bagging.

[LittleFuzzy]

The one thing that I do think is somewhere between puzzling and downright mystifying is the air war. Russia clearly has the airpower to vastly outclass/outnumber the remaining Ukrainian air force, and most defense folks ahead of the war were assuming that the war would start the way Western nations (well, the US) wage war against a numerically and technologically inferior opponent: spend the first day or two systematically destroying the air defenses, airfields, and aircraft of the enemy to achieve air supremacy. There would always have been some residual Ukrainian anti-air capability, of course, but a concerted SEAD campaign early on should have given Russian aircraft (especially higher altitude aircraft) relative impunity. Instead, we are seeing an ongoing contested airspace and surprisingly small amounts of CAS for advancing Russian ground forces. I have yet to hear a convincing explanation for this strategy - some have suggested that Russia is concerned about losing expensive planes and pilots during SEAD and CAPs, others have suggested that the Russian air force might not be up to the complex operations involved in routine CAS, so they're not bothering. Both of these explanations would be very worrying to me as a Russian military planner when not measuring up against such a weaker foe, and I don't know if they're accurate or not. It is definitely difficult to understand, and could be the first indication of real, fundamental weakness in the Russian military.

I finally heard what I think might be a good explanation for that. Russia has substantially underinvested in mobile ELINT and associated C&C links. They lack a robust (read: loss-resistant) capability to detect air-defense as it comes online and looks for targets, and to communicate that to the units in the air, for countermeasures and counter-force Which creates a lot of vulnerability for their aircraft since they often can only tell they're under threat after they've been "painted."

[Steely Glint]

Twitter Link

Unfathomably based.

[Steely Glint]

“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths,” Mr. Putin said. “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges.”

Mr. Putin claimed that the West was echoing the Nazis’ antisemitic pogroms in trying to “cancel” Russia by banning “Russian music, culture and literature.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/w...-protests.html

Putin having a normal one.

[wiggin]

Not sure where your getting your info on the state of the Russian military from, wig, but it seems it's increasingly not matching up to reality. The forces they built up before the invasion have all already been committed and they are not making any moves to bring in other forces.

I do not think anyone has a good understanding of what is actually going on in Russia's force posture at the moment. OSINT only goes so far here, and most of the data that is the basis of publicly available Western analysis (e.g. the ISW daily reports) rely heavily - almost entirely - on Ukrainian intelligence and defense ministry reporting. There's precious little unclassified information available about actual force readiness, degree of committed reserves, etc.

However, one worthwhile datapoint - it looks like Syrian fighters are being recruited by the Assad regime to act in police roles inside Ukraine. This strengthens both narratives - either Russia is so desperate for manpower that they're resorting to import badly trained Syrians to take on occupation roles, or they're so confident in their long term occupation of Ukrainian cities that they're bringing in tens of thousands of police, freeing up their frontline and reserve units for more advances into Ukraine. I think it's a combination of the two, but fundamentally it's easy to misread the currently slow pace of advances as due to a fundamental limitation on Russia's resources rather than a reluctance on Russia's part to deploy all of their resources.

The other explanations I've seen given are a lack of precision weapons (after they used up a large part of their stock pile in Syria) and Russian's lack of planes designed to tackle enemy sam platforms. There's also the fact that NATO is giving Ukraine live access to the data from AWACS flying over Poland.

Another possibility (aside from the obvious one that the Russian air force is simply bad) is that maybe some people in the Russian air force/military think the war is a bad idea and are deliberately sand bagging.

I had seen the precision weapons explanation before. Certainly there have been thinly sourced reports that the guided indirect fires (e.g. cruise missiles etc.) that Russia earmarked for this operation have been exhausted, and Russia seems loathe to commit more high end weaponry to the fight, resulting in the greater reliance of unguided munitions. I frankly don't have enough information to evaluate whether this is true, but it might fit with the broader story of Russia desiring to limit the high end tech losses from this war, instead willing to exchange that for the lives of their infantry and those of Ukrainian civilians.

Do you have confirmation that Ukraine has real time access to NATO intelligence gathering capabilities? I haven't been following this story super closely, but about a week into the war US lawmakers on the House/Senate Intel committees were talking about the delays in handing over intelligence due to issues with legal checks (something about the distinction between intelligence and targeting information). I do not know if that issue was resolved.

I am less convinced that something as obviously verifiable as air force sorties/strikes would be allowed to do such systematic sandbagging - most especially because the campaign hasn't been structured around air supremacy even from the very beginning. I think this is deliberate strategy, but I don't understand the logic or constraints driving that strategy.

I finally heard what I think might be a good explanation for that. Russia has substantially underinvested in mobile ELINT and associated C&C links. They lack a robust (read: loss-resistant) capability to detect air-defense as it comes online and looks for targets, and to communicate that to the units in the air, for countermeasures and counter-force Which creates a lot of vulnerability for their aircraft since they often can only tell they're under threat after they've been "painted."

Ukraine does not have a very good air defense system - mostly aging S-300, Buk, and Tor systems and a lot of lower capability systems like MANPADS. It's certainly true that Russia has not embarked on a concerted SEAD campaign (much to their chagrin, especially for lower altitude air assault missions). And we know that Russia is using A-50s near Ukraine (not to mention a number of wrecked ARMs which suggest they have been using some SEAD work). I would certainly believe that their capability is far less robust than that of a modern Western air force (especially USAF, which often does the coordination and SEAD work for NATO partners), but I would have expected it would be adequate to take out most of the high altitude SAM threats. MANPADS are another story of course, but less of a problem for fixed wing aircraft flying at altitude. This continues to baffle me.

[Steely Glint]

I do not think anyone has a good understanding of what is actually going on in Russia's force posture at the moment. OSINT only goes so far here, and most of the data that is the basis of publicly available Western analysis (e.g. the ISW daily reports) rely heavily - almost entirely - on Ukrainian intelligence and defense ministry reporting. There's precious little unclassified information available about actual force readiness, degree of committed reserves, etc.

I don't think the Pentagon's assessment is based on OSINT sources. I mean, it might be - it would be far from the dumbest thing ever done by a military bureaucracy - but probably not. The UK MOD has been doing daily updates on the invasion on twitter, and they also paint a poor picture of the Russian effort. Example:

Twitter Link

However, one worthwhile datapoint - it looks like Syrian fighters are being recruited by the Assad regime to act in police roles inside Ukraine. This strengthens both narratives - either Russia is so desperate for manpower that they're resorting to import badly trained Syrians to take on occupation roles, or they're so confident in their long term occupation of Ukrainian cities that they're bringing in tens of thousands of police, freeing up their frontline and reserve units for more advances into Ukraine. I think it's a combination of the two, but fundamentally it's easy to misread the currently slow pace of advances as due to a fundamental limitation on Russia's resources rather than a reluctance on Russia's part to deploy all of their resources.

Russia already has their own internal troops for this sort of thing, the VVMVD. I saw reports early in the war that some were deployed into Ukraine as part of the initial invasion and they promptly got smashed.

I had seen the precision weapons explanation before. Certainly there have been thinly sourced reports that the guided indirect fires (e.g. cruise missiles etc.) that Russia earmarked for this operation have been exhausted, and Russia seems loathe to commit more high end weaponry to the fight, resulting in the greater reliance of unguided munitions. I frankly don't have enough information to evaluate whether this is true, but it might fit with the broader story of Russia desiring to limit the high end tech losses from this war, instead willing to exchange that for the lives of their infantry and those of Ukrainian civilians.

Yeah, I've seen the 'Russia is holding back' explanation (frankly, 'excuse' is closer to the mark at this point) a few times and I don't really believe it. Prolonging the war in that way for no real reason is actually a bad thing for Putin:

• It damages the political narrative he's tried to construct domestically to justify the war
• It's obviously very hard to get a clear picture of the true level of support for the war in Russia, but that support is only going to go down when the coffins start showing up.
• The longer the sanctions go on the deeper and more profound the damage they will do the Russian economy
• It will any subsequent occupation much harder
• The longer the war goes on the more damage they inflict on the civilian population the worse the sanctions and international opprobrium get - even China is now making 'hey, maybe war is bad, y'know?' style noises now
• Wars are expensive, one estimate I saw is 20bn dollars a day, and Russia isn't that rich
• The more time it gives NATO supply armaments and other support to Ukraine, the more time it gives the Ukrainians to dig in and prepare to defend their cities. By May, every single man, woman and child in Ukraine will have a MANPAD (probably)
• The longer they take to subdue Ukraine, the weaker it makes them look - probably a serious consideration in the minds of men like Putin, especially since about 90% of Russian foreign policy seems to revolve around making threats.

To me, it makes no sense for them to (essentially) deliberately be shit in Ukraine when they have the ability to achieve their objectives far more smoothly, it seems counterproductive to everything they're trying to achieve with the invasion. Also, they've had four generals KIA because they were near the front trying to unfubar stuff - that hardly speaks to a half-assed effort, or a military that actually knows what it is doing but is holding back for mysterious reasons.

Reports of arrests of high levels members of the FSB and the military suggest Putin is not happy about the way things are proceeding.

The alternate theory - that this is the best the Russian military can do, that they are a paper-tiger hollowed out be decades of corruption, fits far better.

Do you have confirmation that Ukraine has real time access to NATO intelligence gathering capabilities? I haven't been following this story super closely, but about a week into the war US lawmakers on the House/Senate Intel committees were talking about the delays in handing over intelligence due to issues with legal checks (something about the distinction between intelligence and targeting information). I do not know if that issue was resolved.

Russia has claimed it: https://tass.com/defense/1419223 I don't know if it's true, but it would go some way to explains how the Ukraine has been able to deny air superiority to Russia with outdated air defence systems and far fewer aircraft.

I generally believe Ukraine is getting more support from NATO than is generally public- their ability to ambush Russian columns and general command and control out right uncanny for such a supposedly low tier, underfunded military. But that's just my speculation.

[LittleFuzzy]

The alternate theory - that this is the best the Russian military can do, that they are a paper-tiger hollowed out be decades of corruption, fits far better.

While I'm in agreement with everything you said before this line, I'm gonna caution against this conclusion. It may be the case but it's a bit too sweeping and absolute an explanation with too many still-unproven assumptions. Russia absolutely fucked up the campaign from its start, due to a number of factors and it's going to cost them. However, I suspect they both A) could have done it better than they did and B) they could easily be doing better than they are right now, but the price and risk for doing so now, after screwing things up earlier, isn't worth what they were trying to get out of attacking Ukraine in the first place. I can guarantee that Putin is now even more concerned about maintaining a force-posture capable of stopping a NATO attack than he was before the invasion, for instance. Which very much limits the additional forces and material that can be committed in continuing to try and beat Ukraine into submission. Russia has a lot of security commitments and it's own limited version of the US' old "two wars and a regional conflict" doctrine.

[Aimless]

Russia has claimed it: https://tass.com/defense/1419223 I don't know if it's true, but it would go some way to explains how the Ukraine has been able to deny air superiority to Russia with outdated air defence systems and far fewer aircraft.

I generally believe Ukraine is getting more support from NATO than is generally public- their ability to ambush Russian columns and general command and control out right uncanny for such a supposedly low tier, underfunded military. But that's just my speculation.

See eg. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ll-2022-02-28/ and https://inews.co.uk/news/ukraine-wes...erence-1504727. Although the unsecured comms may be a greater asset in many cases

[BalticSailor]

• It damages the political narrative he's tried to construct domestically to justify the war

Not really, it just needs some adjustment. Such as, "there were more Nazis than we expected, because, guess what, the entire Western world supports Nazis, therefore what we're doing now is, like, REALLY necessary, just and right"

• It's obviously very hard to get a clear picture of the true level of support for the war in Russia, but that support is only going to go down when the coffins start showing up.

The solution seems obvious. And, depending on how cynical you're feeling, you can always explain the "son was conscripted, and didn't come home" situation with either a "tragic accident during training exercise" or "he defected and joined the Bad Guys, so you better pretend he never existed from this point on".


I think you seriously underestimate the effectiveness of Russian state propaganda. Latvia borders Russia, and we have both a significant ethnic Russian minority, and access to both Russian and Western media. And despite this access to information, many of the Russians have fully bought the official Russian version of the current events (some 20-ish percent fully support the Russian side, with about 50 percent "undecided", which most likely means they believe the Russian side, but don't want to openly admit it, according to a recent poll). Inside Russia, where access to Western sources of information has been regulated for quite a while, and outright cut off, as of late, I expect the situation to be even worse.

[Lewkowski]

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/mu...ds-ukraine-war

[Steely Glint]

While I'm in agreement with everything you said before this line, I'm gonna caution against this conclusion. It may be the case but it's a bit too sweeping and absolute an explanation with too many still-unproven assumptions. Russia absolutely fucked up the campaign from its start, due to a number of factors and it's going to cost them. However, I suspect they both A) could have done it better than they did and B) they could easily be doing better than they are right now, but the price and risk for doing so now, after screwing things up earlier, isn't worth what they were trying to get out of attacking Ukraine in the first place. I can guarantee that Putin is now even more concerned about maintaining a force-posture capable of stopping a NATO attack than he was before the invasion, for instance. Which very much limits the additional forces and material that can be committed in continuing to try and beat Ukraine into submission. Russia has a lot of security commitments and it's own limited version of the US' old "two wars and a regional conflict" doctrine.

The point I keep coming back to here is that there are problems the Russian military is having that cannot be explained by either withholding some of their strength or simply under-estimating how hard the Ukrainians were going to fight, or even a colossal mismanagement of the logistical requirements. Like, why do their trucks keep breaking down and why do they keep getting ambushed like that? Why do their generals keep getting killed because they're using unsecure phones? Why can't they control the skies against an opponent with, like, 6 planes? Sure, maybe they need to hold most of their air-force ready to fight NATO (which, honestly, good luck with that) but they have a gazillion planes. They can't spare some more of them? They must just be bad at wars.

Another important point is that although for Russia itself this pointless war is, as you say, not worth what they were trying to get out of it in the first place, for Putin himself it's do or die. Like, if Russian ends up with an outright military defeat here there's a very good chance he loses power and, potentially, his life, so for him going all in is entirely reasonable.

Not really, it just needs some adjustment. Such as, "there were more Nazis than we expected, because, guess what, the entire Western world supports Nazis, therefore what we're doing now is, like, REALLY necessary, just and right"
The solution seems obvious. And, depending on how cynical you're feeling, you can always explain the "son was conscripted, and didn't come home" situation with either a "tragic accident during training exercise" or "he defected and joined the Bad Guys, so you better pretend he never existed from this point on".

I think you seriously underestimate the effectiveness of Russian state propaganda. Latvia borders Russia, and we have both a significant ethnic Russian minority, and access to both Russian and Western media. And despite this access to information, many of the Russians have fully bought the official Russian version of the current events (some 20-ish percent fully support the Russian side, with about 50 percent "undecided", which most likely means they believe the Russian side, but don't want to openly admit it, according to a recent poll). Inside Russia, where access to Western sources of information has been regulated for quite a while, and outright cut off, as of late, I expect the situation to be even worse.

Yeah, that's great but when the Falklands war happened the people of Argentina were fully onboard with the idea and were very happy with Galtieri. Demonstrations against the Junta were replaced with demonstrations of support and patriotism, which were completely genuine as far as I can tell. Then, the war was lost and he was out of office within a month and then sent to prison. The Falklands war was not anywhere near close to as bloody as the war in Ukraine, and likely, initially, far more popular with the public.

Turns out, people do not like it if to fuck up a war of choice, even if they liked the idea of that war in principle.

[BalticSailor]

Yeah, that's great but when the Falklands war happened the people of Argentina were fully onboard with the idea and were very happy with Galtieri. Demonstrations against the Junta were replaced with demonstrations of support and patriotism, which were completely genuine as far as I can tell. Then, the war was lost and he was out of office within a month and then sent to prison. The Falklands war was not anywhere near close to as bloody as the war in Ukraine, and likely, initially, far more popular with the public.

Turns out, people do not like it if to fuck up a war of choice, even if they liked the idea of that war in principle.

The difference is, Argentina got fuck all as the result of the Falklands war, not a single thing that they could claim as a completed objective, nothing to put a positive propaganda spin on. They lost, with no way to tiptoe around that fact.
In order for the Ukraine aftermath to be comparable, Russia would have to surrender - as in, give up Crimea and the parts of Donbas region currently under their control. As long as they get to keep them, they can always claim some strategic goals achieved, fortified positions, stabilized the situation in the disputed areas, whatever - anything will do for their propaganda machine to turn it into something sort-of-kind-of resembling a victory, if you squint a bit, stand well away and are somewhat drunk. And my point was, you might think that the Russian people will see right through that bullshit fairy tale - but everything I've heard so far seems to imply that they'll readily believe it.

[Aimless]

Oof.

Twitter Link

[Steely Glint]

The difference is, Argentina got fuck all as the result of the Falklands war, not a single thing that they could claim as a completed objective, nothing to put a positive propaganda spin on. They lost, with no way to tiptoe around that fact.
In order for the Ukraine aftermath to be comparable, Russia would have to surrender - as in, give up Crimea and the parts of Donbas region currently under their control. As long as they get to keep them, they can always claim some strategic goals achieved, fortified positions, stabilized the situation in the disputed areas, whatever - anything will do for their propaganda machine to turn it into something sort-of-kind-of resembling a victory, if you squint a bit, stand well away and are somewhat drunk. And my point was, you might think that the Russian people will see right through that bullshit fairy tale - but everything I've heard so far seems to imply that they'll readily believe it.

The other difference is, for Argentina circa 1982 losing to Britain doesn't really make them look bad, Britain was one of the richest countries in the world, a member of NATO and they were in full cold war mode. The Argentinean military performed at the very least OK, and the air force performed extremely well. Russia getting only token concessions against a much smaller, poorer country and taking such staggering losses does them no favours.

I mean, you may well be right. But the risk is there, which is why it's in their interests to bring their A game.

Oof.

Twitter Link

This was a hack, apparently. It's been removed. I'm actually somewhat inclined to believe that, though it may also have been a disgruntled employee.

It could also have been either of those things with access to Russian official figures

[Aimless]

Twitter Link

Huge if true.

This was a hack, apparently. It's been removed. I'm actually somewhat inclined to believe that, though it may also have been a disgruntled employee.

It could also have been either of those things with access to Russian official figures

Sorry, yes, I pasted the wrong tweet

[Aimless]

Couple of interesting numbers in this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/w...ce-russia.html

[BalticSailor]

The other difference is, for Argentina circa 1982 losing to Britain doesn't really make them look bad, Britain was one of the richest countries in the world, a member of NATO and they were in full cold war mode. The Argentinean military performed at the very least OK, and the air force performed extremely well. Russia getting only token concessions against a much smaller, poorer country and taking such staggering losses does them no favours.

I mean, you may well be right. But the risk is there, which is why it's in their interests to bring their A game.

The thing is, in Russia, publicly pointing out that Russian military didn't perform as well as expected may earn one up to 15 years in jail, as of early March, so "looking bad" internally is a minor issue; the king is actually clad in a very exquisite clothing, as long as nobody dares suggest otherwise.

Also, fucking up has gone quite well for Putin so far.
The first noteworthy event that comes to mind is the sinking of submarine Kursk. Shortly put, there was an explosion onboard a submarine during a naval military exercise. It was clear that at least some of the crew were alive at the time. Russian Navy fumbled the early response; Putin was busy getting his suntan in a resort somewhere, and couldn't be bothered. Offers of assistance from other nearby vessels were refused until it was probably way too late anyway. Everyone on the board of the submarine died, of course. Once done with his vacationing, Putin decided to meet the families of the sailors, where one of the mothers was forcibly sedated; in later interview, the question "what happened to the submarine" was answered with "it sank" and a smile from Putin. Not the greatest PR moment, but it didn't cost him much, so, who cares.

Then there's the 2002 Moscow theater siege. Short recap - a number of armed Chechen terrorists took 850 people hostage in a theater in Moscow. The negotiations went rather poorly, although a small number of hostages were released, but over four days, the terrorists killed 5 of them. "Hold my beer," said the leader of special forces unit, then enacted a plan presumably put together by Baldrick from Blackadder and Leeroy Jenkins, and as a result killed (note, *killed*, not *prompted/caused the terrorists to kill*) further 125 or so hostages.

Beslan school siege, 2004. Put shortly, a hostage situation, where thermobaric weapons were used in an attempt to storm the building by the special forces, and that went down about as well as you'd expect from that description.

The world as it is, 2022. Putin is still president of Russia a.k.a. North Korea v2.0, and doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by the current events.

[Aimless]

NYT report on intercepted Russian comms:

Twitter Link

[Aimless]

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

This, specifically, was what I was expecting to see:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/hype...n-ukraine.html

[Hazir]

The thing is, in Russia, publicly pointing out that Russian military didn't perform as well as expected may earn one up to 15 years in jail, as of early March, so "looking bad" internally is a minor issue; the king is actually clad in a very exquisite clothing, as long as nobody dares suggest otherwise.

Also, fucking up has gone quite well for Putin so far.
The first noteworthy event that comes to mind is the sinking of submarine Kursk. Shortly put, there was an explosion onboard a submarine during a naval military exercise. It was clear that at least some of the crew were alive at the time. Russian Navy fumbled the early response; Putin was busy getting his suntan in a resort somewhere, and couldn't be bothered. Offers of assistance from other nearby vessels were refused until it was probably way too late anyway. Everyone on the board of the submarine died, of course. Once done with his vacationing, Putin decided to meet the families of the sailors, where one of the mothers was forcibly sedated; in later interview, the question "what happened to the submarine" was answered with "it sank" and a smile from Putin. Not the greatest PR moment, but it didn't cost him much, so, who cares.

Then there's the 2002 Moscow theater siege. Short recap - a number of armed Chechen terrorists took 850 people hostage in a theater in Moscow. The negotiations went rather poorly, although a small number of hostages were released, but over four days, the terrorists killed 5 of them. "Hold my beer," said the leader of special forces unit, then enacted a plan presumably put together by Baldrick from Blackadder and Leeroy Jenkins, and as a result killed (note, *killed*, not *prompted/caused the terrorists to kill*) further 125 or so hostages.

Beslan school siege, 2004. Put shortly, a hostage situation, where thermobaric weapons were used in an attempt to storm the building by the special forces, and that went down about as well as you'd expect from that description.

The world as it is, 2022. Putin is still president of Russia a.k.a. North Korea v2.0, and doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by the current events.

All true, but the choices are hard and we're gonna be paying back all that lovely peace dividend. Besides that, we can't ignore the implications of the Sion-Russia bromance any longer.

[wiggin]

I don't think the Pentagon's assessment is based on OSINT sources. I mean, it might be - it would be far from the dumbest thing ever done by a military bureaucracy - but probably not. The UK MOD has been doing daily updates on the invasion on twitter, and they also paint a poor picture of the Russian effort.

Yes, Western intelligence agencies likely have some more information available to them about Russian force posture and readiness than available to the open source community + Ukrainian press releases. It is unclear how much they're willing to share, though there's little doubt that the Russian invasion is not going according to plan - which is more or less all that the Pentagon et al are actually saying. They're providing some public estimates about e.g. force numbers and materiel in the theater, but quite high level information at best. So far everyone more or less agrees that this invasion is costing more in lives, $$, and equipment than the Kremlin expected, that logistics were badly mismanaged, and that the air war is somewhere between puzzling and downright shocking. But much detail beyond that is pretty thin, most notably how much remaining resources the Kremlin can realistically bring to bear (irrespective of whether they will or not).

Yeah, I've seen the 'Russia is holding back' explanation (frankly, 'excuse' is closer to the mark at this point) a few times and I don't really believe it. Prolonging the war in that way for no real reason is actually a bad thing for Putin:

• It damages the political narrative he's tried to construct domestically to justify the war
• It's obviously very hard to get a clear picture of the true level of support for the war in Russia, but that support is only going to go down when the coffins start showing up.
• The longer the sanctions go on the deeper and more profound the damage they will do the Russian economy
• It will any subsequent occupation much harder
• The longer the war goes on the more damage they inflict on the civilian population the worse the sanctions and international opprobrium get - even China is now making 'hey, maybe war is bad, y'know?' style noises now
• Wars are expensive, one estimate I saw is 20bn dollars a day, and Russia isn't that rich
• The more time it gives NATO supply armaments and other support to Ukraine, the more time it gives the Ukrainians to dig in and prepare to defend their cities. By May, every single man, woman and child in Ukraine will have a MANPAD (probably)
• The longer they take to subdue Ukraine, the weaker it makes them look - probably a serious consideration in the minds of men like Putin, especially since about 90% of Russian foreign policy seems to revolve around making threats.

To me, it makes no sense for them to (essentially) deliberately be shit in Ukraine when they have the ability to achieve their objectives far more smoothly, it seems counterproductive to everything they're trying to achieve with the invasion. Also, they've had four generals KIA because they were near the front trying to unfubar stuff - that hardly speaks to a half-assed effort, or a military that actually knows what it is doing but is holding back for mysterious reasons.

Reports of arrests of high levels members of the FSB and the military suggest Putin is not happy about the way things are proceeding.

The alternate theory - that this is the best the Russian military can do, that they are a paper-tiger hollowed out be decades of corruption, fits far better.

I think there's a distinction between arguing they are 'holding back' versus that they were only willing to commit a certain amount of resources to the operation, and have been too slow to recognize that it was inadequate. The Russian military, like any other, has myriad security priorities and balancing one's force posture is tricky to manage. It isn't 'holding back' when the US doesn't commit every uniformed servicemember and the reserves to each conflict - it's a calculation about how much they're willing to risk (and/or spend) to achieve an objective. Clearly Putin and his military leadership miscalculated, badly, and have been very slow to adapt strategy. But it's silly to think that they pulled up every scrap of military force they had for this invasion, especially when it's so obvious they were not prepared for a long campaign.

Russia has claimed it: https://tass.com/defense/1419223 I don't know if it's true, but it would go some way to explains how the Ukraine has been able to deny air superiority to Russia with outdated air defence systems and far fewer aircraft.

I generally believe Ukraine is getting more support from NATO than is generally public- their ability to ambush Russian columns and general command and control out right uncanny for such a supposedly low tier, underfunded military. But that's just my speculation.

Yes, I was aware that Russia has claimed it, but I have not exactly been taking Russian propaganda as evidence of much of anything. There's no doubt that intelligence sharing has been going on, but it's highly questionable that even if the Ukrainians were getting real time AWACS data from NATO E-3s flying in Poland that they would have a sufficiently well networked and integrated air defense system to take much advantage of the data. I think it's more plausible that the Russian air force is just doing a bad job, though the why is still difficult to understand. I should note that they're still managing some 200-300 sorties a day, often with standoff weapons to avoid Ukrainian SAMs. Not exactly air superiority or effective for CAS, but still a substantial threat compared to the relatively paltry efforts of the rump of the Ukrainian air force.

While I'm in agreement with everything you said before this line, I'm gonna caution against this conclusion. It may be the case but it's a bit too sweeping and absolute an explanation with too many still-unproven assumptions. Russia absolutely fucked up the campaign from its start, due to a number of factors and it's going to cost them. However, I suspect they both A) could have done it better than they did and B) they could easily be doing better than they are right now, but the price and risk for doing so now, after screwing things up earlier, isn't worth what they were trying to get out of attacking Ukraine in the first place. I can guarantee that Putin is now even more concerned about maintaining a force-posture capable of stopping a NATO attack than he was before the invasion, for instance. Which very much limits the additional forces and material that can be committed in continuing to try and beat Ukraine into submission. Russia has a lot of security commitments and it's own limited version of the US' old "two wars and a regional conflict" doctrine.

I'm broadly in agreement with your take on this, LF, but I think there's also some additional considerations that factor in here. First off, it's far from clear that Putin is not willing to commit more forces to this effort, it's just clear that he hasn't brought more to the theater yet. There's some evidence of mobilizing units from farther away.

Furthermore, the existing stalemate near Kyiv and e.g. Chernihiv and Kharkiv (and effectively slowed/stalled efforts toward Odessa and up the Dnieper river), coupled with satellite evidence of units in these fronts digging in for defensive positions, suggest that they're playing a waiting game. The only major effort ongoing at the moment appears to be in Mariupol and the Donbas region, which makes a certain amount of sense - first, it allows Russia to establish their land bridge to Crimea and secures the whole Sea of Azov. Second, they have rail supply in those regions, so their unit logistics are in much better shape, allowing for more offensive operations (non-rail/overland supply from the north is very tricky, especially for the Kyiv salient). Also, reducing the major remaining threats there will free up at least 6 battalion sized elements to push north or west. In the meantime, the northern advances can bide their time while waiting for reinforcements and better supply lines while they continue to pound the major cities with indirect fires.

Waiting may not be a bad option for Russia at the moment - while their economy is hurting from sanctions, their logistics (and morale) are strained, and Ukraine has been getting more help than expected, it's entirely possible that Ukraine can ill afford the kind of stalemate and siege tactics that Russia has used before (notably, in Chechnya). Taking their time, given the alternatives, may make sense to them.

We are used to land campaigns that are super fast, but we should remember that these kinds of issues plague any major offensive. Even in 2003, the invasion of Iraq had huge formations run dangerously ahead of their supplies, and almost ran out of fuel and supplies en route to Baghdad. There were substantial logistics issues during the Gulf War, as well. I will admit, however, that the apparent unwillingness/inability of Russia to resolve these issues in a timely manner is going to make this whole thing longer and uglier than it was going to be already. I expect to see extended sieges/bombardments of major Ukrainian cities for quite some time.

The point I keep coming back to here is that there are problems the Russian military is having that cannot be explained by either withholding some of their strength or simply under-estimating how hard the Ukrainians were going to fight, or even a colossal mismanagement of the logistical requirements. Like, why do their trucks keep breaking down and why do they keep getting ambushed like that? Why do their generals keep getting killed because they're using unsecure phones? Why can't they control the skies against an opponent with, like, 6 planes? Sure, maybe they need to hold most of their air-force ready to fight NATO (which, honestly, good luck with that) but they have a gazillion planes. They can't spare some more of them? They must just be bad at wars.

I have no doubt that the effectiveness of the Russian military is far below that of, say, the US military. But that's not really the question here - the question is how they stack up against the Ukrainian military. Clearly the answer so far is 'surprisingly poorly given the mismatch in resources and materiel'. I am not convinced that this is a permanent condition, however, since the resource mismatch gives Russia the opportunity the screw up, bide for time, and adapt. They took their sweet time reducing Grozny to rubble (twice!), and that was against a much smaller and badly resourced opponent (who somehow still managed to inflict something like 10k+ casualties). I continue to believe that in time things will look more and more grim for the Ukrainian defense. It is unlikely that Ukraine can prevail on the military front; I find it much more likely that the combination of economic and political pressure from the rest of the world will result in some sort of resolution short of what Putin wants but still far from a victory for Ukraine.

[Hazir]

Did Biden imply he's gonna fly to Kyiv tomorrow?