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Ukraine Part 5: war...it never changes


Kalbear

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With the STRONG caveat that this is what I want to have happen and thus I am suffering from motivated reasoning.

News like this strikes me as the only possible path for Ukraine to achieve a genuine military victory/negotiated stalemate.  Russia has been massing troops and equipment on the border since at least November.  In most places, their troops are still relatively close to their staging areas.  The trucks and other logistics equipment is being targeted by Ukrainian military, with some success.  The situation will only get worse as distances, mechanical breakdowns and enemy action make the logistical challenge even more acute (at least until significant new trucks arrive which is probably months away). 

If things are already bad, I could see this coming to a breaking point for the Russian army in the coming weeks. 

Now, Ukraine's army has (arguably) an even worse supply situation, since the Russians look like they're moving to cut the country in two, which would separate their military from any supply lines in the West.  But to do that they'll have to move that much further into the interior of the country, and in sufficient force to keep supplies from getting through (no easy task). 

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The Ukrainians don't need to move huge numbers of troops and equipment over large distances (well, right now, anyway). The Russians do, so I think it's a point in the defenders' favour.

Su-25 shot down north of Kyiv. That's an old, ground-attack aircraft and a total sitting duck for Stingers.

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3 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

"Dont invade Russia in the winter" becomes "Russia, dont invade in the winter" (and yes, I know the former saying is partly bollocks since there were numerous reasons the German invasion failed, not too sure about Napolean)

Germany and Napoleon both invaded in June.  Both were gradually worn down and by December, as temperatures dropped and with a dismal supply situation, were at a breaking point. 

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What's happening now in Russia. The NYer is a sub sit, but maybe one or two pieces a month are available?  It used to be that way, anyway,

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-putin-wants-russians-to-see-the-war-in-ukraine

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Take a walk through Moscow these days, and you will see giant, gaudy light displays—entire galleries and faux building façades composed of light bulbs. You will see gleaming arrays of luxury goods, messengers scurrying with cubic backpacks, and restaurants that fill up late in the day and stay full well into the night. Some of those restaurants have giant televisions, and you may see sports competitions, music videos, and news channels on them, but what you will not see is what dominates television screens elsewhere in the world: the images of the war in Ukraine. You will not see bomb shelters in the grand Soviet-era subways, bombed-out apartment buildings, or charred tanks. From most appearances, Moscow is a city at peace.

Anything that disrupts this appearance—whether it’s a person standing alone with a sheet of paper that says “No to War” or the small group that gathered and stood silently in Moscow’s Pushkin Square on Saturday night, or the thousands who have attended antiwar marches around the country since last Thursday, the day that Russia began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine—is intercepted by police quickly and brutally. Occasionally in Moscow, you might see a clump of police officers in riot gear and a prisoner bus parked on the side of the road, its engine off—which means that the people inside are getting very cold as the bus slowly fills up. In the center of town, police buses have been parked for days, apparently on reserve in case of a larger operation. OVDInfo, an organization that tracks political persecution, has documented about sixty-four hundred detentions since Thursday, in more than a hundred cities. Twenty-eight hundred of these—in fifty-six different cities—were on Sunday, February 27th, on the seventh anniversary of the murder of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.

Last Thursday evening, Grigory Yudin, a sociologist and philosopher, and his wife Anastasia Yudina, a marketing researcher, went to Pushkin Square to protest the invasion. They got off the subway and then, Yudin told me, “Something happened. I realized that I was falling down.” Yudina was taking a picture of the swarms of police in riot gear at that moment. When she turned around, her husband had disappeared. Yudin had been loaded onto a police bus, and, with many other people, he was taken to a precinct on the outskirts of the city. The next time that Yudina saw him, about an hour and a half later, it was in an ambulance outside the police station. “He was in a neck brace,” she told me. “He was covered with dirt—they must have dragged him. He was confused.” Yudin had been in and out of consciousness. When we met on Sunday, at one of those cozy and delicious Moscow restaurants, Yudin still had a swollen eye and a noticeable scrape on his left temple.

We weren’t meeting to discuss the story of Yudin’s arrest and beating—these stories are plentiful—but because Yudin is one of the most insightful analysts of contemporary Russian politics and society. “I think now is a turning point,” he said. We were talking about the end of the world as we know it: Would it be the end of Vladimir Putin’s long reign or, well, the end of the world? “If they can’t secure a military victory—at least take Kyiv and Kharkiv—then Putin will shift to treating U.S. sanctions as a declaration of war. It will be the world against Putin, and Putin will have to raise the stakes—by, say, threatening to lob a nuclear weapon at the center of the world, which he believes is in New York.” We had our phones off during this conversation. When I turned mine back on after about an hour, I saw that Putin had put Russian nuclear forces on high alert. “So it begins,” Yudin said. And yet, he added, “In this new situation, I can’t really imagine that he will be able to maintain his hold on power. On the other hand, we have always underestimated his ability to hang on.” . . . .

 

 

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16 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

"Dont invade Russia in the winter" becomes "Russia, dont invade in the winter" (and yes, I know the former saying is partly bollocks since there were numerous reasons the German invasion failed, not too sure about Napolean)

Napoleon made the critical mistake of thinking that war had developed Rules and one of these Rules was that if your army in the field was defeated and your capital was at risk, you negotiated. Napoleon very rarely assaulted or captured cities militarily, he usually defeated an enemy force and then dragged their rulers in for negotiations which ended on his favour.

Napoleon made two catastrophic errors when he thought that 1) Spain and 2) Russia would behave in exactly the same way. The guerrilla war in Spain, which accelerated into a full-on war aided by the British and Portuguese, was completely beyond his understanding, which is why he left the local generals to get on with it (badly). He did think Russia would because they had previously: he defeated the Russian army at Friedland and personally negotiated a peace with Alexander I that was favourable to his cause. When he defeated the Russians at Smolensk and then Borodino, Napoleon believed the same thing would happen and was incredulous when it didn't. As a result he wasn't entirely planning to march all the way to Moscow and got sucked into it by inertia. Then he stayed in Moscow for far too long, then the city burned down and then he found himself marching his army through Russia in October and November, which was titanically stupid.

The Germans made a similar mistake in that they believed they could be in Moscow by September so did not bring enough cold-weather gear. They also did not weather-proof their tanks and other vehicles (resulting in the highly hazardous tactic of setting fires under the fuel tanks of their vehicles to unfreeze the petrol every morning). The biggest blunder, by far, was pausing too long in Smolensk and then getting into a massive debate about pushing on to Moscow that year or waiting for Spring 1942, with some troops from Army Group Centre transferring to North and South and then having to come back again, which caused total mayhem.

It was during Barbarossa, of course, when Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fought side-by-side to defend Kyiv from the Germans, losing 650,000 dead in the process.

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I'll say it differently about winter and snow.

The vehicles will probably drive fine on roads - they have crazy good traction and are heavy. Logistic trucks might suffer a bit.

But what is going to really, really suck is being not in homes. Think about 30-40k troops sitting outside in the snow when they're already having to eat 7-year old rations and often don't have fuel to drive. Think they also have fuel for heating? No, it's gonna suck. I don't think we'll see like frostbite or tanks stuck in the ground or things like that, but I do think that it'll make a shitty situation even shittier. 

So yeah, I suspect it'll help Ukraine for now. 

Where it gets tricky is if Kyiv is actually cut off from resupply entirely and they lose electricity. Then you have a million people potentially freezing, and I think the situation gets far worse for the defenders. 

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4 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

I'll say it differently about winter and snow.

The vehicles will probably drive fine on roads - they have crazy good traction and are heavy. Logistic trucks might suffer a bit.

But what is going to really, really suck is being not in homes. Think about 30-40k troops sitting outside in the snow when they're already having to eat 7-year old rations and often don't have fuel to drive. Think they also have fuel for heating? No, it's gonna suck. I don't think we'll see like frostbite or tanks stuck in the ground or things like that, but I do think that it'll make a shitty situation even shittier. 

So yeah, I suspect it'll help Ukraine for now. 

Where it gets tricky is if Kyiv is actually cut off from resupply entirely and they lose electricity. Then you have a million people potentially freezing, and I think the situation gets far worse for the defenders. 

You underestimate people's ability to withstand things. If people don't have electricity and heat, they'll make do without.

Me and my family lived through three winters during the Siege of Sarajevo without heating, electricity or running water. You wrap yourself up in 2-3 blankets and burn what you find: branches cut off from trees in parks, old furniture, window frames from ruins, books. Instead of using three rooms, everyone stays in one room to keep it somewhat warmer than the outdoors.

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Just now, Gorn said:

You underestimate people's ability to withstand things. If people don't have electricity and heat, they'll make do without.

Me and my family lived through three winters during the Siege of Sarajevo without heating, electricity or running water. You wrap yourself up in 2-3 blankets and burn what you find: branches cut off from trees in parks, old furniture, window frames from ruins, books. Instead of using three rooms, everyone stays in one room to keep it somewhat warmer than the outdoors.

I cannot imagine.  Wow.

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3 minutes ago, Gorn said:

You underestimate people's ability to withstand things. If people don't have electricity and heat, they'll make do without.

Me and my family lived through three winters during the Siege of Sarajevo without heating, electricity or running water. You wrap yourself up in 2-3 blankets and burn what you find: branches cut off from trees in parks, old furniture, window frames from ruins, books. Instead of using three rooms, everyone stays in one room to keep it somewhat warmer than the outdoors.

They will because they have to, but right now morale in Ukraine is largely high; I'm saying it will drop when you lose that stuff. 

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I’m hearing talk of dropping the boom Economically on Belarus.  Is there any reason not to drop the boom on Belarus given Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin and the fact that Russian troops attacked out of Belarus?

Is Belarus being outside the sanctions regime giving Putin a lifeline?

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Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m hearing talk of dropping the boom Economically on Belarus.  Is there any reason not to drop the boom on Belarus given Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin and the fact that Russian troops attacked out of Belarus?

I think the only thing that's holding them back is the negotiations being hosted by Belarus and, despite repeated claims to the contrary, it doesn't appear that Belarus has joined the attack as a cobelligerent (there is confusion over that though). It's a thin hair they're splitting there.

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1 minute ago, Kalibuster said:

They will because they have to, but right now morale in Ukraine is largely high; I'm saying it will drop when you lose that stuff. 

One thing which Slavic / Eastern European cultures have in common is stubbornness. When your back's to the wall and you've lost everything, then you have nothing more to lose.

Also a reason why sanctions against Russia might not have the effect everyone thinks they will.

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4 minutes ago, Gorn said:

One thing which Slavic / Eastern European cultures have in common is stubbornness. When your back's to the wall and you've lost everything, then you have nothing more to lose.

Also a reason why sanctions against Russia might not have the effect everyone thinks they will.

Doesn’t that presume the Russians back Putin?  And that the stubbornness isn’t directed at Putin?

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4 minutes ago, Gorn said:

One thing which Slavic / Eastern European cultures have in common is stubbornness. When your back's to the wall and you've lost everything, then you have nothing more to lose.

Also a reason why sanctions against Russia might not have the effect everyone thinks they wi

Thank you for providing a perspective and insight very few of us on this board ever think about since few of us have ever experienced anything remotely like that.

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The UN General Assembly has voted to demand that Russia stop its offensive in Ukraine, by 141 to 5, with 35 abstentions.

I guess we now know how many countries will be on which side if WWIII does break out.

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