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Ukraine 19: In HARMS Way


Werthead

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Trent Telenko isn't bitter about how the WASPs from Ivy League schools at Christians In Action didn't understand the hollowness of the Russian threat, and thus recommended against supporting a Ukraine at the beginning of the invasion.  The CIA thought the Russians Almighty War Machine would roll over everything to Kiev because none of them have any real-world experience of How Stuff Works.

 

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11 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

Trent Telenko isn't bitter about how the WASPs from Ivy League schools at Christians In Action didn't understand the hollowness of the Russian threat, and thus recommended against supporting a Ukraine at the beginning of the invasion.  The CIA thought the Russians Almighty War Machine would roll over everything to Kiev because none of them have any real-world experience of How Stuff Works.

 

I don't think that's a reasonable assessment. 

I think, honestly, that it was a category error; you assume certain things and it is a blind spot because obviously, no one would do things The Other Way. As the thread points out, using lifts and pallets has been a standard thing in the US army since 1945. Why would Russia - or any other army - do anything differently? 

And this isn't an error that has been around only briefly; this is an error about Russian war capabilities that has been going on since the cold war. This reminds me of the 'can covid spread via air' thing where we had spacing of 6 feet because of one flawed study done almost 100 years ago that everyone took for gospel and was only challenged in 2020. 

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32 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

I don't think that's a reasonable assessment. 

I think, honestly, that it was a category error; you assume certain things and it is a blind spot because obviously, no one would do things The Other Way. As the thread points out, using lifts and pallets has been a standard thing in the US army since 1945. Why would Russia - or any other army - do anything differently? 

And this isn't an error that has been around only briefly; this is an error about Russian war capabilities that has been going on since the cold war. This reminds me of the 'can covid spread via air' thing where we had spacing of 6 feet because of one flawed study done almost 100 years ago that everyone took for gospel and was only challenged in 2020. 

I think that this is his beef, however: the CIA makes the same mistakes in assessments of foreign powers and players over and over, mainly as an outcome resulting from a homogeneous group of employees (Ivy League types, as he puts it.)  Groupthink writ large over time.

There is a certain amount of trend accuracy in what he says, in my opinion.

The CIA has given some pretty lousy advice since its formation (let's prop up dictators to keep the oil flowing, let's overthrow a government because it isn't a political system that would work in America, etc.) that only made sense in their own heads.  And the insides of their own heads are kind of parochial.

Ukraine is just another one on the pile of failed CIA analyses, on top of other things like Operation Condor, supporting Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the Bay of Pigs, the whole rendition program, Pizza Hut in Lebannon, perverting vaccination programs, Guatemala 1954, Peter Pan, assassinating Lumumba, supporting the Shah, failing to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, jailing Mandela, failed assassination of Sukarno, so on and so forth.

But if I wanted help writing an essay for an entrance application to Yale, they would be great.

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Is the CIA primarily composed of Ivy League types? I know it started that way but I have a hard time believing that they are able to get sufficient recruits from the current student body of those places to form the bulk of the current employees. I think it's important to distinguish between Cold War and post-Cold War CIA. The CIA is not nearly the out of control insane organization it was during the early Cold War, and it's predictions have been somewhat better. Stuff like the fall of the Soviet Union or Russia floundering in Ukriane is stuff everyone got wrong not just the CIA. 

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Article by Illia Polomarenko on the Kharkiv offensive:  With successful Kharkiv operation, Ukraine turns the war in its favor.

Quote

To escape a crushing defeat, the Kremlin’s forces were forced to withdraw in a stampede from the territory they had held since March.

Ukraine’s offensive operation has done more than liberate most of Kharkiv Oblast, as Ukrainian units approach the Russian border.

It has exceeded the most optimistic of expectations and rendered one of Russia’s strongest military groupings disorganized and combat ineffective.

The battle is an operational success and is bound to have long-lasting consequences for Russia.

The loss of Kupiansk and Izium, the two transportation hubs, pulls the plug on Russia's chances of seizing the entire eastern region of Donbas, comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

The collapse also jeopardized Russian defenses in northern Donetsk Oblast, paving the way for new successful attacks by Ukrainian forces in the east.

The war’s third phase opens with Ukraine regaining the initiative. 

Experts say Ukraine has turned the war’s tide in its favor, while Russia’s power will likely continue to decline in the coming months.

 

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From the samples I'm seeing on Twitter, it seems like there is a lot of mixed messaging and confusion in the Russian propaganda machine.  There are the hardliners who insist that Russia hasn't even begun to fight, and when they do, the Ukrainians/NATO will be sorry.  And then there are a few voices who say that Russia needs to accept that Ukraine exists independent of Russia and that Russia needs to accommodate that reality. 

This is something of a Go Big or Go Home moment for Russia.  Everyone who is paying any attention can see that "stay the course" isn't working, so they either need to do some sort of escalation or end the war as quickly as possible.  The list of escalations available to Russia is basically WMDs or mass mobilization.  We've already talked about WMDs, but I think that the reality on the ground has changed for mass mobilization as well.

The problem with mobilization when it was discussed in the spring/summer was that it takes too long.  Russia lacks the infrastructure to mobilize another 200k troops, and thus would need to train people to do the training, build facilities to teach them at, and bring old equipment out of storage to fight with.  Those things take time.

But it's increasingly likely that Russia doesn't even have equipment to give these troops anyway.  It certainly doesn't have hundreds of thousands of spare body armor, night vision units, batteries, communication equipment, etc.  We know that because they don't have enough of those things for the units already in the field.  If they had them somewhere in storage, surely they would have been brought to the front by now.  Likewise, Russia is buying drones from Iran and shells from North Korea, that doesn't exactly indicate that they huge reserves of either of those things for a big expansion of the war.  Perhaps the shells are just a precaution to maintain a large reserve (maybe) but certainly not the drones.  Likewise they are deploying 60 year old tanks into battle, so what tanks will they give these new troops?  T-55s?  How many working T-62s and T-55s could Russia even have? 

Those shortages will only compound the problems with the time element.  Even if you assume newly mobilized troops will be given wholly inadequate training and just a few pieces of equipment like a helmet and a Kalashnikov (as some propagandists have argued for) they aren't going to be hitting the front for months.  By then Kherson will probably have fallen, and likely (hopefully) continued losses rolling up the flanks in Luhansk.  How are barely trained, lightly armed infantry going to change the battle?  Huge numbers of untrained, poorly led troops is almost always a recipe for disaster unless the enemy troops are in a similar state.  And the Ukrainian army is one of the best led, combat experienced militaries in the world.

So I guess I'll summarize by saying that mass mobilization is a complete nonstarter for actually changing Russia's fortunes.  However, it would represent political challenges for Putin and make any defeats that much more embarrassing.  It would also (unfortunately) make Russia resorting to WMDs down the road more likely, since they would be backing further and further into the corner. 

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18 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

should we just send him a horse?

He's already got horsies upon which he poses ewwwwwwwwwwww with bare chesty-chest. Which told us a whole lot about him already and how he and tRomper are alike ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Big foney poser-losers. :P  Who, nevertheless somehow are managing to parlay their poses into destruction of big swathes of the world, economically, culturally, environmentally and politically.

 

 

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Interesting thread about Russian public opinion, and the contradictions it offers Putin.  Tldr is that ~60% of Russians are nonpolitical and give silent consent to Putin so long as he doesn't ask too much of them.  Putin knows that asking them to become engaged (a la mobilization) is risky, as his popularity will crater.  

But there's also the 20% of the country that is actively pro war, and they are demanding big action like mobilization to turn things around, because they can see that Russia is losing.  Putin needs the support of both these groups, and that is increasingly difficult.

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4 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I have seen three versions of this report that someone was playing Frogger with Putin's motorcade today.  If true, then the attempts on his life have begun already.

BREAKING NEWS: Vladimir Putin survives assassination attempt says Kremlin insider - Euro Weekly News

The article says erroneously: "Putin’s daughter was recently taken out by a car bomb."   Nope, that was so-called "Putin's brain" Dugina.  So doesn't appear to be a particularly trustworthy source.

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Xi Jingping visited Kazakhstan recently and promised to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Kazakhstan. This is his first trip outside of China's borders since Covid and he'll be meeting with the Kazakh delegation and Putin himself in Tashkent for the conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. To stop in Kazakhstan first seems a pretty strong rebuke of Putin and a warning to not try any "special operations" in Asia. I think it also shows a surprising amount of concern from the Chinese leadership with regards to Russia that they made such promises publicly. I imagine the Kazakh leadership have been extremel nervous since this whole thing started as they also have  a Russian minority region bordering Russia and have also been referred to by Putin and Russian high officials as an "artificial country." 

 

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Yea, but as I noted in a previous thread, China has funded many, many infrastructure projects in Kazakhstan, some of which either involve China leasing land or potentially inheriting that infrastructure if Kazakhstan defaults, and many of which relate to natural resources China needs from Kazakhstan. A Russian invasion of Kazakhstan would directly cost China money. So that concern is not that surprising. 

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A 25% failure rate of hypersonic missiles is concerning. I suspect this is the primary reason Russia will not try to launch any kind of tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine, there has to be worries of a weapons failure meaning that Russia will 1) nuke itself or 2) the bomb will fail to detonate, allowing the Ukrainians to collect the weaponised material and thus get a free nuclear weapon.

 

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