The Ukraine war thread
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Max Boot: Putin is running out of options.
Putin was defiant but subdued, trying to portray Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine as a preemptive response to a looming Ukrainian invasion of Russia.
It was ludicrous and pathetic — but also strangely reassuring. There has been much discussion about whether Putin is rational, because attacking Ukraine with such a small army was an act of lunacy. The evidence suggests that, while Putin is isolated and prone to miscalculation, he is not insane.
He appears to grasp, as I argued last week, that mobilization would bring more problems than it would solve. It would risk undermining Russia’s already battered economy, along with popular support for his criminal regime, but it would not deliver any immediate military benefits. Mobilizing more troops would take many months — and it would be exceedingly difficult to train, equip or supply them. As for using nuclear weapons, that would be the action of a madman who fears that the end is near. Putin’s troops are carrying out unspeakable war crimes, but he is far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory.
Putin seems to understand when the war is not going his way — hence his withdrawal from the environs of Kyiv at the beginning of April rather than risk the complete destruction of his forces. He gambled on winning a more limited victory in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, but that’s not happening, either. The Institute for the Study of War reported on Sunday: “Russian forces did not make any significant advances on any axis of advance on May 8.” Putin is running out of options.
Russia has paid a fearsome price for meager gains. Kyiv claims that more than 25,000 Russian soldiers have been killed; that figure might be exaggerated but probably not by much. Open-source reporting confirms that Russia has lost more than 3,500 vehicles (including more than 600 tanks), 121 aircraft and nine naval vessels, including the flagship of the Black Sea fleet. Those are the worst losses Russia has suffered since World War II.
While Russia gets weaker, Ukraine gets stronger: It now has more tanks than at the start of the war, much better artillery and far more weapons systems of all kinds. Russian morale is poor, with officers reportedly disobeying orders; Ukrainian morale is sky-high.
Putin is now in a strategic quandary that should be familiar to Americans after our misbegotten wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — only many times worse. Russia has launched a “war of choice” based on bad intelligence (such as the assumption that Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators). The war is going badly, but once troops are committed, emotions run high and national prestige is on the line. Both escalation and withdrawal are too painful to contemplate. The easiest thing to do is to continue doing what you’ve been doing, even if there is scant hope that the results will get any better.
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It often requires a new leader to extract a nation from such a quagmire. That’s what Richard M. Nixon did in Vietnam, Mikhail Gorbachev did in Afghanistan and, more recently, Joe Biden did in Afghanistan. The West should signal to Russia’s siloviki (the security and military elite) that if they want to live the good life again, then they need to get rid of Putin and get out of Ukraine. But Putin has had an iron grip on power for more than 22 years, and there is no reason to expect that he will be toppled anytime soon.
That means the most likely outcome in Ukraine is another frozen conflict — the situation that prevailed between 2014 and 2022. The major issue now is how far east the front line will run. That is far from ideal, but if Ukraine can return its borders close to where they were on Feb. 24, while sanctions continue to erode the Russian economy, it will be a tremendous victory for the West and a terrible defeat for Russia. Putin’s Victory Day speech might indicate he is groping for a way out, as the British defense minister suggests, but there is no easy exit from the disaster he created. -
That'll buff out.
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@George-K said in The Ukraine war thread:
Doing laundry?
That one I can understand. Russian supply has been horrible. I suspect between beans and bullets, not much else gets done. No clean socks, uniforms, underwear, etc.
Try spending a couple of weeks in the same clothes while exercising, and tell me how that works out.
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Wrecked Russian fighter jets are being found with rudimentary GPS receivers "taped to the dashboards" in Ukraine because their inbuilt navigation systems are so bad, the UK's defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said.
Speaking at the National Army Museum in London Monday, Wallace commemorated those who died in World War II and called Russia's invasion of Ukraine "senseless and self-defeating."
He added that there was evidence suggesting Russian military hardware was being pushed to breaking point by the invasion of Ukraine.
"'GPS' receivers have been found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian Su-34s so the pilots knew where they were, due to the poor quality of their own systems," he said.
"The result is that whilst Russia have large amounts of artillery and armor that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms maneuver and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages," he added.
In his Monday speech, Wallace said Russian vehicles "are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them" and that soldiers were using "pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks" and attaching "overhead 'cope cages' to their tanks."
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I suspect this did more for the Ukrainians than Jill.
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Russia’s long shot in the Donbas
On the other hand, it’s difficult to believe in the success of the larger plan to surround the Ukrainian grouping in Donbas, even with full deployment of available reserves. The frontline that stretches from Staryi Saltiv near Kharkiv to Kamianske near Zaporizhzhia is close to 600 kilometers (approximately 400 miles) in length. If the Russian forces succeed in surrounding the Ukrainian fighters (and they would have to advance by about 120 kilometers, or roughly 75 miles, in order to accomplish this), the two encirclement fronts — the internal and the external one — would add more than 200 kilometers, or over 125 miles, to the frontline’s total length.
According to the theory taught in Russian military schools, a motorized infantry battalion’s offensive strip should not comprise more than two kilometers, or just over a mile (assuming that there is direct contact with neighbors on the flanks). It follows that an operation on the scale just discussed would require at least 400 such battalions. Meanwhile, each Russian battalion tactical group (the battalion with its support units: communications, electronics, and artillery) consists of 700–900 servicemen. In other words, a successful offensive in the Donbas alone would require at least 300,000 Russian soldiers.
Meanwhile, experts estimate that no more than 70–80 battalion tactical groups — that is, no more than 60,000 Russian servicemen — are operational in all of Ukraine. In early March, the overall grouping numbered no more than 100,000 combatants, albeit without considering the additional forces of the LNR, DNR, and Russia’s National Guard.
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A fascinating thread on the botched river crossing by the Russians. Lots of theory on securing the location, obscuring what you're doing, etc.
How it worked out for the Russians:
A more in depth analysis of what went wrong here.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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I don’t think it’s fake news but it is not call up to arms. Rather, it is call for women with specified civilian qualifications and experience to step forward for the DPR defence force. They are looking for bookkeepers, controllers, drivers, janitors, bus drivers, nurses and cooks.
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I don’t think it’s fake news but it is not call up to arms. Rather, it is call for women with specified civilian qualifications and experience to step forward for the DPR defence force. They are looking for bookkeepers, controllers, drivers, janitors, bus drivers, nurses and cooks.
@Renauda said in The Ukraine war thread:
I don’t think it’s fake news but it is not call up to arms. Rather, it is call for women with specified civilian qualifications and experience to step forward for the DPR defence force. They are looking for bookkeepers, controllers, drivers, janitors, bus drivers, nurses and cooks.
For now. My bet is Russia's military will grow as the propaganda machine wins over more Russians.
