The Ukraine war thread

[Mik]

I love those.

[George K]

Cigarette!

[George K]

He probably said this with a straight face, too.

[George K]

[George K]

This is entirely symbolic, as the German consulate has not functioned since February

Its a warning shot to EU diplomats, which follows months of veiled and real threats from Russian lawmakers and media outlets against Western officials visiting Kyiv

[George K]

[George K]

[Renauda]

Sadly from what I can see in Russian language media and online sources this is true:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63205446

For example:

[Mik]

No longer rational.

[George K]

Status of the Bridge

As bad as the damage looked from the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion, Russia is still using the bridge:

• The rail bridge has two tracks going each way, and they ran a test 15-car train on the other span. I have a civil engineer/bridge inspector friend who thinks it’s probably unwise to use the rail bridge at all, as the fire has almost certainly weakened the structure through spalling. But Russia doesn’t have a lot of options.
• The destroyed train hasn’t been cleared yet.
• They’ve opened up the surviving lane for traffic. “It’s been said that the road span can handle 20 cars an hour and has a weight capacity of 3.5 tons.” That’s rural mail route capacity, not “support a major front in a war” capacity.
• Russia is trying to repair the bridge.
• They’re using passenger-only ferries to cross, but the run rate is so low they may only have one ferry in service.

Peter Zeihan says it’s potentially a turning point in the war:

• “By far the most significant development of the war to date.” I would say that the failure to take Hostomel Airport in the opening phases of the war was bigger, as that meant Russia’s high risk/high reward decapitation strike had failed.
• “The Kerch bridge is the only large-scale rail connection between mainland Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which is home to about two and a half million people.”
• All other rail lines are under threat of Ukrainian artillery.
• He reiterates that everything in Russia runs on rail, as they never built a modern road network in most of the country.
• “With Kerch being the only real connection, it is the primary primary way that the Russians Supply Crimea in the southwestern front with not just troops and equipment, but with food and fuel.”
• He estimates the bridge spans couldn’t be repaired without several months of work.
• “Now that the Ukrainians know it can be done, you can bet they’re going to try to hit other parts of it to make sure the thing stays offline.”
• “For the first time we have a path forward for the Ukrainians here to win that is not long and windy.”
• Russia finally has a problem it can’t just shove bodies at. “You don’t throw a half a million people at logistics. This is something where either you have the connections or you don’t.”
• Russian troops in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea are “suddenly on their own.”
• They can now only supply those regions in two ways. “One is by truck, and we know that because of all the Javelins that have been put into Ukraine, and all the RPGs, that the Russians are almost out of their entire military tactical truck fleet, and they’ve started using city buses and Scooby-Doo vans, and those just can’t take the volume of stuff that an active frontline needs.”
• The second way is by ship, and if they can’t supply anti-ship missiles, then Ukrainians can Muscova “every single cargo ship that the Russians try to bring in.”
• “Losing cargo ships in that volume, losing trucks and buses in that volume, is hollowing out the entirety of the Russian internal transport system. This is the sort of thing that if you bleed this fast, it takes a decade to recover from, and in a war zone that is not going to happen.”
• And sanctions make everything harder.

There still seems to be some confusion over just what blew up the bridge. While truck bomb is still the most widely accepted theory, supposedly Russia scans all trucks before the enter the bridge. And Suchomimus has a video up showing something in the water just before the blast (what isn’t clear).

[Renauda]

@Mik

Funny you should say that. A close friend of mine from undergrad years worked on the Russia and East European desk and embassies for 25 years with Min. Foreign Affairs in Ottawa. His comment to me when this war started last February was that Putin’s actions were irrational and absent even the distorted logic of his Soviet predecessors when they invaded Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

[Mik]

I'm wondering how long Russia will be able to escalate short of nukes. They have to be running short of long-range precision missiles. Maybe they have a lot of non-precision missiles they can launch at civilian targets, much like the Palestinians do. I really don't know.

[George K]

@Mik said in The Ukraine war thread:

They have to be running short of long-range precision missiles.

Indeed they are. A lot of the chatter is how these recent strikes by cruise missiles and other precision weapons serve no strategic purpose. Their goal is to wither the Ukrainian people. Good luck with that.

[George K]

"Russia's drone and cruise missile strikes today cost between $400-700 million."

[George K]

[Mik]

That'll take a while to fix, even if the supporting structure is still solid. If it's not...

[Renauda]

Russian joke for today:

Иван, что значит частичный запуск мобилизация?

Федя, это значит, что тебя заберут из дома целым и вернут по частям.

Translation:

Ivan, what does partial mobilization mean?

Fedya, it means that they take you from home in one piece and return you [from Ukraine] in pieces.

[Mik]

Snort.

[Renauda]

Lawrence Freedman analysis. Worth the read.

Excerpt:

It no longer seems preposterous to suggest that Russia can lose this war. The images of late February, of Ukrainians making Molotov cocktails, have been replaced by those of highly professional forces on the move. The Russian army is a shadow of its former self, and its former self was less than it claimed. Well over seven months into the war its best units have been torn apart. Their replacements are often cobbled together using whoever happens to be available. Years of defence production have been lost, with valuable equipment captured by the enemy. Many senior commanders have been killed while the officer corps has been shredded. Troops at the front are having a harrowing experience and are consequently demoralised. The race is now on to establish defensive lines that can be held and cope with an enemy that has superior intelligence, equipment, and morale. Moscow now faces the prospect of the attrition of its armed forces continuing apace as its occupation becomes increasingly untenable..

https://samf.substack.com/p/retribution-and-regime-change?utm_source=email

[Mik]

Uh oh.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-troops-pour-into-belarus-by-the-trainload/ar-AA12OtwC?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a74a47b5a5d34ffebbc2c9b6b84857a8