Russian invasion of Ukraine

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Yeah.... But we already are helping them. So what more were you suggesting when you said "maybe someone should stop Russia"?

Speeding up the delivery of modern artillery would help. 

[Newbornbairn]

4 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Yeah.... But we already are helping them. So what more were you suggesting when you said "maybe someone should stop Russia"?

I was taking the piss out of those cheerleading for Russia. 

[dorlomin]

5 hours ago, Bairnardo said:

It's not just the war boners this time though. Its the endless, totally sans-context RUSSIA MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO WIN!!!! stuff.

That's all well and good if you have the appetite or the crushing advantage in military terms, to go and make that happen. But we are not willing, and might not be able collectively in the West without torching the planet, to actually stop them.

In February Russian launched an operation to over run Ukraines capital and largest cities. With largely Soviet era hand me downs and a small number of prewar delivered anti tank weapons (most of the Russian armoured vehicles were killed by Ukraines own Stugna-P ATGM) the Ukrainians were able to halt the Russian advance on almost all fronts. Their two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv were saved from occupation but under bombardment by Russian artillery. But that stop was pretty much the war "won". Russia's goal of putting a regime in Kyiv that would allow it to be absorbed by Russia over the years was dead. 

The collapse of the two extended drives towards Kyiv in the end of March allowed Russia to reallocate their forces to the secondary objectives for February, that is to encircle eastern Ukraine from Kherson and Kharkhiv. But again fierce Ukrainian resistance not only blunted these offensives but had some success in counter offensives. Those "poundshop Rommels" talking about Stalingrad, that is the part of the operation that actually looked like Stalingrad's Operation Uranus. 

This failure by mid April effectively meant the Russians had lost operational initiative. They then focussed on trying to encircle the defenders around Severodontsk by drives out of Izyum and Popansa. There were a few kilometres of gains here but this also collapsed. 

Now the second largest land army in the world is reduced to trying to use conscripts from Luhansk in human wave attacks to bludgeon their way through a small front of a few miles wide under the bombardment from the largest artillery force on Earth to try to achieve something. "Something" being the capture of Seveordonetsk

Russia has lost the war by any meaningful definition of the word. We have visual confirmation of over 600 destroyed tanks from prewar stocks of 1200 operational. They are pulling tanks out of storage built in the early 60s. 

Russia has lost the operational and strategic initiative. (Tactical, operational, strategic  are level of military planning). That means they can no longer plan and execute large scale operations in Ukraine but only sustain local tactical assaults (so in military jargon they retain local tactical initiative). Ukraine has been on the defensive since day one, other than local counter attacks such as around Kharkiv and Kherson. But they are in a war of attrition where they have the much larger pool of willing fighters. So they are in the process of grinding the Russians down. 

So Ukraine's plan A, survive is all but mission accomplished. Plan b is to inflict attrition on the high quality forces that Russia does posses, certainly the VDV at Hostemel made part of that easy. But they seem to have all but blunted Russias capacity to generate, even brigade sized forces, capable of manoeuvre. The operations we have seen for the past few months have shown they lack the numbers of trained, skilled and willing troops to make the attacks listed above. 

The final phase of the war for Ukraine would be to go over from stalemate to having the initiative by erroding the combat effectiveness of Putin's army and building up their large number of volunteers into an army of their own. A man with a gun is a militiaman. It takes months to train them into being soldiers capable of combined arms warfare. 

The first supplies we sent were guns, ammo and shoulder fired weapons that could be trained in days.

Then we raided the storage of ex Warsaw Pact countries for old Soviet equipment. 

Then we moved to artillery, why, the hard part of artillery (and it is hard) is the maths. Artillerymen tend to be the smartest in an army and so picking up other artillery pieces when you know the hard part is easy. This is where we are now. 

Next is feeding in the more mechanically complex equipment like those nuts German self propelled guns the Dutch are giving them. The Americans have given them a huge huge line of credit and opened their storage. But it will take time for Ukrainians to learn up on things like Abrams and Bradley. But that is the plan and that is how our support dovetails into the way they have fought the war, not by planning mind, made up on the hoof. But the plan is that as Ukraine starts standing up large formations of volunteers, the regulars can transition to the more advanced arriving western kit. 

At this point, for those who are in favour of assisting Ukraine, the reason we have found it so hard to send them equipment is our "way of war" is so different to theirs. We focus on very high technology and very air power dominated war fighting. Our primary anti tank weapon is Apache, our primary anti artillery weapon will be F-16s, Tornados and the like with laser or GPS guided weapons. We tend to be light on artillery and most of it is in advanced self propelled systems like M-270 (the MRLS system everyone talks about) or the German self propelled gun that does trick shots. Its near impossible to get conscripts up to speed on that quickly. 

There is no great insight here, just a summary of what you will read in the newspapers. 

In summary, there is a plan, its just you cannot turn volunteers into decent soldiers on modern equipment quickly. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by dorlomin

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, Newbornbairn said:

Firstly - Ukraine isn't losing 1000 troops a day,

https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/ukraine-1000-casualties-day-donbas-arakhamia

One of Zelensky's senior officials said they presently are losing 1000 a day just in the Donbass.

[Detournement]

I love this place.

Today the White House are briefing that Ukraine needs to lower expectations and has thrown Blinken and Austin under the bus by saying that any idea that Ukraine would win didn't come from Biden personally. Then Dormolin comes on and states that Ukraine actually won the war two months ago and it's just that our inferior brains hadn't noticed yet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/secretaries-defense-state-said-publicly-us-wanted-ukraine-win-biden-sa-rcna33826

Edited June 16, 2022 by Detournement

[jagfox]

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Newbornbairn said:

The parallels with the 1930s are stark. Our fearless left wing freedom fighters (keyboard division) have been ranting about fascists and dictators for years, but here we have a bona fide totalitarian dictatorship invading another country for no other reason than conquest and to subjugate a neighbour - using the same murderous tactics used in Chechnya and Syria. There's plenty of evidence of war crimes, mass murder, widespread rape and civilians being decanted to camps in Russia. If history teaches us anything it's that regimes like this don't stop of their own volition. Look at Israel. 

This is my favourite part of that truly unhinged post - nothing like citing Israel as a reason why Something Must Be Done by the West. Looking forward to the Western rocket shipments to Gaza!

Meanwhile, History actually shows us that the majority of the world has usually been run by regimes that do not fit the cuddly, liberal democratic standard and are willing to use force to 'defend' their essential state interests (however those are perceived). Rather than having a pointless hand-wringing meltdown about this, the onus is on the adults in the room to identify what limits they can define for the action of those states (containment) without doing ruinous harm to their own interests. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by vikingTON

[DiegoDiego]

Nobody's won or lost the war yet. It's still ongoing.

[jagfox]

 

 

[welshbairn]

14 minutes ago, virginton said:

the onus is on the adults in the room to identify what limits they can define for the action of those states (containment) without doing ruinous harm to their own interests. 

I think that's what they're trying to do, but having become so reliant of Russian fuel over the decades it's a bit tricky. Maybe economic interdependence doesn't always offer the best pathway to peaceful relations. 

[steve55]

 

[LongTimeLurker]

Think this guy explains quite well the problems the Russian army have faced because they were told to fight a major war as a special military operation.

[vikingTON]

10 hours ago, welshbairn said:

I think that's what they're trying to do, but having become so reliant of Russian fuel over the decades it's a bit tricky. 

Trying to play direct economic warfare with a primary resource producing country is the most braindead attempt at containment possible:

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russian-oil-output-jumps-june-china-india-buy-cheap-barrels-2022-6?

Quote

 

Russia has boosted its oil production by roughly 5% in the first half of June compared with last month, Interfax reported Tuesday. 

Average daily oil production, including condensate, hit 1.46 million tonnes through the first 13 days of June, about 68,000 more than the rate in May, per Interfax, according to Reuters. 

After output declined in the initial weeks after the Russia's launched its war on Ukraine, it has been rebounding amid strong demand, especially in Asia, while demand from the West has been down amid self-sanctioning and government bans.

Russian seaborne oil exports jumped 9.5% in the first 13 days of June compared to May, though pipeline supplies dipped 16.5%. 

China and India, in particular, have emerged as top buyers since the war in Ukraine began and demand in the two countries have helped prop up Moscow's energy revenues. Together, the two nations now account for about 50% of Russia's seaborne oil exports. 

 

The West does not have the power to turn off a major producer's economy in a multi-polar world; while Europe is largely replacing one form of external fossil fuel dependency for another (the US) while trashing their own economies and people's livelihoods in the process.

Still though, they can't take away that Eurovision victory! 

[Stellaboz]

What would you do then? 

[vikingTON]

23 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

What would you do then? 

There's no need to do anything in my view. Ukraine is not covered by any formal defensive alliance or even pre-existing ties of dependency on European, never mind US, power. Having repelled the initial, cack-handed regime change effort, Ukraine should be left with no ambiguity about the reality that a negotiated ceasefire and peace deal is required. Georgia signed a peace deal that clearly ran against their ideal interests in 2008 and that has just about held together. 

Only after a ceasefire is declared and peace settlement discussions are underway should questions of future Western aid and military support for Ukraine be put on the table. 

By slapping broad brush economic sanctions on a country that are failing to deter any form of aggressive behaviour and by drip-feeding arms so that Ukraine's political leaders can endlessly 'try to negotiate from a stronger position' (while steadily losing ground throughout), the West is helping to set up a forever war that is among the worst of all scenarios. 

[LongTimeLurker]

It tends to be countries with vast primary resources that challenge the prevailing international order and hence fall out with the west in a big way, e.g. Libya, Iraq, Venezuela and Iran in recent decades. The issue with Russia is that they have nuclear weapons so having a proxy like Ukraine to put this particular uppity primary resource nation back in its box is the ideal scenario for NATO.

The idea that all that needs to happen is for Ukraine to hand over the Crimea land bridge and Donbas to Russia and everything can reset to normal is myopic in the extreme. What the likes of Macron and Scholz still don't seem to grasp is that they are not dealing with a bland European politician who craves consensus with Putin but a ruthless street thug who sensed weakness after the fiasco in Afghanistan and has a shopping list of demands that goes way beyond Ukraine. If Vlad wins in Ukraine, it's only the beginning of how he wants to reorder the world in geostrategic terms and his end game is unlikely to be any more comfortable for the western consumer than what is unfolding right now.

Beyond that, to minimise the scope for economic havoc, the West needs to come to grips with the Green lobby and all the over the top anti-nuclear and global warming hysteria of recent decades so that options that would reduce dependence on rogue fossil fuel rich actors like Vlad don't get phased out for irrational reasons before genuinely scaleable and economically feasible solutions have been found on energy storage for renewables. If Germany had simply followed France's path on nuclear power in recent decades, for example, the EU would be in much better shape right now. That they won't turn their nuclear plants back on even under the current circusmstances frankly beggars belief.

[Detournement]

1 minute ago, LongTimeLurker said:

It tends to be countries with vast primary resources that challenge the prevailing international order and hence fall out with the west in a big way, e.g. Libya, Iraq, Venezuela and Iran in recent decades. 

'Challenging the prevailing international' order by refusing to let white countries continue to steal all your resources. 

[LongTimeLurker]

All of the countries listed are arguably white countries and Russia definitely is, so why bring race into this in a context where it doesn't really fit?

[D Angelo Barksdale]

'Fall out with the West' is one hell of a euphemism, fair play.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, LongTimeLurker said:

the West needs to come to grips with the Green lobby and all the over the top anti-nuclear and global warming hysteria of recent decades so that options that would reduce dependence on rogue fossil fuel rich actors like Vlad don't get phased out for irrational reasons before genuinely scaleable and economically feasible solutions have been found on energy storage for renewables. If Germany had simply followed France's path on nuclear power in recent decades, for example, the EU would be in much better shape right now. That they won't turn their nuclear plants back on even under the current circusmstances frankly beggars belief.

They (German politicians) always cite Fukushima as causing their change of mind on nuclear power rather than Green lobbying.